So we get a montage scene of new customers, who have come for free phones and get a one-on-one pitch, in a tent.

‘The Underground Railroad’: Barry Jenkins’s transfixing adaptation of the Colson Whitehead novel is fabulistic yet grittily real.īut Jimmy seems like a man who has finally figured out his purpose in life, and he has a point when he says that if he walks the legit, corporate path he’ll always live in the shadow of his deceased and far more accomplished older brother.

‘Succession’: In the cutthroat HBO drama about a family of media billionaires, being rich is nothing like it used to be.

‘Dickinson’: The Apple TV+ series is a literary superheroine’s origin story that’s dead serious about its subject yet unserious about itself.

‘Inside’: Written and shot in a single room, Bo Burnham’s comedy special, streaming on Netflix, turns the spotlight on internet life mid-pandemic.

Here are some of the highlights selected by The Times’s TV critics: Television this year offered ingenuity, humor, defiance and hope. Here’s hoping we don’t need to wait an entire season to learn what happens next. Then he decides to save his squirreled-away diamonds and “fix it” himself. Initially, Jimmy/Saul/Gene wants to buy yet another identity, his fourth. We leave this predicament after Saul calls the Disappearer, played with his understated gravity by the great Robert Forster, who has since passed away. Takovic a lift in last season’s opener, and this time it’s clear that the guy isn’t just trying to drum up fares.Įither Jeff is looking for a bounty or to shake down Saul - probably the latter. It’s the same Jeff, played by Don Harvey, who gave Mr. Takovic wants to keep it, despite the somewhat terrifying sense that a menacing cabby named Jeff has discovered Jimmy’s previous iteration as Albuquerque’s own Saul Goodman. As miserable as his new life and identity appear, Mr. Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) is a Cinnabon manager in Omaha named Gene Takovic. We commence, as ever, in the future and in black and white. Let’s just say it: That was the best season opener to date. But judging from this first episode, the wait has been worth it. It’s been a long time since we gathered here to unpack the rising and falling fortunes of our favorite con man turned corporate lawyer turned mobile phone dealer turned plaintiffs’ attorney.

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