Better Call Saul is a show with range. Some characters like Jimmy/Saul lie constantly, others like Mike tell the truth to a fault. With that in mind, our coverage this season will be structured as a collection of true and false statements about each episode. Welcome to Better Call Saul Truth And Lies.

TRUTH — We’ve been emphasizing the wrong word

A few seasons back, once it became clear that Kim Wexler was going to be both an important ongoing character in this universe and an important ongoing part of Jimmy McGill’s life, a lot of us started doing some uncomfortable math. “If Kim is such a big deal here,” we’d think, “and she’s not present or even mentioned in Breaking Bad, then what exactly happens between now and then to cause that change?” Or, to put it in a more panicky, accurate way: What happened to Kim?

It turns out we might have been emphasizing the wrong word in that last sentence. It might not be so much “What happened to Kim?” — with the implication being that some outside force caused her to disappear from Jimmy’s life — as it is “What happened to Kim?” Maybe this was never a situation where Kim Wexler ends up being a victim of circumstance, a person who things happened to, a person whose options are limited to “die or flee New Mexico in heartbreak.” Maybe all of this actually unlocked something in Kim that was there all along. Maybe, despite her protests and scowling in the early stages of Jimmy’s transformation into Saul Goodman, deep down, she… likes it.

Maybe Kim Wexler breaks bad, too?

I fully cop to the fact that I did not see this coming, at least not in this way. Last week should have been a tip-off, though, the way she shredded Lalo and sent him packing when Jimmy couldn’t get a convincing word out of his mouth. Kim really leaped into action there in a way that seemed natural. She’s always been good at it, dating back to her tequila-gridding days as Gisele St. Clair. She’s been better than Jimmy at times, too. The difference might have been as simple as Kim having a governor on her motor put in place by the expectations of polite society.

Well, it looks like something knocked that governor loose. Watch her face when she was talking to Jimmy about ruining Howard’s life with falsified claims of mismanaging client funds, a substantial step up from Jimmy’s “bowling ball through the windshield” revenge. Watch her eyes light up as she talks about that Sandpiper money. Watch her do the same finger guns Jimmy did at the end of last season when he crossed over to the dark side.

Her path was even similar. They both left HHM, they both got folded into a big firm and focused on one big client (Mesa Verde, Sandpiper), and they both had the realization that they’d rather be in it for themselves as criminal defense lawyers. Kim might even end up being more diabolical in her journey because she has the innocent cover of pro bono work, whereas everyone knows Jimmy is all flash and sleaze. I could be taking this too far. I think I just made her a supervillain.

The truth is that there still is an anvil hovering over her head. This doesn’t change any of that. Kim Wexler does not show up in Breaking Bad. She exits Jimmy’s life in some way, probably sooner than later. What this episode teeters toward is a version of that story where that exit is not a result of something Jimmy did, but instead of her own future shady behavior. It’s a lot to consider. We should have considered it already. Kim Wexler was never a damsel in distress. She might very well be her own danger.

LIE — Jimmy has it all under control

He sure does not!

A big part of this is still him dealing with the PTSD of that gunfight. A similarly large part has to do with Lalo showing up at his door and his — apparently mistaken! — belief that he needs to protect Kim from harm. However the math of it all works out, my dude is spiraling right now, showing up at Mike’s house in a breathless panic and trying to plan an entire day of pampering to convince Kim to stay in the hotel. He’s scared, a lot, in a very real way, and the discovery that Lalo Salamanca did not in fact die in Mexico will not help that feeling at all.

We know it won’t last. We’ll see him later on in that strip mall full of bluster and bravado, hair combed to perfection and neon dress shirt pressed perfectly wrinkle-free. This might all be one of the foundational experiences that gets him from here to there. But it’s still strange to see, especially with the roles flipped, where Jimmy was preaching skittish caution and Kim was charging ahead recklessly. It makes me kind of sad this show is a prequel, really, because now I’d like to see Jimmy and Kim as a shenanigans-performing husband-wife defense team for a period of decades. I feel like Kim could have handled Walter White.

Screw it. Let’s alter history and do it. It would be fun.

TRUTH — Lalo went full-on Kevin McCallister

Two of my favorite things:

• Movies and television shows where a character is forced to defend his home from invaders using a series of booby traps and gizmos, kind of like an adult Home Alone, with examples including Skyfall and Hobbs & Shaw and The Martian, if we want to make the leap to a situation where the role of the Wet Bandits is played by the harsh and unforgiving cosmos
• Lalo Salamanca

And so, yes, of course, I loved watching him thwart Gus Fring’s assassins with hot oil and secret tunnels. It was just classic Lalo, improvisation crossed with startling athleticism. Lalo has the same problem Kim and Nacho have — I’m sorry to keep harping on it, it’s unavoidable — where we know they’re not around a few years down the line. We know Gus is around, too. Lalo does not win this war. I am very glad this was not his time, though. I need as much Lalo as I can get.

It is almost unreasonable how good a character Lalo is. To pull this off after five seasons of this show and the full run of Breaking Bad, to just up and introduce someone this charming and evil and perfect, is basically showing off. Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould are doing a Globetrotter routine right in front of our faces, fancy dribbling and confetti buckets and all of it. I have no choice but to respect it.

LIE — Nacho is doing a great job of getting out of the game

Buddyyyyyyy.

All Nacho wants to do is run from New Mexico with his father and keep them both safe. He only has a few small problems: his dad won’t leave; Gus won’t let him out and is threatening his father just to drive that home; Lalo brought him to Don Eladio with the intent of having him step up in the cartel; and now Lalo seems to (correctly!)suspect him of working with Gus to stage an assassination that resulted in the deaths of people close to him.

Nacho is stuck between a rock and a hard place. The rock and the hard place both have guns. One of them has a terrific mustache. This analogy is falling apart. I think the point stands.

TRUTH — I love Don Eladio

As far as I can tell, Don Eladio spends all day having pool parties and drinking tequila and accepting exotic sports cars with piles of cash in the trunk, which is located in the front of the car and is therefore called a “frunk,” by him, to his great delight. I realized as I watched this episode that I have never not been very excited to see him. It angers me in a surprising way that Gus takes him and (presumably) Lalo off the board eventually.

Eh, screw it. If we’re already letting Kim live as Jimmy’s rascal law partner, let’s let Lalo and Don Eladio defeat Gus, too. Let’s pretend. Or at least pitch a Don Eladio prequel. We can age Steven Bauer down with that Irishman CGI. The budget will be like $25 million per episode. I’ll start passing the hat now.

LIE — It is a terrific time to be Howard Hamlin

Every character on this show has grown and/or changed since season one. That’s not exactly shocking because, like, that’s how storytelling is supposed to work. Jimmy is becoming Saul, Mike is working with Gus, Kim… well, we discussed that earlier. But let’s not overlook the borderline hilarious arc that Howard Hamlin has been riding.

The man was the closest thing the show had to a Big Bad in the beginning. He was the antagonist that pushed and drove Jimmy. He was formidable and powerful and not some buster to be clowned on. Cut to four-plus seasons later and he is getting clowned on all day. There was the bowling ball and the hookers, of course, and then when he told Kim about it all, when he tried to “warn” her, she laughed right in his very tan face. He must be so confused all the time about what happened to his life. It’s delightful.

And it might be getting worse, now that Kim is pitching an even more malicious fate for him. This whole series could end with him broken into a million pieces and sleeping on a park bench. I’d love to sit in on one of his therapy sessions to see how he feels about it all.

TRUTH — There is no greater decadence than a midnight cheeseburger

This was the coup de grace of Jimmy’s plan to stay in and pamper themselves while hiding from Lalo in the hotel and, I must say, it would have swayed me. There are some situations where a midnight cheeseburger is sad and troubling, I’ll grant you that. But in the right circumstances, if you’re treating yourself after a hard day or capping off a great night, a midnight cheeseburger is as decadent as it gets. The grease and indulgence of it all, my god.

You might not feel great about it in the morning, both because of the lack of sleep and the congealing mess ravaging your insides, but that’s a problem for later. You do not concern yourself with the future while eating a midnight cheeseburger. A midnight cheeseburger is about the moment, this moment, right now. There are no regrets allowed while eating a midnight cheeseburger, unless you forget to order fries with it. You wouldn’t do that, though. You know this is a decadent treat. This is not your first rodeo.

LIE — This show stinks!

This is not the time for the debate about whether Better Call Saul will end up being better than Breaking Bad. There is a time for that, maybe later this summer when we’re all sweaty and irritable and bored. We can yell and call each other names and really get after it. It’ll be fun. But right now, today, this is about celebrating an incredible season of television. How good was this? All of it, too, from beginning to end. The way this world has grown and expanded and gotten more dangerous step-by-meticulous-step, never rushing, making the journey from mailroom failbro to cartel-adjacent lawyer seem perfectly logical. It’s basically a magic trick. And it keeps getting better.

I joke about all the other spinoffs and prequels I want after this show ends (Gus in Chile, Don Eladio’s rise, Mike in high school), but I’m only barely joking. It’s been such a treat to watch this universe open up. If they can do this — again, all of this — with the comic relief character from a heartbreaking show about drug dealing and personal loss, I mean, why stop there? Keep expanding it. Go full Marvel. Tell me a series of interconnected stories about this fictional world until the sun grows and grows and swallows our real-world whole, incinerating plants and animals and buildings alike and bringing an end to the experiment we call Earth.

Or, uh, maybe just one more. For now. Better Call Saul is a good show. That’s what I’m trying to say.

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When Cary Fukunaga took over for director Danny Boyle on The Film Previously Known As Bond 25 No Time To Die, it was unexpected news, to say the least. He’d just come down from a cerebral, crazy ride of a limited series, Maniac, and his reputation still rode high for directing the first True Detective season, which was (and let’s say this in a Woody Harrelson-Matthew McConaughey hybrid voice) totally wild, man. So I thought maybe, just maybe, we’d see a slightly more unconventional Bond installment this time around. Perhaps that was an unfair assumption, True Detective‘s twists are penned by Nic Pizzolatto, and Fukunaga wasn’t the only mind behind Maniac‘s twists (Patrick Somerville wrote much of the series), but my hunch was not entirely off base.

The Beasts of No Nation director did, in fact, attempt to make this Bond film an atypical one. He originally pitched a more cerebral take, and it sounds like kind-of a mindf*ck, honestly, even though it would have bounced off the Spectre acts of Christoph Waltz’s Blofeld. As Fukunaga tells Miranda July for Interview Magazine, he wanted the first half of the movie to take place inside 007’s head. Yes, he was completely serious:

“I swear to God, I had an idea that this movie could all be taking place inside the villain’s lair from the last film. There’s this scene [in Spectre] where a needle goes into James Bond’s head, which is supposed to make him forget everything, and then he miraculously escapes by a watch bomb. And then he and Léa blow up the place, and go on to save the day. I was like, ‘What if everything up until the end of act two is all inside his head?’”

At that point in the interview, July suggested that perhaps Fukunaga creates stories like she does, meaning that he’s attempting to work out other things in his life through his own work. In response, he admitted that “it’s so hard to separate the project from a chapter in my life,” and given that he helped write No Time To Die (after recently concluding Maniac), this all makes more sense in terms of Fukunaga wanting James Bond to be on some mind-altering substance. However, Universal/MGM obviously shut this pitch down, so we can expect No Time To Die (the last James Bond turn for Daniel Craig) to be more in the feel of the 007 pictures that we’ve come to expect. Fukunaga will probably shake up the franchise a little, sure, but we’ll have to see how much that’s possible when the movie arrives on November 25.

(Via Interview Magazine)

When HBO Max debuts on May 27, the streaming service won’t have its biggest “get” (the Friends reunion special, which has been delayed due to the global coronavirus pandemic), but it will have a solid selection of launch-day titles. There’s a ton of HBO series, obviously, including The Sopranos, The Wire, and Sex and the City, and 20 films from the Studio Ghibli library, as well as Friends, Rick and Morty, and The Big Bang Theory. There’s also original programming, like Looney Tunes Cartoons and Love Life, Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick’s first foray into scripted television as a lead.

Created by Sam Boyd, Love Life “is about the journey from first love to last love, and how the people we’re with along the way make us into who we are when we finally end up with someone forever,” according to the gooey, generic plot description. But hey, it’s a show starring Kendrick and Scoot McNairy — I will watch (and probably love) it.

Here’s more day one offerings:

The slate includes the scripted comedy Love Life, starring Anna Kendrick; Sundance 2020 Official Selection feature documentary On the Record; underground ballroom dance competition series Legendary; Craftopia, hosted by YouTube sensation LaurDIY; the all-new Looney Tunes Cartoons, from Warner Bros. Animation; and Sesame Workshop’s The Not Too Late Show with Elmo

To sign up for HBO Max, click here.

Lil Xan was reportedly hospitalized after having a panic attack, according to TMZ. On Sunday, the 23-year-old rapper, who was staying with his mother in Corona, CA, apparently began hallucinating so badly that his mom called 911 for an ambulance. The doctors reportedly told Xan that he had suffered a panic attack, but Xan tells TMZ that he doesn’t actually remember what happened. The rapper attributed the attack to stress from socially distancing, which has severely affected his income like many artists who can’t tour or record right now.

Xan says that he’s been hospitalized before for anxiety issues, but that this was the worst attack he’s had and the first since the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis began. While he avoids watching the news, social media has likely contributed to his anxiety since COVID is all anyone seems to be able to talk about. Toward the end of March, he reposted a quote from Billie Eilish about not reading Instagram comments, writing that “this sh*t is starting to ruin my own f*cking life and I care about my mental health more than anything!”

He also posted about coronavirus being “the most lonely thing” and later wrote “this pandemic has me losing my mind.” Hopefully, he finds something to occupy his time so he doesn’t continue to focus on anxiety-inducing thoughts like these as the need for self-isolation continues.

After making its Adult Swim debut in December 2013, Rick and Morty seemingly rocketed to fame overnight. And with only a few seasons under its belt so far, the nihilistic comedy has already found itself ranked alongside South Park, Futurama, and The Simpsons as one of the best animated classics of all time with no signs of the show losing its razor-sharp wit anytime soon.

The series revolves around alcoholic genius/mad scientist Rick Sanchez and his grandson/sidekick Morty as the two attempt to juggle family life while literally ripping holes through time and space in pursuit of, well, mostly sticking it to Rick’s detractors and/or discovering new forms of trans-galactic sex. There’s clearly a riff on Back to the Future going on, but Rick and Morty takes many of its cues from sci-fi staples like Doctor Who and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. There’s also a bit of Lovecraftian of horror underpinning the show’s madcap plots, which only adds to its fan-favorite blend of existential bleakness and absurd comedy.

With every frenetically-paced episode packed with visual gags, narrowing down the ten best episodes is almost certainly going to be a subjective task. But we think we’ve nailed down a pretty solid list that’s comprised of the best Rick and Morty has to offer. And if we didn’t, let us know in the comments.

10. Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat (Season 4, Episode 1)

The Story: In the fourth season premiere, Rick brings Morty on an expedition to harvest “death crystals,” so right off the bat, what could go wrong? The crystals allow whomever holds them to see their future, which results in Morty learning there’s a way to spend the rest of his life with his crush Jessica, so naturally, he jams one in his skull, and it’s off to the races. Rick dies, comes back as a wasp, a hologram and various other clones while Morty goes on a murder spree to ensure a future with his one true love. Don’t worry, everything works out in the end.

Why It’s On The List: With the introduction of Wasp Rick, Shrimp Rick, and a new take on Mr. Meeseeks, this episode sets aside any doubts that the show might’ve lost a step during a long, two-year hiatus since the third season. It’s all the Rick and Morty goodness that fans love while moving the series in new directions. Plus it has some sweet Akira references.

9. Rixty Minutes (Season 1, Episode 8)

The Story: After finding normal television boring as hell, Rick allows the Smith family TV to watch an endless array of shows from infinite realities. Unfortunately, one of those shows is a reality series that shows Jerry, Morty’s dad and Rick’s son-in-law, living the sweet life as a rich and famous actor, which makes everyone in the family curious to see how their lives could’ve played out in other realities. It goes very badly, and soon, Jerry and his wife Beth are barreling towards a divorce while their daughter, Summer, plans to run away after learning she wasn’t exactly a “planned” addition to the family.

Why It’s On The List: While trying to convince Summer to stay, Morty shows her the secret graveyard in the backyard where alternate versions of him and Rick are buried, and he delivers this classic line: “Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody’s gonna die. Come watch TV?” It sounds bleak as all get out, but it plays perfectly in the episode and is probably one of the best examples of the show’s absurd, existential humor.

8. The Ricks Must Be Crazy (Season 2, Episode 6)

The Story: How to explain this one? So Rick’s flying car won’t start, and, of course, it’s powered by a battery that actually contains a “microverse” where an advanced species is unknowingly having its electricity siphoned by Rick. However, that species has now invented a microverse of its own, which is the source of aforementioned car trouble. Rick and Morty inevitably get trapped inside the microverse inside a microverse, and it becomes a whole thing. Meanwhile, in the real world — well, actually, a movie theater parking lot in an alternate reality — Summer is sitting inside Rick’s car that’s wreaking mayhem on the populace after taking Rick’s instructions to “Keep Summer safe” a little too far.

Why It’s On The List: On top of having all the hilarious sci-fi weirdness you want in a Rick and Morty episode, both Stephen Colbert and Nathan Fielder provided voices for Rick’s microverse adversaries. The ice cream gag at the end was pretty great, too.

7. A Rickle In Time (Season 2, Episode 1)

The Story: In the second season premiere, Summer and Morty’s squabbling breaks the very fabric of reality, and it puts Rick square in the sights of two testicular-looking time cops voiced by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele. Turns out, some of Rick’s methods aren’t exactly legal. For example, using a stolen time crystal to freeze time for six-months because he’s too lazy to clean up a house party from season one. That’s apparently frowned upon and will land him in Time Prison for all eternity — if the time cops can catch him across a cascading number of realities first.

Why It’s On The List: Did you catch the part about time-traveling testicles voiced by Key and Peele? That’ll do it right there.

6. Meeseeks and Destroy (Season 1, Episode 5)

The Story: In an effort to get everyone to stop asking him to complete basic tasks all of the time, Rick gifts the family a “Meeseeks Box,” which unlocks exactly one Mr. Meeseeks who will perform a task of your choosing, and then immediately perish. Unfortunately, Jerry doesn’t listen to Rick’s instructions to keep the tasks simple, and soon, a hostage situation breaks out involving hundreds of Meeseeks who can’t die until Jerry takes two strokes off of his golf game or dies in a hail of gunfire and has “all of the strokes” taken off of his game. Meanwhile, after winning a bet with Rick, Morty gets to pick the adventure this time, and things take a very dark turn. You’ll never look at jellybeans the same way again.

Why It’s On The List: Mr. Meeseeks is easily one of the more memorable characters that Rick and Morty have thrown at the screen, and that really is saying a lot. The show is packed to the gills with off-the-wall characters, so it takes a little something extra to stand out in that crowd, and Mr. Meeseeks delivers.

5. Pickle Rick (Season 3, Episode 3)

The Story: Because he’d rather risk death than go to therapy, Rick conveniently turns himself into a pickle just as the family is getting ready to leave for counseling. However, Beth notices an elaborate setup with a syringe that will change Rick back into a human as soon as everyone leaves, so she takes it, which leaves Rick trapped as a pickle until they get back. Unfortunately, on her way out, Beth doesn’t realize that she knocked Rick into the sewer, where he’s forced to build himself a robotic body out of rat corpses that turns him into an unstoppable killing machine.

Why It’s On The List: Ask anyone to name their favorite Rick and Morty episodes, and there’s an almost guaranteed chance that Pickle Rick will end up on the list. The episode eschews the show’s usual sci-fi trappings, except for the cybernetic pickle, of course, for an insane send-up of action films with a touching family drama sewn in. Alright, maybe touching isn’t the right word, but there is binge-drinking!

4. The Ricklantis Mixup (Season 3, Episode 7)

The Story: So this one isn’t exactly about the main Rick and Morty, but it is definitely full of Ricks and Mortys. More commonly known as “Tales from the Citadel,” this episode is comprised of five short vignettes that focus on the interdimensional society where thousands of Ricks and Mortys from different realities do everything from work as crooked cops, run for office, and get turned into delicious wafers? It’s very reminiscent of The Twilight Zone but taken to outrageous extremes that fans of the show have come to expect.

Why It’s On The List: The Ricklantis Mixup is the writing team firing on all cylinders as they take a tiny pocket of the Rick and Morty mythos and turn it into a multiverse of stories packed with the show’s hilariously bleak sci-fi antics. After it aired, the episode received critical acclaim for shining its absurd light on police brutality and political corruption, and for the fact that almost every single character was voiced by Justin Roiland with the exception of one or two lines. Considering each short story was jam-packed with different variations of Morty and Rick with their own unique personalities, that’s no small feat, and it’s impressive as hell that Roiland pulled it off.

3. Total Rickall (Season 2, Episode 4)

The Story: While sitting around the dinner table, the Smith family slowly learns that every time they reminisce about the past, alien parasites reproduce and become part of their memories. But not just any part, the parasites manifest themselves as a strange assortment of characters from a talking pencil named Pencilvester, Tinkles the Fairy Lamb, Frankenstein’s monster, and the lovable Mr. Poopybutthole. But once the Smiths solve the key to figuring out who’s a real memory and who’s a parasite, well, that’s when the shooting starts.

Why It’s On The List: Mr. Poopybutthole. Full stop.

2. Rick Potion #9 (Season 1, Episode 6)

The Story: On the night of the school dance, Morty asks Rick to make him a love serum that will make his longtime crush Jessica be his date, which is a creepy thing to do, so fortunately, the whole situation wildly spirals out of control. Unbeknownst to Rick and Morty, Jessica has the flu, which bonds with the love serum and causes the entire population to become violently obsessed with Morty. After repeatedly disfiguring the whole world with failed antidote after antidote, Rick finally comes up with a Hail Mary solution that will haunt Morty for the rest of his life.

Why It’s On The List: Not only does Rick Potion #9 turn the gross implications of a love serum on its head, but the episode makes it abundantly clear that Rick and Morty isn’t afraid to go to some very dark places, and yet somehow be insanely funny while doing so. The episode also marked a notable push into bringing continuity into the mix, which is a very bold move considering Rick and Morty blow up reality almost every time they go on an adventure. But with Rick Potion #9, viewers learn a dark secret that gives future installment an added heft because, as much as it seems like nothing matters on the show, the duo’s insane romps are having lasting effects. It’s a delicate juggling act, for sure, but Rick Potion #9 set the ball in motion, and the writers have risen to the challenge every time.

1. Mortynight Run (Season 2, Episode 2)

The Story: After becoming displeased with Rick making an arms deal that will result in the assassination of a sentient cloud being named Fart, of course, Morty helps the wanted gas cloud escape. Unfortunately, in his attempt to save a life, Morty ends up getting several people killed, which he rationalizes as a means to an end. But when that end comes, things get very dark for Morty, as they so often do.

Why It’s On The List: Once again, Rick and Morty doesn’t shy away from putting poor Morty through the wringer. Just when you think the show can’t traumatize the kid anymore, he’s faced with an intergalactic Trolley Problem after already leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. And yet, somehow, each dark stare into the void is more hilarious than the last. Mortynight Run is also another classic example that you never know what crazy twist Rick and Morty is going to pull as their frenetic adventures come crashing to an end. Morty’s righteous jaunt to protect a fart cloud could’ve easily concluded with a laugh, but nope, the show took a sharp turn into “Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in a box” country that will leave you staring at your TV in disbelief. And that’s the magic of Rick and Morty.

Megan Thee Stallion has established herself as a friend of The Tonight Show, as she has visited the program to perform, and she even teamed up with Jimmy Fallon and Black Thought for a “Hot Girl Fall” sketch. Now she has returned to guest on an at-home edition of Fallon, and she spoke with the host about making new music while social distancing.

The pair kicked off their conversation by discussing new music, with Megan saying she’s been working from her home studio in Los Angeles: “I’ve been recording. But you know, that’s the best thing about the quarantine. I would have been working on it anyway, but what else am I going to be doing right now? I’ve just been writing and we set up a little studio in here. So, we’re gonna have new music for when we can go back outside.”

She also talked about her popular #SavageChallenge TikTok dance challenge, saying that it has gotten her attention from some pretty famous folks: “I just saw Courtney Cox did it and Jessica Alba, freakin’ Janet Jackson. […] Now we follow each other on Instagram. I win: Janet Jackson follows me on Instagram. Everybody else can go away.”

Watch Megan’s appearance on The Tonight Show above.

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Val Kilmer’s book, I’m Your Huckleberry: A Memoir, is out today, and in it, he discusses playing everyone from Jim Morrison in The Doors to (an extremely underrated) Batman in Batman Forever to Doc Holliday in Tombstone to Dieter Von Cunth in MacGruber, which I hope gets three chapters. At least three chapters. Kilmer’s had quite the career, beginning with his breakout role in 1986’s Top Gun, where he plays the Iceman to Tom Cruise’s Maverick. The Daily Beast published an excerpt from the memoir, where the actor discusses working with director Tony Scott and Cruise’s legendary work ethic.

After discussing how his “camp” of actors were the “party boys” who took over San Diego while shooting the film, Kilmer writes, “Tom refrained from our revelry, with good reason. From day one, he was laser-focused on a singular goal: to become the greatest action hero in the history of film. He was up nights learning lines; he spent every waking hour perfecting his stunts. His dedication was admirable.” Kilmer continued:

“Of course even more admirable is the fact that he achieved his goal. I also love that he’s a Mark Twain fan. Tom is a comrade I respect and admire, though as creatures we hail from galaxies far, far away from one another. My favorite moment between us was a small prank in which I gave him an extremely expensive bottle of champagne but placed it in the middle of a giant field and made him follow scavenger-hunt-style clues to find it. I hid behind a bleacher and watched him lug the giant crate to his motorcycle. He never did thank me for the Iceman-style bit. I thought it would break the ice, but I guess the ice was just right.”

Tom Cruise is the teacher’s pet, if the teacher’s pet climbed skyscrapers and clung onto airplanes and jumped from building to building for fun. Kilmer also revealed how Scott pitched the movie (which he was initially hesitant to do) to him: “It has to be you. It’s not the lead, but I’m going to make you feel like it is. And this kid we found, Tom Cruise, he has it, man, and you two together, and Kelly McGillis — you know her from Juilliard, she’s nine feet tall and utter perfection.” Top Gun was the highest-grossing movie of 1986 and spawned a sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, which comes out on December 23.

(Via the Daily Beast)

Smino has a new album on the way, but fans don’t have to wait until that is out for some new music from the rapper: He has shared a surprise new mixtape, She Already Decided. Smino’s 16-track effort runs for about 40 minutes, and it’s available for free on his throwback-looking website, smitransfer.com.

Smino shared a statement about the project, in which he notes that his next album is “100% done”:

“I made dis sh*t at the krib fr tryna stay sane and
Inspired as much as I can mane…
been smokin distancing from
Da world
krazy..
how hard distance hit…
Sh*t different rn
so I jus cooked some fun sh*t…REAL FREE MUSIC..
AINT NUN PERFECT ALL UNMASTERED N ROUGH RAW WTF
EVER for y’all.
Some kool ass artist on dis project dat aint care
Bout no politics n just wanted to make some sh*t for da fun..
S/o Rizz.. S/o Arin Ray.. S/o T Pizzle my big dawg
N all da producers on this mf who was down for da cause..
like Most a y’all im ducked back figuring out how to move
Next off this sh*t…my album 100% done but …
yanno..
UNTIL THEN.
Baby!!!
She Already Decided…Shout out to Her.”

Listen to She Already Decided above.

She Already Decided is out now. Get it here.