In Which We Only Give Away Money To Kickstarters For Smart Watches

Any Way That You Want Him

by DICK CHENEY

Breaking Bad
creator Vince Gilligan

Walter White (Bryan Cranston) has recently been exposed for the first time. Some of the people that he knows know some of the things he did, other people know others of the things he did, one or two people know a few of the things he did.

it's called a garage beard and it is fantastic

No one knows everything, but Walt's brother-in-the-law could now list the vast majority of Walter White's murders, but he could not possibly detail them all. "If that's true," Walter tells Hank as the last episodes of AMC's Breaking Bad unfold, "if you don't know who I am, then maybe your best course would be to tread lightly." He obviously has not seen Hank on Under the Dome.

sic the child on him Walt, protect yr family
For some reason it is far more disappointing to watch the protagonist of Breaking Bad lie than it is to watch him kill someone. Each moment he used deadly violence as a means of communication, we know in our hearts that Walt had no other choice. Even when he poisoned a child with the byproduct of a rare plant, he had a moral ground from which to operate. Did you ever read Kissinger's autobiography? It wasn't full of apologies.

staring away from someone and looking mad is an entire class at Juillard
His ex-partner Jesse Pinkman stands on no such firmament. Watching him redistribute his wealth made me physically ill, just as I become sick to my stomach from the Nazi references in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. Giving away your money to make yourself feel better about things you have done is fiction's second oldest cliche after Leonardo DiCaprio talking very quickly in a loud voice.

never get seafood at the Dog House, you will regret your choice

The sad thing about Jesse Pinkman's current existence is that it's about a million times more exciting than mine. He hung out with his friends, and went to pick up some hot dogs. That sounded fantastic. Then he gave a bum $10,000. If you really want to give money to people who deserve it, flush it down the toilet, because whoever makes that disappear is a magician who deserves to be compensated. Or go on Bandcamp with some earplugs.

Aaron Paul's acting has been reduced to its most basic component. His skull ensconced in skin now looks like Mr. Potato Head, and his eyes, as usual, do about 90 percent of the work:

that was voyager

His only morality is that he does not obey the rules of others, which is a very good morality indeed. Paul's general approach to playing the character of Jesse Pinkman has never bothered me before now, but the constant eye rolling, the peripatetic motions of his tongue and mouth and the staring as a substitute for meaningful response to stimuli does not scream spin-off to me. I was really hoping this would all end with Jesse turning into the new Sam from Cheers but that hope dims every time he tries to expose or apologize for his past. If Ted Danson can walk around with his hairline, so can you Aaron.

jeez walt just shave your head and pretend you have cancer, we've all done it

The number three cliche in scriptwriting is of course showing the end before the beginning. With his ginger hair growing in and his live free or die apparel, Future Walt resembles a tea party adherent who has been infected with Simon Pegg's DNA. His trunk full of guns holds no interest for us, since shooting people has never been Walt's metier.

did not personally find Leaves of Grass all that affecting

Presumably Future Walt has been given leave by Hank to flee. The people Future Walt is now running from are more likely to be his old partners than the law.

This hokey past/present set-up has taken some of the juice out of the season until now. Walt has returned to Albuquerque to reclaim his secret poison, and we are meant to wonder who exactly will be his target. Lydia seems too obvious, and her definition of business casual too restrictive to perish in such a scenario.

lydia your sense of style was unencumbered by the birth of your child and I respect that immensely

More likely he finally has to put Jesse out of his bliss. Even Mr. Pinkman has never fathomed Walt's ways completely. In not-so-subtle fashion he tries to get Walt to convince him that Mike is alive somewhere, that the only friend he made in this sordid business was not also consumed by it. Walt composes himself on Jesse's couch, thinking in his head that it is time for one more good lie before he tells the truth.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in an undisclosed location and the former vice president of the United States of America. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here. He last wrote in these pages about touching under the dome.

Walt never saw a bong before this moment, he was shocked by this device

"Any Way That You Want Me (Troggs cover)" - Spiritualized (mp3)

"I Think I'm In Love" - Spiritualized (mp3)

In Which It Is Bad News For Everyone

A Certain Low Profile

by DICK CHENEY

Revolution
creator Eric Kripke

Revolution begins when the world loses electricity. This is J.J. Abrams' idea of hell, because then he can no longer abuse Tom Cruise's mental illness further in Mission: Impossible sequels where Ethan Hunt is a grandfather. Even batteries don't work anymore. Earth reverts to a pre-industrial society in every facet except one: there are still jokey allusions to Lost at every possible moment. It's not another show from this fuck unless it's a show that proves Lost wasn't shit in retrospect.

It's still hard to talk about Lost. I blame Lynne for ruining Lost, I never knew it was bad until she told me. It was like how for many years I thought Mona Lisa was a man.

Guys are a lot more into horses, they seem to have replaced girlfriends. Everyone has shifted to a straight razor without even so much as an adjustment period. There is one rule followed at all times: Gus Fring must ride a horse, and the cast of Lost has a chance to play a significant role.

Revolution is so painfully bad it's unclear if this was actually meant to be a show or just a means by which Jon Favreau can express his shame by making young girls cry after Gustavo Fring, in a purple one-piece, shoots their father. It's a morbid and confusing sort of pornography, as crass as anything completely absurd can be.

Presumably it will be harder to manufacture birth control in subsequent episodes. That means America will soon be great again. After all, the world couldn't go on if Juliet was unemployed for more than a month? Remember when she kissed a pre-DUI Matthew Fox, or when she lived with Sawyer like they were bros? No, you don't, because it didn't make any fucking sense.

For now, Revolution only depicts a small number of people in the United States. In further episodes questions such as the following will be answered:

Does anyone have the time or means to get circumsised?

How many times was the phrase "That's the truth" included in the pilot script for Revolution?

Wouldn't people be scavenging power lines in like two seconds?

Would Google really stop existing without electricity? Wouldn't they all just spend their time in that gorgeous cafeteria?

Can Benedict Cumberbatch just shut the fuck up for once?

Did everyone just forget about bicycles?

Was there ever electricity at Wrigley Field?

The main hero of Revolution played a serial rapist on The Closer. "Don't worry, that's not Philip Stroh," I told my wife. I spent forty minutes explaining to Lynne what mise en scene is. Then I spent another forty detailing why I felt Mike Ehrmantraut was an unbelievable asshole who deserved to die. It was dark by the time I was finished, probably because I went off on a tangent on how stupid Fringe was. The Avengers also sucked, but try telling my wife that.

Everything that matters to me or Walter White is pretty much gone. The worst part is, we destroyed it ourselves.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in an undisclosed location. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

"All Things Conspire" - Katie Noonan & Karin Schaupp (mp3)

"I Hope I Never" - Katie Noonan & Karin Schaupp (mp3)

The new album from Katie Noonan & Karin Schaupp is entitled Songs of the Southern Skies.

In Which There Is Nothing To Be Afraid Of

Lady Banjo Eyes

by DICK CHENEY

Breaking Bad
creator Vince Gilligan

True Blood
creator Alan Ball

Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is distracted from his job for a moment, but no more. On his 51st birthday, his wife slowly walks, fully-clothed, into the family pool. She can't get good with the way things are now that Walt is running his own business. She chainsmokes in the home, she begs for his cancer to return, she can barely manage to bake a chocolate cake. Her behavior is so exaggerated that she has turned into the Danielle Steele version of an adulterous wife.

It's a lot harder to write a character sketch like this about the protagonists in the eighteenth season of HBO's True Blood. What's that you say? It only feels like the eighteenth season? No matter. The typical scene on True Blood lasts only the thirty or forty seconds it might take you to get bored of it before moving onto the next character. It's like skipping from YouTube to YouTube, and in every episode, there are over a thousand.

not casting Fred Savage as Godric was an almost unforgivable mistake

The character I least understand on True Blood is Eric Northman. When the show began he was completely committed to the superiority of vampires over humans, now he walks around acting like he's Saint Ignatius. You have never seen a man so completely convinced there is no vampire god. He's become a Christian message board troll who waits for someone to espouse their faith in under 130 characters and then chimes in with a "Not likely!"

Understanding the motivations of a drama's personages is the first step to empathizing with their predicament. I almost admire how much True Blood eschews this. The only time it has its characters even react to the madness that surrounds them is when they cry afterwards. By the next episode, they are generally fine. The rule on True Blood - that everyone gets a storyline - extends even to the most peripheral characters, especially if they were kind enough to offer Alan Ball an on-set blowjob.

Alan Ball and Anna Paquin will not be doing any USO tours, of that much we can be certain

After a time, playing with the lives of fictional people becomes like moving things around on your desk. Alan Ball hates God so completely he had to become him.

Everything bad on True Blood is associated with religion, even the eating of a child. Ball believes that faith is the corruptor, the scapegoat instrument by which evil is wrought. His most sincere and good-willed individuals on the show are completely without faith; they feel lost in the world as he does, and simply by virtue of not knowing exactly what they are, are blessed and imagined as heroes.

No such luck for Walter White. He spent his entire life before he got brain cancer afraid of things, unable to decide who he was or what he should be doing with his life. Once he realized that, his new problems began.

I have lived longer than anyone I have talked about so far in this essai besides Eric Northman. One of mankind's most enduring cliches is that success comes with a price. (This cliche was first associated with Jesus, and later, Kristen Stewart.)

Whatever truth there is in this statement exists completely outside the realm of human experience. For those who aren't successsful, no price is too high. And for those who are successful, like the creators of Breaking Bad and True Blood, there must be some other reason for their unhappiness, an explanation that lies outside themselves. If they actually found they liked being miserable, success would feel like a curse.

taking Nancy Pelosi's dream and bringing it to life

Basically, it's easy to forget that you are the one who knocks. Many years ago my daughter came to me and explained that one of her classmates was afraid of me. What was I going to do about that? I offered to meet the young man, and he came over to our house for dinner. I asked him if he still felt afraid of me. "No," he said. I told him to wait.

Walter White is happy, perhaps the happiest he's ever been, but there is no one to enjoy it with him. Is this what it is truly like to run a critically acclaimed television series? Must there be a feeling in everything that they will be found out as a fraud, a charlatan? Did Matthew Weiner put his blood in a syringe and infect everyone in Hollywood with his identical insecurities?

I noticed some years ago that I find myself happier in the company of sad people, simply by comparison. And when I meet truly happy people - Oliver North comes to mind - I feel sorry for myself, that I cannot be as they are. Even more astonishing is that I am allowed to behave this way by the people in my life.

Beel, drain this woman while I watch the uneven bars

There might be another reason that this cliche keeps reoccuring in our popular fictions. Vampire leader Salome Agrippa (Valentina Cervi) has quickly become the worst character on True Blood. Her scenes are completely boring; she speaks with a vague monotone that is supposed to come off as threatening but in reality just lulls the viewer to sleep. Her idea of acting consists of brushing back her bangs. If I have to view her bare chest one more time, I'm going to start missing the acting "skills" of the guy who played Lafayette's top.

But besides the fact that Salome can't act and looks completely unappealing without clothes, the various travails of Salome don't interest me or my wife because she is truly satisfied with herself. Salome is incapable of change. Eventually this will be her downfall as she tries to take over the world for her vampire God, but until then I guess I have to keep watching Bill (Stephen Moyer) penetrating her with his ass raised high in the air, like he's about to hammer a nail.

you killed off Christopher Meloni FOR THIS?

True Blood and Breaking Bad, as they ascended to their first heights, made a point of portraying strong and powerful women. Now that these dramas near their conclusion, these women are actually revealed only as exceptions to the general rule of female archetypes - power and vulnerability can no longer exist within one human person. There may be sexism behind this, and I'm sure there is, but I can suggest another cause as well.

sexism, yoWhen a man changes his mind, or becomes something different than what he is, it is not a betrayal. This is expected of him: it happens when he begins a household, settles down with his partner, has children. These are all changes for him, and the responsiblities are said to improve who he is.

When these things happen to a woman, it is thought to be no more than a natural extension of herself. Lies. This vicious canard is completely subsumed in how men think of the opposite sex. But the reality is not that women aren't changed by the contours of family and marriage. It is that, on a conscious or even subconscious level, women are better at understanding what change implies than men will ever be.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is the former vice president of the United States. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here. He last wrote in these pages about the beginning of Breaking Bad's season.

"We Are Not Good People" - Bloc Party (mp3)

"Octopus" - Bloc Party (mp3)

The new album from Bloc Party is entitled Four, and it will be released on August 20th.