Things I Enjoyed Last Week: April 6-12

I've watched an obscene amount of Guy Fieri this week [Food Network]

This is a thing I'm going to try to do every Monday, recapping the week prior by writing about stuff I enjoy but don't necessarily want to write a long thing about. Probably going to talk about around five different things every week. Simple as that.

TV Thing: Better Call Saul - A lot of people are using quarantine to catch up on shows in their backlog. I'm no exception. I used the month of March to finally watch Twin Peaks: The Return (absolutely brilliant, some of the best television I've ever watched), and now I'm finally working through Better Call Saul. I was a huge Breaking Bad fan when it was on, but only watched the first season of this when it came out. I'm not sure why, because I really enjoyed it. Now that I've picked up with season two and am now in the middle of season three, I'm really regretting my choice to throw this aside for a few years. Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy/Saul and Jonathan Banks as Mike might be giving even better performances here than they did in Breaking Bad, and the rest of the cast is great. Michael McKean as Chuck McGill is especially incredible, as is Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler. The part of season three that I'm at has some fantastic tension between Odenkirk and McKean, and I'm both excited and nervous to see where it goes.

Movie Thing: Onward - I've been watching a lot of movies during quarantine, but I ended up watching a lot less last week outside of the 2003 sci-fi action movie The Core and Onward, Pixar's recent animated fantasy that would still be in theaters if not for basically every theater shutting down. It's on Disney+ and worth a watch. It's not my favorite Pixar movie, but the studio's been a lot less consistent for a few years now. This feels more like "Good Pixar" than "Mediocre Pixar," even if it's not quite the achievement as something like Coco. I thought it took a while to get me into it, but around the midway point I started having a really good time, and the theme of brotherhood really hit me. If anything, Pixar can still really hit emotional family themes out of the park.

Video Game Thing: Animal Crossing: New Horizons - There's been enough written about Animal Crossing: New Horizons in the past month, since it's such a wonderful distraction from everything happening right now. After about a week, I was starting to fall off a bit, only really playing to get a few daily tasks done. But I'm back on it strong right now, and I think the reason is the level of connection you can feel to your friends even if you're not voice chatting. I can't visit my friends' actual houses, and they can't visit mine. Being able to visit their islands in this game is the closest I feel to actually hanging out with them. Two of my best friends have their birthdays on April 12; we couldn't have a big party like we normally do. One of the birthday girls'  husbands put together an Animal Crossing party for them that was super fun. We took pictures, showed each other our towns and houses, and played homemade minigames within the game. It was a hoot. The game made me feel like I was really with them, even though all of us were stuck in our own houses.

Another TV Thing: Guy's Grocery Games - My roommate got Sling TV and so I've been really cherishing having Food Network for the first time in years. Usually that's a treat reserved for when I visit my family back in Michigan. Last week there was a day where I watched roughly eight straight hours of Guy's Grocery Games, the best show on television.

Music Thing: John Prine - John Prine - The influential and cherished singer-songwriter John Prine died last week after complications with COVID-19. Prine's music was a special brand of Midwestern warmth, humor and sadness. Those emotions often all hit within the same lines. He never reached the heights of popularity as a Bob Dylan or a Bruce Springsteen, but his music was just as phenomenal. His peers knew that. We'll never have another John Prine. Here's "Spanish Pipedream."