* * *

I’m reminded of a scene on the news where a beached whale — dead, not dead, I don’t even know — is blanketed by squalling, complaining gulls. That’s Borders. Local store got the axe. Most of the Borders in the state are done, it seems. And now it’s a carcass on the beach besieged by those who smell a cheap pop culture meal.

I’ve never seen a bookstore that busy. You could hip-bump a hive of bees on its side and not get this kind of action. Everywhere, jostling bodies jockeying for books. The sci-fi and fantasy section is a parliament of owls: bespectacled readers hungrily looking for a genre fix. Mystery, too: a gaggle of detectives on the hunt for books about detectives. The children’s book section has, and this is no joke, no joke at all, three books left. Three nuggets of puckered meat clinging to otherwise bleached bones. One book about a wombat who is allowed, mysteriously, to play with a human infant. Children’s books can be very stupid.

The literature and fiction section is empty, though. Shelves, still full. One in a while, a lone reader wanders into the alcoves — not because it is where he wants to be but rather because he got lost, because he is the flotsam (or is it jetsam? are there any dictionaries left for purchase?) that washed up here from the churning chum-capped tides here in the bookstore. When he realizes where he is, he will shake his head as if clearing his mind of illusion and infection and then totter off again, buoyed by another belching current. Or driven by cheap prices the way a zombie is driven by his hunger for brains.

* * *

People still want books, it seems. They just don’t want to pay full price.

* * *

The prices are half-off and the shelves are half-empty and still I see books I’ve read and loved, books that I know to be popular, books by authors who I see on Twitter or even here at the blog, and for a moment I’m consumed by a dog-shelter moment. The Sarah McLachlan song cues in my mind. I see the books as sad pups and pooches: one with a scar on his brow, the other missing an eye, a third cowering in the corner equally afraid of me and desperate for my love. I want to sweep them all up in my arms and take them home and lather them with kisses and give them that thing they need most: my eyes to read them, my mind to process them, my mouth to share of their wealth. But then I remember that Borders is fucked, Borders isn’t paying out, and I don’t even know if the authors of these books will ever see what they’re owed from these sales. And I think, if I want to buy these books I should at least go home and buy them from Amazon. Of course, isn’t that what got us here in the first place? Is it? Isn’t it? I don’t even know.

* * *

Borders, of course, can’t pay publishers. It’s broke. Still wearing days-old diapers and a hat made of newspaper. And yet its hobo bindle must be heavy with secret hobo gold because Borders still intends to pay $8.3 million in executive bonuses. I’m sure I’m just naive in that I don’t understand economic realities, but it seems to me that someone should pay the writers via publishers first. Any executive looking for a hand-out should get one: and by “hand-out,” I mean “fist to the nuts.”

* * *

By the comic book shelf, a big pear-shaped dude is blocking the aisle while picking up one graphic novel after the next and reading them. Front to cover, from what I can tell. American Vampire. X-Men. Manga. Flip, flip, flip. Read, read, read. Eventually I see him gravitating toward the exit, no books in hand. Part of me wants to grab a magazine rack (on sale for $100 bucks, the whole fixture) and break it over his head. Or hurl a copy of a D&D book at his dumpy Baby Huey body as if it were the crazy shuriken from Krull. The other part of me thinks, eh, fuck it. Isn’t this what Borders always wanted? For us to hang out? Sit down? Read books and magazines? Sip a latte? Why spend money on books? Don’t we just want everything cheap and free now? Twelve dollar cappucino, hold the wordsmithy.

Words on a page like ants on snow. Poetic. And meaningless.

* * *

They’re selling everything. All the shelves. The racks. The end caps.

They’re even selling manila folders.

Two for a dollar.

Two used manila folders for one whole dollar.

One of the workers there, she’s snarkily telling a customer, “Would you pay that?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

She gives him a look like, Duh.

* * *

I can buy 100 manila folders new at Amazon for about ten bucks.

* * *

Three kids pinball between the sci-fi and fantasy shelves. Hoodies. Skull shirts. Mop-top hair. Kids today, with their hair and their clothes. “There’s nothing good here,” the one mewls, moans, whimpers, pules. I want to grab his face and drag it across the book spines the way you would a stick along a picket fence. I want to show him, “There’s so much good here.” But then I think, well, at least he’s in a bookstore.

At least he’s still looking at books.

* * *

One aisle down, a guy in his 20s is picking up a book. Hardback. Something pretty, but I can’t tell what. He says to his friend, “I think it’s a role-playing game.” He says this with some reverence, but also a kind of confusion, like he’s someone picking up something he’d heard of but never seen: a rotary phone, a Viewmaster, an honest Republican. He walks away with the book, planning to buy it.

* * *

I used to work at Borders.

It was like belonging to a cult. And not in a good way. Not in a, “We all love each other and sing songs and eat granola under the caring eye of Mother Moon” way. But rather in a, “Drink the Flavor-Aid and if you don’t drink the goddamn Flavor-Aid I’m just going to shoot you in the head anyway.”

I quit after a couple weeks.

* * *

The mood here is wildly vacillating. It is the frenzy of fishes and sharks, eyes rolling back and jaws clamping on books never-before-read without thought or meaning, a kind of predatory bliss. But here too is the sadness of prey, and some folks are stumbling around, faces vacant as they stare at a nowhere-nothing point. They look like the shell-shocked victims after a bombing, an earthquake, a zombie apocalypse.

* * *

My pregnant wife comes up to me and she’s got tears in her eyes, and I think, is she sad about Borders? I know I’m sad about Borders. Maybe not enough to cry about it. But still, a little sad.

She instead hands me a children’s book. She says with a sniffle, “Read this.”

And I think, now I’m like that pear-shaped douche standing here reading a whole book from front to cover, but a cursory glimpse through the book tells me I’m going to be able to read it in about 30 seconds. Okay. Fine. I read it. It’s called Remembering Crystal. It’s about a bird — a duck, maybe? Who has a friend who is a turtle and the turtle is old and then the turtle dies and the duck continues to look around for the turtle even though the turtle is dead. Eventually the duck-like entity goes to sleep, sad about the turtle, and there the duck realizes that he/she/it has found the turtle after all, in the duck’s dreams, in the duck’s heart. The memory of the turtle named Crystal is how the turtle still lives. It is adorable. And also horribly sad.

The book is for pre-school to age two.

It choked me up. I’m not even a pregnant woman.

Part of me recast the book, though. I am the little duck. I’m wandering the ends of the earth looking not for a turtle but rather for a Borders bookstore. Or any bookstore. Or even a book.

And by the end, I realize the only place they still live is in my head.

* * *

We go to checkout. My wife has some books on child-rearing. I have Patton Oswalt’s book. Our checkout person looks dazed. Sad, even. She’s slow, methodical, peeling off prices with this red plastic price-peeler that looks like some kind of little lobster claw. She’s saying little to us. Part of me thinks she might cry.

Her cohort at the counter is the precise opposite. She’s young, bubbly, talking to everyone. The bookpocalypse hasn’t fazed this one. Her head is probably full of Facebook and Farmville. I envy her.

An old man stands at the counter next to us. The bubbly one attends to his check-out. He’s got a book on writing. The Art of Storytelling or something like that. She chirps, “Are you a writer?”

He laughs a dismissive laugh, and shakes his head no.

“I bet you have lots of stories to tell,” the bubbly one says. She doesn’t say, but we all hear: because you’re totally old. She confirms this by adding, “My grandfather has lots of stories to tell. He’s not a writer, but boy he can tell stories. You should be a writer.”

The old man offers another yeah, but no chuckle and shrugs in a way that suggests, “Why bother? Have you looked around? Do you know where you work? Don’t you see what’s happening? Be a writer. Sure. So my book can end up here. Unbought. In a mass grave. Squirrels nesting in its chest cavity. Maggots for eyes. My words serving as their own dirge, their own funerary incantation. I’ll get right on that, you empty-headed twit. Writer. Pfft. Pshhh. Pah!”

Then again, maybe that was all in my head, not in his.

Maybe he chuckled and shrugged the way babies do, and for the same reason. Maybe he just had gas.

* * *

The bubbly girl, finding no one behind the old man, talks to us as our own shell-shocked counter-jockey obsessively works to remove price stickers from our books.

“We’re efficient,” the girl says, proudly. “We get the job done.”

I can tell. Bureaucrat of the apocalypse. Again, the accounting of the dead.

Bubbly girl has another customer. She asks them, “Do you have your Borders Rewards card?”

Because such mighty rewards await us in the kingdom beyond.

* * *

On the way out, I say to my wife, it’s kind of sad, isn’t it? She agrees.

We get in the car and we leave, navigating the swarm of cars incoming and outgoing, book-hungry scavengers of the wordsmith’s wasteland, desperate for a taste, a taste at cut-rate game-over prices. They come only when they smell smoke. They come not for the meal but to pick the trash.

* * *

Now that my email is working, the remainder of this week will be guest bloggage by the Friends of Terribleminds. They’ll start tomorrow and will go into next week — note that regularly-scheduled Friday Flash Fiction challenges will continue, however. Keep your grapes peeled.

Finished Mockingjay.

Loved Mockingjay.

But wondering: why all the middling reactions toward Mockingjay? I wouldn’t call it “hate,” exactly — but I was warned repeatedly that the third book was essentially a big disappointment from the high of the previous two. Lots of “ehh,” “mehhh,” “pbbbt” reactions.

To which my jaw drops, my eyes launch out on springs, my tongue rolls, and the floor drops out from under me. Dang, I did not find that to be the case.

Your job, then, is to explain your disappointment (if you desire) in the comments.

I will not fling aspersions toward your general character. The question is not subject to any wrong answers. I mean, sure, I’ll throw flaming bags of poo at your head. I kid! I kid. They won’t be on fire. Sheesh.

My thoughts (and this will contain some very light spoilers):

The book was unflinching. Unflinching. This is not a shiny happy book. It is a book about children and war. It is a book where lots of characters you care about die. It is a book that again puzzles me and haunts me with the question: “How the hell are they going to make this into a PG-13 movie?” Seriously. Blood. Gore. Children dying. Nightmarish images. Murder. War. It’s not splatterpunk, but it’s not Harry Potter, either. Any effort to water this down to an acceptable family-friendly rating potentially does harm to the story’s message, a message carried on purpose by such grim, unceasing nastiness.

The book felt to me as the natural conclusion to the series — it carries the “game” motif back into play, this time on the battlefield. It pays off on things to which it was building. Nothing out of left field. For the most part the characters we care about are… concluded properly, I suppose you could say. Only one sticks out (Finnick) as feeling narratively inconclusive (and actually a little strange).

And yet, the book remained surprising, too. At no point did it feel rote.

The ending was pitch perfect, for me: like a shot of espresso, the book was super dark with a very bittersweet finish. I’ll say it again: not a happy book. And it does exactly what I was exhorting the other day — the storyteller is an emotional manipulator and the best and most memorable stories are the ones that truly made us feel something. Collins doesn’t fuck around. She’s constantly kicking you in the spleen, punching you in the kidneys, wrapping her hands around your throat. The woman knows how to hurt her audience. And the ending doesn’t do much to salve the wounds — a little. But not much.

So, chime in.

You read it?

You like it?

You find it disappointing?

Color me curious (which is actually a robin’s egg blue!).

Even the best television shows have episodes that are real stinkers — clunky junkers that don’t really feel right. But, for every shitpile episode, you also get those episodes that are truly gilded — they sit high atop a hill overlooking all of the Empire, serving as a gleaming example to what television can truly aspire.

Some episodes, you love more than others.

It’s like children. You have more than one kid, you end up liking one more than the other. I mean, c’mon. Don’t lie. It’s just between you and me. I won’t tell Suzy that you think Jimbo is your favorite and that’s why he gets one extra scoop of ice cream every night. I’ll keep that on the down-low.

What are some of the best episodes?

The Lost pilot. The Gilmore Girls “They Shoot Gilmores, Don’t They.” (Yes, I watched and loved that show, shut up. At first it was a requirement to get in good with my wife, but as it turns out, it was one of the whip-crackinest smartest shows out there.) Sopranos, “Pine Barrens.” Buffy, “The Body.” The Wire has almost too many — “Late Editions,” “Corner Boys,” “Hamsterdam.” Hell, Mad Men may have just had its best episode a month ago: “The Suitcase.”

Hell, if you have 20 minutes, watch my favorite episode of Archer: “Skytanic.” (“My vulva is smoother than a veal cutlet!”)

So what about you, Pikachu?

Favorite episodes ever. Across various shows. Emblematic. Unforgettable.

I await your input.

(Oh, and at the top is a scene from the best episode of Community ever — an episode that embodies what’s best about absurd television sitcoms. That Paintball episode is buh-rilliant.)

Shall we begin?

Yes. Yes, we shall.

Joelle Charbonneau, Skating Around The Law

First and foremost, let me stomp around the room tooting a kazoo and clapping my hands. See that banner above my head? What’s it say? GO TEAM DECKER. That’s right. Team Decker don’t suffer no fools. (I mean, except me. Don’t tell. Shhh.) Joelle, one of our illustrious brood (and easily the nicest and prettiest among us, though I’ve heard rumors that Dan O’Shea looks pretty good in a “Shanghai hooker” get-up), has not only this book coming out, but the second in the series, too. First line of her book is, “Falling on my ass really hurts,” but that’s pure fiction, folks — this book won’t be falling on its ass. I think Target is making it a featured book? Exciting stuff. Read the killer first chapter right here, and if you still need convincing, remember that it is a book that combines Murder, Ice Skating, Camels, Small Town Craziness, and did I mention Murder? When you’re too mad with hunger for this book to do anything else, jump here and order the book. Published by St. Martins/Minotaur. Follow Joelle on Twitter or she’ll club you to death with her skates.

Hilary Davidson, The Damage Done

Hot damn, been waiting for this for a while. Excited to finally get it in my greasy paws. Dead sister in bathtub? Identity theft? Drug addiction? Corpse switching? It’s the debut novel from Hilary Davidson — wait, you know who she is, right? A whip-cracking crime fiction queen, writes some truly malevolent shit (y’know, but in a really good way) — did you read “Cheap Bastard?” Go. Do that right now. Then come back and tell me you don’t want to buy The Damage Done. Do you seriously need more convincing? Mm-hmm, fine. Howzabout the words First Three Chapters? That enough for you, you greedy jackals? Very excited to read this, which I think will be a kind of grim counterpoint to Joelle’s book. Joelle is the angel on your shoulder, and Hilary, the devil. Thinking that these two will be the first reads I make on Ye Olde iPad when it arrives today. Anyway. The Damage Done. It’s over here at Amazon. Published by Forge. And follow Hilary on Twitter. (Total sidenote: loving the fact that on Amazon, you’ll see that both Skating Around The Law and The Damage Done are “frequently purchased together.” Do it! Buy them together! Fulfill your destiny.)

The Cipher RPG

“Very soon now everyone will have heard the term ‘Cipher’ and know that people with mental powers exist. The exact date is unclear to even our most powerful Seers, but the future is screaming down on us like a freight train and every person on this planet is tied to the tracks.” Definitely dig that last line. Anyway, what I’m saying is, I got a copy of the Cipher RPG earlier in the week and have been reading it — haven’t gotten to the systems yet, but hot damn, the game’s pretty cool. You dig World of Darkness-flavored stuff, you might dig this. Psychics? Tracked by the government? Fast approaching some kind of uncertain cataclysm? I’m always hot for psychic characters, and this lets you inhabit a world where you’re a) totally that and b) kind of fucked. Solid writing and surprisingly solid art come together to make this a product worth looking at. Eager to play it at some point (it’s been far too long since I’ve sat at a game table and chucked dice with goodly folks). Game is by Broken Meme Studio, written by Paul Holmes. You can download the game over at DriveThruRPG. No. Really. You can go and do that right now. I’ll wait here.

Open Game Table, Vols I and II

You ask me, the roleplaying game community still not only exists but thrives because of the online experience — no, I don’t mean MMORPGs, I mean online communities continuing to support and pimp this hobby, a hobby that long ago could’ve gone the way of the Dodo or the McRib Sandwich. Bloggers like Rob Donoghue (who is also a most excellent game thinker and writer) writes great posts like this one about true game balance at the table. So, you’re thinking, “Wouldn’t it be the tits if someone put the coolest gaming blog posts together and delivered them to me packaged together in a shiny book?” It would be awesome. And it’s already been done. Not just one book, but two, as a matter of fact — Open Game Table Vols I and II (The Anthology Of Roleplaying Game Blogs.) I’m digging into the second volume now. Great intro by Justin Achilli. Great interview with Robin Laws. Posts about sex in D&D, about character types you don’t see enough of, about systems and storytelling. Very cool stuff. You might note that you can score a free copy of Volume II if you’re lucky — they’re giving away five copies over at Goodreads. Otherwise, if you just wanna buy? Volume I is here, Volume II is here. Please to enjoy.

The Book Of The Gods

I am a man whore for books about mythology and gods. It’s true. Which is why I’m totally disappointed that this book, by frequent guest of this site (PeterAllen the Godchecker, plus chief pubologist, Chad Saunders), is not actually available on American Shores as yet. And no Kindle version, which officially makes Baby Jesus cry. It’s also possible that Baby Jesus is crying because he totally didn’t do that “virgin birth, son of the gods” thing first and now he’s pouting. I dunno. All I’m saying is, are you in England? Go buy the Book of the Gods. Stop rubbernecking and go, go, go.

Civilization V

Not really pimping so much as making a desperate plea for my sanity. Civilization V is out and it threatens to eat my life. I’ve been… good so far, but I feel it. Pulling at me. Like a Precious. A beautiful Preeessshuuuss. I haven’t given in. I mean, sure, on Sunday I lost my life to it without even realizing it — but this is Civilization. That’s par for the course. Still. I need help. Because it’s awesome. So awesome. Guhh. GUHHH. *twitches, wants to rule the world with my crazy Siamese Empire*

Collapsus: Energy Risk Conspiracy

Hey! Looky, looky. A while back, I told you about Collapsus, an online transmedia experience that tells a story through live action, animation, and gameplay — a story about the coming energy crisis and, well, basically how fucked we are, and how we’re all at the mercy of special interests. Lance Weiler and I wrote it, and it was directed by Tommy Pallotta (Through A Scanner Darkly, Waking Life), and prior to this point it was only available to international audiences. Well, it has washed up on American shores (unlike the Book of the Gods), and if you wanna see what all the hub-bub is about, you can check it at the site, Collapsus-dot-com. Thing is, you’ll need an access code, which is, drum roll please: infowars. Please to enjoy.

Your Turn, Pimpers

Hey, let’s turn this into a full-bore wankfest. Got something you want to pimp? Something of yours? Something of somebody else’s? Hop on into the comments and pimp away. Show some love. Check the comments for the pimp parade, and don’t forget to check out the stuff here in this post, you dig?

Powering up.

Yesterday, Mighty Game Dude David Hill pointed to an article on boingboing (“Games Not Art After All, Say Angry Gamers“) that describes how, blah blah blah, some reviewer over at G4 took Metroid M to task for issues beyond its graphics or gameplay — in particular, that Samus becomes a regressive female figure, and that the game is somewhat sexist for portraying her as a girl “submissive and obedient” to male figures.

Now, to be clear, I have no feelings either way about Metroid. I do have feelings on how male authors write women (in all forms of pop media), but for now I’ll let Josh Loomis handle that topic at his blog.

What does give me pause is the fact that we no longer have critics. By which I mean critics in what I feel to be the old-school sense of the word — what we have now are, strictly speaking, “reviewers.” We have become obsessed with the good / bad polarity of pop culture. We are driven only by recommendations. We no longer have in great bounty the task that critics used to perform: analysis of the subject at hand. Not a review. Not a “did I like this? tee-hee-giggle-snort!” but an honest-to-jeebus look at some aspect of a pop culture piece — a look that holds it up against culture, against history, against society, against other work, against anything other than the reviewer’s own personal thumbs-up or thumbs-down grade-school bullshit.

(Do you like me? Check the box that says YES or NO!)

*pees pants in anger*

I don’t know that gamers are necessarily the most regressive of the lot, though it wouldn’t surprise me — being a gamer, I’m still sometimes astounded at the things I hear and see on, say, Xbox Live or on Internet forums about games. I find it’s a little dialed back when reading about books, film, TV or comics (though even there the Internet de-evolution is hard at work).

The audience may certainly be driving the content, but it’s still a shame that you don’t see many actual critics stepping into the fold, trying to talk about pop culture in a way that goes beyond the dichotomy of good and bad — we’re so obsessed with that Rotten Tomatoes style of measurement, that simplified notion that pop culture and art is subject to something that is essentially numerical — “Oh! 78% of people liked that thing that I already like! Woo!” or “Pshh, 78% of people liked that thing that I think sucks the sweat off of a dying man’s balls. Boo!”

This bleeds over to our fascination with money, too — in the box office tally, in how many units a video game sells, in what books are on the bestseller list (note that the bestseller has nothing to do with the best reading — it’s purely a measurement of units moved). It’s as if the money other people spent — other people you don’t know! — makes one lick of difference whether you’ll like something or not.

This is why I don’t read many reviews anymore. What I need in terms of recommendations, I can get from my circle of online peeps (i.e. you folks), something I discussed in my Escapist article, “In Twitter We Trust,” an article talking about the shift in what we once considered “word-of-mouth.”

What I want to see more of are thoughtful looks at film, video games, books, whatever — critics that talk about what that piece of art and pop culture means to her and then attempt to connect it to something beyond the critic herself, something that draws from larger sources and makes a bigger (or even smaller and more personal) statement than just “Me like! You buy now! Shill shill shill!”

I lament the loss of the critic.

I damn the rise of the entrenched reviewer class.

*spits on ground, then the spit turns acidic and eats through the sidewalk, then catches fire, and somewhere, a unicorn croons a mournful howl and leaps off a cliff to the churn-froth ocean below*

Anyway: a call to action, then, since it’s considered rude to bring up a problem and then to just drop the mic and walk off stage — the equivalent of vomiting, then failing to clean it up.

Seek out criticism. You can find game “critique” at The Escapist, and since I am nothing if not a needy whore, I’ll start you off by pointing to two more articles of my own — “A Paean To Floyd,” which talks up sidekicks, and “The 12-Year-Old Who Carried Us To Victory,” which talks about leadership qualities born in the unexpected arena of Modern Warfare multiplayer. While you’re there, you might as well look at my take on white-washing in video games, “The Pasty White Person Is King.”

I don’t know that what I do constitutes quality criticism, but dangit, I’m trying.

And other people are, too. Someone recommended Kill Screen Magazine, for instance.

Do you have critics you like to read? Roger Ebert has become less driven by his thumbs-up/thumbs-down approach and at his blog has become a critic across an array of subjects.

Where else can and should one look? You tell me. Where do you go?

Also, it’s not just about seeking out the right critics. It’s about avoiding reviewers. Don’t give in to that easy Rotten Tomatoes mindset. Stop caring quite so deeply about the money, too.

And finally, write up some thoughtful analysis of your own. Doesn’t have to be dry or boring. Got a blog? Do it there. Forget the “good or bad” mentality. Tell us why we should care. Tell us what this thing you just watched /read / played / experienced means. Get your hands dirty, your boots muddy.

Tell the reviewer to stick it up his ass.

Let us once again exalt the critic.

Rant mode, off.

Powering down.

PYOOOooooooo… — *

Damn, this keyboard has it in for me. Did I pee on its Mom? I bet I peed on its Mom. I pee on keyboards all the time. I get drunk and I’m like, “Yo, is that a keyboard?” And someone’s like, “Word.” And then I’m peeing all over it. Don’t even ask what I do to mice. Like, not even computer mice. Real mice. Cheese-eaters. Big ears. Pants and suspenders.

Sorry. What did you come here for again?

Oh. Oh. Right. I just saw Scott Pilgrim Versus The World, and you want to know what I thought.

I can do that.

In General?

Really dug it. Film has a kind of crazy electricity, a ball-tickling energy that keeps you giggling and shifting in your seat the whole time. Edgar Wright is a master of the form — and by “form” I don’t necessarily mean “film,” but rather, “self-referential stories that transcend the reference material and become something all their own.” Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz — all films built on the backs of other work, but films that then use those backs to catapult themselves over a wall and into an entirely different yard.

That said, would Wright rock doing something 100% original? Like, something straight out of somebody’s head, something that isn’t using a pop culture springboard as… erm, a springboard? I dunno. I think so.

Time will tell.

This flick, though: a total blasty-blast.

Scrape Away The Video Game Veneer

And you’ll find a film (based on the comic, a comic of which I’ve only read half) that has a lot going on, which is perhaps unexpected. You think, “Oh, shiny. Video game references! Coins! 1-Up! Comic book stylings, too! And fights! And fun! And colors! And cool music!”

But it goes well-beyond all that. Contained within this story are multitudes and metaphors — one’s past relationships are more than just baggage. Baggage is passive. No, these ex-boyfriends and girlfriends on all sides of the fence represent a kind of trap: it’s more than how we’re weighed down by our experiences. It’s instead how those experiences can haunt us like ghosts, or how they can be weapons used to hurt — barbs and lashes and blades. If we cannot get past someone’s whirling, aggro death-baggage, well, our hearts will be forever doomed.

Further, it’s easy to see that this is very much a film about growing up. My feelings are, each generation is successfully flimsier than the last, like a document run through the copier so many times that the original has lost all meaning. Despite the marketing, this is not a film for the generation that has come since mine: in fact, I’d say it’s a volley across the bow of our damn generation (c’mon, the video game references are generally pretty retro). That volley is a cannonball of condemnations: hey, jerks, you’re self-consumed, self-absorbed, you’re weak and non-committal and bonded to the past, you can’t grow up because you won’t grow up and just in case you didn’t know, you’re basically one big man-child.

It’s not an unfair message. It’s harsh — and peel away the candy-coating of the film, you’ll find this accusation lurking in the sour, lip-puckering middle.

But It Doesn’t Go Any Deeper Than That

And now we come to the “critical” portion of the post — my one concern over the film is that the messages and metaphors and meanings are barely concealed by that candy-coating. These lessons aren’t deep. In story terms, the movie unabashedly “on the nose.” In fact, the lessons and metaphors are more or less smashed into the bridge of our noses with the weight and velocity of Ramona’s big honkin’ hell-hammer.

As a result, it occasionally comes across feeling a little shallow — better had they not asserted this so forthrightly, perhaps? Perhaps.

Mind you, this sense of shallowness doesn’t come across (to me) in the actual comic. Something about the way it’s drawn (and drawn out) suggests an almost literary meandering through these messages: less firm, less overt, less bold-faced Comic Sans smack-to-the-chops. It’s for this reason that the comic will always be superior, though the film has a pretty good go at it.

I mean, I can’t blame ‘em too much — they had a lot to condense, and condense it, they did. I just think maybe if they had pulled back on the reins a little instead of letting the horse go all stompy-stompy the audience might be treated to the dose of subtlety and nuance found on the pages.

It does nothing to diminish the fun of the film, mind you. Still enjoyable from start to finish, though the constant battles get a little weary, and some of the exes are a little more “filled in” than others (in the book they’re more fleshed-out, whereas here they’re generally straight-up caricatures). Anyway. Criticism over.

Meandering Thoughts

Say what you want, but that new Culkin brother (did they just make him out of spare Culkin parts?) is the shit. You heard it here first: Kieran Culkin is star material.

So too with Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Can’t wait to see her again. (Did you know she’s John McClane’s daughter? Er, I mean, she plays her — not trying to get all meta-fiction on your ass.) She owns the Ramona role, but also makes you want to see her again and again: in roles beyond this.

Actually, the whole damn cast was top-notch.

The music was super delightful. All that fuzzy grungy garagey goodness.

Cera does a commendable Pilgrim. Not perfect: I kind of wanted more twinkly-eyed charm and cocky naivete? But then again, I can’t think of anybody who would capture it so well. So, maybe he is perfect? Fuck, I dunno. Did I mention I hate this keyboard? For reals. The shift key is grumpy, so it does not capitalize with any consistency. Punch! Kick! Pee!

The video game references, again, are fairly retro. I think that’s a good thing and I think this speaks very exclusively to my generation — those who played Zelda, Mario, Mortal Kombat, who remember the “You Got Mail!” fanfare from AOL. That’s not to say it won’t play to younger crowds — it will, because it’s fucking fun as shit. Older crowds, I’m not so sure.

Sadly, the film doesn’t look to have performed all that admirably at the box office. With its $60 mil budget, unless it gains some steam you’ll see domestic tally around… what? $25, 30 million? That said, I suspect it’ll gain life after the box office: cult classics like this have a way of becoming legitimate classics over time. [EDIT: Is there something to the thought that the winner of the weekend is a traditional 1980s-era ass-kick-fest? Manly Men being Men as opposed to an 80s-aesthetic video game reference film where Girly Boys need to become Men? I dunno. You tell me. Feels like the faint whisper of something cultural.)

Anyone else see it? Anyone else planning to?

Man, Inception.

I can’t stop noodling it.

Now, to be clear, HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

Like, for real.

Really real.

Like, we’re gonna spoil the whole goddamn ending of the movie.

I’m not kidding.

3…

2…

1…

You had your chance.

I had reservations about the ending to Inception. The ending, as you know if you watched the movie, loosely appears to show a world where Cobb’s plan was successful (after much agita and complication), and where he is once more allowed back into the country and back home and finally allowed to be with his children. We think, okay, is this a happy ending, or is it something else? And then Cobb puts his totem — the spinning top — down on the table and it spins and spins and spins and and we hear “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey playing and then, and then, and then –

Credits.

And maybe I’m mixing this up with the Sopranos a little. Shut up. It’s an apt comparison.

The reservations for me orbit the notion of storyteller ambiguity. That level of ambiguity is interesting because it gets people talking, but as a storyteller I don’t have a lot of respect for it. You’re telling me a story, so tell it. Don’t wuss out. Put your balls on the table. A story’s ending is everything, and by failing to commit to an ending — and further by failing to commit in a big way, given that the ending of Inception allows for the dramatic pendulum swing that crosses realities and perceptions — a storyteller is more or less giving a half-hearted shrug. Is the glass half-full or half-empty? You decide, he says, and then takes a nap and fouls his pants.

Inception’s ending isn’t merely a question of little details that could go either way. That’s a functional ambiguity. But here we’re left with a huge dichotomy — “It’s a dream” or “It’s reality” — and it ends up being spectacularly jarring. For me, at least. It feels like a cheat. And shows a lack of confidence.

Except, something nagged at me.

Nolan isn’t a storyteller lacking confidence.

Plus, you look back at the Sopranos finale, even though that was wildly ambiguous, Chase still had an ending in mind.

And so it occurred to me: Nolan must have an ending in mind, too. Somewhere in that ending is the answer — a declaration of intent. Films are a visual medium so I thought, okay, look back over the visuals and what do we see? The top is for most people the easiest and most forthright clue, and herein I think Nolan learned something from The Prestige –

The spinning top is an artifact of misdirection.

We’re going to focus so much on the top that it’s hard to see everything else.

Like a magician, Nolan wants you to focus on this while he performs his trick.

Look past the misdirection…

And then, duh, boom, splurch, there it is –

The kids.

Look past the top and you see the kids, and if you see the kids you see that they’re the same age they’ve been in every dream he was having. They’re the same age from his memory. They’re wearing the same clothes. They’re part of the dream: where before the dream-kids would not turn their heads to see, now their heads have turned. They see their father. His life continues. He may now grow old, and without regret.

He’s still in the dream. He’s still in Limbo.

Maybe he always was. Or maybe he just didn’t come out of it when he met Saito.

I don’t yet know. That’s the fascinating thing. Finding one answer doesn’t put all the other answers in line. Each answer asks two more questions. That’s great — this infinite lemniscate ever turning, ever looping back, is like the Escher print that are the dreams within the film (or the film itself), a weirdly recursive story that has thematic ties to The Prestige and Memento. And once more, I think Nolan is a confident storyteller, and I think contained within this film are answers. It’s a puzzle, and it challenges us to solve it.

I’d originally thought too that the “it’s a dream” ending (i.e. top doesn’t fall) means it’s also what you would consider to be the “negative” ending — but I don’t know that to be the case. We still have a sense of reconciliation: he has put his wife to rest, he can now see the faces of his children, he is moving beyond regret, and (if you believe that the rest of the film is “real”) he helps negotiate Fischer’s troubled past and offers him a feeling of reconciliation (though that inception is a deception).

I’m more and more fascinated by this.

I need to see it again, I think.

I’m also left to wonder what is the deal with that phrase that’s oft-repeated through the film: grow old with no regrets. And Ariadne in Greek myth is not a maze builder, is she? But a maze solver? She helps Theseus through the Cretan maze, right? To defeat the Minotaur? Is she even real? Is she part of Cobb? A segmented piece — he can no longer make mazes, but a part of him still can? Or is she real, a person hired by the grandfather to perform “inception” on Cobb? Is this film a con on him rather than on Fischer?

Holy crap, my head hurts.

But anyway: the ending.

You ask me, it’s a dream. I don’t know how deep or how long, but it’s a dream. The clues are there. Ignore the misdirection of the top. Look to the children for your proof. How to explain it otherwise?

So. How’d Manny Shammy do in handling this beloved geek property?

Tell, Don’t Show

M. Night needs to realize that he’s a director, because as of this film, he’s in writer jail. The good warden of this jail should take away Manoj’s pen, and stat. This is not the same dude that wrote Sixth Sense. Something happened to him. Brain trauma, maybe. Could be that he drank, like, a hot microwaved cup of drain cleaner after watching a DVD copy of Lady In The Water, which was a movie that was so bad, I wanted to force feed myself my own body in a never-ending Sisyphean cycle of consumption and misery. Maybe an oak tree headbutted him after the clotting miscarriage that was The Happening, angry at what he had done to sully the good name of plants all over this little blue-green marble.

I don’t know what happened, but somehow, his writing has gotten worse. He telegraphs everything. He apparently thought this was a radio show, not a film, because everything is spoken, described, explained. Did he forget that, in a film, you can just… y’know, show the shit that’s happening? You don’t need to explain it with an overdrawn voiceover ever ten seconds? They go to the Southern Water Tribe, and they tell you the whole step of the way: “Oh, we’re going to the Southern Water Tribe now.” And they remind you that Aang is the Avatar every 4.5 seconds. “I’m the Avatar!” “He’s the Avatar.” “But you’re the Avatar!” “Malkovich Malkovich!”

Hot damn, Sokka actually tells people when he’s going to go to the bathroom. And not in a funny way. He just tells them. And us. Do we really need to know Sokka’s bathroom habits? For reals?

The Requisite Shyamalan Cameo

You know how people were irate over the fact that some of the most beloved bits of the show weren’t going to make their way into the movie? You sonsabitches should’ve just kept your mouth shut. Because Manny? He listened. Oh, boy, did he listen. Can you say, “Reshoots,” boys and girls?

Everybody loves the Cabbage Merchant? Right? From the cartoon? “My cabbages!”

He’s in there.

And he’s played by M. Night Shyamalan.

He hams it up. It is, in a word, embarrassing.

Worse, because Manoj is so deeply in love with the smell of his own stink, he shows up every ten minutes. The main characters at least have a goddamn Sky Bison to get them from Point A to Point B. How is it, then, that Manny the Cabbage Merchant travels as swiftly?

Also: the cabbages? CGI. Couldn’t get real cabbages, could you? Farmer’s markets were closed during the reshoots? We did not see the film in 3D, because I hear that’s the worst way to see this film (which, at this point, is like saying, “The worst way to eat a pile of gopher diarrhea is with a dirty spoon”), but I hear that the cabbages are one of the few things in this film that get proper 3D treatment. Not the Fire Nation boats, not the arrows, not Appa the Sky Bison, no. All that falls aside. Cabbages? Cabbages get cash money.

Goddamn you, M. Night. Goddamn you big.

The Deepest Racebending Poopchutepalooza

All right. Okay. You win, racebenders.

After seeing this film, by gum and by golly, you have yourselves a case.

Get this.

The Fire Nation is offered as a rough analog to India, right?

And Shyamalan is himself Indian.

You’d think this would be a no brainer.

But, instead, it’s a, “Holy Crap, Someone Really Needs A Brainer.”

He puts Indians and Native Americans in the Fire Tribe. He conflates one type of “Indian” with the other type of “Indian.” Some of them speak with that India accent, others speak with the Big Chief Two Deers Running Dances With Wolves accent.

Oh, and the Earth Kingdom characters all speak with a really comical Chinese accent. Like, this is fake “Yellow Peril” stuff. It’s as bad as those bug-eyed amphibian Trade Commission dudes from the new Star Wars movie. This is Charlie Chan shit.

It’s All Doom And Gloom

Nary a hint, nor a whiff, of humor in this movie. It’s droll. Dead. Bleak. Blank.

And, in fact, it’s actually a big ol’ downer.

Listen, spoiler warning.

Okay? From here on out, it’s Awooga, Awooga, Dive, Dive, Dive.

We good?

Can I go? I’mma go.

Characters die in this film.

It’s like, M. Night was clearly trying to put a throughline in this movie about discipline and sacrifice, and blah blah blah, what does victory cost? It’s like — where’s the message of peace? Of hope? Of happiness?

Let me reiterate: characters die in this film.

Characters you love.

Like, for instance, Iroh. Iroh eats it. Killed by the Water Tribe, no less, as he’s trying to help them. But the corker? The kicker? The real eye-opener?

Appa. Appa the Sky Bison dies. During the climax, a big ball of fire from one of those Fire Nation dreadnoughts catches him right in his face (a face, by the way, that looks not entirely unlike what would happen if Don Rickles made love to and had a baby with a lemur — like, say, Momo). Appa catches fire. Appa falls into the water, thrashing. Appa dies, on fire. Steam rising. Screaming. It’s like, a five minute scene. And it’s terrifying.

A New Form Of Bending? Wuzza?

Blood-bending, sure. We know that from the show.

Lightning-bending, yep, got that, too.

Sand, metal, swamp. Fine, fine, fine.

But now we get: poo-bending.

Yep. It’s always assumed that kids like a good dooky joke (see: Jar-Jar stepping in a pile of sand-speckled shit in Tatooine), and Manny happily parades down that path. Oh, sure, they don’t call it poo-bending. They don’t call it anything. And I’m guessing that since Sokka does it — yes, that’s right, by the end Sokka starts to learn bending — it’s actually waterbending that allows the poo to move with the airy gesticulations.

Poo-bending.

This is what people think the fans, and the kids, want.

We’re all fucked. Like, as a species.

And Of Course, The Twist Ending

Manny Shammy is a junkie. He’s a junkie for the twist. He needs it. His precious. His precious.

Tricksy Hollywood execs want to take the precious away from Shammy, but ohh, Shammy will have his way. He’ll sneak one in there somehow. Except, this one is less “snuck in there” and more “crammed in there,” like the way you would stick a tricycle up somebody’s ass. It’s uncomfortable and unpleasant.

Once more, spoiler warning.

Here’s your twist.

Aang is really Aaron.

He’s not a 12-year-old “savior of the universe.” No, he’s a 12-year-old Leukemia patient that happens to be imagining this whole story. Sure, Manny throws us a bone and kind of makes it seem like, even though it’s happening in his imagination it’s still real, but c’mon. He even pulls that old Wizard of Oz chestnut, where he awakens in a hospital bed surrounded by Sokka, Katara, and even Zuko.

“And you were there, and you, and you…”

The Real Twist Ending…

…is, of course, I didn’t see this movie. I mean, c’mon. Poobending? You didn’t fall for that. I know you didn’t. Pshh. You know me better than that. I’m full of crap on the best day.

But boy, what a twist that would be, right –? Aang is actually some chemo patient somewhere named Aaron? I’m sure somewhere, M. Night is reading this and sobbing into his ruby-encrusted Cheerios.

No, I was going to see this movie, but the word-of-mouth is leading me to suspect it’s a real dog of a movie, a total crap-basket of cinematic proportions. The previews looked good, but on the other hand, I’m not surprised. Manny’s lost his touch. I think he’s fallen prey to his own quirky Michael Jackson slash David Blaine ego and he just can’t rise above it. Which is a shame. This guy was heralded as the love child of Spielberg and Hitchcock.

And the first half of his career was pretty damn special. I even liked The Village, by god.

And he’s local! Hell, he filmed some of Airbender in a quarry only minutes from where we last lived. So, I’m good to pull for the local boy. And I’m good to pull for someone who seemed overtly concerned with narrative subtlety and cinematic patience. The dude could hold a shot, y’know? He relied on us as his audience having patience — no flash cuts, no herky-jerky epileptic sequences. That scene in Unbreakable where you hear Bruce Willis’ character getting the news and, in the foreground, a dude on a gurney slowly bleeds out? Wow. That hits me every time. It requires us to be invested. And it requires M. Night to be good enough to keep us invested.

But now? Here we are. At the end of the road where I won’t even see a film that pairs together what once were two of my favorite things: a great director and a killer cartoon property. (Seriously, Avatar is easily in my top ten favorite shows, nestled right next to The Wire, methinks.)

It’s a sad day.

It’s a sad day when my joke — “Haha, Poobending!” — is basically what M. Night is doing with this film. He’s bending poop to his will. Not a particularly gracious or impressive talent, I’m afraid.

It’s done. I’m done. It’s over. I’m sad.

Let’s be clear about one thing: I waited far too long to watch The Wire. I had a number of people — trusted sources, even! — tell me, “This show is incredible.” And I just nodded and mumbled something about not having time for a whole five seasons of television. It’s possible that, in a sense, I was right: I don’t know that I had the time for this.

But trust me, it didn’t matter.

We started watching the show here in Der Wendighaus one snowy day — during one of the many El Blizzardo Loco storms — and you could practically hear them buckling me into the roller coaster ride. It took a couple-few episodes for my wife to get hooked, but me, I was champing at the bit from day one.

And now, five seasons later — and five months of life — it’s over. In the can. Back in the hands of Netflix, hopefully going to some other poor asshole who thought he could get away with not watching The Wire.

Bold statement: The Wire is the best television show I’ve ever seen, start-to-finish. That last phrase is key. Start-to-finish. Some shows may have had better seasons here and there, and certainly a few really whopper holy-shit bomb-go-off episodes, but as a package? As a show that begins properly and gets a proper end? It’s The Wire. It’s The Wire by a country fucking mile. You feel me?

Why do I love The Wire? Let me count the ways.

It’s A Goddamn Greek Tragedy Is What It Is

Check out this quote from David Simon:

But instead of the old gods, The Wire is a Greek tragedy in which the postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces. It’s the police department, or the drug economy, or the political structures, or the school administration, or the macroeconomic forces that are throwing the lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no decent reason. In much of television, and in a good deal of our stage drama, individuals are often portrayed as rising above institutions to achieve catharsis. In this drama, the institutions always prove larger, and those characters with hubris enough to challenge the postmodern construct of American empire are invariably mocked, marginalized, or crushed. Greek tragedy for the new millennium, so to speak. Because so much of television is about providing catharsis and redemption and the triumph of character, a drama in which postmodern institutions trump individuality and morality and justice seems different in some ways, I think.

This quote hints at it, but let me say it more boldly: tragedy on the stage is wholly different from what the news will call “tragedy.” There they mean, tragedy is when bad shit happens. In the narrative form, though, it’s a different animal: tragedy is when you create your own downfall. The characters in The Wire all do their damnedest to do the right thing, and so often, “the right thing” is what gets them fucked.

You Want To Learn About Character, You Watch This Show

Another bold-ass statement: The Wire features some of the finest characters in television. Hell, it features some of the finest characters in any form, ever. The characters are nuanced, complex, and even the worst of them are endearing, compelling, and real-feeling. Week-to-week, season-to-season, this show challenges one of the fundamental assertions of television: characters shouldn’t change. Oh, not here. These characters are all subject to seasonal arcs and a series arc — and it’s one of the most complete sets of “character journeys” that registers on the screen. A really incredible feat.

I mean, c’mon. Bubbles? McNulty? Freamon? Daniels? Omar?

My jaw drops just thinking about how well-orchestrated these character arcs end up.

It’s not all perfect: some characters feel a little flat. Marlo’s got a whiff of the complex, but he and his crew don’t really get the same level of nuance that the Barksdale crew gets. It’s necessary in some ways (they are a more malevolent force, to be sure), but I really cared about the Barksdale crew, as bad as they often were. Further, a character like The Greek is just a cipher; a figurehead, a paper tiger.

And If You Want To Learn About Plot, You Watch This Show

I know that this is television, and I know that television is subject to lots of chaos and suffers under the yoke of forced improvisation: even still, this feels like one of the most finely-plotted shows I’ve ever seen. Not as single-serving bite-sized episodes, but as entire stories, each season as rich as an elegantly-penned novel. You want this level of intricacy and detail, you have to be a plotter. You can’t one-off a show like The Wire. You can’t just invent this kind of plot as you go — or, at least, I can’t. It’s got so many moving parts that fit so nicely together, we’re talking about a surefire case of Intelligent Design.

Then again, maybe I’m just seeing patterns like in the center of a sunflower or some shit.

A good quote on the writing of this show:

I think what you sense in The Wire is that it is violating a good many of the conventions and tropes of episodic television. It isn’t really structured as episodic television and it instead pursues the form of the modern, multi-POV novel. Why? Primarily because the creators and contributors are not by training or inclination television writers. In fact, it is a little bit remarkable that we ended up with a television drama on HBO or anywhere else. I am a newspaper reporter by training who wrote a couple long, multi-POV nonfiction narratives, Homicide and The Corner. The first became the basis for the NBC drama of the same name; the second I was able to produce as a miniseries for HBO, airing in 2000. Both works are the result of a journalistic impulse, the first recounting a year I spent with the Baltimore Police Department’s Homicide Unit, and the second book detailing a year spent in a drug-saturated West Baltimore neighborhood, following an extended, drug-involved family. Ed Burns, my coauthor on The Corner and co-creator on The Wire, was a homicide detective who served in the BPD for twenty years and, following that for seven years, a seventh-grade teacher at a Baltimore public school. The remaining writers—Richard Price [Clockers], Dennis Lehane [Mystic River], and George Pelecanos [The Night Gardener]—are novelists working at the highest level of the crime genre. Bill Zorzi covered state and municipal politics for the Baltimore Sun for twenty years; Rafael Alvarez, another Sun veteran, worked as a merchant seaman and comes from two generations of port workers. So we are all rooted in a different place than Hollywood.

Hear that?

If you write crime, please, please watch this show.

Rectify your errors. Come to the light, as I did. Don’t make me stop this car.

Aaaaand If You Want To Learn About Dialogue, Well, You Get The Idea

Dang, I don’t even know what to say. Just watch this. Some light spoilers, though I suspect they’re largely context-free if you haven’t seen the show –

It Rewards Careful Viewing

…and, I suspect, rewatching.

This show gets what many writers don’t — you don’t need to coddle your audience. If what you’re doing is good, you can hit the accelerator and speed along at a nice clip; they’ll catch up, I promise. The Wire doesn’t fuck around with over-explanations, or, sometimes, any explanations. A lot of scenes are left on the table with the attitude of, “Just watch, you’ll figure it out.” Some scenes don’t have pay-off until later in an episode, or even later in an entire season. Hell, some little bits remain outstanding for entire seasons.

The show assumes that you’re not an idiot.

I’m an idiot, but even still, I made it through, and I’m glad the show didn’t treat me like the frothing baboon that I just so happen to be.

That Theme Song

Every season added another version of the Waits classic (including the Waits original, in Season Two). Remember: you gotta keep the Devil way down in the hole.

My favorite: Season three, baby. Neville Brothers.

…so good, so tasty.

Omar

Motherfucking Omar. I dunno. Might just be one of my favorite characters of all time. Righteous. Complex. Honorable. Mean as a snake-bit dog. Gay. So proper.

Though, I can’t lie: so many of these characters are characters I could live with season after season.

Hell, I’d watch a show just about Freamon.

But that’s another interesting thing about this show: each season puts the spotlight on different characters, but never forgets a character. They all get play. They all get in the rotation.

Even Rawls.

Like, for instance, when we see him…

In a gay bar.

Anybody see that? That blink-and-you-miss it scene?

Never again addressed. Fascinating shit.

Howzabout You?

All right. I gotta tie this one off and get to business for the day. If you haven’t seen The Wire, then you and me aren’t friends until you change that. You can stay over there. In the corner. Standing in the dog poop. When you’ve started to watch it, you may step free from your shitty little corner and we can once more resume communication like two human beings.

If you have seen the show, hey, let’s talk this shit up. What do you like best about The Wire? Let’s wank-fest this. Wankity-wank-wank-wank. Fave character? Fave season (If I had to rank them, well, it’d change depending on my mood. Season Two is probably forever at the bottom, but the rest jockey for position above.) Favorite iteration of the theme song? Favorite quote? Any damn thing you got, throw it at me.

He’s got the fire and the fury… at his command…

McNulty: We’re good at this, Lester. In this town, we’re as good as it gets.

Lester: Natural po-lice.

McNulty: Fuck yes. Natural po-lice.

Lester: Tell me something, Jimmy. How exactly do you think it all ends?

McNulty: What do you mean?

Lester: A parade? A gold watch? A shining Jimmy-McNulty-day moment, when you bring in a case sooooo sweet everybody gets together and says, “Aw, shit! He was right all along. Should’ve listened to the man.” The job will not save you, Jimmy. It won’t make you whole, it won’t fill your ass up.

McNulty: I dunno, a good case—

Lester: Ends. They all end. The handcuffs go click and it’s over. The next morning, it’s just you in your room with yourself.

McNulty: Until the next case.

Lester: Boooooy, you need something else outside of this here.

McNulty: Like what? …dollhouse miniatures?

Lester: Hey, hey, hey, a life. A life, Jimmy! You know what that is? It’s the shit that happens while you’re waiting for moments that never come.