The millions who watched El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie when it premiered on Netflix on Oct. 11 had a strange experience; they learned of Robert Forster’s death just minutes after seeing the actor repeat his Breaking Bad role as a man who makes people disappear.

Forster’s Ed Galbraith runs a vacuum cleaner store in Albuquerque. It’s an oversized space staged to make this medium-statured man look smaller and lonelier. He’s chatting with a little old lady customer who doesn’t want to ditch her loyal, broken vacuum cleaner. “Why can’t they build things that last anymore?” she complains. He replies, “Ah, you’re singing my song.”

His next customer is Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), a scar-faced fugitive with a huge sack full of money. The young desperado tries to force the system of references and secret passwords Ed uses as a firewall between his front and his real work: giving aliases and new lives to criminals on the run. Even in the face of stacks of cash, Ed stands his ground, to teach the kid a lesson.

This actor was built to last. Forster is best known for a similar character: the rueful, South L.A. bail bondsman Max Cherry in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. Forster acted in good movies as well as wretched ones, and took corporate pep-talk gigs for hire when job offers dwindled. With most actors, you can tell whose silhouette they fill—who would have acted their kind of roles 50 years previously. Jesse Plemons, who plays the calf-faced psycho Todd in El Camino, is superb in a part that Rod Steiger would have nailed in 1964. There’s no clear parallel to Forster’s particular ability to embody a human problem: the matter of integrity, what it costs and what its worth.

Breaking Bad, to which El Camino is a sequel, was a story about for-profit medicine. As they say, the Canadian version would have been one episode long. But it was also a critique of the way some of our tunnel-visioned dads worked, as perfectionists who never considered the end results. At the end of this trail, meth-baron Walter White (Bryan Cranston) beamed with fatherly pride at the beautiful, stainless steel machinery he used to pump out death by the bindle-full.

His star pupil, Jesse, was last seen in the Breaking Bad finale in September 2013, roaring with ecstasy at his freedom. That’s where we begin. His first stop is the welcoming home of beloved knuckleheads Badger (Matt Jones) and Skinny Pete (Charles Baker)—note the goofs squandered their crime earnings on a pair of full-size replica USS Enterprise chairs. Next stop is to toss the apartment of the newly dead Todd (Plemons) to try to find the money he stashed.

Jesse Pinkman was a slave laborer for Todd and other Aryan thugs, tortured and kept in an open pit. Like most PTSD cases, Jesse is unable to stay in the present; and is riddled with flashbacks about one particularly bad weekend in captivity.

El Camino is slightly unfixed in time. The Wild West peeks out of the Sunbelt sprawl. This movie that has Jesse crunching burner phones in his hands also has him ripping out some Yellow Pages to help find his way. Who does that now? This is tense and authentically tough, but not on its own wavelength, like David Lynch’s brilliant sidebar to Twin Peaks, Fire Walk With Me.

El Camino doesn’t stand alone. However, it does reunite those two fascinating figures, mentor and student. In a flashback, at a coffee shop, White once again fails to note the intelligence beneath Jesse Pinkman’s gangsta affectations—a personal style that hadn’t yet faced a margin call, as it does here.

‘El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie’ is streaming on Netflix now.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Singapore has one of the world’s lowest fertility rates. A few years ago, this state of affairs prompted the government to urge Singaporeans to have sex on an annual holiday known as National Day. A new rap song was released in the hope of pumping up everyone’s libidos and instigating a baby boom. It included the lyrics, “Let’s make fireworks ignite / Let’s make Singapore’s birth rate spike.” I have a different reason for encouraging you to seek abundant, high-quality sex, Aries. According to my analysis, tender orgasmic experiences will profoundly enhance your emotional intelligence in the coming weeks—and make you an excellent decision-maker just in time for your big decisions. (P.S. You don’t necessarily need a partner.)

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In the 1530s, explorer Jacques Cartier led expeditions from France to the New World. As Europeans often did back then, he and his team were rude and brutish to the indigenous folks who lived there, stealing their land, kidnapping some of them and slaughtering herds of great auks in a bird sanctuary. Yet there was one winter when Cartier’s marauders got crucial help from their victims, who gave them vitamin C-rich pine needle tea that cured their scurvy. I suspect you Tauruses will embark on quests and journeys in the coming months, and I’m hoping your behavior will be different from Cartier’s. When you arrive in unfamiliar places, be humble, curious and respectful. Be hesitant to impose your concepts of what’s true and be eager to learn from the locals. If you do, you’re likely to get rich teachings and benefits equivalent to the pine needle tea.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Many software engineers have enjoyed The Pragmatic Programmer, a book that helps them develop and refine their code. One popular technique the book offers is “rubber duck deprogramming.” Programmers place a toy rubber duck in front of them, and describe to it the problems they’re having. As they explain each line of code to their very good listener, they may discover what’s amiss. I recommend a similar approach to you as you embark on metaphorically debugging your own program, Gemini. If a rubber duck isn’t available, call on your favorite statue or stuffed animal, or even a photo of a catalytic teacher or relative or spirit.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Read the following passage from Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. “Gaston was not only a fierce lover, with endless wisdom and imagination, but he was also, perhaps, the first man in the history of the species who had made an emergency landing and had come close to killing himself and his sweetheart simply to make love in a field of violets.” I admire the romantic artistry of Gaston’s dramatic gesture. I applaud his imaginative desire to express his love in a carefully chosen sanctuary filled with beauty. I praise his intense devotion to playful extravagance. But I don’t recommend you do anything quite so extreme in behalf of love during the coming weeks. Being 20 percent as extreme might be just right, though.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In his song “Diplomatic Immunity,” rapper Drake disparages tranquility and harmony. “I listen to heavy metal for meditation, no silence,” he brags. “My body isn’t much of a sacred temple, with vodka and wine, and sleep at the opposite times,” he declares. Is there a method in his madness? It’s revealed in these lyrics: “All that peace and that unity: all that weak sh– will ruin me.” In the coming weeks, Leo, I urge you to practice the exact opposite of Drake’s approach. It’s time to treat yourself to an intense and extended phase of self-care.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): It’s a favorable time to refresh your relationships with your basic sources and to make connections with new basic sources. To spur your creative thought on these matters, I offer the following questions to meditate on. 1. If you weren’t living where you do now, what other place might you like to call home? 2. If you didn’t have the name you actually go by, what other name would you choose? 3. If you had an urge to expand the circle of allies that supports and stimulates you, whom would you seek out? 4. If you wanted to add new foods and herbs that would nurture your physical health and new experiences that would nurture your mental health, what would they be?

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Mushrooms have spores, not seeds. They’re tiny. If you could stack 2,500 of them, they’d be an inch high. On the other hand, they are numerous. A ripe mushroom may release up to 16 million spores. And each spore is so light-weight, the wind can pick it up and fling it long distances. I’ll encourage you to express your power and influence like a mushroom in the coming days: subtle and airy but abundant; light and fine, but relentless and bountiful.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “Sometimes the easiest way to get something done is to be a little naive about it,” writes computer engineer Bill Joy. I invite you to consider the value of that perspective, Scorpio—even though you’re the least likely sign in all the zodiac to do so. Being naive just doesn’t come naturally to you; you often know more than everyone else around you. Maybe you’ll be more receptive to my suggestion if I reframe the task. Are you familiar with the Zen Buddhist concept of “beginner’s mind”? You wipe away your assumptions and see everything as if it were the first time you were in its presence.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Is it always a bad thing to be lost? To wander in the unknown without a map? I’d like to propose a good version of being lost. It requires you to be willing to give up your certainties, to relinquish your grip on the comforting dogmas that have structured your world—but to do so gladly, with a spirit of cheerful expectancy and curiosity. It doesn’t require you to be a macho hero who feels no fear or confusion. Rather, you have faith that life will provide blessings that weren’t possible until you got lost.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): “Worrying is the most natural and spontaneous of all human functions,” wrote science educator Lewis Thomas. “Let’s acknowledge this, perhaps even learn to do it better.” I agree with him! And I think it’s an ideal time for you to learn how to worry more effectively, more potently, and with greater artistry. What might that look like? First, you wouldn’t feel shame or guilt about worrying. You wouldn’t regard it as a failing. Rather, you would raise your worrying to a higher power. You’d wield it as a savvy tool to discern which situations truly need your concerned energy and which don’t.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “Some wounds go so deep that you don’t even feel them until months, maybe years, later,” wrote Aquarian author Julius Lester. Pay attention to that thought, Aquarius. The bad news is that you are just now beginning to feel a wound that was inflicted some time ago. But that’s also the good news, because it means the wound will no longer be hidden and unknowable. And because you’ll be fully aware of it, you’ll be empowered to launch the healing process. I suggest you follow your early intuitions about how best to proceed with the cure.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): If you’ve been having dreams or fantasies that the roof is sinking or the walls are closing in, you should interpret it as a sign that you should consider moving into a more spacious situation. If you have been trapped within the narrow confines of limited possibilities, it’s time to break free and flee to a wide open frontier. In general, Pisces, I urge you to insist on more expansiveness in everything you do, even if that requires you to demolish cute little mental blocks that have tricked you into thinking small.

Q: I’m a 30-something gay guy. When I moved to a new city five years ago, I knew nobody except two female co-workers, who became my first friends. I have since met people who are more my style. I no longer work with these ladies, and I’m not interested in hanging out with them anymore. When they call to get together, I keep saying I’m busy, but they’re not getting the picture. How do I break up with them without being mean?—Trapped

A: When you break up with a romantic partner, there are comforting cliches you can use, like “It’s not you; it’s me,” “You deserve better,” and “We can still be friends.” When you break up with a friend, where do you go with that?

It helps to understand the underpinnings of friendship. We like to think of ourselves as rational and discerning people and we believe this shapes our choice of friends. In fact, personality psychologist Mitja Back and his colleagues find that a major driver of whom we’re friends with is “mere proximity.” Location, location, location! Really special, huh?

Still, maybe you feel guilty about exiling these ladies from your life, because you used them when you knew nobody. However, they hung out with you willingly. It’s not like you were some odious character they were forced to go to brunch with at gunpoint.

The kindest approach is to keep distancing yourself and hope they get the message or just give up on trying to get together. You do say that the “take the hint!” approach hasn’t been working. But are their calls and texts so bothersome that it’s worth it to go all rip-the-Band-Aid-off? If you decide it is, you could say, “You guys have been so kind to me, and I’ve enjoyed our times together, but I’ve gone through some personal changes, and I don’t think we’re such a great match anymore.”

Be prepared: They may press you to tell them more. For maximum kindness, stick to this sort of vague statement. Don’t go all truthful on them: They were human placeholders, the sidewalk furniture of friends, like curbside chairs you dragged home so you wouldn’t have to ask your dates, “Hey, wanna stand in my living room and watch Netflix?”

Q: I seem to keep getting together with the same, messed-up guy over and over again. Basically, the men I’m attracted to all have the same issues (emotionally unavailable, fear of commitment, etc.). Each time, I tell myself I can make things different. How do I stop doing this?—Broken Picker

A: Your problem isn’t being attracted to guys who turn out to be messed up. It’s going forward with them after you discover that. It’s like seeing the sign “Shark-Infested Waters” and then saying to yourself, “They probably say that so the lifeguards don’t have so much work.”

Research by psychologist Roy Baumeister on self-regulation (self-control) finds that it has four components: standards, motivation to meet those standards, self-monitoring to make sure you’re doing that, and the will to control urges to do what you know you shouldn’t be doing.

You probably believe you have standards, but chances are you haven’t thought them out to the point that you can tick off what they are. Not having a solid grasp on them means you can’t monitor whether you’re following them and take action if you aren’t. Now’s the time to change that. Write down a list of your standards: your must-haves for a guy you’re with, the qualities you can’t do without.

When you’re interested in a guy, ask questions that draw out the sort of man he is and also look at his behavior. If he falls short of your standards, make yourself move on. Yes, make yourself. This will be hardest the first time, and if you really like a particular guy. Eventually, it’ll become easier to weed out the guys with issues, though you may need to work on your own before you’re comfortable with guys who’d make you happy. Should you find yourself jonesing for a project, opt for something safe, like gluing elbow macaroni all over your car, as opposed to being like the storm-chaser dude who’s all surprised when he gets blown into the next state and impaled by rebar.