The Disappearing Man and Us
I watched El Camino yesterday afternoon, avoiding the articles and commentary until I saw for myself. I was a Breaking Bad fan from the beginning; I think there was a buzz about it back then, or else it was just a whim at the beginning, and then I had a monkey on my back for the duration. It was a great show.
I don’t have much of a desire to rewatch, interestingly. I can watch episodes of half a dozen TV shows from the past at a drop of a hat—give me a sandwich and a free 30 minutes, and I’ll always be happy to catch a little of The Office or Parks & Recreation or The West Wing. Not BB, though.
El Camino, the postlude or epilogue or whatever it is, was very good, although novelty was part of the appeal. We’ve seen any number of reunion specials and follow-up shows, but this felt unique. Breaking Bad had a sad but satisfactory ending six years ago, but most stories have loose ends because life does. We live, we die, someone tells our story.
Robert Forster in “El Camino”
This was an extra episode, then; it will easily be tacked onto the franchise, and if the actual follow-up series (Better Call Saul, a prequel) ever comes back on and wraps up the first part, it’ll be quite the story. If you watch, of course. Can’t see everything.
Robert Forster was a key actor in El Camino, the only answer for our protagonist, a mysterious figure whose background is never explored or illuminated. He was crucial to the final episodes of BB, and his reappearance was just as crucial.
So it was an oddity and a sad surprise to find out that he died yesterday, apparently after a long tussle with brain cancer. His story is told, at least on IMDb. I remember him as the star of Banyon, a one-off detective series in the early 1970s that for some reason I watched (there were a bunch of these back then, Sam Spadesque gumshoe types, with tough guys like William Conrad and David Janssen).
There were other things, too, roles he played over the years that I suspect I remember, even though his main claim to fame in recent years have been things I’ve avoided (Jackie Brown, because of a weird Tarantino revulsion on my part, and Twin Peaks, which I sort of watched but never really got attached to). Apparently he was also a super-smart guy with a high IQ (and a psychology degree). The things you learn.
So RIP, Robert Forster. I liked what I saw.
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I’m trying to finish a book this weekend, after two months of wading through the history of humanity. This was spontaneous, a book I spotted at an Airbnb in Scotland, scratching an itch I had to catch up on the history I didn’t know. In this case, world history.
It helped that I’ve gone through a geography phase in the past couple of years, just quizzing myself periodically and looking at lots of maps, until continents and countries became seared into my brain. It helps tremendously when trying to picture the steppes of Central Asia and the Mongols, etc.
It also comes in handy when visualizing the nations as their borders ebb and flow, waxing and waning as armies rise and territory is exchanged, as names like Bohemia and Prussia appear and then vanish, as empires as diverse as Portugal and Sweden (!) ascend and then climb back down. It’s been fascinating, and it feels organic and just right for me, at this moment.
But jeez Louise. It’s a lot of material, it can’t be easily skimmed, and I can’t read it for more than a couple of hours before I get sleepy. I keep renewing it from the library, and I’m only 60% through, which brings me to the beginnings of the United States. I can’t really stop now, but there are other books waiting. Maybe this weekend I’ll be able to wrap it up.
This is what history is for, or at least what it means to me. I always find insight with perspective, and patterns and anomalies become less fuzzy. Humans have been around a long time; recorded history covers only 5% of that time, but that’s still a bunch of centuries to discover.
None of this seems pertinent, at least so far, to our current crisis, and it’s a crisis. It’s difficult for me to find any words to write, as the whole situation seems unlikely and unreal, even. After decades of bizarre conspiracy theories about our leaders, from the Clintons as crime bosses who murder their friends to George W. Bush arranging the Sept. 11 attacks to Obama’s Kenyan birth and secret Muslim whatever, it’s just hard to accept that this administration is essentially staffed by mobsters and charlatans.
I mean, it seems crazy. I’m always thinking that I’ve got the story wrong, that my biases are creeping into the conversation. How can people be this dishonest, and dumb to boot? And how can other people support this?
I see a lot of social media commentary by people who seem eager to place the blame on their friends and family who voted for Trump, which strikes me as misplaced if pretty human. Partisan politics is about picking your team and wanting them to prevail, and enlightened thinking is too much work for most of us. These are the good guys, these are the bad ones, end of story.
I don’t see much benefit in pointing fingers at low-information voters, then. And I understand how they’ll just double down on ignorance, pretend facts are fake, limit their information to propaganda spoon-fed to them by corporate bosses with agendas that have nothing to do with being a good citizen. Spitting into the wind will have more of an impact, I think.
I just wonder what these people think, if they spend any time thinking, when they’re alone and the TV or radio is off. I wonder if this sketch below is relatable. I think maybe.
