Tiger King
Yeah I got sucked into it like everyone else. Dear God what a festival of dysfunction!
Before I get to the show itself, let me start by saying I don't think exotic animals should be imported or bred for captivity. That said, I'm not sure how I justify that opinion. At some point in human history there were no domesticated animals, that is to say all animals were exotic in a sense. If people like me held sway throughout history there would be no domestication of wolves, and horses would never have been used for transportation. So how do I know that Tiger King and his ilk aren't just on the leading edge of a new human/animal partnership? Another thing is that it's clear that some of the folks in this documentary gain deep satisfaction from caring for these animals, especially the tigers. In my uncertainty, am I in a position to deny them that? What rights non-humans have under natural law is not a settled issue.
Sometimes I wish I could just be like most other people. Form incompletely reasoned opinions based on my gut and decide they are correct and certain then just get on with my life.
Yes, the characters in Tiger King are jaw-droppingly extreme. But perhaps equally impressive is the structure of the series itself. The first episode is just about some crazy weirdo who has a zoo. Then it builds. We see that there is a little subculture of exotic animal zoo keepers and they are all weirdos. Then we see they have a blood feud with a woman who is trying to shut them down. Then we see the woman trying to shut them down has a missing rich husband who was declared dead under suspicious circumstances and she may not be as saintly as she seems. The dead husband's family believes she killed him and her current husband --also wealthy -- is not exactly an alpha male. Then we see keeping exotic pets seems to go hand in hand with -- how to put this precisely? -- uncommon sexual relationships. Then things really start to get wild. There is an accidental suicide, criminals and conmen are everywhere, one of the wierdos clearly has turned his zoo into a cult-ish type organization with a Mason-esque troop of enraptured young girls. The pinnacle is a supposed murder-for-hire plot when at last the the FBI shuts everything down and makes arrests.
Here's the thing: It's all real. It is utterly, outrageously unbelievable but it is all real. Often you can see how a documentarian has manipulated facts to make things seem wild and bombastic, but honestly, it would be hard for me to make any sort of case that these were reasonable people being misrepresented. And I didn't even touch on many of the crazy details like the country songs, and the race for governor, and the boob jobs, and the drug dealers.
Fiction is dead, it cant compete.
Breaking: Nick Cage to play Joe Exotic in a scripted mini-series. Because of course he is. However weird you get, there is always something weirder.
Better Call Saul
This was Kim's season. She had convinced herself that her purpose was to do good. To make compromises to find ways to help the helpless; to defend the noble unwashed that the system is screwing. But after having to brazen her way through some tough, and in one case life-threatening, situations along with seeing the ultimate futility of pro bono. She appears to buy into the crooked life, wholeheartedly. This is Vince Gilligan's stock-in-trade. How events drive decent people down paths they should know better than to go down.
(I say "appears" because there is the outside possibility that she is either testing JImmy or outright conning him. I wouldn't put either past her.)
As far as character development goes, that was really about it for the season. The Jimmy/Mike/Nacho/Gus/Lalo story was strong, but really just a standard drug dealer plotline. No one found new aspects to their life or personality.
Better Call Saul is still a terrific show but it has yet to re-achieve the high point of the Jimmy versus Chuck drama of the first couple of seasons. With one more season to go I honestly wonder if it will. It may, like it's predecessor Breaking Bad just finish its last season as a top quality crime story. Nothing bad about that.
