Liars and Saints

  The insightful writer Alan Sepinwall has a new book out on "Better Call Saul"; to get ready, I have been spending time with Sepinwall's essays on "Breaking Bad." Some fun observations: *People recall that Emily Nussbaum hated the "Breaking Bad" finale so much, she suggested that it was a daydream. The real ending, for her, was Walt in his car, in "Granite State," slowly dying in a snowstorm. But I didn't know that Joyce Carol Oates also advanced this theory. *The foreword pays special attention to a broken dinner plate. By the writer's calculations, "Breaking Bad" first achieved greatness when Walter White had to contemplate the possibility of his inaugural killing. White really wanted to avoid the killing. But, as he scraped up the shards of a broken dinner plate, he deduced that his captive had snatched one quarter of the plate; that little piece was waiting to become a weapon. For this reason, Walt then committed his mu...

 My role model for this week is my daughter Susannah, who seems quite tough and determined. She arrived on her own schedule; the world had hoped that she might adjust herself to be headfirst, but she had other plans. She is generally calm, despite the presence of things that resemble IV drips, oxygen masks, heart monitors. She seems to like show tunes and passages from Joyce Carol Oates. It's a treat to sit next to her for a long while, even in an oppressive room. She will turn one week old tomorrow. (Happy Birthday, Susannah!)