Better Call Saul rewatch - just doing the full show and then finishing up the final episodes for season 6. I just started this one, so I don’t have much to say other than I love how the show starts off with Jimmy thinking he’s protecting his victim brother Chuck from the evil Howard Hamlin… Oh how interesting that story twists and turns!
The Office - The American version. It has a different tone from the British one. It has a very American sitcom feel. Where the characters have no real meaningful flaws because everything can be overcome with time and grind. Jim Halpert is lazy and lacking drive, yet gets promoted above everyone. Clingy toward someone else’s wife to be, for years, and that somehow ends up being the winning strategy for getting the girl - granted Roy wasn’t even presented as a real character, just an obstacle. He often annoyes his co-workers with pranks, and never sees consequences despite destroying office property and productivity.
The show has some excellent episodes sprinkled in, my favourite was probably The Dinner Party - also the name of my favourite Seinfeld episode; but the show kind of wears on me.
The big difference between Jim Halpert (and Ted Mosby from How I met Your Mother) and the basis for the character - Tim Canterbury and Ross Gellar, are that there were actual consequences for their character flaws (at least in the first 5 or 6 seasons of friends Friends) and they weren’t presented as good, but kind of dark and creepy - tension for Tim and Ross, based on their actions, got thick enough to cut with a knife. One moment that sticks out to me was after Ross and Rachel broke up, and how uncomfortable the other characters were in the subsequent episodes when they couldn’t ditch Ross - because he was Chandler’s best friend and Monica’s brother. In fact, that’s the sort of writing I loved about Dinner Party, Jan’s mental breakdown and Steve Carell being nowhere near the right mindset to deal with it, and the other guests just trying to be polite.
Unfortunately, most of the show’s episodes feel kind of samey, and it’s a grind to watch, so I kind of quit during season 5, not sure if I’ll go back since Better Call Saul’s a show I know I like, and I’ll probably move onto something else after. I find with most of these American Sitcoms, they hit this point where they kind of “break” and then it’s just a waste of time to keep watching because they never recover the elements that made them great in the first place. I think that’s happened with The Office, it happened in Friends during season 5 or 6? I forget, but I remember the last 30-50 episodes or so weren’t very good except for a few scenes here and there. That’s what’s happened with The Office for me. I think it happened when Jim proposed to Pam, that’s it, I don’t care about the story anymore. Shows like Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul know when to end, but alas - the main inventive is cash. Seinfeld, IMO was the opposite, I felt like that one could have kept going - but Curb Your Enthusiasm felt like exactly the sort of update that Seinfeld needed, that and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Watched films all night, Mulholland Drive and Scarface.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
