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The 1975 are set to drop their new album Being Funny In A Foreign Language this fall. Ahead of time, the band spoke with Pitchfork about the creative process behind the records, as well as their inspirations, of the past and today.

The author of the piece noted that throughout the interview, The 1975’s lead vocalist Matty Healy dropped several F-bombs. When asked if he was a fan of Kate Bush, Healy said, “f*ck yeah.” Healy, however, revealed that he’s not big on all Stranger Things-related music, saying, “I f*cking hate Metallica. My worst band of all time.”

Healy did not further discuss Metallica. However, he shared that he shared an early listen of his band’s new album with Taylor Swift, who summed up the record saying, “It’s so funny.”

He also expanded on the band’s choice to work with Jack Antonoff to produce Being Funny In A Foreign Language, which he says has left fans polarized.

“People may think that it’s ‘uncool’ to work with the biggest producer in the world — I don’t give a f*ck,” said Healy. “I wanna make a great f*cking record… Jack doesn’t get enlisted by a lot of the best artists because he’s some go-to guy — Jack’s good.”

Being Funny In A Foreign Language is out 10/14 via Dirty Hit. Pre-save it here.

Indie music has grown to include so much. It’s not just music that is released on independent labels, but speaks to an aesthetic that deviates from the norm and follows its own weirdo heart. It can come in the form of rock music, pop, or folk. In a sense, it says as much about the people that are drawn to it as it does about the people that make it.

Every week, Uproxx is rounding up the best new indie music from the past seven days. This week we got new music from The 1975, The Killers, Stella Donnelly, and more.

While we’re at it, sign up for our newsletter to get the best new indie music delivered directly to your inbox, every Monday.

Brijean — Angelo

Rhythmic duo Brijean, composed of Brijean Murphy and Doug Stewart, have made a name for themselves with their lo-fi, groovy music which combines intricate soundscapes to create colorful tracks. Full of breezy, percussive tunes, their new EP Angelo is music to soundtrack sunny days.

The Killers — “Boy”

We all need a reason to reflect on our younger years at times, and The Killers‘ new track “Boy” does just that. The song is constructed around driving beat and nostalgia-inducing guitar riff which takes a back seat once the synth kicks in. Overall, the song was inspired by singer Brandon Flowers’ recent visit to his small hometown. “I found that the place I had wanted to get away from so desperately at 16 was now a place that I couldn’t stop returning to,” he said. “I have a son approaching the age I was at that time in my life. With ‘Boy,’ I want to reach out and tell myself — and my sons — to not overthink it.”

The 1975 — “Happiness”

If The 1975‘s latest lead single “Part Of The Band” sounded like Bon Iver attending a Phoebe Bridgers concert, their newest track “Happiness” sounds like Peter Gabriel attending a MUNA concert. The more upbeat song is lead by a groovy bass guitar and a jazzy saxophone and shows the band’s ability to pen a range of music from brooding ballads to carefree love songs.

Stella Donnelly — “How Was Your Day?”

Australian songwriter Stella Donnelly is just a few weeks out from her anticipated album Flood. Giving fans another taste of the album, she delivers the poetic anthem “How Was Your Day?” With bright, sunny chords, Donnelly takes up a talk-y lyrical delivery as she unpacks what it means to have meaning get lost in digital translation.

Young Jesus — “Ocean” Feat. Tomberlin

It hasn’t been long since Young Jesus, the band of songwriter John Rossiter, released the 2020 album Welcome To Conceptual Hill, but a lot has happened in Rossiter’s life since. Following the untimely and tragic death of a close friend, Rossiter poured his emotions into music, resulting in the upcoming album Shepherd Head. The Tomberlin-featuring track “Ocean” acts as a preview for the project, combining haunting vocals over wistful chords as Rossiter asks life’s big questions.

Frankie Cosmos — “One Year Stand”

Frankie Cosmos‘ 2019 project Close It Quietly was her last full-length project, but this week, the songwriter shed light on her creative endeavors with the lead single “One Year Stand” and Inner World Peace album announcement. The tranquil track features a rolling guitar and veiled lyrics about a relationship that ran its course. “To me, the album is about perception. It’s about the question of ‘who am I?’ and whether or not the answer matters.”

Gordi — “Stranger”

After emerging as one of Australia’s leading, heart-tugging singer/songwriter, Gordi goes back to her acoustic roots with the relatively upbeat track “Stranger.” The song arrives ahead of her upcoming EP Inhuman and offers a reflection on detachment and running on borrowed time.

Helado Negro — “Agosto” Feat. Buscabulla

Helado Negro, moniker of musician Roberto Carlos Lange, released the enthralling 2021 LP Far In, but that hasn’t stopped him from continuing to roll out new projects, like the comforting song “Agosto.” The track is a collaboration with Puerto Rican duo Buscabulla, resulting in gorgeous soundscapes and tender melodies that create a comforting and blissful lullaby.

Whitmer Thomas — “Rigamarole”

Comedian/musician Whitmer Thomas is on a mission to prove comedy and indie rock go hand-in-hand. So far this year, he’s already released the EP Can’t Believe You’re Happy Here, but he’s now gearing up for a full-length release, produced by Jay Som nonetheless. This week’s single “Rigamarole” is a synth-driven tongue-in-cheek anthem about giving in when life’s getting you down. To Thomas, the song is about “trying to shake depression with routine, and ultimately accepting I’ve got no choice but to sink into it.”

Okay Kaya — “Spinal Tap”

Dynamic songwriter Okay Kaya is preparing the release of her upcoming album SAP, which features the brand new track “Spinal Tap.” Opening with spoken word prose, the song is underscored by a driving bass guitar that compliments Kaya’s languorous vocals. In terms of subject matter, “Spinal Tap” is an investigation into her mind’s function, which can be oddly comforting when looked at through a scientific lens.

Last week, Liz Cheney‘s re-election campaign unveiled a brutal attack ad where her father and former Vice President Dick Cheney rails against Donald Trump. While the ad has been airing in Wyoming where Liz is facing a primary challenger, her campaign is apparently taking it national this week. According to Axios, Fox News viewers will soon be watching Dick Cheney call Trump a “coward” as he praises his daughter for her work on the January 6 commission despite the Republican Party’s allegiance to the former president. To add a little more sting, the spot will reportedly air during Trump’s favorite programs: Fox & Friends and Hannity.

“It’s important not only for Fox News viewers, but for the network’s hosts and top executives, to hear former Vice President Cheney’s warning about the ongoing danger Donald Trump and his lies pose to our constitutional republic,” a spokesman for Liz Cheney’s campaign told Axios.

In the now-viral ad, Vice President Cheney blasts Trump as an unprecedented danger to America. “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump,” Cheney says. “He is a coward. A real man wouldn’t lie to his supporters. He lost his election and he lost big. I know it, he knows it and deep down I think most Republicans know it.”

Adding insult to injury, the Cheney ad running on Fox News arrives on the heel of the FBI searching Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and reportedly confiscating his safe. If the Department of Justice is on the verge of pressing criminal charges, it could jeopardize’s chances of running for president again in 2024.

(Via Axios)

When Steve Adcock, an entrepreneur and “fitness buff” posted this to his Twitter:

“By age 30, you should have a group of friends that talk business, money, and fitness, not politics and pop culture.”

… people had thoughts.

His post might have been intended as more of an encouragement to surround yourself with people who challenge your current mindset, considering the tweet continued with “one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made was making friends with like-minded folks who talked about the same [stuff] over and over. I agreed with 99% of it. Your comfort zone will kill your progress.”

But still, overall the tweet left an unsavory taste in people’s mouths—primarily because it implied that money was somehow a better conversation topic than what people are usually genuinely passionate about. Why not talk about your favorite television show with friends if it lights you up inside?

It also seemed to uphold the dying myth that by the age of 30, the puzzle pieces of adulthood should somehow, as if by magic, simply fall into place. And this is where folks chimed in with their own hilarious (and sarcastic) jokes about what one should expect by their third decade on planet Earth. They did not disappoint.

Here are 12 things you didn’t know you needed by the time you turn 30. Enjoy:

1.

By the age of 30 you should have anxiety, and an emotional support pet that also has anxiety

— Shilpa Rathnam (@shilparathnam) August 3, 2022

“By the age of 30 you should have anxiety, and an emotional support pet that also has anxiety.” – @shilparathnam

I have at least three friends who tick this box.

2.

“By the age of 30 you should have a therapist you always reschedule on, a big bag of spinach in the fridge that always goes bad before you get to it, and at least one stagnant 401k that you haven’t merged after changing jobs.” – @kianatipton

Check, check and check.

3.

By the age of 30 you should own, not rent, OWN a bouncy castle. This is a time when you should be building equity. The only way to beat inflation is with inflatables.

— Yer Gal Friday (@FridayInHalifax) August 4, 2022

“By the age of 30 you should own, not rent, OWN a bouncy castle. This is a time when you should be building equity. The only way to beat inflation is with inflatables.” – @FridayinHalifax

Where’s the lie?

4.

“By the age of 30 you should have a favorite pen you won’t let anyone use, a cache of pretty notebooks you’re saving for a special occasion, and at least one piece of media you rewatch endlessly for comfort.” – @allieiswriting

Oh how I do love using my unicorn gel pen while writing in my notebook as “The Great British Bake Off” plays in the background. Not my good notebook, of course. That’s tucked away for the day I finally write the next great American novel.

5.

By the age of 30 you should have at least one large emotional support box of obsolete* cables.

* but you know they aren’t.

— Dana Sibera (@NanoRaptor) August 4, 2022

“By the age of 30 you should have at least one large emotional support box of obsolete* cables.* but you know they aren’t.” – @nanoraptor

Better yet, make it two.

6.

“By age 30 you should have a sick ass jacket people identify you by.” – @dieworkwear

Nicolas Cage knew this back in the ’90s.

7.

by the age of 30 you should have at least 3-5 feral raccoons as your best friends

— M.🍒 (@casinthemeadow) August 3, 2022

“By the age of 30 you should have at least 3-5 feral raccoons as your best friends.” – @casinthemeadow

A Marvel-based Twitter account thought something similar…

8.

“By the age of 30, your friend group should consist of a talking raccoon, a tree with a limited vocabulary, the most dangerous woman in the galaxy, and Drax.” – @MarvelUnlimited

9.

By the age of 30 you should have one friend who is a little frog

— Hana (they/them) (@Hana_D_Barrett) August 4, 2022

“By the age of 30 you should have one friend who is a little frog.” – @Hana_D_Barrett

I don’t know who these 30-year-olds with frog friends are, but they are winning at adulting.

10.

“By age 30 you should have several henchmen, a sworn enemy, and a narrative foil.” – SparkNotes

The company that’s helped us fake our way through book reports in high school offers life lessons too.

11.

“By the age of 30, you should have at least 5 web browsers with over 100 tabs opened that you don’t have any plan to actually read.” – @KhoaVuUmn

Being 30 means having virtual commitment issues. Finally, one person rallied in the war of art versus commerce, and their stance was quite clear.

12.

By your 40’s-50’s (or sooner), you realize that people that talk frequently about their money/wealth are nothing but insufferable, shallow boors.

Call me dull, but I prefer to talk about amazing books, podcasts, gardening, hobbies, documentaries/shows on Netflix, etc.

— Sonya in the Backcountry (@SJCanyonLove) August 1, 2022

“By your 40’s-50’s (or sooner), you realize that people that talk frequently about their money/wealth are nothing but insufferable, shallow boors. Call me dull, but I prefer to talk about amazing books, podcasts, gardening, hobbies, documentaries/shows on Netflix, etc.” – @SJCanyonLove

Bottom line: Love what you love and don’t weigh yourself down with arbitrary rules about age.

Walmart is probably best known as the place to pull off the highway, put a few quarters into a vending machine and get a can of Dr. Thunder, but perhaps soon it will also be the streaming service where you watch the latest episode of The Mandalorian.

That is, of course, if Walmart+ gets off the ground as a content curation platform. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that the big box megastore is hoping to land a streaming deal to add onto its monthly subscription service you probably didn’t know already existed:

In recent weeks, executives from Paramount, Disney and Comcast have spoken with Walmart, the people said, as the retailer ponders which movies and TV shows would add the most value to its membership bundle, called Walmart+. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions were private.

The report made it clear there’s no real indication that Paramount+, Disney+ or Peacock are ready to join forces with Walmart just yet. But it’s certainly an interesting development in a streaming landscape that’s somehow getting both more crowded and less robust in recent months.

And while it may seem really strange that Walmart wants to get into streaming, it actually makes a bit of sense once you learn what Walmart currently provides:

A Walmart+ membership, which costs $12.95 per month, includes free shipping on orders and discounts on fuel. It also includes a free six-month subscription to the Spotify Premium music service.

…

The retailer is increasingly looking to build its relationship with its customers beyond the footprint of its big-box stores, particularly given the dominance of Amazon.com’s Prime membership program.

As HBO Max and other streaming platforms have learned, actually making content can be more expensive and labor-intensive than just buying the good stuff at a premium and letting folks stream to their heart’s content. And while that’s bad news in a lot of ways, Walmart attempting to make its own Amazon Prime-like service without having to make anything for itself is certainly plausible. The Times report made note of wireless providers like Verizon and T-Mobile striking deals with streaming services to create bundles in a similar way, too.

Still, it’s weird to see the plus symbol next to America’s most famous big box store. But all things can become familiar if there’s enough money in it for everyone, I suppose.

[via NY Times]

Kenan Thompson has had one of the most prolific careers that any former Nickelodeon child star: he carried All That, had multiple television shows of his own, and is currently the longest-running cast member on Saturday Night Live. Now, he’s adding the 2022 Emmy’s host to his roster.

Thompson will host the 74th Emmy Awards on NBC on Monday, September 12th, live from Los Angeles. This will be the first time Thompson has hosted any type of ceremony besides all of the many fake gameshows he hosted on SNL.

“Being a part of this incredible evening where we honor the best of the television community is ridiculously exciting, and to do it on NBC – my longtime network family – makes it even more special,” Thompson said in a statement. “Like all TV fans, I can’t wait to see the stars from my favorite shows.”

The former Kenan And Kel star will enter his 20th (!!) season of Saturday Night Live this fall, making him the longest-running cast member on the show.

Thompson has several Emmys and nominations under his belt, including two in 2021 for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for Kenan and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for SNL. He joins the ever-growing group of former comedians turned Emmy hosts, which include Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and Michael Che and Colin Jost, who hosted in 2019 for some reason, despite the fact that they maybe didn’t want to do it. It seems like Thompson is actually on board, though!

The Emmy Awards air on September 12th on NBC.

(Via Deadline)

Lady Gaga’s Chromatica Ball tour took her to Washington DC last night (August 8). While she was in our country’s capital, so close to the politicians who make decisions that have an impact on our lives, Gaga decided to speak out against the recent Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Before launching into a solo piano rendition of “The Edge Of Glory,” Gaga offered a dedication, saying, “I would like to dedicate this song to every woman in America, to every woman who now has to worry about her body if she gets pregnant. I pray that this country will speak up, that we will stick together, and that we will not stop until it’s right! For every woman.”

This is not the first time Gaga has spoken out against restrictive abortion laws. After Alabama passed one in 2019, Gaga wrote, “It is an outrage to ban abortion in Alabama, period, and all the more heinous that it excludes those who have been raped or are experiencing incest, non-consensual or not. So there’s a higher penalty for doctors who perform these operations than for most rapists? This is a travesty, and I pray for all these women and young girls who suffer at the hands of this system.”

Following the passing of actor and singer Olivia Newton-John, the tributes have been pouring as Hollywood remembers the iconic stage and screen star. Obviously, Newton-John is most known for her breakout role as Sandy in the 1978 film adaptation of Grease. Landing the part was huge for the Australian-born actress’s career, but according to a new interview with Grease casting director Joel Thurm, Newton-John was actually very cautious about signing onto the musical.

While praising Newton-John’s savviness, Thurm admitted the production would’ve been a tight spot if she turned it down because she was the only actress John Travolta wanted and the only one the production pursued. “If she said no, I’d be playing the part in a poodle skirt,” Thurm joked to PEOPLE. “So everybody wanted Olivia here, but Olivia didn’t jump at the offer. That’s the important thing to know.”

According to Thurm, Newton-John wanted to make sure she had chemistry with Travolta, which was something the veteran casting director had never seen before:

“She said, ‘Okay, I want to see a screen test with John and myself and then I’ll let you know if I want to do it,’ ” he recalls.

Thurm confesses this was a first for him, telling PEOPLE, “I think I’ve never heard of a case where an actor being offered a role said, ‘I want to see me before I say yes.’ But that’s how smart she was.”

After a few wobbly takes of the drive-in scene, Newton-John and Travolta found their groove after using the original script from the musical instead of the screenplay, and the rest is cinematic history.

“You look at the screen and you see it,” Thurm said. “He had great respect for her as an artist. And she had the same for him. There was never anything untoward or romantic or stuff like that, but there was a great deal of mutual respect and friendship that lasted forever. They definitely had a spark.”

(Via PEOPLE)

On December 7, 1941, more than 350 Imperial Japanese aircraft attacked America’s Pearl Harbor naval base on Oahu, Hawaii, killing more than 2,400 people (including 68 civilians) and wounding 1,153 more.

On September 11, 2001, a total of 19 terrorists highjacked four commercial planes and turned them into weapons of mass destruction they attacked New York City’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon. (The Capitol was also a target, but was diverted when passengers aboard the plane took on their attackers.) All told, nearly 3,000 people were killed; 6,000 were injured; and first responders on the ground have succumbed to a variety of diseases because of their life-saving efforts in the years since.

On August 8, 2022, the FBI raided the Palm Beach golf club/home of reality show host-turned-president of the United States Donald Trump. The only thing injured was the former president’s ego, yet Fox News host Mark Levin has declared that “the worst attack on this republic in modern history.”

As Mediaite reports, Levin chatted with his Fox News colleague Sean Hannity on Monday night, where he let loose on the “friggin’ FBI,” which he deemed corrupt:

This was well orchestrated, so this has been going on for weeks. Now, you keep asking your guests, what’s the justification? There is no justification. What’s he going to say tomorrow, the attorney general? Here’s my guess: ‘We’ve been negotiating with Trump and his lawyers since February when we found out they had this information. We were getting nowhere, and then we know or we heard that some documents were being destroyed.’

After claiming that “There is no justification for sending 30 friggin’ FBI agents to the former president’s compound in Mar-a-Lago in [the] early morning and conducting themselves this way,” Levin took his grandiose comments to new highs (and lows) when he claimed:

This is the worst attack on this republic in modern history. Period. And it’s not just an attack on Donald Trump. It’s an attack on everybody who supports him. It’s an attack on anybody who dares to raise serious questions about Washington, D.C., and the establishment in both parties. I haven’t heard a damn thing from the Republican leadership in the Senate! Have you? Not one of those guys has put out a statement. Because they’re weak. That’s why.

You can watch the full clip over at Mediaite here.

(Via Mediaite)

The Better Call Saul Lie Detector Test is a weekly recap of the major events of the final season, separated out by their apparent truthfulness at the time. This is not one of those recaps that gets into granular detail about things. It will miss the occasional callback or foreshadowing. But it will be fun. Sometimes, that’s what’s important.

Season 6, Episode 12: “Waterworks”

Kim Wexler is doing great

Hey, let’s check in with Kim Wexler to see how th-… aaaaand she’s bawling on a bus. That’s not ideal. It’s never ideal, really, to be ugly crying alone on a bus. Or any form of public transportation. Like, if you saw someone having that kind of meltdown on the subway, you’d assume they were really going through something. I doubt you’d jump straight to “that lady has been living in Florida as a brunette for six years to put various murders and relationships as far in her rearview as possible but she just came back to New Mexico to confess to all of it to both the authorities and the widow of her former legal partner whose life she helped ruin before he was killed in front of her by a charming sociopath,” but I don’t know. Maybe you’re intuitive like that.

There are two things going on here, related in every way but also separate. The first is the Kim Wexler of it all. The thing where she’s living in Florida and selling sprinklers and having the most boring mayonnaise conversations you can possibly imagine all day long, sometimes literally about mayonnaise, sometimes with her absolute snoozer of a new lover, a man who shouts “Yup” over and over during sex. She has stripped all the excitement from her life, almost definitely on purpose, as the first five-plus seasons of this show gave her enough for a few lifetimes. You can see how this might be appealing to her.

But then, the phone call. From “Victor St. Clair.” Out of the damn blue. That seemed to make everything real again and end whatever sun-soaked denial she’d been pushing through. She jumped on a plane and dusted off the legal writing skills and wrote up a whole affidavit about Howard and Lalo and everything she and Jimmy had been running from in very different ways. She went to Cheryl to deliver the news in person because Kim is somehow the moral center of this twisted endeavor, past actions be damned. It was a lot. You would cry on a bus, too.

Which brings us to the second thing: How freaking good is Rhea Seehorn? Holy moly. That shot on the bus lingered on her for so long as everything hit her in waves. She fought the tears and then exploded and it was all so real and so incredible and so devastating. Think about the logistics of that scene. Think about a camera pointing at you with no cuts for a full couple of minutes and you having to go from dead-eyed stare into the middle distance to dropping snot with no one to act off of or even dialogue to help you get there. And that was just the big showpiece scene. The whole episode was her putting on a clinic, even in the Florida sprinkler office where you could see how checked-out she was just by looking at any part of her face and the scene in Saul’s office where she signed the divorce papers and sighed a lot about the guy he had become. She’s pretty good, is my point.

Also, she got to do this toward the end of the episode, in a scene I’ll discuss in more detail later.

Just massively cool. One of the all-time great television characters. One of the all-time great performances. Things got wild at the end of the episode, in a way that will play out in a big way next week, but let’s all try to talk about this part of it all a bunch, too.

Gene could have stopped if he wanted

The thing here that’s important, a thing we discussed last week when Gene kicked off his barbiturate-laced identity theft scam, is that whether he’s Jimmy or Saul or Gene, he is still the same guy and he’s always going to blow up anything good in his life. “Good” is on a sliding scale here, I guess, as he did not seem to be enjoying his boring Cinnabon life very much, but it was not prison. Which counts for something. He just needs action, all the time, in dangerous ways. This is how one ends up brandishing a jar of doggy ashes as a weapon after an identity theft victim wakes up because one took all the time in the world and poured some whiskey while looking for passwords in a home one broke into by smashing the glass right near the front door. You know, to pick an example at random.

Think of all the stupid choices he made that led him to that moment at the end where Marion smashed her Life Alert button and blew everything up. Just the ones in the past few days:

• Started the identity theft scam with two idiots because one of them recognized him at the mall
• Kept doing it after he achieved his alleged goal of having dirt on them so they wouldn’t rat him out
• Followed through with the grift on the cancer guy even though there was no tape on the door and he’d have to smash the glass, maybe out of lingering anger at another guy he knew who had cancer
• Hung around the house so long that Jeff got nervous outside and panic-crashed his cab because there were cops behind him
• Mentioned Albuquerque in the phone call with Marion, a sweet woman who recently became familiar with YouTube thanks to the laptop her idiot son — and his business partner — bought her with the proceeds from their crimes

Just a parade of unforced errors. It’s tempting to say the whole situation was avoidable, but also… was it? Wasn’t he always going to destroy his life somehow, if not involving doggy ashes and Carol Burnett using dial-up internet then… somehow? The only thing remotely resembling self-control he showed in the last few weeks was not strangling an old woman with a telephone cord when she tried to call for help after discovering his whole criminal ruse. Which was nice, I guess, but an extremely low bar.

Things are not going to go great for him in the finale, one assumes. Between Marion’s call for help and Kim’s affidavit (which was also the result of an unforced error, what with the whole disastrous phone call where he yelled that she should turn herself in), the whole house of cards is coming down fast. It was always going to happen, but it’s definitely happening now.

Vince Gilligan is kind of rusty at this television business

This episode was written and directed by Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad and co-creator of this show. He is good at this stuff. The scene with Kim on the bus, the tension in that final scene with Marion, just the confidence to open with like 15 minutes about a sprinkler office and doing puzzles and making potato salad and dates at the new Outback when the entire audience is waiting for the fireworks. Imagine being this good at your job. Imagine being this good at anything.

Part of me wants him to just keep spinning off characters from these shows and building out the universe for decades. (I repeat: Don Eladio prequel, please.) Another part of me wants to see what else he has in the tank. Either way, I think it’s fair to assume it’ll be good-to-great based on the track record. Really no losing here for me.

Kim is going to prison

ON ONE HAND: She did just confess to a lot of crimes and confessing to a lot of crimes is a good way to end up in prison. The stuff with Howard and the drugs, the covering up of his murder, all of it. And she doesn’t seem to be hiding from any of it. She very much seems like a lady who is tearing herself apart with guilt and is seeking some kind of punishment she feels she deserves for the actions she’s been running from.

ON THE OTHER HAND: A lot of this is hard to prove even with her confession. The murder was scrubbed clean by a guy who bled out next to a river. The body is buried under a superlab that was operated by a guy who got his face blown off. The only one who can corroborate it all is the guy she did it all with. I don’t know how that all works out. And then there’s the possibility that she gets off for testifying against Jimmy/Saul/Gene, a noted fugitive who has been on the run for half a decade.

A lot of ways this could go. All of which I will be thinking about this week. I worry about Kim Wexler a lot.

Jimmy/Saul/Gene is going to prison

ON ONE HAND: The crimes. So many crimes. Old ones and new ones. He could get a decade just for this last Nebraska-related breaking and entering. And that doesn’t even touch on the various New Mexico things he’s running from, dotting across various timelines, as far back as the Howard stuff Kim is airing out to anyone who will listen and going all the way up to and through the Heisenberg business. There are probably a number of prosecutors who would very much like to get their hands on him for any number of reasons. And it’s not like he has much to trade anymore either, seeing as most of his immediate conspirators are dead. Grim future for Slippin’ Jimmy.

ON THE OTHER HAND: There are probably some cartel guys out there who have long memories and grudges and do not have anyone else left to take it all out on. And maybe he has one last trick up his sleeve. Maybe he grows a beard and changes his name to Percy Valentine and goes to work at a landscaping company. Until he blows his life up again a few years later. Which he will. As we have discussed. So it’s basically “jail or murder for him,” really. Again, grim future.

Wild to remember this was the “fun” character they spun off from the other show.

Tammy needs a new husband

ON ONE HAND: An exercise bike? For her birthday? Come on, buddy. Come on. You simply cannot be that dense and expect there will be no consequences.

ON THE OTHER HAND: He probably thought he was doing a nice thing — “She’s always saying she wants to start exercising and I thought this would help” — but was just so hopelessly misguided that he ended up here. Sweet but dull is better than a lot of other alternatives. He won’t live this down, ever, but maybe they can work through it.

I still love hearing Jesse Pinkman drop an unnecessary “yo” or two

Three things are true here, all of which I can pound out via bullet point:

• For the second week in a row, I whooped a little when I saw Jesse, this time as the camera pulled back and revealed him outside Saul’s office, mostly because I still have a soft spot for that goofball even knowing who he is and what he’s about to do
• There was one second where I thought Kim had flown to Alaska instead of Albuquerque, when she was standing near the signs for Alaska Airlines and Frontier airlines, and I got very excited she might have gone up there to find him and do some sort of business up there related to Saul
• “It’s like bananas, all this rain” has now officially entered my brain and I suspect it will reappear every time the clouds open up around me in real life, at least for a few years

I wish there was a way I could alter history and save him from the meth Nazis. He’s a sweet misguided boy. He just got in with the wrong crowd. Leave him alone.

I called it

I apologize in advance for how insufferable I am going to be about this for pretty much the rest of my life, but here’s what I said last week.

We need to consider the thing at the end of this episode. The thing where she heard a doggy ruckus outside and looked through her window while Gene was melting down on his accomplices in that shed. And the thing where she now has an internet-connected computer and an increasing knowledge of how to navigate YouTube. And the possibility that there are a number of YouTube videos — news reports, weirdo fan tributes, etc. — about the mysterious disappearance of crooked New Mexico attorney Saul Goodman. And the possibility that she will stumble across one and think about how much that guy looks like sweet Gene and how her beloved Jeffy spent time in New Mexico and how it’s weird that the two of them are spending so much time in that shed.

What I’m saying here is that there’s a non-zero chance that the diabolical Saul Goodman ends up finally getting arrested after years on the run because a Nebraska senior citizen played by Carol Freaking Burnett got bored watching cat videos one day. That would be pretty awesome.

Freakin’ nailed it. Close enough, at least. Is there an argument to be made that this was all less me being a handsome genius and more the show laying out details meticulously — Marion getting a computer and going on YouTube, her getting suspicious about Gene and Jeff meeting in the backyard, a show casting Carol Burnett in 2022 like they wouldn’t absolutely use her for a pivotal moment in the series — in such a way that even a doofus like me can see what’s coming, even subconsciously?

Hmm. Maybe. Possibly. But it’s more fun for me to run around shouting “I CALLED IT,” so let’s just all agree to go with that.

That cop was right about fish tacos

We live in the damn future. We can send satellites to outer space to take pictures just so we know what the weather will be like in a few days. Elderly ladies can uncover years-long criminal mysteries with a box they use to watch cats being silly. We should be able to get fresh and delicious fish tacos anywhere at any time. Figure this out. It’s madness and we should not stand for it.