Graggoz Reviews

Better Call Saul: Rebecca (2016) Season 2, Episode 5

A master-piece in how to complicate things without purpose.

[4/10 · 15 March 2016]

It seems the writers for this show often seem to do everything they can to make the viewer aware of their methods of telling the story, often at the expense of the story itself. Almost like watching a film school project experimenting at times.

Instead what they probably should have focused more on was:

"How can we tell this story in a good way without the viewer getting unnecessarily distracted by those methods"?

That's what good story telling is all about in my opinion: Telling the story in a good way, without the reader/viewer/listener even realizing or reflecting upon what methods was used.

On this show they seem to do everything they can to instead make people focus more on the story telling techniques instead of the story.

* Weird and often insufficient lightning. * Extraordinary weird camera angels just for the sake of it. * Whispering, at times unintelligible, voices. * Unnecessarily frequent jumping in time and space without really adding quality to the story-telling * Hidden and vague messages and hints just to appear sophisticated, that doesn't really improve the story-telling. * Sometimes huge lags between the picture and the audio swap point between scenes. * In general they seem to think that all methods that usually work great in a book, can without alteration be implemented in a TV series.

The smoothness of the show is almost non-existent in some episodes (like this one). If viewers almost feel they need to have some sort of whiteboard where they write down all the scenes and then try make some sort of theory how the writers intended the viewer to interpret the fragments, preferably after re-watching a couple of time, it's a tremendously strong sign of a horrible writing technique, especially when it often turns out that the story itself was not complicated, only the story-telling itself was.

Now consider that there a lot of fans that seem to defend these methods no matter how bizarre they get and that the writers also seem to like that the story revolves around the story telling methods rather than the story itself.

Those factors combined unfortunately makes it very probable that this show will not ever get away from this unfortunate tendency of a bizarre self-admiration of the methods and "artistic twists" rather than focusing on the story itself which actually had quite a potential... :(

Better Call Saul: Gloves Off (2016) Season 2, Episode 4

Please stop these horribly far-fetched plans

[4/10 · 8 March 2016]

I hoped Better Call Saul would be spared from these overly far-fetched unrealistic complicated plans where there are just to many minor variables that can go wrong to make it a realistic option to solve a problem, but in this episode we see a classic example of this again.

Mike calling in to the police his own disturbance with a very unique voice, easy for investigators to detect, is just plain stupid. Mike has been prone to avoid contact with police at all costs so this goes completely against his actions earlier.

Now he made contact both through a call with a very distinct voice AND was seen as a victim of a violent crime. Also the plan could very easily backfire if a police car was very close when the call was made or if they drove to the place without sirens (which in fact would probably be very likely considering how Mike described the event on the phone to the police and that police strive to avoid L&S driving unless clearly deemed necessary). They clearly didn't think this one through and it reminded me of some of the super-stupid far-fetched plans that Walter did in last few seasons of Breaking Bad.

It seems like the writers sometimes think "How can we come up with the most complicated and bizarre plan possible?" and then they implement it without even considering if it holds up...

Please, no more of these! Better Call Saul has a great potential, don't let it go away by stupid things like this!

And if you are one if the viewers that watch Better Call Saul/Breaking Bad to try and pretend to be super-smart and sophisticated (for some bizarre reason), please don't forget to verify it by voting NO on this review... :)

But judging by this community it seems that there are a lot of viewers of this show that think it doesn't matter that the show makes so many stupid far-fetched twists, don't let logic stand in the way of a crazy plot seems to be the notion. Many seem determine to let anything fly, regardless of it's irrationality

That's why I fear this show will be dumbing down even more very quick and continue with having more and more far-fetched plots (think for instance of a shows like 24 or Arrow to get what I am fearing). If so, they have lost me and probably a lot of other viewers as well.

South Park: Eat, Pray, Queef (2009) Season 13, Episode 4

This is the episode were I lost all hope for a rejuvenation of South Park

[1/10 · 4 March 2016]

After bingewatching entire South Park I noticed how great the series were in the beginning but then took a slow turn to the worse over season 11 and then 12. However S13E04 marks the very episode were the recovery of the series seem to be impossible (and episodes beyond this with some few exceptions showed this was the case).

Does this episode have any humour? Not really.

Can anyone relate to the messages? I don't know anyone who can. What was this supposed to be about.

Was the episode shocking and provoking? No, it's just plain childish and stupid.

The only positive thing about the episode was that it did not include as much of Trey Parker's personal opinions that he think he is entitled to force upon the viewers (often in a very immature way after season 11).

But still, this one cannot be rated anything but a 1 rating.

Black Widows (2016– )

A promising comedy/drama with good acting but mediocre script.

[7/10 · 26 February 2016]

The series is pretty much about what the title "Black Widows" suggests. Three widows that decides they are better of without their better halves.

The three women have different and interesting personalities. Two different police officers with a very different methodology pairs up to investigate the murders of their husbands.

It's worth pointing out that this is just as much of a comedy that it is a drama. Which is good.

Unfortunately, there are quite a lot of plot holes and unrealistic twists (not revealing anyone to avoid spoilers) that felt like it wasn't properly scripted.

Also incredibly annoying that all the Swedish cars has the same letters in their license plates (all starts with MLB). It may seem like a minor detail, but it's really annoying especially for those who has a natural tendency to memorize things like that.

Definitely worth a watch, especially if you appreciate shows that doesn't take itself to serious.

A Man Called Ove (2015)

Touching, entertaining and deep.

[10/10 · 30 January 2016]

This movie is about an old man that appears to be grumpy. The story gradually reveals his back-story in a masterful way to explain his behaviour that will probably change your opinion of the main character.

I can honestly say that I have never before felt such a strong connection to a character in a movie. This is an absolute masterpiece.

The directing of the movie is also great. It's easy to understand who is who and when a flashback occurs even if you have not read the book.

The greatness of the movie will be most appreciated if you understand Swedish, but even if you depend on subtitles it will still be a gem that you should not miss out on.

I am very conservative with rating movies 10/10, but this one I think truly deserves it!

The Simpsons: Teenage Mutant Milk-Caused Hurdles (2016) Season 27, Episode 11

Good Story

[8/10 · 11 January 2016]

This is one of the better episodes as of late. A well defined story arch and a lot of good humour and play with words.

I also appreciate when they focus the show more on Bart like in the old days. That usually results in better episodes.

The plot about Lisa suddenly becoming popular has been used several times before, but I think it still works out OK.

This episode also manages to squeeze in some messages/thoughtful consideration without having to sacrifice the quality of the story.

Finally, thumbs up for not using many pop-culture references or having annoying not so hidden "hidden" commercials in this one. Keep this up!

The Simpsons: The Girl Code (2016) Season 27, Episode 10

Another lame Apple Suck Up Episode

[3/10 · 10 January 2016]

The episode did not feel fluent. There is a lot of jumping around and no real good main story. Instead two stories that are not really well integrated.

It's also a bit of an insult for programmers pretending that second graders would get as an assignment to make a working computer application.

The constant Apple references are getting very lame too.

I really miss the old Simpsons when they actually made good and fun stories and were and episode had a clear arch of events and a proper ending.

The story with Marge causing Homer to lose his job by visiting him on the job had potential, but it did not get enough time to evolve good enough since so much of the episode was wasted on the App-idea.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Bracelet (2000) Season 1, Episode 4

Yes finally! Larry David at his best

[10/10 · 22 October 2010]

After being a bit disappointed at the previous episode #1.3 Porno Gil I really hoped this episode would make the show go back to where it was intended to go. And it sure did!

This is the first episode that fully satisfy my expectations for this show.

The episode touches on many nice and interesting social aspects such as:

* Men's desire to act lazy as soon as their wife/girlfriend are gone for a couple of days.

* How women generally cannot understand why some moment in sport games can be of such a high relevance that they are being temporarily neglected.

* The classic "No everything is OK I promise"-theatre to give men bad conscience (which always work by the way ;) )

* How people are being judged by their appearance (Larry being denied entry to the jewellery store because of his clothes and a homeless guy talking to him)

* The stupid, complicated and old-fashioned tipping system that still exist in US restaurants.

* Karma (Larry not getting a favour from the captain after refusing to tip him the day before)

* The dilemma between the desire to help a handicap person (in this case blind) and the need to spend time on oneself.

* The taboo of criticizing a handicapped individual.

* How the satisfaction of giving a gift is destroyed, if the person specifically ask for the gift just before you have planned to give it (Cheryl asking about the bracelet)

I could go on with more specific incidents, but there is really no need to. This episode is great, emphasizing on what Larry David do best, making humour out of everyday behaviour!

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Porno Gil (2000) Season 1, Episode 3

Predictable, yet fun, but too sensational this time around.

[5/10 · 22 October 2010]

It beings with a totally unrealistic scene from a social point of view at a golf driving range. To have the man standing there and wait for Larry to give him that ball is totally unrealistic and irrational, especially since Larry is a significantly older man than the guy who dropped the ball (Brian), Larry is holding a golf club, while Brian have put down his bucket and bag already with both hands free and his golf ball lying one foot in front of him as a result of his clumsiness, and ball didn't even roll over to Larry's place. Sure you may argue this is a bit picky to criticize, but as the show is trying to be a realistic show of Larry's life, scenes including unrealistic social interactions like this really hurt the plausibility of the show's plot to be honest.

Anyway, Later, Larry accidentally call the wrong number and ends up getting invited to a party hosted by an old friend, Gil, who used to be a porno star, the very same day that he already had plans with Cheryl. Gil faxes him the directions as he apparently live quite far out in the wild.

Jeff being hospitalized, asks Larry for a favour to get hold of Jeff's secret porno collection to assure it will not get revealed should he die. So he gives Larry his keys.

So the week-end comes and Larry and Cheryl are heading for the "porno Party". Cheryl who was sceptic from the very start of the idea to attend this party, get progressively more annoyed as they run into various problems to even get there. She acts really well during these scenes I must say.

They ask an old woman for the road. This scene is really funny as it point out the humour in some people's overwhelming desire to help people with directions when they are lost, despite they may not really know the directions themselves any better than the people asking.

Larry then realizes she cannot possibly be of any valuable help, yet the woman insist of trying to help and refuses to give the paper of the directions back. The scene is spot-on what I like best about Larry David. The woman's desire to help out is much more based on a need to satisfy her own need to feel being helpful, than actually being helpful in itself. Realizing she was only trying to satisfying her own need of helping when Larry is repeatedly asking to get the directions back, she gets annoyed and rips the paper. 10/10 for this scene!

Cheryl now gets more unhappy.

Later, they ask another person for direction. It turns out the driver is Brian from the Driving-Range. Brian, for some bizarre reason, still upset about the minor detail on the Driving Range, tries to get revenge on Larry for this. Larry tries to blame it on him having a hard time to bend his back. The scene ends with Brian asking Larry:

"Then Maybe you should just bend over and kiss my ass, and maybe next time, you will remember to pick up the f***ing golf ball."

Poor scene and Brian Palerma acts poorly throughout the episode.

Finally they found Gil's house and steps inside, a house which apparently is a strict no-shoe zone, initiated by Gil's wife. However Larry refuses to take them off. It turns out that the so-called porno party was a dinner party , making their late arrival somewhat embarrassing, an emotion well delivered.

Gil then, macho and full of himself, directs and introduce them to the dinner guests, Brian and his wife being one of the five couples. When all are sitting down, Gil starts and tell a nasty porno joke taking a full 2 minutes of the show. The story was not only unnecessarily vulgar and inappropriate, it was also way to long. I mean we could quickly tell that Cheryl had had enough from this dinner party, there was just no need to drag on this story for so long, it didn't make it more embarrassing and it wasn't funny. It's not that I am sensitive to vulgar sexual or porno language, because I am not. But the scene's vulgarity and most importantly the length of it was totally uncalled for.

After the dinner Bill apparently or accidentally drops his lighter right in front of Larry making a similar scene as we witnessed on the golf course. Larry then tries to pick up the lighter as a gesture of politeness but have to do it while pretending to have a bad back. Like as if the initial scene of the driving range wasn't bad enough, they had to repeat it once more time. Anyway Larry's attempt at picking up the lighter makes him accidentally shatter a very expensive and rare lamp leaving glass spill all over the floor.

This makes Gil's wife, who had already been annoyed at Larry for being late and refusing to take off his shoes, release her annoyance for Larry and especially the fact that he was wearing shoes inside. Larry and Cheryl are more or less thrown out of the party.

The next day Larry goes to Jeff's house to get his porn. Jeff finds a movie starring Gil, so out of curiosity he puts it on to watch some. Well what happens? You guessed it, Jeff's parents enters and see him watching the porno.

A horrible ending to an already mediocre episode as it once again leaves the plausible realism a bit to far and even doing so without really surprising or making a funny point out of it.

So after giving 8-rating on the two first episodes, this rather disappointing episode only get 5 stars from me. I hope this episode was an isolated mistake and that better episodes are around the corner.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Ted and Mary (2000) Season 1, Episode 2

Cheating without physical contact...

[8/10 · 22 October 2010]

Larry get the wrong shoes back after bowling. The Shoes he lost he really likes. Not knowing whether he will ever get them back, he order some new ones, but as they are not in at the moment, they have to order them to the shoe store.

Larry eventually get his original shoes back though after he confronts the person who obviously deliberately took the wrong shoes. That confrontation feels a bit weird though.

As if that was not enough, Larry is getting trouble when he know doesn't need the shoe the store has ordered for him and then accidentally run into the guy on the street who ordered the shoes for him. Although somewhat over-acted, that scene is great fun to watch.

This episode also touched on an interesting topic, namely what is allowed and not allowed to do with you and your wife's common friends, in this case Larry and their common friends Mary and Ted. It's almost like Larry is asking Cheryl for permission to "cheat without any physical contact" and offer Cheryl green light to do the same as an exchange. Great fun stuff!

During a lunch with Mary and Mary's mother, Larry accidentally drinks from Mary's mother's water glass. When being informed that it was her glass, Larry act out as he was very disgusted by this in an obviously embarrassing manner.

The dilemma when they are waiting for the call about the concert and Larry starting to assume the reason they are ditching them is due to his inappropriate incident with Mary's mother and Larry trying to see if he can avoid mentioning this to Cheryl is a superb scene. Calling to ask or waiting to see is such a classic social dilemma everyone who watches can identify themselves with.

Also Larry do the classical social mistake of over-estimating how clumsy and inappropriate his own clumsy actions are regarded by others and as it turns out, the reason Mary and Ted never called, was simply because the concert was not until Sunday. We have all been there, done that I guess ;)

On a side-note, when Larry is back to return the so-called half jacket/half shirt, he meets Mary's mother and Mary. Having the possibility to make a big embarrassing scene there for Larry when the shop employee could have insisted that he was there to give it back to the store right in front Mary, It's brilliant and vital to the show however that they choose not to take advantage of every possible way of making an embarrassing scenes like that, as it will maintain the concept of a plausible reality.

So all in all, a great episode, although maybe not as fun as the s01e01, this one barely have any annoying flaws to it. Hope they keep up the good work.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Pants Tent (2000) Season 1, Episode 1

Solid Start, but a bit predictable.

[8/10 · 22 October 2010]

Funny, entertaining start of this show.

Only concern is that they might over-use these typical Seinfeld scenarios where one clumsy social thing (in this instance referring to his wife as "Hitler" while more than he thought overheard the conversation) and then covering it up by a lie, only to have to lie once again only to have it all revealed in a socially embarrassing setting. These long twists just may not work out as good in this show as it's trying to appear realistic.

Don't get me wrong, I really love them but I think they need to work on keeping them plausible and not have to many of them in each episode. In short, this episode consisted of 3 different of those twist, namely:

1. Larry's pants fake erection => Cheryl's friend feeling convinced it was genuine.

2. Larry having an argument with a random woman on the cinema, which turn out to be someone a friend of him is dating.

3. Larry referring to his wife as "Hitler" to Jeff => Jeff's sensitive Jewish parents overhearing this => Covering it up by a lie => Lie detected by coincidence.

Although I guess all of these coincidences are plausible individually, it is sort of hard to swallow that three of those occurred during this period of time (which I get the impression is supposed to be something like one week).

Trust me, I do realize in order to make entertaining situational comedy there is a certain need for these coincidental twists, but I found that even though number 1 and 2 are OK and they work out fine, especially the third one just makes it a bit over the top of what we can absorb as far as regarding the show to be a realistic description of Larry's everyday life.

When Larry and Jeff agree for a cover-up story about the "Hitler" event to prevent Larry's wife figuring out he called her Hitler, we all know this is going to end up with Cheryl somehow figuring out that Kathy Griffin in fact never had made the phone call the lie was constructed around. It was too obvious and although a funny final scene, it sort of ruin the show's basic idea of being a truly genuine and improvised description of everyday scenes from Larry's life.

I think they are good at showing Larry's personal desire to get everyone to like him but at the same time feel he is entitled to confront anyone who he finds act somewhat inappropriate no matter how insulting it may be for the person to hear this, often making him appear outright rude or having double standards regarding his own behaviour compared to others behaviour. This is really great stuff and they should focus more on that.

I think this combination of desires are something many can identify themselves with and it has a great potential alone to create funny incidents.

What I hope they keep on showing is Larry's great way of ridiculing social norms, such as in this episode:

* The complex science of restaurant table reservation. * How people act as if it's the end of the world if they have to stand up to let someone into their row at the cinema. * The excessive urge people have to make formal apologizes for minor inconveniences, often without even really knowing why. * The complex nature of acting appropriate in the presence of friend's parents.

This is really great stuff I think and I hope they will emphasize more on those aspects and try and avoid making to many complicated and unrealistic twists stories that, although funny, make the show lose much of it's realistic feel.

So all in all, a solid episode, but just hope they in future episodes manages to keep the apparent sense of realism they are trying to make you sense.

Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm (1999 TV Movie)

Looks promising, but with several potential problems.

[6/10 · 22 October 2010]

I have for some reason never seen any episodes of "Curb your enthusiasm" before. But always been a fan of the humour from Seinfeld, which apparently most of it derived from Larry David. so I thought I would give this series a try since the lack of good humour programs are hard to come by these days.

Anyway this pilot give a brief suggestion to what the show is going to be about: Larry's everyday life more or less filmed without any re-rakes, total improvisation or simply natural reactions to situations from everyday life. I really like that concept as I find that genuine reactions makes it so much more realistic compared to the modern so-called acting in which you cannot really identify yourself with any of the characters as they are acting as "actors" and not acting as a "character", making it too obvious it's not genuine social interactions you are witnessing.

One of the concepts about Seinfeld I really like was that it hardly ever lowered itself into cheap death or offensive sex-related humour but just kept going in style, in contrast to 80%+ of all current sit-coms. But from watching this pilot you sort of get an impression that Larry David has planned to loosen up on these restrictions. I hope he doesn't and that it was just a coincidence on this pilot...

Also if the show really wants to be a kind of sit-com/reality-improvised hybrid, I think they need to keep the amount of amazing coincidences at a plausible level, which for instance you cannot really say Seinfeld did. I mean I am sure Larry David has a massive personal social network, but nevertheless, there is a limit to how many persons he can just accidentally ran into during a certain period of time.

During this pilot for instance he accidentally meet a friend who is out jogging. Yet when she stops and talk to him, she is instantly talking fluently without a trace of increased heart beat as a result of the jogging. Surely this doesn't really bother me much, but if the actual show is going to contain many of these similar "goofs" in relation to it being improvised, I think it will take away a lot of the reality feeling it seems so obvious Larry David is trying to create.

This pilot was unnecessarily long and I don't think there was a need to so clearly and repetitively stress what kind of taboos Larry David suspects will be included in the upcoming show. I can really identify myself with many of the everyday social norms Larry David is bringing up, both in Seinfeld and in this Pilot, like for instance how non-nonchalance people often act if they are on the phone when you are entering their room.

I am really looking forward to the actual show which I think and hope will be much better. A show in which I think will have the potential to be a more raw version of Seinfeld with a more realistic yet equally funny set.

This pilot might have been made to prepare viewers not so familiar to Larry David's honest yet border-lining rude humour, but the pilot almost derailed into a narcissistic reality show. I hope this will not be the case for the upcoming show.