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Pop CultureFebruary 16, 2016

Does this colossal chin reveal the true identity of the next Bachelor? A Spinoff investigation

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Has the slimy old Spinoff found the new Bachelor for 2016? And has he been hiding in plain sight on TV3 the whole time? Alex Casey investigates his online presence to see if the tailored suit fits. 

This morning The Spinoff received word that Jordan Mauger is the next brave tribute stepping into Art Green’s non-existent shoes for the second season of The Bachelor NZ.

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He’s an actor, director and philanthropist, raised in Christchurch and now residing in Auckland. At this stage the only really compelling evidence we can present to you is this chilling chin-comparison from The Bachelor NZ teaser promo, results of which have come out of The Spinoff’s Facial Mapping Laboratory with a 89% match.

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But these are uncertain times, and our Facial Mapping Laboratory has been wrong in the past. We decided to take our findings to MediaWorks, and they weren’t budging. A winky face emoji could mean anything, it’s nowhere near as clear as a strong chin emoji:

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With little else to go on, I thought I would look at what it takes to be a good Bachelor, and if Jordan Mauger ticks all the boxes. Get your biggest cyber-scuba mask on, it’s time for the deepest of internet dives to see if the big ugly ring fits (click here to read all Alex Casey’s coverage for The Bachelor NZ)

The Bachelor must be marketable

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Being comfortable marketing yourself is a huge plus in The Bachelor universe. You’re going to be on every billboard, so you might as well find your “thing” and own it. Art Green had the body of Adonis, and solid self-promotional skills honed from years of pushing paleo powder on the mean streets of Ponsonby. The current US Bachelor Ben Higgins is clearly heir to a very delicious, yet crumbly, biscuit throne. Jordan Mauger also comes with his own enticing sales pitch: a role in TV3’s Westside as the pawn shop owner Rob Nugent.

Imagine the torrent of publicity when season two of the Outrageous Fortune prequel returns later this year, starring New Zealand’s second ever Bachelor?! It’s a classic rat king MediaWorks move to tie their franchise tails together, but it’s never been done as closely and aggressively as this.

I also found in my trawl that Mauger bought his own domain name on January 8 this year, and brought his online brand together across social media platforms with a stylish ‘JM’ letterhead. At the time of publishing, none of them have more than 15 followers. The ‘news’ section of the site is an empty shell of templates. This feels like a guy who is just waiting to become very, very well-known. He’s even got a bloody charity coming soon… what kind of average Joe could promise that?!

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The Bachelor must be well-travelled

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Remember last season when Chrystal boasted about having traveled to over approximately 30,000 countries? There’s no doubt that being a #wanderlusting tourist is a desirable trait on The Bachelor, and this guy has a hell of a travel profile. He’s hooned around from Italy to America, Fiji to Egypt. And, of course, Paris – city of love, city of Art Green holding a baguette. If that’s not standing on the shoulders of giants, I don’t know what is. It’s not like anyone else has ever been to Paris before.

The Bachelor must have knowledge of the franchise

Particularly in the US, The Bachelor franchise exists as it’s own ecosystem, regurgitating ex-contestants, birthing new stars and watching old ones shrivel and die on the beach in Bachelor in Paradise. You’d be mad not to do your research, which is exactly what Mauger had done. His dormant Twitter account only follows 62 people, two of which are ex-Bachelor talent.

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I’ve crunched the numbers, and that’s a follow rate of 3.225% for Bach-related accounts. By comparison, I wrote about 50,000 words about The Bachelor last year, talked about it for over an hour a week over 8 weeks, and I’m only sitting at 0.868% Bach-related follows. The math don’t lie.

The Bachelor must enjoy a signature tipple

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Much like Art perfected the art of the espresso martini, Jordan’s signature drink appears, by all social media accounts, to be a lovely dram of whisky. I’m seeing group dates to the distillery, I’m seeing a quaich being passed around the Mansion, I’m seeing projectile vomiting in the hot tub. You can also find him drinking his part of the angel’s share in New York under the hashtag #peopleofwhisky. I’m also aware of what a creep I am at this stage.

The Bachelor must be handy

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I’m sure The Bachelor crew would appreciate having a guy on set that could “find his light” without the director having to use one of those laser pointers that cats like to play with. It appears that Jordan is to film and television production what Art Green is to bags of very expensive muesli. Not only is he an established actor, starring as BOTH ‘Uptown New Yorker’ and ‘Police Man’ in King Kong, but he’s au fait with being on set and dealing with crew.

He’s an assistant director on Taika Waititi’s upcoming Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and a bloody local hero who tried to build a permanent film studio out of earthquake rubble. His technical skills could certainly come in very handy when Mike Puru gets sick of holding the boom AND the flecky board at the same time.

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Mauger could well be just another red herring like Martin Colenbrander, Logan Marbeck, Logan Dodds, and any other single man in New Zealand called Logan. With The Bachelor NZ returning in March, you won’t have to wait too long to see if this is the man selling his heart in the pawn shop of love.


Want to do some detective work of your own? Click here to watch our potential Bachelor Jordan Mauger in Westside, or below to enjoy some dark Bachelor fan fiction in UnREAL

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Pop CultureFebruary 16, 2016

How Better Call Saul cured prequelitis and stood on its own slippery feet

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The story of how loser lawyer Jimmy McGill became legal superstar Saul Goodman returns to Lightbox tonight for its second season. Andrew Todd looks at how Better Call Saul avoided the curse of the prequel.

Spoilers for Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad follow.

Who is the audience for Better Call Saul? Those who haven’t seen Breaking Bad (though seriously, why on earth not?) aren’t going to be first in line for this, its spin-off. And while many Breaking Bad fans know the brilliance of that show’s comic-relief lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), they may have their doubts he can carry a show of his own.

Then there are those who saw Better Call Saul’s first season: they know that not only can Goodman sustain a show, he can do so in a way that doesn’t even require prior viewing of Breaking Bad. That’s because Better Call Saul is altogether a different monster: funnier, less brutal, and in many ways, more tragic.

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Prequels have a bad reputation – “prequelitis”, some call it – and the derision has been largely deserved. Telling stories about characters who’ve already been introduced chronologically later is inherently fraught. The stakes are lower: we already know the characters survive into the “next” movie or TV show, so it’s hard to drum up much concern for them here in the present. Take Anakin or Obi-Wan in the Star Wars prequels: those films are a relentless, predictable slog towards an outcome we already know.

Worse, prequels are frequently filled with winking references and “clever” foreshadowing that entirely relies on the audience knowing what’s going to happen later on. The Star Wars films are full of these, but they’re not even among the worst offenders. Monsters University is almost entirely comprised of references to the first film, while The Thing (2011) is almost a scene-for-scene remake of The Thing (1982).

So how did the Better Call Saul team avoid these pitfalls? The answer was surprisingly simple. Creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould not only wrote an original and standalone story, but also neatly sidestepped prequelitis by taking a comic support character from one series and employing him as a tragic lead in another. Tonally, it seems like that shouldn’t work, but through some smart narrative distancing and thoughtful writing, by God, they pulled it off.

When we meet the title character of Better Call Saul, he’s miles away from his Saul Goodman days – he’s even got a different name. His former self, Jimmy McGill, is recognisably the same person as Goodman, but in a vastly different context. He has no clients. He works from a crappy little office that’s little more than a storage closet for a nail salon. He’s constantly taking care of his more-successful but cripplingly neurotic brother, who secretly scorns him. He’s haunted by his con-artist past, and equally haunted by his conspicuously empty future. Jimmy is a character with little to lose and a lot to gain. He’s got goals that matter – the stakes are his happiness, career, and maybe even survival.

Crucially, Better Call Saul never really allows its protagonist to win. Even the comic moments (much rarer than anyone expected) and moments of victory are tinged with sadness. There’s a sense that Jimmy will always be limited to small victories, masked by big failures. That’s mirrored in his personality, all bravado and banter concealing deep, deep insecurities.

Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn in season one of Better Call Saul.
Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn in season one of Better Call Saul.

How possible is to reinvent one’s self? The question is woven through Better Call Saul. Jimmy’s former reputation as con artist “Slippin’ Jimmy” constantly comes back to bite him in the ass, and informs his every action, whether he wants to admit it or not. Even when doing the right thing, he does it out of self-interest, and often utilising the same dodgy tactics as when he was fleecing drunks. He’s opportunistic and two-faced, and worst of all, laced with guilt – he knows he’s still Slippin’ Jimmy at heart, and feels awful about it, but continues behaving that way because it’s all he knows. He even goes back to Chicago for a week of swindling with his old partner in crime, and that week of lucre is one of a few victories he gets to enjoy. But it’s an empty victory, and he knows it.

What makes Jimmy such a compelling character – and Better Call Saul such a compelling show – is his desperation. He’s got something to prove. In that respect, and his constant comparing of himself with his would-be peers, he’s a similar to Walter White. But while Walt has the skills, amorality, and sheer force of will to improvise his way out of bad situations, Jimmy can’t seem to make anything stick. He’s forever stuck in a loop of shortchanging people and being shortchanged himself, which makes Better Call Saul a much sadder show than Breaking Bad. Jimmy desperately wants to attain the kind of success his brother enjoys, but he never will. The audience knows he never will, and deep down, it feels like Jimmy knows it too.

The show’s other great triumph is in how it links to Breaking Bad in subtle and unexpected ways. With the exception of Tuco Salamanca’s almost-winking appearance at the start of the series, references to the earlier show are recontextualised and given new meaning. That makes it easier for newcomers to enjoy the show, but it also makes it a fascinating viewing experience for Breaking Bad fans.

What were throwaway gags for Saul Goodman are now tragic points of personal shame for Jimmy McGill. Saul’s law degree from the University of American Samoa is funny in Breaking Bad, but for Jimmy it’s emblematic of not only his drive but his persecution complex. Saul tries to sell Walter White the nail salon Jimmy works out of – showing he never really gets away from his old habits. And Saul’s pinky ring turns out to have belonged to Slippin’ Jimmy’s accomplice and buddy Marco (The Last Man On Earth’s Mel Rodriguez), whose death lends significant pathos to a tiny character detail.

It’s telling that the one episode that doesn’t really fit with the rest – and won’t really work for those who haven’t seen Breaking Bad – is the episode focused on former cop, current parking attendant, and future enforcer Mike Ehrmantraut. It’s not a bad bit of drama, but it doesn’t tell us anything we’re not expecting. It basically amounts to his having shot some fellow officers for being crooked, which isn’t exactly outside the circle of expectation for that character. We’ve always known he’s a cranky badass with a sense of justice, so there’s no image being subverted there.

The first season of Better Call Saul ends with its main character still far from achieving his later status as the Albuquerque underworld’s go-to lawyer. The goal seems less to mechanically explain how Jimmy became Saul than to inform the character choices made in Breaking Bad. Rewatching that show in light of the new one, will we see Saul’s past haunting him still? Will we see the history between Saul and Mike? Ultimately, that’s reading a lot into choices that have been reverse-engineered to start with, but it’s a fun reason to mount another Breaking Bad rewatch.

Better Call Saul is an extraordinary kind of prequel: one that not only entertains us but surprises us, making us re-examine a character we thought we knew. It constantly takes unexpected turns – just when we think our pathetic hero’s on track to becoming the guy we know, life takes yet another shit on him, setting him back for the umpteenth time.

But for all this talk of prequels, you ultimately don’t need to have seen Breaking Bad to enjoy Better Call Saul. All you need know is that it’s a story about a third-rate lawyer who has ambition and a capacity for sketchy tactics. Veterans of this alternate Albuquerque are as much in the dark as newcomers. After 10 hours of storytelling, we still don’t really know where the story is taking its protagonist. Does Jimmy? Does he know what he’s doing? Does he even believe in himself? Do we?

I may not believe in Jimmy McGill, but I believe in Better Call Saul.


Season 2 of Better Call Saul arrives at 8pm tonight and will be delivered express to Lightbox viewers every Tuesday. Click below to start watching now.

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This content, like all our television coverage we do at The Spinoff, is brought to you thanks to the excellent folk at Lightbox. Do us and yourself a favour by clicking here to start a FREE 30 day trial of this truly wonderful service.

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