RECAP: Breaking Bad 5x12 "Rabid Dog"

So we start off tonight right where we left off, with Walt speeding up to his house to see Jesse's car in the driveway with the door hanging open. Walt creeps in the back way with his gun out and wanders through every room in the house, calling out for Jesse to show himself, only to realize Jesse isn't there. All the gasoline is poured, but the place is empty.

When we come back from the opening credits, Walt gets Huell to take Jesse's car and cleaners to fumigate the house, but he also calls Jesse and leaves him a voicemail, thanking him for changing his mind and telling him they can fix things between them if they just talk, using his fatherly voice again in what he thinks is a calming manner, and this is our first hint in this episode that Walt might really care for Jesse after all. I was amazed that he thinks all he has to do is "talk" to him and Jesse will come around again after finding out about the ricin, but I guess it speaks to the enormous amount of power Walt thinks he wields over him.

When Skyler comes home, Walt has fashioned this amazingly convoluted story about a malfunctioning gas pump that spilled gasoline all over him, the car, and then the house as he threw his clothes off. No one believes him of course- Jr. thinks he fainted again and Skyler sees that something else is going on but stays quiet for the sake of the kids, as Walt suggests they go stay in a hotel for a couple of days. While they're holed up in what must be the fanciest hotel in Albuquerque, Walt meets Saul and his guy in the car, where Saul tells him they've looked everywhere and can't find Jesse. Walt just thinks, again, that all he has to do is explain to him why he had to poison Brock and everything will be ok, but Saul isn't buying it and suggest Walt look at Jesse as an "Old Yeller" type of situation, where the once loyal dog had to be put down because he went rabid (hence, the title of the episode). Just like with Hank, Walt flat out refuses, telling Saul to keep his metaphors to himself.

Back in their floor size hotel room, Skyler demands to know what really happened and why he's talking to Saul, so Walt pretty openly confesses about Jesse, not telling her what he did, but admitting that he did "something" that he had to do that made Jesse angry. He again emphasizes that he knows how to handle the kid, but Skyler think he ought to kill him, which shocks Walt. Skyler thinks they should just face facts and seeing how they've come this far, what's one more? This faux "shock" on Walt's part over the idea of killing Jesse seems strange in this episode- it's similar to his reaction over the thought of killing Hank, as though Walt has somehow drawn these lines in his own mind over how far he'll go, which is of course, ridiculous, given that he's poisoned a child, let a woman die in front of him, run over some drug dealers, and had 10 people killed in the span of a few minutes, among countless other murderous deeds in this series. But he seems to be hanging on to the idea that there is some imaginary line he won't cross.

Now we get a flashback to Jesse pouring the gasoline in a rage. We see that he's high and got just seconds away from doing it before Hank barges in and stops him at gunpoint, having been following him from Saul's office himself. Jesse cries out that Walt poisoned Brock and can't keep getting away with everything, to which Hank agrees and gets him to come with him in his car. We see Hank and Jesse drive off mere moments before Walt pulled up to the house.

Then we get Marie with Dave the shrink, complaining about not knowing a person's true nature and wondering about getting untraceable poisons, in a scene that I'm not sure I know the point of (I have never found Marie even vaguely interesting on her own), unless it has something to do with Dave himself, who kept pressing for details on the Walt situation only to be spurned by Marie. That whole thing was kind of odd- is Dave going to turn out to be a random key player in an upcoming episode? When Marie gets home she sees that Hank as brought Jesse back as a houseguest, which she agrees to as long as it's bad for Walt, and then Hank listens to Jesse's voicemail on his phone, and hears the message Walt left for him earlier.

There's a brief moment of Walt sitting poolside at the hotel, where Walter Jr. joins him to hug him and cry about his returning cancer- and they've really been pushing the stress on poor Jr. over the last couple weeks about this, which makes me wonder if Walt's cancer somehow might not really be back and if he's faking this in order to make Skyler stay with him or something. There just seems to be more to that, given that we know Walt isn't dead in the future, and aside from the beard he doesn't actually look to be in that bad of physical shape, either. Jesse then wakes up at Hank's house, where Marie offers him coffee and they appear to have brought Steve Gomez in on the story, as he's there when Hank has Jesse tell him everything from the beginning as he records him.

Hank and Gomez commiserate on the balcony after hearing all the details, and though they believe him they both agree that there's no real evidence, just hearsay. But Walt calls again and leaves Jesse another message, wanting him to meet him the plaza in Albuquerque so they can talk. Hank and Gomez want Jesse to go wearing a wire, but Jesse freaks, saying Walt is smarter and luckier than them and whatever they want to happen the exact opposite will, and beside, Walt will kill him. Hank disagrees, saying that Walt's actions have shown over and over again that Jesse is the one thing he cares about, but Jesse doesn't buy it. When he leaves the room, Gomez confesses he's not so sure either, but Hank doesn't care, saying if Walt kills him at least he'll get it on tape. Well, there goes the audience's rooting interest in you, Hank, if there ever was any. Poor Jesse just can't get anybody on his side.

The meet is set, and with Walt waiting on a bench in the crowded plaza, Hank pretty much shoves Jesse out of the car, wire attached. Jesse is nervous and slowly walks over to Walt, but stops when he sees a suspicious looking bald guy standing near him in the corner. Jesse then turns around and runs to a pay phone, calling Walt and telling him he decided not to burn his house down because he's going to get him another way, and he's going after where he "really lives." Hanks picks Jesse up and yells at him over ditching the plan, but Jesse insists he's thought of a better way to nail Walt. But it turns out the bald guy was just some random dude with no connection to Walt at all, and the last scene is Walt getting in his car and calling none other than Todd, telling him he's got another job for his uncle.

Well, I really have no idea where this is going, but I'm starting to think this future with Walt and the machine guns might have something to do with Todd and his crew after everything goes horribly wrong. This episode tonight seemed to let us in on the fact that Walt really does (or did) care about Jesse, or at least he thinks he does, even if he showed it in extremely uncouth ways in the past, but of course Jesse doesn't learn that. Now I'm wondering if there will end up being some sort of crazy, unexpected reconciliation between them at some point after all, despite all the terrible things he's done to him. Since Jesse has been nothing but jerked around the whole series, going from being the object of one person's manipulation to another, it would seem especially cruel to not let him have some form of solace in the end, but I have no idea how that's going to come about.

Pointless Prediction #4: I'm going to ahead and predict that Walt's lying about his cancer being back. I'm suspicious now and I'm going to say he's faking it in order to get Skyler on his side again.

Recapping the VMA's 2013

I didn't get a chance to live-blog last night, because the show wasn't actually shown live in my area (grr- hate when that happens), but still, let's skim over the highlights and lowlights anyway, shall we?

Well- I don't even know what more there is to say about the monstrosity that was Miley Cyrus last night, unless it's simply to echo the hilariously apt reaction of the Smiths (see below), which I'm sure many people were. It seems to be the only thing anybody was talking about the next day though, which is probably enough to make Miley happy (under the old "any publicity is good publicity" mantra). But I've got to say, not since Britney Spears' infamous 2007 VMA nosedive has anybody made more of an embarrassing and unsexy fool of themselves in public- and Miley Cyrus has less of an excuse, as Britney was in the middle of her famed nervous breakdown at the time. The only word left I can think of to utter is simply, ICK. Poor Robin Thicke was the innocent bystander in that trainwreck (his weird Beetlejuice outfit notwithstanding).

As for the rest of the performances, Lady Gaga was good (although almost immediately overshadowed of course) and Justin Timberlake's nearly 20 minute performance was probably the highlight, if you're a fan of his. I've never been that crazy about him, but he is a good performer, although his very brief reunion with NSYNC reminded me of Beyonce's Super Bowl show where she was nice enough to condescend to sing with Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams from Destiny's Child for about 2 minutes before sending them away again in a flash- hee. Clearly the leaders have moved on. And shouldn't Jessica Biel have been in the audience or at least gotten a mention from him in one of his speeches? I forget they're married half the time. No one else stood out much, in my opinion.

I'm sorry, but this is what Daft Punk stood up Stephen Colbert for? After the big fuss they made about ditching his show at the last minute because of their contract with the VMA's they didn't even perform on the show!? They show up to give Taylor Swift an award and that's it. I would expect more retaliation from him when he gets back next week for this glaring insult If I were them.  

Ok, Li'l Kim looks completely different- she has to have had surgery since the last time she's been seen in public, that''s just not her old face. And as for Rihanna, she looked all night like she'd been forced to attend the show at gunpoint, pretty much glaring or looking bored at every performance except JT's.

For all that Katy Perry's finale was hyped all night, that lame boxing stunt show was decidedly underwhelming- but I will say that it's the best performance I've seen her give on one of these things, which should tell you something about the extremely low bar she's set. In fact, I think the bar in her case has finally moved up about two inches from the floor (but no more than that, because she's still lip-synching which I can't stand).

Well, that about wraps up any thoughts I had on the VMA's this year- a pretty lame show overall, only a slight improvement on last year's, but I never tune in expecting much from this thing anyway, which is smart because if you do that, then you're never disappointed! See you at the next major awards show, everybody! 

RECAP: The Newsroom 2x07 "Red Team III"

Now that's more like it! This was an outstanding episode, reminiscent of the best of The West Wing, filled with tension, suspense, great acting and plotted so tightly that we are completely wrapped up in believing how News Night botched this Operation Genoa story. If there's anyone who wonders why I will always keep watching Aaron Sorkin shows, it's because I know there is the potential for television like this.

We start off with lawyer lady MGH interviewing Don now about the failed story, and this is where we find out that MGH is working on behalf of Jerry Dantana, who is suing ACN for "wrongful termination," after he had been fired for doctoring that video last week of the general refusing to confirm the military using sarin on civilians. Don is outraged by the audacity of Jerry to sue them and wants to know how MGH can have any doubt about the ethics of what he did, but she explains that Jerry's claim is of an "institutional failure" on the part of ACN, for which he should not have been the only person fired. Don disagrees and thinks the doctored tapes are reason enough for the Red Team not to have been able to catch the holes in the story, but as we go on to see, nearly every witness News Night secured falls apart one by one.

We then flash back to the final Red Team meeting, where Jim remains unconvinced, even though by this time, Charlie and Mac are ready to go with it. Jerry continues to forcefully defend his evidence, and he's played extremely well, as I said last week but it deserves another mention, by a perfectly upright, righteous Hamish Linklater. He points out that Jim mainly doesn't trust the story because he's the producer on it, and Jim agrees, as we find out from his own questioning in the present day that the first hint of the story Jerry provided came from a source in the army that Jim would not have trusted, had he not been off covering the Romney campaign at the time. Don and Sloan have various other concerns about not airing the story, namely safety issues involving riots and the upcoming election, but final say rests with Will, who after hearing the whole thing for the first time, confirms that he'd heard a similar story from another source, who later turns out to be the same one who'd told it to Charlie. This of course, is not caught at the time, and after Will says he trusts Mac and Charlie, the greenlight is given and News Night finally airs their report on Operation Genoa.

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After it's aired, we see that there was long time waiting for a response from the Department of Defense, and MGH tells us this was because they had brought in lawyers and the attorney general before finally sending out to ACN their strongest possible denial, even threatening charges under the Espionage Act. Before this, Stomtonavich calls in to protest the editing of his interview, but it's not taken very seriously from Mac, Charlie or Will, who assume it's the standard "taken out of context" complaint from disgruntled interviewees, not having figured out yet that the raw footage had been fudged. There's some pretty heavy foreshadowing over the way Mac eventually figures this out (we knew it was going to have something to do with the basketball game playing on the TV behind the general), as Will explains to her about the time clocks in certain sports, which gives her the idea to get him one for when he's on the air.

The ratings come in and are higher than expected, but the elation doesn't last long, as the notice from the DOD arrives and brings everyone back down to Earth, but they decide to stand by the story for the time being. Then, one by one, the witnesses start falling apart, the first one being Sweeney, the soldier who was embedded in the unit that was conducting the mission. After some cute flirting between Don and Sloan in the control room over who'd better survive in prison should they be indicted (and they seriously need to get together soon, I'm hoping the plan is NOT to drag this out ala Josh and Donna on The West Wing), Sweeney says in an on-air interview with Elliot Hirsch, who anchors the show before Will's, that he and two others suffered traumatic brain injuries, a fact no one on the staff had been aware of. Don panics and pulls him off the air, and the staff reconvenes in the conference room to go over who knew what yet again.

This is where Maggie confesses to not having been in the room with Jerry for the Stomtonavich interview, and doubt begins to creep up on Mac and Will, but not yet Charlie for the moment. Mac tells Will she's having doubts now about her interview with the final witness who came to light last week, Valenzuela, a buddy of Sweeney's, whom she now feels she might have led in the questioning. As she goes over her transcript with him, she realizes he doesn't produce any original facts he didn't obtain from her or Sweeney, and may just want to stand by his friend.

While all this is going on, the attack on the Benghazi consulate is beginning to happen as Neal and the lower level staff are on it, and this is the only thing in the episode that bugged a tiny bit. It turns out that News Night "discovers" that the protests in Libya were not over the infamous muslim movie sent out by the pastor Terry Jones, and were probably a coordinated terrorist attack, but News Night decides not to run that theory because they don't want to take risks with accuracy in the face of the flailing Genoa report. That's awfully convenient and another one of those hindsight issues people accuse the show of taking with "real" news stories, but it was a pretty minor part of this episode, so it doesn't hurt it much.

Charlie decides to meet with his source again, and this time we find out that his source has flat out lied to his face and was seeking revenge against Charlie for the death of his son, a one time ACN intern who was fired for writing political opinions about the news on the internet, after he'd been warned not to. The kid was an addict who then relapsed and died soon after, something for which the source blames Charlie. So he fed him false information in retaliation, and Charlie is stunned, as is the audience. This revelation could have been foreshadowed in a previous episode instead of being allowed to seemingly come out of nowhere, but the surprise is shocking enough that it works in the way that it's intended.

Finally, Mac sees the new time clock for Will and realizes that Jerry's tape might have been off, so sure enough, when she sits down with the footage and plays it back she sees the clock on the basketball game jump around between the numbers 19, 2, then  14- and she's stunned and shaking when she confronts Jerry in the elevator over what he's done. Jerry is adamant and defensive, yet knows he's finished, and then Mac tearfully tells Will and the others they have to retract the entire story.

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In present day (which is now the day before the election) Will says to MGH that this was an institutional failure and that after the election he, Mac and Charlie will be resigning from ACN. Then, as the three of them convene to tell Leona Lansing, Jane Fonda charges into the room and pretty much dominates the final scene with a wonderful speech filled with Sorkinese witticisms, mocking each of them, expressing outrage over Jerry's duplicity, and refusing to accept their resignations, instead daring them to earn the public trust back. She's backed up by MGH in a surprise (but not really) reveal that she's not a bad guy after all- and that caps off a very tightly written, acted and dramatic episode, by far the best of the series.

In fact, it may say a lot that The Newsroom's best episode was almost entirely devoted to their fictional news story, and even though I thought that was going to be the contradiction that would hurt the show this season, it came together in a far more compelling way than anything they've done that takes place in the "real world." Should the show have been set in a fictional universe all along, or at least a parallel one, taking inspiration from Law & Order's "ripped from the headlines" style of doing things? It's too late for that I suppose, but this was definitely a step in the right direction and I think it's something that should probably be taken note of going forward. No new episode next week, but part one of the finale is set to air on Sept 8, so I'll see you then folks!

RECAP: Breaking Bad 5x11 "Confessions"

Tonight's very eventful episode is appropriately titled in every way, and we get more of Jesse for the first time in a while, but we start out with a thread that will presumably be picked up in future episodes, because tonight it's only in the cold open and then nothing for the rest of the hour.

Todd calls Walt outside a diner and leaves him a rambling message, letting him know about the "change in management" at the meth lab. He's his usual polite, differential self, and then he, his uncle and a guy in his uncle's crew have breakfast in the diner while Todd relays the story of the train heist in a boastful manner. The men are sufficiently impressed and in the bathroom we see one of them wiping the blood off his shoe as they complain vaguely about the "nanny state," before taking off in car toward New Mexico. The fresh blood lets us know this is all taking place right after the shootout in the last episode, and Todd expresses his confidence in cooking again.

Meanwhile, back at the station, Hank faces Jesse and tells him that he knows Walt is Heisenberg and that if he talks he can make any charges on him disappear. Jesse refuses to spill, but Hank plays up his apparent unhappiness, surmising that Walt hasn't treated him well and has used him for his own benefit, just like he's used his family. This truth seems to get to Jesse a little, but he still refuses to say anything to Hank in particular, and then Saul bursts in to shut down the interview and scold Jesse for throwing his money around recklessly. I have to wonder though... Hank seemed to correctly guess a LOT in this scene about Walt and Jesse's relationship, but I'm not getting how it is that he knows so definitively that Jesse and Heisenberg are partners in the first place. Maybe I'm forgetting some things, but I don't think Jesse had been linked to any of the major events in the past few seasons- I think the writers may have had Hank leap pretty far to some of these conclusions about the depth of their connection. Did he even suspect Jesse for the last couple of seasons of being involved in anything?

Back at the White's house, Walt prevents Walter Jr. from going over to his aunt Marie's house at her request by confessing to him that the cancer's back. It works perfectly, as Jr. insists on staying home with his dad, and then Walt decides to, with Skyler's help, tape a "confession" of sorts, as we'll see in a bit. Walt and Skyler then meet Hank and Marie for one horribly awkward and tension-filled dinner at a Mexican restaurant, where Walt tells them to leave the kids alone, while Marie snipes at them in anger and disbelief over Skyler's attitude. Walt pleads with them not to destroy the family and Skyler claims that the entire ordeal is behind them anyway, but then Marie interjects that Walt should just kill himself to get all this over with. Hank protests at the idea, saying he doesn't deserve to get off that easy. Walt feigns concern over Jr.'s well-being and hands them the confession he's recorded before he and Skyler leave the table.

When Hank and Marie play the tape at their house, it turns out to be a video of Walt "confessing" to being the forced victim of Hank, whom he pins the whole drug empire on, along with every tragic event that he himself is to blame for. Hank realizes it's a threat, and also finds out from the tape that Walt is the one who payed for his medical bills, which Marie admits is true, placing Hank in an even worse position. I'm not sure how plausible Walt's plan is here- as much as Hank doesn't have any evidence of Walt's crimes, there's also zero evidence of this alternate story either, so it just seems to be a threat of your word against mine. But maybe he assumes that will be enough.

Walt meets Jesse and Saul out in the desert, and Jesse tells him that Hank doesn't seem to have any evidence and hasn't even told the DEA yet, and this all seems to prompt Walt to once again reassure Jesse in a fatherly way that he doesn't like to see him hurting like this and maybe he ought to, for his own good, get out of town and start a brand new life with a new identity, using one of Saul's contacts to help him. Jesse doesn't fall for it this time and screams at Walt to drop the "concerned dad" act and just tell him to get out or he'll kill him like he did Mike, breaking down in the process as he tells Walt to just admit he doesn't care about him. Walt doesn't say anything, but pulls Jesse into a hug, as Jesse falls into his arms, sobbing. It's a powerful and effective scene, but it all goes to hell in the final part of the episode, leading to a crisis and a cliffhanger ending.

Jesse is all prepared to vanish, and Saul is setting him up with his contact and piles of cash, even suggesting Florida as a destination, but Jesse is nervous and shaking, and lights up in his office again as Saul reprimands him and sends him out with Huell and a Hello Kitty phone to the pick-up stop. As Jesse stands at the spot, waiting nervously, he searches his pockets for his dope, but all he finds are his cigarettes and realizes Huell has lifted it- and then it finally, suddenly dawns on him that this same cigarette pack was lifted off him before and that's how the infamous ricin was planted there. Jesse bolts from the spot and storms back into Saul's office, punching him and holding everyone at gunpoint, demanding to know if Walt had it lifted and if he did in fact, poison Brock after all. Saul admits it, but protests his own ignorance of the plan, and Jesse takes off again, while Sauls calls to warn Walt. We then see Walt dash to the car wash to fish out the gun he'd hidden underneath the soda machine, but the last scene of the episode is Jesse kicking in the White's front door and pouring gasoline all over the house in a blind rage.

It's quite a downer to end the episode on, but I think that unless Walt does kill Jesse in the next ep (which is certainly possible) he's almost certain to run back to the DEA to turn Walt in, as there would seem to be no way that relationship is salvageable at all at this point. I always wondered if Jesse would find out about Brock and/or Jane, as it seemed to me that was only necessary if they planned to have an irreparable split between the two, something I was never sure was intended in the end. Now though, the previews (which are finally back at the end of the episode- yay!) confirm that Jesse says "Mr. White is the devil," at some point in the next ep, so yeah- I think we can safely say a permanent good-bye to that partnership.

Pointless Prediction #3: hmmm, it's hard to say this week- but given all that's happened, I'm going to go out on a big limb and predict that Walt DOES kill Jesse before the season's over. May seem too extreme, but I wouldn't put anything past him now and with Jesse in this uncontrollable fury, it seems like his only option for self-preservation, which we know is Walt's number one priority.

Anna Gunn Goes to Bat for Skyler White

In an op-ed for the New York Times entitled "I Have a Character Issue," Anna Gunn, who plays Skyler White on AMC's Breaking Bad, expresses her shock at the way the Skyler character has been treated by the fans, and blames much of it on misogyny, saying a lot of it "has to do with their (fans') own perception of women and wives."

She states that being on the show for five seasons has been a wonderful journey for her, but she was bewildered and unprepared for the anger directed at her by the show's more rabid fans, especially on the internet.

She also says that she was always aware that Skyler would probably not be the show's most popular character, reasoning that "Because Walter is the show's protagonist, there is a tendency to empathize with and root for him, despite his moral failings...As the one character who consistently opposes Walter and calls him on his lies, Skyler is in a sense, his antagonist." But the level of hatred and vitriol directed towards the character online ("hate pages" on Facebook, "hate boards" on AMC's website), and eventual threats towards the actress herself convinced her it had more to do with people's complex feelings about TV wives and strong women (citing similar dislike of characters like Carmela Soprano and Betty Draper). 

It's an interesting editorial. I myself have wondered about this very thing, and as a fan of Breaking Bad, I will freely admit to finding Skyler annoying at times in the past (although nothing approaching anything like hatred and threats towards the actress, that's insane), but I too have always figured the sole reason for this reaction was because audiences are pretty much always set up to be on the side of the protagonist, even anti-heroes like Walt, Don Draper, and Tony Soprano. But it goes back further than them, it goes back to films that have glorified gangsters and villains, always putting us on the side of the guy who seems like he can get away with it. I don't think that's anything new really, but my own personal annoyance has been the similarity of the "wife" characters on TV- they're always on the outside, usually in the dark, set up against the protagonist, never allowed to be part of the action themselves. My argument would be for something different: why not let them be part of it? Why can't there be female antiheroes on television, just like men? As a woman myself, I have been wanting to see this for a long, long time.

Take the example of a show like Justified (and there will be spoilers here if you haven't watched every season). Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) is our protagonist (he's not even an antihero, really, just reckless), and he was saddled with the same "wife" problem at the outset of the show. In this case, his ex-wife Winona (Natalie Zea) was the love interest, and she ended up becoming, like so many of these other women, a character that audiences didn't like because of her complaining about Raylan's job, the violence, the safety issues. Now of course she's right, but if Raylan quits his marshal job, obviously the show's over, so that's not going to happen- and eventually they just ran out of things for Winona to do and she had to be written off the show, only to show up occasionally. Now on the other hand, Justified has two protagonists- and one is Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins) whom audiences love just as much as Raylan, if not more. Boyd's true love Ava (Joelle Carter) was brought into the fold completely as a member of his crime circle and made a true partner in his nefarious activities. She wasn't forced, she was ready and willing to do it and happy not to be lied to. Ever since they've gotten together, there have not been any complaints about Ava, she's very well liked, and in fact she's the one woman on the show with any significant role because she gets to be a part of the action.

And why is that so hard to do on these other shows? Ava is the only example I can think of that is allowed to be a part of things (and even then the writers draw the line at times, last season balking at her killing someone, saying they wouldn't want her to be "too bad"), but I dare them to go further with these female characters. These shows are really about entertaining people, and audiences have always loved a good bad guy (probably because we can live vicariously through them), but I'm saying that applies to both men and women.

I'm willing to bet if there was a show about a female protagonist that audiences liked in part because she was somehow getting away with all kinds of criminal or questionable activities, but was saddled with an annoying husband who did nothing but nag her and try to stop her, that audience antipathy would wind up directed towards the husband. Or maybe I'm wrong and the deep seated feelings about strong women that Anna Gunn talks about really are true and widespread (I'm sure they are in some people, I just question that as being the primary reason behind dislike of these characters), but as a woman myself who has often, like many in the audience, found these characters annoying, I can only tell you how I wish they were instead. And I'd like to see more shows test this theory by trying out a female antihero and seeing what the reaction would be.

New SNL Cast Members Recruited

With the mass exodus of cast members this season, SNL needs to find new people to replace the likes of Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, Fred Armisen and Seth Meyers, and it looks like they're taking their pick from the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theatre (which has given them past and present cast members like Amy Poehler, Rob Riggle, Horatio Sanz, Kate McKinnon and Bobby Moynihan) . According to Deadline, the new candidates are John Milhiser, Noel Wells, Kyle Mooney, and Beck Bennet, plus Michael Patrick O'Brien, who's apparently coming out of the writer's room to become a featured player.

The only one I know much of is Beck Bennet, and you'll probably recognize him too, from these AT&T commercials:

It's funny, when I first saw these ads, the guy seemed like a natural for a position as a correspondent on The Daily Show. Maybe this is a future Weekend Update host?