Better Cast Saul - 403 – Something Beautiful

We continue to be pleased at the pace Better Call Saul is maintaining in the early stretches of season 4. Checkov’s letter? Bam! Here it is. Waiting to see how long it will take for the other shoe to drop on Nacho’s flip by Gus? Blam! Blam! You got it. There’s also some suggestion of how Jimmy eventually becomes an important underworld connector in the Breaking Bad timeline, if you know how to connect the dots. Plus, we get a pair of nifty back-alley surgery/thievery sequences. All this and tons of feedback, coming your way!

Bald Move Pulp - Sharp Objects Ep. 7 – Falling, Castle Rock

On today’s BMTV, we discuss the penultimate episode of HBO’s Sharp Objects, “Falling”, as well as our thoughts on the first six episodes of Hulu’s Castle Rock. Sharp was an especially wild hour, chock full of stomach churning child abuse and problematic sex scenes between damaged and self-destructive people, before promising a truly epic conclusion from the setup of a five way collision between Camille, Amma, Adora, Alan, and Chief Vickers. Will Detective Willis find his way into the middle of this perfect storm? 

Bald Move Pulp - Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2002)

Special thanks to Brian Strader, previous commissioner of the podcast for the underrated sci-fi saga, Babylon 5. This time he’s back to, as he says, “play ‘TV Show Dumpster Fire’ roulette.” Unfortunately we think he may have lost by betting on Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. We were suitably impressed with the detail of the animations, certain aspects of world building, and the themes were philosophically engaging here and there. Unfortunately, other aspects of the world building struck us as silly or worse, the dubs and probably general translation on the version we watched were almost universally bad, and the themes that were otherwise engaging have been either dated or made more engaging by later works such as Altered Carbon.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Podcast - 306 – The Climb

We’re back with another terrific season three episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones, “The Climb”. Of course the title refers to the Wildlings’ epic climb of The Wall, but also Littlefinger’s unhinged speech about chaos delivered to a shell shocked Varys. Both are amazing in their way, as is Lady Olena and Lord Tywin’s political duel in the Hand’s chambers. We discuss all this plus tons of fan commentary and questions!

Better Cast Saul - 402 – Breathe

AMC’s Better Call Saul delivers the goods in another tense episode, reminding us to “Breathe”. Between Gus’s high stakes plot to squeeze the Salamanca gang by taking ownership of Nacho to Kim’s blistering of Howard in his own firm over his callous treatment of Jimmy, this episode had plenty of fireworks. Speaking of Jimmy, the real mystery that is driving a lot of the intrigue this season is the man himself. What’s going on with him? Why is he going through the motions with Kim? Why can’t he get out of his own ways? Is the ghost of Chuck still haunting him, or are there deeper problems going on in his mental machinery? We ponder all this and more with the help of plenty of fan feedback!

Bald Move Prestige - BlacKkKlansman (2018)

Spike Lee has thrown a very well made, very funny, and very devastating bomb into American movie theaters with his latest joint, BlacKkKlansman. To mark the occasion, we’re not keeping our full review and discussion as a Club Member. Anyone who wants to hear this can. Will White America listen to the message we so desperately need to hear, or hit “snooze” and go back to sleep. What are we going to do about the resurfacing of explicit racism in our country, that has until recent years been hiding beneath the still waters of institutional racism? What will you do with friends and family who bemoan Black Lives Matter, or offer the limp rebuttal that “both sides are bad?”  As the movie asks, if not now, when, and if not you, who?