TV Watch: I love AMC's "Talking Bad." Meanwhile, the new show, "Winter Low Heat" (or whatever it's called), isn't doing much for me

Here's where you can submit your questions for Talking Bad.

by Ken

I didn't think there would be a "TV Watch" this week. After all, though I've been putting in mountains of tube time, most of my watching has been pm DVD -- not just the amazing Friday Night Lights, which I wrote about recently, but now also Aaron Sorkin's single-season Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and -- what else? -- The Sopranos. (I had Seasons 1-3 on VHS, and those tapes got a fair amount of use, and I had Season 4 on DVD, but I finally took the plunge and bought the complete-series DVDs.)

Whereas stuff coming through the cable . . . well, there's Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom, and of course the final arc of Breaking Bad, but I really don't want to write about them again until their seasons are completed. Still, it occurred to me that this late Sunday night slot of a holiday weekend could be swell for a "TV Watch" post, which would also enable me to see, not just the new Breaking Bad, but also AMC's terrific after-show, Talking Bad.

I love Talking Bad. One of these days I'll find out more about the host, Chris Hardwick, but for now all I know, apart from what I'm seeing on the shows, is that he hosted a similar one-shot show for one of the AMC shows that I don't watch. On Talking Bad he has shown himself incredibly smart and show-savvy, providing some brilliant underscoring of fascinating moments (some obvious, but many of them not) from the night's new episode, and highlighting all sorts of interesting angles on the characters.

I think it was last week that he pointed out something that never occurred to me: that Walter White, one of the most resourceful and skillful liars in the history of the human race, becomes bumblingly inept when it comes to lying to his wife Skyler (like that hopelessly idiotic and unbelievable story he came up with to justify opening the Coke machine at the carwash, and the at-least-as-dreadful lie he followed it up with about having to fill a prescription). And boy, did that bear fruit in tonight's episode. (I don't remember whether this was Chris's own insight or something cited from someone else, but it doesn't matter. Either way, it was a fantastic observation.)

Gus "The Chicken Man" Fring

The guests have been sensational. I could swear I already wrote about the premiere, with Modern Family star Julie Bowen and Breaking Bad creator-mastermind Vince Gilligan, when Vince delivered the first of his weekly teases for the following episode, but I can't find the link. The show has been flexible about guests, unhesitatingly slotting in Aaron Paul (Jesse Pinkman) the week when he became available. Or there was the show with superfan Samuel L. Jackson and the uniquely brilliant Bob Odenkirk, the man who made crook-lawyer Saul ("Better Call Saul") Goodman a household deity. Ever so charmingly, Bob turns out never to have become comfortable with the idea that he belongs in the company of the Breaking Bad people. In a recorded comment Vince Gilligan left no doubt that he's one of the show's great assets. Still, I find it charming that Bob doesn't know how beloved his Saul Goodman has become -- certainly among my all-time favorite screen characters (though I would have to say that he's only tied at the top of my Breaking Bad pantheon, with Giancarlo Esposito's Gus "The Chicken Man" Fring).

Actually, I haven't seen tonight's Talking Bad yet. I'm writing now in that hour between the Breaking Bad and Talking Bad in which AMC thinks it can force us to watch its new show, High Low Sunshine or whatever the hell it's called. (In my mind, if you've got a show title that's next to impossible to remember, you don't have a great show title.) And I've grudgingly played along, sort of half-watching most of the episodes to date. So I know that it's about a bunch of detectives in Florida dealing with the beyond-the-limit crookedness of one of their number who then turned up mysteriously dead later in the first episode. The surrounding cast consists of people who were somehow involved in the dead guy's nefarious dealings.

I take it that the atmosphere is meant to be gritty and oppressive, and I'm certainly getting the "oppressive" part. What I'm not getting is any particular reason to care about these people or what they do or what happens to them.

Gale Boetticher, RIP

One exception: It seems that every time David Costabile, playing the IA guy who functions as the show's chief villain, walks on-screen, my attention seems to be grabbed. They don't seem to give him anything to do worthy of his talents, but I've loved him since he made such a riveting character of Walter White's super-fastidious and too-short-lived deputy meth cook, Gale Boetticher, on Breaking Bad. If the producers had given Gale another season, he might have worked himself into my BB pantheon alongside Saul and Gus. I think it's a tribute to Gale that the copy of Leaves of Grass he gave Walter triggers the single most dramatic turning point in the series.

You can click to enlarge the fateful moment when Hank picks up the copy of Leaves of Grass that Walt keeps by the can. There's an idiotic theory circulating online that "G.B." isn't Gale Boetticher. However, as Erik Kain, the observer who posted this photo, points out, we've actually seen Gale's handwriting -- and this is it, in case the initials (and the fact that Gale was a Walt Whitman fan) weren't obvious enough. Some people -- like these whacked-out conspiracy theorists -- have way too much time on their hands.

Cagey AMC has made it difficult to bail out of Winter Summer Doodles by allowing the 9pm Breaking Bad episode to run several minutes past 10pm, making it difficult to switch, say, to the new episode of The Newsroom. Tonight, however, HBO is following the time-honored custom -- happily not honored by AMC -- of not showing new episodes of a series on a holiday weekend. I've got Low Sun High Moon on even as I write, but on the whole this hour has been a boon for someone who happens to be trying to finish a "TV Watch" post.

And then at 11:05 I'll get to watch guests Betsy Brandt (Walter's sister-in-law Marie) and RJ Mitte (Walter Junior) on tonight's Talking Bad.



How great was the Talking Bad show with guests Samuel L. Jackson (a Breaking Bad superfan) and "Better Call Saul" Goodman himself, Bob Odenkirk?


POST-TALKING BAD UPDATE

A swell time with Betsy and RJ, and a fine slide-show character portrait of Anna Gunn's Skyler. (It's noted, for one thing, that she listened to music to help her find the character, and that this involved a lot of Lucinda Williams for her quotient of disappointment and heartbreak.) I loved that Chris reminded us of that sublime Saul Goodman moment when he evokes Old Yeller to Walt. Chris also noted the tribute it pays to the complexity of Walt's character that "everyone hates him for a slightly different reason."


UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: IT'S LIVE!

Somehow I don't think I mentioned that Talking Bad is done live -- the initial broadcast, of course. I also didn't mention that when the show ends Chris and the guests do an additional segment (about 15 minutes, I think it is) that gets posted online. Probably I forgot about this because I always forget to search out the expanded online version.

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