Illustration by Maddison Bond.

Near the end of his Memorial Day performance at Eugene, Oregon’s Hult Center, Jack White did one of the weirdest, most out-of-character things I’ve ever seen him do. During the final verse of a crushing rendition of the White Stripes’ immortal “Seven Nation Army,” he cut off every instrument save for the drums and sang over the crowd’s chant of the song’s iconic bass line. In nearly a decade since the release of Elephant, that riff from “Seven Nation Army” has been repurposed throughout Europe as a popular soccer chant. That’s far from what White likely had in mind for it, considering that the album was released at the height of his militantly lo-fi rhetoric. To see him even acknowledge that his most enduring song has become “We Will Rock You,” let alone encourage it, was a little bizarre and unnerving. However, there’s a reason that “Seven Nation Army” has achieved that level of ubiquity. The song thrills in every context.

White’s current tour, on the back of his recent solo debut Blunderbuss, is the final touch to his ascent to modern-rock elder statesman. The White Stripes and Raconteurs songs that littered his two-hour set are Classic Rock now. He treated them like “Pride (In the Name of Love),” relishing the extra level of recognition. He opened with “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” and was visibly giddy when the audience sang more of “Hotel Yorba” than he did. After years of rejection of basically every conventional frontman trope in the name of authenticity, he finally feels comfortable embracing them.

The Blunderbuss material sounds enough like White’s other bands that it fits seamlessly into a set with those songs. It’s an unmistakably Jack White record on the surface—over the course of a 15-year career, he’s honed his blend of blues, folk, country, and rock into a mixture that will sound like his work no matter who else is involved. But it’s also a deceptively complex set of material, full of the kind of instrumental interplay he couldn’t get away with in his other, more limiting projects. “Sixteen Saltines” and “Freedom at 21” would have fit on any White Stripes or Raconteurs album, but the prog-tinged “Missing Pieces” and the ballads “Hypocritical Kiss” and “Take Me With You When You Go” are very much the work of Jack White the auteur. His five-piece backing band, the Buzzards (the all-male of his two touring bands—he sometimes performs with an all-female group called the Peacocks) was tailor-made for the new stuff but also stretched out his older material. The show’s highlight was an epic, reverb-drenched version of the Stripes’ “I’m Slowly Turning Into You,” a showcase for former Mars Volta keyboardist Ikey Owens.

White’s live performances with his previous bands were always deliberately segregated. Raconteurs shows featured no White Stripes songs, and the Dead Weather’s sets had no overlap from either of those two. His relenting on this point on his first solo outing can be taken as an admission on his part that his projects will always be interconnected. Comparisons between them are still futile: it goes without saying that his new show lacks the primal power of the one White Stripes show I was lucky enough to see in 2003. But this is, far and away, the best group of musicians he’s ever played with. I never thought middle-aged Jack White would be this fun.

Illustration by Maddison Bond

by Michael Levin

Last week I assigned every Western Conference NBA team a band that (I feel) best matches their talents, auras, and sensibilities. And as not to leave my Eastern Conference friends hanging, I’ve got 15 more teams/bands mash-ups for you below. Part Two!

Unsheathe your hipster swords and follow me after the jump.

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by Joe Lawrence 

Last night I watched Quarantine 2 on Netflix. It was a pretty average scary movie. Afterwards, I was still in the mood to be creeped out, so I went to one of my old favorite shows: The Twilight Zone. I was halfway through an episode at 2 o’clock in the morning in my dark room before I decided I no longer wanted to be creeped out. But it was more like, “Ok, screw this; I’m gonna watch a comedy.” So I started searching through the not-so-deep (pretty shallow, actually) recesses of Netflix. That’s when I found one of the rare gems on Netflix Instant. The perfect show to cure the fears running through my head: Hey Arnold! (By the way, that exclamation mark is in the title, I’m not exactly one to exclaim a whole lot.)

I went ahead and watched it from the beginning. I was three years old when Hey Arnold first came on television, and yet, I still remembered the first episode. Normally, I could chalk this kind of thing up to having brothers that are seven and ten years older than I am, (this explains why I had seen TV shows like South Park and movies like Fight Club when my peers watched Barney), but I wasn’t the only kid my age watching Hey Arnold! at the time. Everyone watched it and reruns ran often on Nickelodeon for the kids like me that wanted to rewatch some episodes after we learned to poop like a big boy.

As soon as talk of good ol’ nineties cartoon shows begins, Arnold is definitely bound to be at least mentioned if not raved about. For a kid growing up in a small Texas city, life as a fourth grader living in New York City and going to P.S. 118 seemed amazing. The mere fact that their elementary schools were just numbered off for their names enthralled me. The people they dealt with were all so unique and they kind of creeped me out, but that made it more exciting. The shenanigans they pulled were all so large scale compared to anything possible in San Angelo, Texas.

The characters, the main ones at least, were relatable. They all had imperfections, which is what made them likable. In fact, a typical episode featured Arnold or his best friend Gerald messing something up, Arnold, the moral compass, feeling bad about it, and then spending the rest of the episode fixing it. This is seen in the first episode, Eugene’s Bike, when Arnold accidentally wrecks Eugene’s bike (hey, look at that). After a brief montage of Arnold remembering all the times he accidentally harmed the unlucky, lovable dweeb throughout the years, Arnold spends a whole day trying to help Eugene have fun, because as Arnold says, every dweeb should have his day. This is done in a Ferris Buehler’s Day Off sort of way, taking him all over the big city, including to a baseball game (I’m assuming the Yankees instead of Ferris’s Cubs) and onto a ferry tour of the Hudson. Of course, Arnold has trouble making things go right with the unfortunate Eugene, who falls down a manhole, is hit in the head with a baseball at the Yankees game, chokes on a hot dog, and falls in the Hudson River. At the end of the day, after Eugene barfs away his seasickness from the ferry, Arnold apologizes for the new mishaps he had dragged Eugene through that day, but in a very cheesy but impossible-not-to-love way, Eugene tells Arnold it was the best day of his life. What a great day for television and kids nationwide! I actually did an exclamation mark there because that sentence deserved it. Hey Arnold! was that great of a show.

I’ve gone back and watched a few of my other old favorite TV shows since the invention of Netflix, and nothing has matched up to the expectations set by my memories of sitting inches away from the only television in the house on Saturday mornings. Angry Beavers is one I do not recommend going back to watch. Arnold, on the other hand, may have been appreciated more by 18-year-old Joe than nine-year-old Joe because I now see the “football-shaped head”-shaped hole in television scheduling that can never be filled.

Arnold was a wonderful character and part of a wonderful show, and he will be missed, especially on a station that now has the penguins of Madagascar in a show. That’s actually the title, The Penguins of Madagascar. Don’t you just love spinoffs from movies that weren’t even that great? In fact, writing this article has brought back memories of sitting and watching Hey Arnold! with my mom because it was one of the only cartoon shows my mom actually enjoyed (she said could put up with, but I know she actually enjoyed it), and now I want to go give her a hug, so this article is over. But remember, keep on truckin’. I think that might be my new sign off. What do you think?

P.S. Can you do this in articles? I don’t care – I didn’t know where to fit this into the actual article. HOW COOL WAS ARNOLD’S HIDDEN COUCH?!

Illustration by Leif Seifert

Instant Review is where I review movies that the Internet told me to watch on the Internet.

Film: Punching the Clown (released in 2009 or 2010 depending on who you trust.)

Recommended by: @Bouncex3

Streamed via: Netflix

Instant Review Rating: 3 out of 5 Doritos Locos Tacos

Making a living as a comedian often means struggle. You can be on the road, sleeping in your car and performing for embarrassingly small audiences that may not get you and venue managers that may not pay you. Or you can try setting roots in a show business city, say Los Angeles, and peddle yourself relentlessly in hopes of attracting the attention of some asshole that might help make you a star. “Punching the Clown” aims to satirize both settings, following an unassuming and road weary performer who finally decides to give Los Angeles a try.

This film was written by and stars comedy balladeer Henry Phillips, who delivers a convincing performance as a comedy balladeer named “Henry Phillips”.

“Singing comedian? Meh. No thanks.”

Let me stop you right there, person that has opinions similar to mine on the topic of singing comedians. “Punching the Clown” is funny, with Phillips just as willing to poke fun at himself as he is show business. Both produce laughs, sometimes almost simultaneously. We see an out of place Phillips at a Hollywood mansion party struggling to describe his act (“singing comedian” is not a label he finds adequate) to a woman who bails the moment it becomes clear that Phillips cannot further her towards her own goals. We see the woman move on only to be immediately rejected herself by another party goer, and in turn her rejector being rejected, and so on until the baton of status seeking phoney self-absorption passes all the way back to Phillips just moments later.

The satire never aspires to go beyond laughing at the silliness of it all. It tickles the what without bothering with the why. That lightness pervades the entire ninety minutes. (Also, thanks for making this movie ninety minutes. Please stop making other movies so long.)  We never feel bad about Phillips having to sleep in his car, he’s sleeping in his car because he is choosing to do what he loves to do. Good for him.

That lightness makes it hard to care much for the two relationships with humans that Phillips seems to have. When his brother, an actor, gives up on his own dream you get the sense that you are supposed to feel something. Ditto for the love interest leaving town. Even when Phillips’ name becomes sullied in some bizarre misunderstanding I couldn’t feel anything other than annoyed that this was taking away from better jokes.

Most of the enjoyment in this film comes from Phillips’ well-honed act. The songs are amusing and the jokes between the songs are impressively sharp. It makes sense that the film provides regular doses of Phillips’ performances. If this comes at the expense of developing a deeper connection to the story and some of its characters, it at least resulted in laughs.

Illustration by Maddison Bond

by Thom Powell 

The degree of difficulty in executing Sherlock Holmes is harder than you’d think. While people have been taking cracks replicating Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic character for quite some time, the results have been mixed for the most part. For every series like BBC’s initial, Jeremy Brett-led forays into exploring the character, we get ten more mediocre titles, like Guy Ritchie’s two films (particularly the second one), Barry Levinson and Chris Columbus’s “Young Sherlock Holmes,” or video game adaptations like “Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis,” which is gripping and suspenseful for entirely the wrong reasons.

I’m a fan of the original Conan Doyle stories, and it’s for this reason that I was a bit reluctant to check out the BBC’s “Sherlock.” I’d always liked Martin Freeman (even in other notably underwhelming adaptations) and was intrigued by Benedict Cumberbatch’s exceptionally British name, but given its arrival at the heels of Ritchie’s first film and the “Holmes in a modern day” premise, I wasn’t really sure it would do anything interesting with the character, let alone execute the transition to modern day gracefully. Basically, I was certain “Sherlock” would be as clunky and misguided as the upcoming CBS series “Elementary” — which squanders the presence of Johnny Lee Miller by pointlessly making Watson a woman (just cause!) and placing a still-British Holmes in America for absolutely no reason — promises to be.

However, when I finally watched it months after it aired (via Netflix Instant), I was delighted to find that “Sherlock” was not a tarted up CBS procedural or a glib, self-congratulating set of character references in a modern setting. Instead, I was treated to three episodes of one of the best written, acted, and executed shows currently airing on television. Holmes is a delightfully tactless, self-described “high functioning sociopath,” and Cumberbatch plays him with equal measures of childlike glee and petulance. Freeman is every bit as good in his portrayal of Watson, capable of moving from exceptional comic relief to credible gravitas seamlessly. These performances are great in isolation, but what makes “Sherlock” truly exceptional is the positively magnetic chemistry between the two. Holmes and Watson are frequently and hilariously mistaken for a couple throughout the series and, quite frankly, it’s a notion that’s pretty easy to buy into. The two bicker like they’ve been together for decades and there’s rarely a scene in the show where they aren’t at each other’s side. It doesn’t take much of a push to construe their bromance as something more — which countless slash fiction and romantically themed YouTube tributes have taken the liberty of doing.

“Sherlock” could coast on its stars’ effortless compatibility and still produce eminently watchable, self-contained pseudo movies (each episode has a 90 minute run time). Fortunately, though, writers Steven Moffat, Steve Thompson, and Mark Gatiss — who is a formidable double threat, portraying Sherlock’s effete brother Mycroft in addition to writing the series’ two strongest installments — have crafted an expansive universe in a mere six episodes, with an impressive roster of well-written recurring characters, excellent character development, and a gripping, unpredictable central antagonist. The modern touches are extensive but never unwelcome. Instead of writing on journal on his friend’s escapades, Watson starts a blog. Holmes doesn’t have an issue with opium, but he does occasionally overdo it with nicotine patches. The changes made are necessary for the show to work, and it never feels like the writers make them without proper forethought or discretion. The result is a fully formed, sustained universe that enriches and enhances the show’s already sound foundation.

It’s hard to imagine a movie franchise churning out three excellent films in a single franchise each year, but that’s essentially what we’re getting with “Sherlock.” Quality hasn’t just remained consistent, but has steadily increased, with the second series — particularly its terrific finale — building on the character work of the first and besting it in the process. Three episodes per series never seems to be enough with this show, even given their lengthy run times. The show’s second series finished airing on BBC America a little over a week ago, and the yearlong wait for new episodes will prove to be excruciating. A more poorly executed series would wear out its welcome quickly, but what could be a tedious production schedule is instead turned into an immense strength by the show’s high level of quality.

A frequent problem with recommending a television series tends to be the lengthy process a new convert must undergo through its back catalog in order to catch up. It’s hard to commit to an ongoing series with the prospect of having to devote dozens of hours just to discuss it with other viewers. This isn’t an issue with “Sherlock.” Anyone who wants to be completely on board in time for series three will have a year (or more, potentially) to watch nine hours of television, which is pretty far from being an insurmountable task. The show’s accessibility makes it even easier to catch up. The first series, as previously mentioned, is available on Netflix Instant, and the second will soon follow suit. Give it a try. If you give the first one a chance, I promise it’ll be harder to stop than it will be to burn through the remaining episodes.

Illustration by Mary Grace Ewald

by Andrew Rosin

One of the most interesting things that happened in the week of Podcasting was a certain amount of crossover between Nerdist Industries and Earwolf. On Who Charted? You heard Pete Holmes charting things with Wewe and Kulap. And on the Nerdist? Comedy Bang Bang impresario Scott Aukerman, he of the asking questions of the state of the Hot Dog.

And quite frankly? It got me to thinking. Who are my favorite guests on Podcasts? It’s rare to see someone treat podcasts as a singular, all encompassing event. And there are those guests who will run the dial more than others. So, who will be my favorite five? Find out…in two return breaks!

(Spoiler Alert: There’s not 5.)

5. Gillian Jacobs

Now I don’t want to start noise about how I think she’s better than Alison Brie, because you people are weird, and that debate is stupid. The reason why I chose Gillian Jacobs is that she’s done solid interviews regarding her process on the Choke Q&A from the Creative Screenwriting Podcast, and A Bit of Chat with Ken Plume, as well as personal conversations on the Pod F. Tompkast and The JV Club. And she shows some real strong comedic chops with her appearances on Comedy Bang Bang and in the Thrilling Adventure Hour.

4. Jon Hamm

I mean, come on. If he was an ugly bro? He’d be higher on the list. But he’s just so effortlessly good at everything. HE WHISTLED A MASH-UP OF SWEET GEORGIA BROWN AND MAD MEN FOR PETE’S SAKE.

Ahem.

3. Andy Daly and James Adomian

On Comedy Bang Bang these two are remarkable at developing characters. Andy Daly brought some spectacular one-shot characters like Hot Dog and August Lindt, and was one of the better guests on Who Charted? as well as Jordan, Jesse, Go history. James Adomian’s Jesse Ventura has always been my one of my favorite podcast-based impressions. Creative enough to be great on the air, and yet easy enough that you can do an impression of his impression.

2. Paul F. Tompkins

What? You scoff. This is Paul F. Tompkins from podcasts! This is the consistently great presence be he in character as one of his all-time classic impressions of a Boss of Cakes or TV’s Garry Mashall or as himself. (Check out Doug Loves Movies as he has two episodes where he plays himself and his characters. It’s an excellent usage of the medium).

But, and remember, this is number two out of Podcasts. He isn’t as good when the matter is something more process oriented and about him. Not that being good at talking about yourself is a character flaw, but it’s not as if we’ll look upon you crossly for doing so in a podcast we subscribed to.

1. Ben Schwartz

If you say who? I will be so exasperated with you. Schwartz is not comedian who brings a bag of  characters with him. Though he probably could if asked. After all, when Saul Goodman comes on Comedy Bang Bang, you could very well see Clyde Oberholt doing some consulting on who to make Earwolf go better. But, I will ask you these questions three.

Who was there when James Adomian unleashed his Huell Hauser impression on the world? Who was there when the question What’s Up Hot Dog was finally answered? Who was the guest for both my favorite Who Charted? as well as Makin’ It with Riki Lindholme? It was Ben Schwartz.

Did I miss one? Probably. 5 guests out of Podcasting is something of a crapshoot. Throw out a comment if you wish to be so bold.

And seriously? Search out the Ben Schwartz episode of Makin’ It. Necessary for any aspiring creative type. And it’s the closing paragraph, so you know I’m serious.

Illustration by Maddison Bond

by Thom Powell 

“Look at me. Stannis is a killer. The Lannisters are killers. Your father was a killer. Your brother was a killer. Your sons will be killers some day. The world was built by killers, so you’d better get used to looking at them.” – Sandor Clegane

I think I can pretty confidently say that I’ve never seen a show do what Game Of Thrones did tonight. The scope of the battle of Blackwater is virtually unprecedented for the medium — likely rivaled only by another HBO production, Band Of Brothers — and the results were absolutely breathtaking. This was the best episode of the series since “Baelor,” the first season’s penultimate installment wherein Ned Stark met his unfortunate end. It seems that the show-runners are structuring their seasons in a manner similar to The Wire, with the second-to-last episode functioning as the climax and the finale acting as the denouement in addition to setting the table for the next season — and, like last season, we got a hell of a climax.

We don’t get much time to gather ourselves before the battle starts, just a few uneasy scenes. The episode begins with as Davos, along with his son and the rest of the men aboard Stannis’ fleet, steels himself for battle. The conversation between the onion knight and his son acts as a nice juxtaposition between the idealism of those who buy into Melissandre’s lord of light and the weary resolve of a realist like Davos. His son believes the people of King’s Landing will welcome their rightful king with open arms as Stannis’ superior numbers overwhelm Joffrey and the other Lannisters, but Davos knows things will not be so easy. No one has ever successfully laid siege to the capital and its residents will see only invaders, ones that will sack their houses and rape their women if given half a chance.

The Lannisters are similarly apprehensive. Tyrion confesses his fear of failure to Shae, while Cersei prepares for the worst with Maester Pycelle. Both know they might be dead in a matter of hours, whether by way of sword or axe, or self-administered poison, in Cersei’s case. Joffrey has Sansa kiss his sword for good luck, who manages to get in a dig at him by asking if he’ll be serving at the front lines. It’s been a pleasure to see how much Sophie Turner has been able to expand Sansa’s character this season. Sansa wasn’t really given much to do in the first season, aside from act maddeningly immature, but Turner does an excellent job of conveying the constant terror she’s forced to live under, which makes the moments when she has the courage to get a verbal barb or two in (like she does to Joffrey about his cowardice) even more satisfying. She mournfully tells Shae that Joffrey will survive the battle, because “the worst ones always do,” and it’s hard not to agree with her depressing assessment. We also get a bit of insight into Varys’ psyche in his scene with Tyrion, as he reveals a deep-seated fear of magic and people like Melissandre who practice it, and teases that this may have something to do with why he was cut and forced to live as a eunuch. Meanwhile, tensions are mounting between the forces the Lannisters have employed, as Bronn and the Hound are at each other’s throats, in a scene that will doubtlessly inspire some very… interesting fan fiction.

Then, finally, we get to the battle, as the bells of King’s Landing ring and Stannis’ men beat the drums of war. The initial stage is a slow burn, as Tyrion (along with Joffrey, Lancel, and the Hound) watches the arrival of the enemy ships and deals with his nephew’s impatience. Davos is suspicious, as it appears the Lannisters have only sent one ship in defense — and he’s right to be, as the ship is unmanned and appears to be leaking Mountain Dew out its sides. As it turns out, the green (albeit still XTREME) liquid seeping out is the wildfire Tyrion commissioned the alchemists guild to make several episodes ago, and with a few well placed torches and flaming arrows, it’s set ablaze and engulfs half of Stannis’ fleet. The ensuing fireball (the force of which knocks Davos into the water) is one of the more impressive uses of special effects I’ve seen on television, especially compared to a show like LOST, which attempted an explosion of a similar size with more disappointing results. The carnage from this explosion — even with its slightly unconvincing green flames — is engrossing and appropriately horrifying, with thousands of Stannis’ men burning to death in agony. From there, we get to see the landing of infantry and siege of the castle, which, while not as explosive as the wildfire, is every bit as gruesome. Men are pelted with arrows, hacked to death with small arms, and, in one particularly memorable scene, a man’s head is reduced to a bloody pulp by falling rocks. The scope of this battle is very impressive here and nearly comparable to some of the biggest in the Lord of the Rings films. Director Neil Marshall (The Descent, Dog Soldiers) may have had to reduce its size from its original depiction in “A Clash Of Kings,” but we’re still treated to a pretty epic fight, especially for the medium.

As the battle rages on top of and outside the castle walls, Cersei, Sansa, and the rest of the noblewomen wait anxiously in a guarded chamber. Here we get some of the episode’s best character work, as Cersei drinks and informs Sansa about what will happen if things don’t go well for the Lannisters in battle. As she says, “If the city falls, these fine women should be in for a bit of a rape. When a man’s blood is up, anything with tits looks good.” It’s interesting to see Cersei in such intimate moments, as her frustrations with the limitations of her gender are clearly on display and she, at times, seems to have some genuine concern for Sansa. Shae suggests that Cersei hates the Stark girl because she’s jealous of her, and it’s hard not to agree with that. Sansa has yet to be forced to the side of an unworthy husband as a mere ornament that’s expected to pump out kids. She’s yet to suffer the humiliations Cersei has, and Cersei clearly resents her for it. Instead of getting to be involved with the battle, Cersei is forced to wait and either die or cede all the glory to her brother or son. Despite the deep-seated resentment, however, Cersei still confesses intimate details and offers advice to the young maiden. In one particularly telling moment, she tells Sansa that as children, her and Jaime looked nearly identical until they were eventually forced into their respective roles — her as a lady and Jaime as a warrior — and it’s clear that Cersei wishes she could have gotten the same instruction as Jaime. Instead she’s left with one weapon — the one between her legs — which is useless to her against Stannis Baratheon. This leaves her no option but to wait, drink, and offer whatever comfort she can to her youngest son.

Things begin to break down for the Lannisters, as the Hound is rendered pale with fear by the fire everywhere. He returns to the castle, has a stiff drink, and tells off Tyrion and the king before storming off. Before he leaves for good, though, he pays Sansa a visit in her chambers (where she’s gone at Shae’s suggestion). There haven’t been a lot of character moments to be found this season for Sandor Clegane, but we get a great one here. Throughout the season he’s insisted that killing is the thing he loves the most, but once he’s been forced into fight-or-flight mode, it seems it’s not the solitary object of his affection. He tells Sansa to leave with him and offers to escort her back to Winterfell, and his intentions seem genuine. It’s unclear whether Sansa trusts him, and we’re left with a cliffhanger as to whether she decides to run off with the now-stray dog. With Sandor AWOL and Joffrey taken to safety at his mother’s request, it dawns on Tyrion that he’s the only one left to lead the forces of King’s Landing. With Stannis at the gates, he’s forced to appeal to his men’s survival instincts: they have to fight back, or each and every man fighting this battle on the Lannister side will lose everything. The consequences at stake are enormous and they’re enough to convince his men to return to battle. Tyrion’s words find their mark, and his forces mount a brave counterattack, but Tyrion takes an ax to the face in the process, narrowly escaping further bodily harm with the unexpected assistance of Podrick Payne, his squire, who impales his assailant with a spear. The blow doesn’t kill him, but things aren’t looking good for the imp, as he lays helplessly on the ground, blood seeping out of his face.

The final sequence of the episode is arguably its finest, in which Cersei sits atop the iron throne with Tommen, her youngest child, and tells him a story to comfort him. The story here has obvious parallels to the events of the show — it involves a lion protecting her cub from wolves and telling him that he will grow up strong one day and eventually become king of the animals — and clearly acts as an impetus for the queen to reassure herself in the face of mortal danger. It’s an emotional scene, as we see cutaways to a wounded Tyrion and slowly come to realize that Cersei’s plan to keep Tommen “safe” is to give him a more peaceful death by way of poison. Before she’s able to tip the vial into his mouth, however, armed men storm the throne room. We see Tywin Lannister at the forefront and, more surprisingly, Sir Loras Tyrell (Renley’s bereaved lover), who removes his helm. The Lannisters have won the battle. Stannis’ men are beaten and forced to physically remove him from the battlefield as he flails around in desperation and demands they stand and fight to the last man. The battle is over, for now, but the war still rages. The Lannister victory is an important one, but it’s just as bittersweet as the National song that plays over the end credits. There will be more death and disappointment to come for Westeros. As the Hound says, their world is built by bloodletting. This is only the beginning.

Illustration by Mary Grace Ewald

Season 1, Episode 4: Cancer Man

“Then why don’t you just fucking die already? Just give up and die.”- Walter White Jr.

The cold open in this episode is one of the shorter and more straightly played in the show’s entire history. It begins with Hank discussing the amazingly pure Meth found in Krazy-8′s car, and how it seems to indicate the emergence of what Hank calls Albuquerque’s new kingpin (cut to Walter in his underwear, goofily brushing his teeth). It’s a joke scene, but I remember it being one that really stunned me, and for one simple reason: I did not anticipate the authorities catching on to Walt this quickly. I really felt as if that would be a plot point to end the season on, not one to start off the fourth episode. It’s this sort of disregard to the standard operating procedure or television dramas that really let me know what I was in for with this show. Walter and Jesse themselves seem to understand this, in some primal way, as they both spend a not inconsiderable amount of time in this hour looking over their shoulders, wondering when the other shoe is going to drop and someone, anyone, is going to seek retribution for what happened to Krazy-8 and Emilio.

Most shows, even great ones, push off any sense of finality for as long as they can. As soon as they establish a successful formula, they prolong it for as long as possible, pushing off climactic character conflicts until finales. Either that, or they stick so many revelations, betrayals, and climaxes into the plot that the very drama that holds the show together is devalued. What does it matter if Character A is working with Character B when in three weeks, they’ll have both moved on and nothing will have come of it? Breaking Bad does the one thing you’re least likely to see: it lets you know, right from the beginning, that the end is coming. Sooner, rather than later, all of this will come crashing down on Walt. Even if he manages to succeed in his new-found profession long enough to make enough money for his family, the cancer is going to kill him. There is no other option. Even the conflicts found in something like Mad Men can seem somewhat trivial in comparison. Breaking Bad really, truly feels like a series of set events that lead to one path and one path only. A downward spiral. Or, as Walt later comes to call it, “a series of very bad decisions.”

Anyway, this is a slower episode than usual, probably the weakest of the first four (though we do get our first taste of the wonder that is Skinny Pete), but that opening scene always brings to mind the inevitability of all of this, and that nothing, not even a great TV show, can last forever. KEN WINS

Season 1, Episode 5: Gray Matter

“My entire life it just seems I never…you know, had a real say about any of it.”- Walter White

This episode is the first to focus on our protagonist’s other major character trait: his pride. The first third of this episode is set at a birthday party for Walter’s former partner, Elliot Schwartz, a man with whom Walter founded Gray Matter Technologies, a major scientific conglomerate now run by Schwartz and his wife Gretchen (the same Gretchen seen in the cold open of episode 3). During the party, Elliot offers his old friend a position at the company he helped found. After he lets slip that Gray Matter has “great health insurance,” Walter realizes that Skyler told Elliot about the cancer, something that infuriates him (or, rather, the idea that Elliot would hire him just to pay for his treatment). This feeds the fire of Walt’s pride, further validating his choice to “go it alone,” as it were.

Later in the episode, Walter’s pride again comes into play, in a different form, as he states going out on his own terms, leaving the memory of a strong, capable, bread winning sort of man behind. What’s interesting is how the version of himself he wants to leave behind seems to have only recently shown up. When he first began to cook, he was doing more out of a shocked sort of desperation rather than as a way to sate his own ravenous pride. When Jesse compliments his skill in the pilot, Walt shakes it off with a simple pledge to the chemistry. But when Elliot’s colleagues at the party talk about Walt being a “master of crytallography,” he seems to take it more to heart. As he does when asked which university he teaches at after he states that his career path “gravitated towards education.” These men, Elliot’s colleagues, should have been HIS colleagues, as far as Walt is concerned. He is better than them, and to be shamed first like this, and then by Elliot offering him what Walt sees not as a sympathetic gesture, but a belittling one, is far too painful a reminder of the injustices he suffered at the hands of the Schwartz couple (injustices that we, sadly, have yet to see any more of, even through allusion).

It’s interesting to note that while Gretchen makes a couple more appearances, Elliot has yet to show up again on the show. Perhaps it’s because Walt wants nothing to do with him, or perhaps it’s because he served his narrative purpose. In a show so infatuated with the mixing of volatile compounds, Elliot was the catalyst, just as much as the cancer was. Elliot, and his friends, are what give Walt purpose, so that even if he has nothing to show for himself professionally, inside Walter will know that he is every bit as clever and capable as he knows himself to be. It’s the fuel for his pride. It’s the fuel for Heisenberg.

Season 1, Episode 6: Crazy Handful of Nothin

“Sometimes you got to rob to keep your riches, just as long as we got an understanding.”- Tuco Salamanca

This episode is the first real glimpse of what Breaking Bad would come to look like in the future, full of surreal, apocalyptic openings, explosive villains and, perhaps most symbolically, a bald Walter White and the very first utterance of the name “Heisenberg.” It is fitting, then, that the first scene after the cold open takes place in a chemotherapy treatment center. I don’t know if you’ve been in such a place, but they are among the somberest places in existence. It is here we find Walt, almost physically chained to a machine designed to pump some of the most toxic substances known to man into his body.

Funnily enough, for occurring immediately after his little transformation, this episode starts out with a series of legitimately decent conversations between Walt and his family in therapy, and Walt and Jesse while cooking. Then again, as Walt himself says in another thematically on-the-nose classroom scene, there are two types of chemical reactions, both gradual and rapid. In the former, “you don’t even notice the reaction is happening,” while the other “generates enormous bursts of energy.” The shift from White to Heisenberg is, as one might expect, an … uncertain one*, full of both gradual reactions, such as Elliot’s party, and rapid ones, like the showdown with Tuco.

Speaking of that showdown with everyone’s favorite degenerate, the real plot of this episode is Walt and Jesse’s (specifically Walt’s) attempts to get in contact with a distributor in order to more effectively make what Jesse likes to call “fat stacks.” And, since Walt poisoned and suffocated their original distributor, it’s up to Jesse to use his contacts (really just Skinny Pete), to branch out and find someone new. An underlying plot point to all this is the relative luck they have in this endeavor, though neither of them would admit it as such. Firstly, Krazy-8′s was, as Hank tells us early in Episode 4, a DEA informant, one who certainly would have been able to describe Walt in excruciating detail. Secondly, they are lucky because the man they eventually come to do business with is such a ridiculous caricature of a man that Walt is able to effectively read him and put on enough of a show (by nearly blowing up a building), that he is able to wriggle a measure of respect out of the first man who knows him as Heisenberg. Because of this, Walter starts to think that maybe, just maybe, he might be getting the hang out of this “criminal” thing.

Throw this gamble in with the poker scene earlier at the White household, in which Walt successfully bluffs Hank out of a massive pot with what Marie somewhat affectionately calls a “handful of nothin” (hey, she said the name of the show!), and you have a rapid start to what eventually becomes the most gradual reaction of them all: the emergence of Heisenberg, and his eventual destruction of pretty much everything positive about the life Walter has left. He is free from the chained, doomed existence he found himself in, but at what cost? Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss will gaze also into thee.

*Did you see what I did there? This guy certainly did.

Season 1, Episode 7: A No-Rough Stuff Type Deal

“So you do have a plan? Yeah Mr. White! Yeah science!”

The first season of Breaking Bad is one truncated by the Writer’s Strike of 2007. In retrospect, this is not necessarily a bad thing. Intitially, Jesse was to die at the hands of Tuco in this episode’s climax (much in the same way as No-Doze is). Show creator Vince Gilligan has since said that it was Aaron Paul’s performance that stayed his hand, but it stands to reason that the abruptness of the strike forced their hand. It’s more than conceivable that the writing staff simply wasn’t done with Jesse yet.

Regardless, this episode sees our meth-cooking superfriends’ first real attempt at expanding their business. After “securing” a deal with Tuco, Walt brings Jesse his share of the money (plus a little extra), only to find that not only is Jesse upset at doing business with the “dead eyed killer” who beat him half to death, but that there’s no way he can secure enough pseudoephedrine to account for their new 2-pound-a-week policy. After an awkward meeting with Tuco, in which Walt promises 4 pounds for the next week, he and Jesse spring his scienc-y plan into action. Using “homemade” thermite, Walt and Jesse break into a chemical supply plant near Albuquerque, takign with them more than enough methlymine for the foreseeable future. After the RV refuses to start, they make a temporary lab in Jesse’s basement, leading to a very telling line from Walt. While discussing how much they stand to make from the week’s haul, Jesse asks Walt exactly how much money he needs. “More,” Walt replies. While he has an end date in mind, we’re starting to see just how much his new production method has expanded his expectations. Escalation is a recurring theme, and each time their means increase, so does Walt’s greed.

All of this leads to a scene that, while perhaps not a good climax for the season, certainly fully establishes Tuco as a wildly unpredictable and dangerous man, as he beats No-Doze to death for the smallest of affronts. Walter, in naming his alter ego “Heisenberg,” thought to become a wholly unpredictable entity in the criminal underworld. It’s here where he sees just exactly what that means. He brings the pork pie hat, Tuco brings the unmitigated crazy. Escalation.

Marsh Sunrise by Christus Murphy

by Dave Murphy

Every August Bank Holiday, an annual rite of passage takes place in Wales. Sturdy young men and women, and some aged ones as well, come from near and far to a peaty bog where aroma lies thick upon the senses. They compete in a tradition that has been honored since 1976, the World Bog Snorkelling Championship. This year there’s an interloper or so some say. Michael Phelps, winner of 16 Olympic medals in more traditional forms of athletic swimming, insists that he’s simply looking for a new challenge. Some longtime residents of the area say different.

At pubs and gathering spots, the tone of discussion is dark, and not easily shared with writers who have come for a visit. If you’re a Murphy however, there’s a longer and deeper connection to the land and those who love it. And while this particular visit was brief, I came away with enough to know there is no black and white, no pure right or wrong. There is only an uncertain portent of what will come this summer at Waen Rhydd, and marshy grass and decaying leaves, and the quiet cold water.

I should probably set a few things straight. The English spell snorkeling with two “Ls” for some reason. Also, my own third nephew – Conor Murphy from County Armagh across the sea from Wales – won the championship back-to-back in 2008 and 2009. A minute and thirty-eight seconds, straight down a 60-foot trench and back. And he beat 170 others and won a hundred dollars to boot. So there is that, and a sense of familial pride. Conor’s not your average swamp creature though, he’s a triathlete who only did bog as a lark for a couple years. So I guess that’s the other thing, where conflict comes and sticks to the sticking-place.

I didn’t take this assignment because I have any particular horse in the race. I told Graydon I was tired and spent after Bombay. I do know marshes and watery ways however, as the incessant texts and emails reminded. I grew up an easy walk from a New England wetlands, and my father has long maintained a summer home at the edge of a Cape Cod marsh that runs directly to the ocean. On high tides the sea comes right up to the edge of the property near a comfortable deck, a good place to drink wine and swat mosquitoes. But tromping through the muck doesn’t make me part of the local set at Llanwrtyd Wells. I knew I’d need to go to the source. I needed to talk to Phelps in person.

He wasn’t easy to find, hadn’t been at his beloved Meadowbrook facility in Baltimore for weeks. I landed at Southampton and rented a Fiat 500 which is a great little car until you get lost and stop caring about great little cars. But I arrived in Hampshire nonetheless, still late afternoon and a splitting headache from the flight. An 18th century stone cottage stood at the edge of Pennington Marsh and further out was Michael, churning through the reeds. It was the first time I had seen him since I wrote the bong expose for Vanity Fair, the one that put his Kelloggs endorsement in the crapper. Still, he grinned at me like he does, teeth chattering and skin nearly blue under bits of grass and dirt, and we headed back to the cottage to talk.

Bog snorkelling as we know it, is a recent cultural phenomenon with its banging pie plates and cowbells and spectators in bright costumes, and even mountain bikes plunging headlong into the glorious stench. Its history however is long and serpentine. Owain Glyndwr’s ancient anarchists used marsh reeds to take in air as they hid from the King’s soldiers, and the Celtic people remain a mysterious and insular lot with their polytheism and worship of nature, their poets and shape-shifters.

Michael changed into dry clothes and we were fed a hearty muskrat stew prepared by his lady friend Elin, a singer with a local pub band. And afterward we sat by the fire with a good dark ale and finally talked about motivation and purpose. “I swim,” he said, “it’s what I do and what I have always done. Lately I’ve been bothered by chlorine. After all these years.” And he just shrugged as if there were nothing else about it. And stared with a sense of melancholy into the fire. And Elin came and put a quiet hand on his shoulder, each of us alone with our thoughts.

We had bangers and eggs and rashers in the morning and Elin went into town for a band rehearsal and Michael walked out to the marsh and I caught up on sleep. Those English fry-up breakfasts can send you right back into a torpor and I didn’t mind at all. And later, got ready for yet another flight back, and walked out to say so long.

Michael was powering through the pickerel weed and marl with that inimitable butterfly stroke and I yelled ,“you do know they only allow the dog paddle or two arms straight out in front?” And he laughed and I knew he shared a kindred spirit with the good people of Waen Rhydd. Michael’s quest has always been elusive, like Hemingway on the plains of the Serengeti. And I looked over my shoulder as I walked away, and saw the kid who swam from one end of Baltimore to the other. Come Bank Day in August, the locals will witness something to remember. Michael flipped at the end of the trench and pushed off from the muddy bank, and headed for home.

Illustration by Mary Grace Ewald

by Brian Schroeder 

While browsing the “TV” section of my downtown library late last week, I came to a startling realization: there were no books about Breaking Bad to be found. While this is hardly shocking (the show really is not a ratings machine, drawing 2 million viewers at most, which pales in comparison even to Mad Men), I would daresay it deserves at least as much introspection and thought as nearly any other show on television. It’s both daring and contemplative, capable of the most awkward of humor and the most shocking of despair. Bolstered by one of the best casts on television (although a little top heavy, perhaps), Breaking Bad is a testament to what a driving force television can be, and what one man’s vision can do for the medium. I can’t say this little project will be quite the well-researched piece of thought provoking companionship as “Bones: The Official Companion” and “Entourage: A Lifestyle is a Terrible Thing to Waste,” but I’ll try my best.

Season 1, Episode 1: Breaking Bad

“To all law enforcement entities, this is *not* an admission of guilt.”- Walter White

There’s a telling scene early in the first episode of Breaking Bad. It’s five in the morning. A man silently gets out of bed. Today is his 50th birthday. He does his daily workout in another room, lest he wake his wife, pregnant with their second child. This room is filled with everything you’d expect from an expecting couple. Unwrapped toys, new baby supplies, paint samples. And a plaque, acknowledging the man as a “Contributor to Research Awarded the Nobel Prize” in 1985. A sickly cough escapes the man’s lips. He pauses, and stares blankly at the plaque. The he looks down, and begins to tinker with his stepper. Something’s not right. It shouldn’t be making this sound. He has to fix it.

 The longer Breaking Bad has been on the air, the more pressing the question has been: has Walter’s cancer irrevocably changed his character? Or was he capable of doing the things he’s done in the subsequent 45 episodes all along? The scene I mentioned before is telling in that it proves that, from the start, this show has had some idea that Walter’s one true, defining character trait is his obsessive need to fix things. Fix his family. Fix his life. Fix his regret. It’s at the core of nearly every decision he’s made over the course of the show. It’s what drives him. And, aside from all the basic exposition featured in this episode, it’s the one thing I always take away. This is a dark, bitter man who finally has reason to do something out of the ordinary, something that will bring him the recognition that he once took for granted.

While I highly doubt cooking Crystal Meth with a former student and poisoning a pair of gangbangers while wearing nothing but tighty whities and an apron is what he had in mind, it’s something that some part of him must secretly relish. That scene, in the very beginning of the episode, is our first look into what we eventually come to know as “Heisenberg,” Walt’s criminal alter-ego. Like most alter-egos, it is less a split personality than it is a release valve, an excuse to act out the darkest, craziest notions of the id. After all, Bruce Banner isn’t angry because he turns into a giant monster. He’s always had a propensity for rage. Turning into the Hulk just gives him a way to express it.

Season 1, Episode 2: “The Cat’s in the Bag”‘

“Because somehow it seemed preferable to admitting that I cook crystal meth and killed a man.”- Walter White

Walter’s job as a high school chemistry teacher was initially one of the best ways the audience had of relating to him. At home and at his job at the carwash, he’s somewhat of a quiet, meek man who seems somewhat embarrassed of where he is and what he is doing. In the classroom, however, he’s everyone’s favorite science teacher. Enthusiastic, excitable and genuinely interested in what it is he’s teaching, he seems to be the sort of nerdy science teacher other nerdy science teachers talk about in hushed tones. In the scene he has in the classroom in this episode, he’s talking about the chemical phenomenon of chirality, in which something (molecules, in this case) are asymmetrical to their mirror images (most notably seen in the human hand. The two forms are ideally mirror images of one another, but subtle differences make them nearly incompatible).

While talking about chirality, he mentions these subtle changes as sometimes being the difference between being “active and inactive, good and bad.” Obviously, we’re meant to see that Walt is thinking of himself at this point. He now has two lives, mirror images of one another. He’s not only hiding his new career path, but also his terminal lung cancer from his family, and his concerns are no longer getting this bored group of students to prepare for everything on the midterm. They’re what to do with the two men he poisoned at the end of the last episode. They, too, are mirror images of one another. Emilio is dead, while Krazy-8 somehow isn’t. Walter never prepared for this. His hair-pulling attempts to rationalize his way out of entirely irrational situations is the great narrative impetus of these first few episodes, and trying to thematically draw them to the greater pull of the show as a whole is one of the things I most looked forward to in doing these recaps.

Season 1, Episode 3: “…And the Bag’s in the River.”

“The soul? There’s nothing but chemistry here.”- Walter White

There’s a flashback scene during the cold open in this episode, in which a young Walter breaks down the chemical structure of the human body with a woman we eventually learn to be Gretchen, the wife of Walt’s former business partner Elliot Schwartz, and, more notably, someone who had a bit of a thing with Walter in the past. The scene, which was interspersed with present-day Walter and Jesse slowly cleaning up poor Emilio’s remains, splattered all over Jesse’s hallway, was played off as a bit of black humor. It wasn’t the best received scene in the show’s history, drawing a bit of eye-rolling from the excellent Donna Bowman over the AV Club (who, by the way, I readily admit a fair bit of inspiration from for most of these recaps). It’s a pretty cheesy scene, but I feel like there’s something richly thematic about it. It further illustrates how deeply Walter respects the idea of chemistry itself. He’s the type of man who can relate anything in his world to chemical reactions, to bonds and isomers and all the jargon one would expect to hear in a class like the one he teaches.

This small insight into Walt’s character is what makes the pivotal scene of this episode so fantastic. Walt, having drawn the short straw, has to either kill or release Krazy-8, who is tied to a post in the basement. He suffers a coughing fit and passes out, breaking the plate he he had brought a sandwich for Krazy-8 on. He makes another sandwich and has a long conversation with the man he is supposed to kill. Through what seems to be a random twist of fate, Walt comes to learn that Krazy-8 used to work at the same store the Whites bought Junior’s baby furniture at. This is not chemistry. It’s a legitimate connection with another human being, perhaps the first one Walt’s had in years. Eventually, he agrees to release Krazy-8, but not before coming to a bit of a revelation. In a chilling scene, one of the first examples of what would come to be Breaking Bad’s trademark scenes of nearly unbearable tension, Walt pieces together, literally and figuratively, that Krazy-8 stole a piece of the broken plate, with which he would kill Walter and make his escape. After confronting him about it, Walter uses the bike lock Jesse used to lock him in place to choke Krazy-8 to death. It’s Walter’s first experience with the human side of the drug game, and it teaches him that not every obstacle can be solved through science and reason (even though figuring out the broken plate bit was a signature moment of spatial brilliance for him, something Jesse certainly wouldn’t have been able to do). Sometimes, instinct has to take hold to survive in the new world Walt finds himself in, and his instinct told him not to trust this man he was harboring.

Near the end of the episode, Walter returns to that flashback scene with Gretchen, where the quote at the beginning of this review takes place. He’s thinking of what constitutes the human soul, the same sort of soul he just extinguished in a dark basement. Maybe he’s thinking of his own soul, and what his deeds have done to it. Soon after, both the episode and the first major story arc of the show ends with Walter telling his wife that he has something to tell her.