There’s one thing missing from AMC’s critically-acclaimed series Breaking Bad—a gaping void in the show’s reverence. At first it was hard to pinpoint, but now, thanks to one Tumblr, we know that the problem was the absence of our man, Drake.

Drake-ing Bad, a site in which Drake is drawn into scenes of Breaking Bad past, improves on the show, bringing Drizzy joy to our hearts, one post at a time.

This is a tumblr where I draw Drake into scenes from Breaking Bad. Thanks.

No, Tumblr-er, thank you.

(Still image from Tumblr)

The post Drake-ing Bad: Where Drake is a Character on AMC’s Hit Show appeared first on Jewcy.

Remember when you were assigned Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, but you watched the film starring Demi Moore instead? Well, for all you kids in Chumash class, you can soon pull the same move with the bible’s second book. Ridley Scott’s film Exodus, which is slated to premier in 2014, will star Christian Bale as Moses, Sigourney Weaver and John Turturro as the Pharaoh Ramses’ parents, and Aaron Paul is in negotiations to join the cast, too, Variety reports:

Paul will play the Hebrew slave Joshua who goes on to lead the people onto the promised land after Moses.

A far cry from his meth cooking as Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad.

(Photo by Jim Padgett/Wikimedia)

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It’s summer, which means time to hole up inside your apartment, crank the A/C up, and grab your laptop for some quality Netflix binge-watching. In that spirit, we present our streaming-friendly Network Jews summer installment, Netflix Jews. And what better show to start than with AMC’s addictive, critically-acclaimed crime drama Breaking Bad, which nabbed 13 Emmy nominations this morning?

When the final eight episodes of Breaking Bad begin airing on Aug. 11, all eyes will be on the cancer-ridden chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin Walter White (Bryan Cranston), his former partner Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), and Hank, the DEA agent brother in law (Dean Norris) who SPOILER just figured everything out. But the show has taken on an increasing number of supporting characters as Walt’s business expands. The first and longest-lived of these adjunct members of the White empire is lawyer Saul Goodman. Played with delightful smarm by Mr. Show star Bob Odenkirk, Saul has provided Walter with much-needed extra-legal advice (helping set up Walt’s former employer as a money laundering front), assistance in sticky situations (using his secretary to throw Hank off the trail of Walt’s RV), and most importantly for viewers, a stable source of comedy on a show that is usually deadly serious.

Breaking Bad may be on its last eight episodes, but a Goodman-based spinoff now seems to be in “full speed ahead” development—good news for some fans, aggravating for others, and as good a reason as any to catch up on the show.

OK, fine. Saul Goodman is definitely not Jewish. He’s Irish (his real last name is McGill), and he changed his name because he wanted to attract clients interested in hiring a Jewish lawyer. His family life isn’t particularly kosher, either—he claims to have caught one of his ex-wives having an affair with his stepfather. But that’s not to say Saul doesn’t have Jewish qualities. In trying to present himself as a Jewish stereotype, Saul becomes a dark reflection of those same stereotypes—a conniving lawyer obsessed with his own bottom line.

Saul debuts in the appropriately titled Season 2 episode “Better Call Saul” as a so-called criminal lawyer rather than a criminal lawyer called in to counsel Walt’s snatched dealer Badger (Matt L. Jones). Saul is a cheesy lawyer prominent enough that his ads are displayed on the bench Badger gets arrested on, right before he’s properly introduced in this horrifying ad showcasing his lack of ethics and Constitution-draped office.

After Walt and Jesse kidnap him to ensure Badger doesn’t rat them out, Saul becomes Walter’s consigliere (Saul makes the Godfather reference explicit). Using his extensive criminal connections, Saul spends the next few seasons helping Walt’s business with increasingly difficult situations from money laundering to attempted assassination attempts.

Saul does demonstrate some moral awareness beyond his desire to save his own skin. In the most involved Saul ever gets directly in Walt’s scheming, he has his assistant/bodyguard Huell (Lavell Crawford) pickpocket Jesse to trick him into believing Gus had taken his ricin-laced cigarette and poisoned Brock, his girlfriend’s son. At the beginning of the fifth season, Saul realizes he’d been duped into helping with Walt’s plan to poison Brock and attempts to quit in protest, only to be intimidated into staying on.

Breaking Bad’s premise entails the continual moral growth and decay of its characters—Vince Gilligan famously describes the show’s arc as transforming Walter from “Mr. Chips to Scarface.” Jesse begins the show as a criminal addict, but nurtures his inherent talent and matures into one of the most compelling, sympathetic characters in television history. Walt’s wife Skyler goes from a frustrated housewife to a steely, money-laundering schemer.

In this very uncharacteristic televised universe built on the concept of change, Saul Goodman is the one constant. Though his circumstances change slightly over the course of the show (particularly when he prepares to go on the run), his own moral character, founded on an intense focus on his own survival, does not. Considering the adage that drama is about change (nominally) and comedy about stasis, it makes perfect sense that Saul has largely usurped Jesse as Breaking Bad’s biggest source of comic relief

Not only does Saul’s ingratiating tone and ability to profit from any situation (he gets Walt and Jesse to pay him to become clients when they kidnap him), his horrific, clash-heavy fashion sense and love of excess never changes. “Garish” might be an understatement for a character whose subtler outfits consist of yellow shirts and purple ties. Even Breaking Bad costume designer Jennifer Bryan had to “throw out every rule of coordination.” And one of his pet projects is a laser tag arena he first attempts to convince Walt to use as a money-laundering front, then uses as a hideout for Jesse.

Most notably, Saul seems like the only character certain to survive the events of the final season of Breaking Bad. Not only is he a slippery enough operator that it’s hard to see him getting either caught by the law or killed, Saul now seems likely to wriggle out of even the more serious, real textual ending of the show itself. It’s still unclear whether the Saul spinoff in development will be more comedic or dramatic, half an hour or an hour. Hopefully, the new show will find a distinct tone from Breaking Bad while still maintaining the mother series’ fingerprints, mixing Saul’s lighter nature with the darkness of what he does for a living. Regardless, escaping the boundaries of the series to find a completely new life as the protagonist of his own story is … well, s’all good, man.

Previously on Network Jews: David Rosen, the unlucky mensch on ABC’s Scandal

Agent Mulder, Supernatural Expert and Conspiracy Theorist on 1990s sci-fi hit The X-Files

Michael Ginsberg, the Smartass Ad Man on Mad Men

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The post Netflix Jews: Saul Goodman, Breaking Bad’s Scheming Lawyer appeared first on Jewcy.

Most people remember The X-Files as a venue for exploring an especially 1990s brand of paranoia and fascination with American weirdness. The series explored everything from government-run alien conspiracy to Satanic cults, but the delivery system for the monsters through those years was almost always one man: Special Agent Fox Mulder.

Mulder, played by David Duchovny, is introduced in the pilot episode, 20 years ago this September, as bespectacled and hunched over a desk, surrounded by images of skulls, countless folders, and stacks of papers, a creature that simply wants to be left in his own habitat to pursue his “weird science.” As the FBI’s resident supernatural expert and conspiracy theorist, Mulder is already steeped in the paranormal far more than an average television viewer who hadn’t spent years sniffing out demons. Though Mulder was the hero of the show, Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), Mulder’s partner and the audience identification character, was if anything more important as someone who could ease us into Mulder’s insanity. Though Scully was originally our interpreter, we were immersed in Mulder’s brain over the course of nine seasons to the point where Scully, though still necessary to the show, didn’t have to play the skeptic.

The rest of the paranormal happenings in The X-Files wound up secondary when compared with the real heart of the show: the relationship between Mulder and Scully. Somehow, The X-Files managed to transcend some aspects the “will they/won’t they” problem that has plagued many other shows by depicting an emotional connection founded primarily on mutual respect and professional admiration. Though many fans longed for them to get together, it’s easy to watch The X-Files without being invested in Mulder and Scully’s romantic pairing. In some sense, it’s impossible to understand or define Mulder absent his relationship with Scully.

Though his partnership with Scully has been picked apart repeatedly, Mulder’s Jewish qualities are one of the less examined, but still critical, aspects of his character. His Judaism is only hinted at in a few places, most notably Season 6’s “Drive.” Violent anti-Semite Patrick Crump (played by TV’s Bryan Cranston, in the role that convinced Vince Gilligan he could play Walter White) accuses Mulder of being Jewish based on his last name and rails against supposed Jewish control of the FBI. Mulder takes offense at Crump’s anti-Semitism and sarcastically apologizes for the “international Jewish conspiracy.” Though “Drive” doesn’t confirm Mulder’s Judaism, the hints are in line with The X-Files relatively subtle early approach to doling out information, like the early appearance of crucial alien “black oil” in the first-season classic “Ice.”

Even the X-Files episode that treats Judaism most thoroughly, Season 4’s “Kaddish,” like the similar Homicide episode, never mentions the possibility of Mulder being Jewish. The episode’s treatment of the Jewish community is a little silly, to be honest, complete with Yiddish accents. But “Kaddish” does explore Mulder’s relationship to Judaism. Though Mulder claims not to know Hebrew or understand a Talmudic text, he is again confronted with anti-Semitism. Curt Brunjes, an anti-Semite Mulder and Scully interrogate, tells Mulder “you look like you might be one yourself,” provoking a reaction similar to Mulder’s ire at Crump in “Drive.”

It’s worth noting that most of the moments that make Mulder’s Judaism (partial or not) explicit are adversarial in nature, emerging from other characters defining Mulder by attacking him. Considering that Mulder’s entire character is based on his antagonistic relationships with the government and those attempting to dissuade him from his quest for the truth, there’s something that connects Mulder even more to Judaism than whatever religious rituals he happens to participate in.

That antagonism is crucial to understanding Mulder’s often hidden innate Judaism. Mulder may have been raised Protestant—in an episode where Mulder appears to die, a Protestant minister presides over his funeral, though it may not have been in keeping with his wishes—but more important than whether or not he attends services, Mulder is essentially a Jewish action hero. Considering long-standing stereotypes about Jews that were still in wide use in pop culture through the early 1990s (something “Kaddish” did nothing to help with), Mulder’s portrayal as someone who happens to be Jewish, but is not defined by that Judaism, bucks stereotypes. Fox Mulder endured body switching, abductions, and alien super soldiers, and kept it Semitic in the process.

Previously on Network Jews:

Michael Ginsberg, the Smartass Ad Man on Mad Men

Dr. James Wilson on Fox’s Dark Medical Procedural House

Ari Gold, the Jewish Hollywood Agent on HBO’s Entourage

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The post Network Jews: Special Agent Fox Mulder on 1990s Sci-Fi Drama ‘The X-Files’ appeared first on Jewcy.

In middle school, I couldn’t stand to look at the cover of my favorite album. I turned it around in the thick folder that held all of my CDs; sometimes I hid it behind more anodyne album covers, behind lyric books and photos of bands in practice studios. Occasionally I would take a quick, uncomfortable peek, but throwing it away somehow seemed sacrilegious or an admission of weakness. It was the image on the cover of Rage Against the Machine’s self-titled album that bothered me—the iconic photo of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk named Thích Quảng Đức engulfed in flames.

On June 10 1963, Đức, along with a few hundred other monks and nuns, took part in a protest of the South Vietnamese government’s treatment of Buddhists. He stopped in a Saigon intersection near the presidential palace, sat down on a pillow, doused himself with gasoline, and set himself on fire. David Halberstam—one of the few foreign journalists to witness the event—reported that Đức never moved, while Malcolm Browne’s photograph of Đức was disseminated worldwide, shocking President Kennedy and later spurring him to withdraw U.S. support for the South Vietnamese government.

As an eighth grader, this political and historical context was mostly lost on me. The photograph seemed like some expression of overpowering despair, but its particulars were unclear. Instead, the photo impressed upon me both the frightening power of some images and the trickiness of using them for mixed commercial and political ends. But even if I wasn’t sure of what Rage Against the Machine was trying to do, that album taught me that art could be political, that it could and should make a person uncomfortable, and that the glare of spectacle could sometimes obscure and reveal truth in equal measure.

Moshe Silman’s self-immolation has caused me to think again of Thích Quảng Đức, as well as the Americans who later engaged in self-immolation in order to protest U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Fifty-seven years old and deeply in debt, Silman had been driven to desperation after difficulties finding public housing. Having suffered a stroke, Silman couldn’t work and believed that the Israeli government’s social safety net had failed him. On July 14, he lit himself on fire at a protest in Tel Aviv; he died on Friday in a hospital. Since his act, at least four other people have attempted self-immolation, with one, Akiva Mafa’i, a 45-year-old disabled IDF veteran, succeeding.

Some Israeli commentators called the self-immolations senseless, while others acknowledged that they reflected an underlying desperation that hasn’t been reckoned with. One protest leader told the Times of Israel that they should “stop this wave while taking the message seriously.” She added that “usually the tragedies are invisible, but this time we watched it happen.”

It’s this latter remark, I think, that gets at the heart of the matter, which is the failures of Israeli and American cultures alike to not only address the plight of the poor but even to depict it honestly. Poverty has long been seen as distasteful, unsuited to the go-go entrepreneurialism our countries share. It can only be looked at sidelong or through a veneer of sensationalism—the violent death of a homeless man makes for a good story; how he got there, less so.

In a recent essay in the journal The Baffler, Heather Havrilesky argues that on contemporary television, “the very rich are either breathtakingly noble or downright nefarious, while the very poor are as self-destructive and helpless as injured animals.” The show Two Broke Girls illuminates little about its title pair, except that the poor “better prepare to be humiliated by those with more money (and therefore more dignity).” In this regard, Havrilesky cites Downton Abbey as “the show for our moment, unique in offering the old-world rich as the remedy for the miseries and woes of the lower orders.”

Indeed, when it comes to class, the dominant message of today’s pop culture is that the poor aren’t poor; they’re simply not yet rich, and they must overcome poverty’s intrinsic depravity. We’ve accordingly made models of our financial elites, dividing them into altruistic benefactors (Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, half of Hollywood) and devious oligarchs (the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson). Donald Trump occupies some third category: we tolerate him as an entitled buffoon—a Billy Madison who never wised up—and carnivalesque showman, though when The Apprentice was among the most popular shows on TV, he epitomized the vulgar aspirations of wealth.

The media has granted those rich who aren’t yet famous the sobriquet of “job creators”—a euphemism that has an almost industrial sense about it, as if they have come to replace our departed manufacturing base, machining jobs on the shuttered assembly lines and distributing them via UPS. Occasionally, job creators revel in their behind-the-curtains power. On CBS’ Undercover Boss, they spend a week slumming it with entry-level workers, where they might learn some truth about hard work that can’t be discovered without a camera over one’s shoulder.

When we do see the poor on television, it is usually on shows like Undercover Boss, where the distorting lens of reality television doesn’t accurately depict the privations of poverty but rather makes a fetish of it. We have other reality TV shows about the lower classes, about teen mothers, Louisiana rednecks, hoarders, coupon fanatics, and the world’s worst jobs. They’re our rare growth industry. Jerry Springer—who as a Democratic politician once tried to save Cincinnati residents from being drafted to fight in Vietnam—became rich by being a ringmaster to an endless procession of the poor and uneducated. After 21 seasons, he’s still going, his show having been normalized as something campy and even endearing, rather than crassly manipulative.

On the otherwise stellar AMC series Breaking Bad, Walter White, a school teacher soon to be overwhelmed by bills for his cancer treatment, is depicted as too proud to accept the financial help of a semi-estranged friend. He chooses what’s treated as a nobler, but more dangerous, alternative, without which the show wouldn’t exist: he becomes a meth cook and, later, a drug kingpin. If the show is attempting an honest critique of the structural inequities that plague our for-profit medical system and how it can drive a lower-middle class family to the brink of poverty, it mostly does so by way of subtext (and only in the first couple of seasons). Poverty is more interesting when sublimated into old-fashioned capitalist striving. Be a criminal if you have to; just make sure you pay your bills.

The obvious truth is that poverty makes for meager entertainment, and so in order to be made palatable for television—or for politics, which is no longer substantively different from entertainment—it is dressed up in burlesque, ridicule, or spectacle. It is made into something bizarre and remote. And when the poor choose spectacular acts to express their despair, we grant them our attention, because they have spoken in the language of the day.

The post Culture Kvetch: How Poverty Became Merely Another Spectacle appeared first on Jewcy.

It’s pretty standard for the networks to use all their heavy artillery during the Fall/early Winter months, and start throwing their b-team up after the new year.  But the TV battlefield has drastically changed, forcing network to stay on their game year-round.

Here’s why you’ve still reasons to yearn for that couch and put off finishing one of those big Jewish books for another day.

Big Love’s Final Act

For those who’ve never tuned in to Big Love because the premise didn’t seem like enough of a lure, you’ve missed out on one of the best shows on television.  Whether or not polygamy fascinates you, Big Love is worth watching more for the incredibly elaborate and fleshed out world that creators Mark Olsen and Will Scheffer have established within the show.  More interesting than polygamy in Big Love is the corruption that exists within the small splinter religion that most of the show’s characters belong to, corruption that mirrors many real life religious splinter groups.  Also, as we’ve said on Jewcy before, Big Love’s ensemble includes some of the most talented actors working on TV.  In fact, right now there’s only one other TV program that rivals Big Love in that regard, Breaking Bad, which doesn’t begin until July.  The subject TV show finales has been highly scrutinized in recent years, the finale’s of Six Feet Under, The Sopranos and The Wire have all made rather indelible marks, so it will be interesting to see if Big Love manages to do the same.  Lets just hope they find a new theme song/credits sequence or switch back to the old one.

The Return of TV’s New Best Comedy?

When Parks and Recreation began, it was perceived with almost universal ambivalence.  At that point, almost the entire TV watching world had fallen in love with Amy Poehler and Human Giant fans were psyched that Aziz Ansari had a new vehicle.  But the show seemed like a poor spin off of The Office, and for a couple of episodes, it was.  Then, during Parks and Recreation’s Season 1 finale, everything clicked into place and people decided that the show at least deserved a second season.  Ever since, Parks and Recreation has been hitting a no, delivering a pitch perfect season of deadpan comedy while maintaining enough drama for us to care about the characters.  Aziz and Aubrey Plaza have continued to shine outside of the show, which will either help or hinder this next season and now with the addition of Party Down star, Adam Scott to the cast, the show is rife with heavy hitters. If they manage to keep up the momentum, Community will have a rival for TV’s best new comedy.

More Gratuitous Sex!

Ever have that moment where you’re watching a show  and it dawns on you what it is that you’re watching?  For instance, you’re in the middle of an episode of Entourage, watching the gang gorilla step their way into some fancy party and you realize, “This is just one big fantasy for assholes!”

I’d assume that by now, most people have figured out that Californication is exactly like Entourage in that regard, a fantasy, a mode for viewers to live vicariously through the show’s protagonist, only for dads.  Hank Moody with his survived hairline, shades and cool older guy boot shoes, can miraculously have sex with anybody without having to express his desires at all, it’s sort of like dreaming of owning a La-Z-Boy that turns into a toilet.  The show has become a veritable live action version of Maxim Magazine, showcasing every gorgeous young new Hollywood actress — most notably, the unforgettable Madeline Zima. As soon as we see an attractive woman on Californication, we know that she’ll soon be having sex with Hank. There’s got to be a drinking game here.

TV Crack

Generally, reality TV can be characterized as a guilty pleasure, but there is a certain brand of reality TV, a kind that makes no bones about what it is, so self-acceptingly gratuitous and miserable, that it can only be described as TV Crack.  Two of the year’s best batches of TV Crack are still to come.  Jersey Shore: a show that most people hate on principle, but some like because they don’t know any better and a select few enjoy because of it’s almost John Waters over-top-ness, started last night and will keep us warm and tan through months of cold Thursdays to come.

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is another of the awful, yet self aware reality shows, but this particular installment is special because of what we know is about to happen.  Camille is one of the housewives who, as the season begins, happens to be married to and completely enveloped by the life of Kelsey Grammar (you remember, tossed salads and scrambled eggs!)  However, in a bit a dramatic irony, we the viewer know that the couple splits during the course of the show, when Camille finds out that her husband has what Tony Soprano would call, a “goumar.”

Perhaps the best example of TV Crack is Oxygen’s Bad Girls Club, a show that puts both The Sopranos and Jerry Springer to shame with its gratuitous violence.  The brainchild of The Read World co creator, Jonathan Murray, this show is so self aware in how blatant it is, how lacking in any kind of theme or redeeming value it is, that it’s unrelentingly brilliant.  Bad Girls Club is merely a bunch of emotionally unstable women in a house, period.  Best of all, during the reunion shows, host Perez Hilton reserves the right to douse the girls with water or Silly String if they get out of line.  Think of it this way, if you’re going to rot your brain, don’t be half-assed about it.

More Excuses to Make a Mess

Top Chef can be either fantastic, or dreck, depending on the season, the theme and the characters/contestants.  This season, Top Chef All Stars gives us chefs who almost won in past seasons of the show, making for some of the hungriest and most talented competitors thus far.  My pick for the show’s winner: Chef Richard Blais.

On the other end of the dial, Chopped continues to flourish as “the cooking show that could.”  The network behind Chopped isn’t quite as big and the challenger and competition isn’t as elaborate, but Chopped manages to put out a show that’s as entertaining, if not more so than Top Chef, by keeping it simple, and by casting interesting and quirky contestants to battle it out.  Just remember, both shows have better kitchens than you do, and people who get paid to clean up the mess.

Lastly, Storage Wars is a new show based on one of the most fascinating recent episodes of This American Life, which followed around people who buy neglected storage units.  It turns out that if you miss three months of rent, they sell your stuff, and there are people who make a hobby out of buying it up.  A lot of them get junk, stuff soaked in urine or gnawed at by rats, but some manage to nab new naked photo’s of Parris Hilton or abandoned cars.  Just remember, if you find your garage packed in a few months with stuff you bought at storage auctions, there’s a show A&E that might help you, it’s called Hoarders.

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