It’s not just these two familiar faces. Spoilers below for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Whether or not you think Better Call Saul rivals Breaking Bad in the prestige TV canon, it’s undeniable that the shows are more closely entwined than ever. As the differences between Jimmy McGill and Saul Goodman fade away, executive producers Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan have seeded BCS with crossover cameos and consequential appearances from Breaking Bad favorites and bit-parters alike.

The first 15 Godzilla movies, known as the Showa Era (and collected in a swanky Criterion Collection set a few years back), were a natural, if increasingly goofy, evolution of the King of the Monsters. What began as a haunting metaphor for the horrors of the atomic bomb became, thanks to various creative whims and desires of the moviegoing public, a much more kiddie-oriented series. This first stage of one of the longest-running and most prolific franchises in all of cinema came to an end in 1975, but you can’t keep Godzilla down.

The writers’ room wasn’t getting paid enough to define the WGA strike’s terminology, so we took a stab at it. With the Writers Guild on strike, observers are catching up on the industry jargon that comes along with the coverage and negotiations. Most of us know that union film and TV writers are fighting for better compensation, AI regulations, and protections from exploitative new streaming practices like “mini-rooms,” but what are mini-rooms?

The Church of Scientology was named in a lawsuit yesterday in Los Angeles that accuses its leader, David Miscavige, and one of its highest-profile members, actor Danny Masterson, of covering up rape and/or sexual assaults and engaging in years of abuse, human trafficking, and intimidation. Today, both church leaders and the actor are responding to the news. Masterson said the lawsuit is “ridiculous.” In a statement through his lawyers, he added, “I intend to sue her and the others who jumped on the bandwagon for the damage they caused me and my family.

If you’re as online as much as me, you’ve surely heard of the Chapo Trap House podcast. It’s the new big thing with politics/media people who are young/hip, or seek to appear as such. Hosted by the Twitter brocialist trinity of Felix Biederman, Matt Cushman, and Will Menaker, the weekly show has consistently been at at least respectable position on the “news & politics” podcast charts. But more importantly, I like it, and so that it why I want more people to listen to it.

Noé. “I’m so used to bad reviews,” Gaspar Noé told me yesterday, on a rooftop in Cannes. He wasn’t lamenting their existence, though: “I really enjoy them when they’re very mean! I’ve always wanted to make a poster out of my bad reviews and frame it.” To tout his new film Climax, Noé essentially did just that. The one-sheet for the movie features a picture of the 54-year-old director with a demonic smile on his face and ticks off Noé’s other taboo-pushing projects like a harrowing walk down memory lane.

The Mountain Goats’ frontman on keeping the faith, loving the occult, and sad songwriting. Photo: Lalitree Darnielle I’ve been meaning to pick John Darnielle’s brain for a long time — not just because of the literary brilliance on display in the catalog of his flagship act (the Mountain Goats, a band equally liable to break your heart with songs about divorce and abuse as to make you chuckle through an ode to Mexican lucha libre wrestling or the arduous quests of tabletop role-playing games) or his storied internet presence, documented in his 2000s music blog, Last Plane to Jakarta, and, more recently, his lively Twitter account.

Looking back, that magnificent marzipan peacock showstopper said it all. Tonight on PBS, Candice Brown was crowned this season’s winner of The Great British Baking Show — or, as the Brits would say with an eye roll to us Yanks, The Great British Bake Off — breezing through her last three “Royal” challenges that culminated in an epic picnic fit for Queen Elizabeth II herself. (Look at those piggy sausage rolls!

Every September, with the same predictability of the fall equinox that has preceded it for millennia, Twitter users ask that somebody, anybody, wake up that guy from Green Day. Because after writing the song “Wake Me When September Ends,” that guy, Billie Joe Armstrong, is believed to have been suspended in an indefinite slumber. We caught up with Armstrong and asked whether he had anything to say to those Twitter users, and, to our surprise, he had some strong words and suggested a possible track we truly hope he produces.

Or dystopian past, in this case. Black Mirror is going back to the future. The first images from Netflix’s upcoming season of Black Mirror have made their way online (first leaked, then posted by creator Charlie Brooker himself), and they serve up tech dystopia two ways. In one set, from the episode “San Junipero,” we see a glammed-up Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Beyond the Lights) with Mackenzie Davis (The Martian). At the TCAs, Netflix described this episode as ‘80s-centric, and revealed that it would be directed by Owen Harris.