Better Call Saul

I thought the first episode was pretty good. I'm going to give it eight out of ten

I'm curious what the dramatic arc of the show is going to be, considering that Walt fucked up a relatively stable criminal ecosystem. Tuco and Gus and Saul were all pretty established and safe in their power. I like the idea of the show as a sort of perverted Matlock, where Saul defends a series of mostly guilty people, but I'm not sure if that's what we're going to get.

I loved the comedy of it all, the way things were filmed fit that style perfectly. But if it becomes more dramatic, I'm not sure I will care.

cold open cinnabon was the best part

if this were actually good, what a coup . . .

it's a little goofy that he's doing exactly what he speculated he might be doing in his new life

I don't see this amounting to a hell of a lot but I'll prob enjoy it for a season or so.

but better call saul's a prequel, right? so that means in the last bit of breaking bad he was referring back to something that he used to do.

it's not exclusively a prequel. The first thing we see is chronologically after BB

xp haha no, that would be even sillier! "for my expensive new identity I'm just gonna go back to my old job"

actually no it would make more sense, you're right. But it's a flash forward in BCS

it's a little goofy that he's doing /exactly/ what he speculated he might be doing in his new life

I like the idea of him being 100% committed to a plan he made in haste. It just fits his character so well!

I still haven't had a chance to watch yet. Tonight!

Nah, it's silly. He probably couldn't choose, it's just tossed off line he throws off. Too much fan service for my taste. The ending with Tuco annoyed me as well. But inbetween, there was loads of good stuff.

I just took it as a joke/fan service, cause why not? I mean within minutes of starting his first jape he's ended up at __________ (removed for karl)

xp nevermind haha

"it's a little goofy that he's doing exactly what he speculated he might be doing in his new life"

I kinda took it was a business and ID that Saul had created in case anything got to hot, which it did. If I remember right, the scene when Saul tells Walter about Omaha and the Cinnabon is with "the cleaner" held up in that basement waiting to move on to next step.

I didn't even recognize tuco until I saw it mentioned somewhere else. there are bound to be things that this that will happen and I don't see why they shouldn't.

Anyone notice the little hat tip to the Wire in the courtroom scene? not sure if it was intentional or not.

Two associates of Jimmy coincidentally bumping into Tuco's mother (?) is not something that was 'bound' to happen, at least not on their very first day working together. It's an extremely big contrivance, just as it's a contrivance that Saul could have guessed/known/planned exactly what he would be able to do after the cleaner took over.

But so what, right? Well, for me, it takes the mystery out of the characters. The world of Breaking Bad was filled with mystery and danger at the beginning, but they really really killed that over the years. When Krazy-8 was killed, even crazyer Tuco took his place. When Tuco was killed, those weird cousins were sent to avenge him. And this mysterious guy from Chile who sold chicken seemed also involved somehow. But then the entirety of the cartel was nice enough to gather around and be poisoned by a single bottle of tequila, it turned out Gus was mainly motivated by the murder of his friend years ago, and the shadowy involvement of multinational companies in the drugdistribution? Turned out it was a rogue housewife, but nevermind, she had a bad cup of tea as well.

The whole world became so small and neat over the years, that it damaged my interest in it. And now you can't skate on the streets of Albuquerque without running into the Salamanca-family? How small is this city?

eh, i dunno, i don't see it as a problem thus far. so long as it doesn't turn into a 'league of extraordinary gentlemen'-style thing where all they do is give familiar characters walk-on parts. if this is a prequel, i expect to find out how Jimmy becomes Saul, how he meets Mike and why he decides to become a criminal lawyer. Tuco was one of my favourite characters in BB and it' shame he only lasted a handful of episodes, so bringing him back into the frame is a great idea in my book.

tuco's gun is comically large

that's what she... oh never mind

Lydia wasn't a "rogue housewife"

yeah, this was pretty good. i really liked that there wasn't much expository dialogue - the characters' interactions were enough to fill in the blanks.

i wonder if the black and white photography in the omaha sequence was a deliberate homage to / joke about alexander payne's nebraska?

were the flash forwarded sequences in BB b/w?

Did 'Chuck' ever get mentioned in BB? I take it he's Jimmy's brother? Or uncle?

So glad this isn't just a knockabout sitcom about a hapless lawyer though. I was always a Saul agnostic when he was in BB as he stood right on the edge between comic foil and slapstick sitcom buffoon. Plus it took me ages to stop thinking of him as Gob in Arrested Development, but as a lawyer instead of a magician. I like how Jimmy cuts a bittersweet, really quite dualised and tragic figure. One minute he's walking around in his suit, acting as though he owns the place; next he's returning home to an absolute hovel after having been talked down to and kicked in the nuts by life... It continues the double-act of WW/Heisenberg in that respect.

i might be out on this already, the tone just feels off to me; I bet there will be some inspired stuff but not sure I want to invest ~14 hrs or w/e

There will be loads of bb characters in this. Of course as Saul goodman he'll have good reason to come up against every scumbag in Albuquerque, and cops too

I mean, this is a breaking bad spinoff about Walter White's wacky lawyer; its very existence is fan service, however much prestigey ~darkness~ they inject into it.

I'm down cause I thought odenkirk was brilliant in bb

i loved the cold open so much

I enjoyed this a fair bit, just because Saul is a great character and it's good to spend more time with him. Wish the Tuco reveal hadn't come so early, because it's a fairly short line from him to Gus Fring, and really if this show is going to succeed on its own terms it needs to take time to do a Frasier and build its own universe of characters. The scenes with Chuck suggested that's in the plan, even if he felt miscast - I struggled to see him and Saul as actually related.

It's also showing us at least two Walter White-style descents into the underworld, and I love seeing people way way over their heads.

Like I think a constant parade of "hey look, it's Badger!" gratuitous fanwank would be the worst approach they could take and I more or less trust Gilligan not to take that road.

No they'll be careful not to make it constant I think

yeah i think i trust this team enough now not to make it shit

When you look at Odenkirk's career between his inspired turn as Stevie Grant in The Larry Sanders Show and his BB turn as Saul it is quite depressing, a lost decade and a half of mediocre writing credits and various atrocious comedy-fail shite. I think this being his stand alone big shot and Gilligan's nerviness at following up such a big hit might be something to do with the rocky start this series has made. I hope it gets better cos I always liked Odenkirk, but so far it all feels a bit stilted and predictable.

nah...

don't think i'd heard of odenkirk before BB though.

i think the broken windshield was a nice level of fan service callback

haha, what's that?

i.e. that walt's windshield was constantly broken and now we've had another two broken windshields already, the breaking bad universe is much like our universe but with way more broken windshields

xposts

Odenkirk did Mr Show between Sanders and Breaking Bad! And he was in Nebraska after BB, which was nominated for a Palme D'Or and a half-dozen Oscars. He will be fine if this tanks.

and fargo

Comedy-fail dross and an appearance in a Payneful, overrated movie might pay the bills but fronting your own series is a different matter and Fargo is also post BB.

Yeah, Odenkirk hasn't had the best luck making movies of his own but he's otherwise had a pretty solid (if generally low-key) career and a vast comedic community that rightfully respects the shit out of him. Plus he brought Tim & Eric into our hearts and homes. He's gonna do just fine.

Mr. Show = 'comedy-fail dross'. Okay.

ok whatever your assessment of his career or talents are - he understands the risks of Better Call Saul, he'll be fine if it doesn't work out, and it's not "his stand alone big shot".

The NYT interview seems totally level-headed:

“I was worried about what it would do to my family and worried about whether I would end up being the guy who” — um, screwed up — “the legacy of ‘Breaking Bad.’ ”

“And then I talked to my daughter, who is 13 and incredibly mature, she said, ‘It’s a big opportunity, we will be fine, and if it’s bad, really, how bad could it be?’ ”

“And I said well, it won’t be bad. It’s written by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould; the worst thing is it’s a really interesting misfire. If that’s the worst thing it is, I’d be more than happy to be part of that.”

There's a scene in Ep 1 at a security checkpoint where the guard waves the metal detector near a guy's privates and it goes off...the fact that McKean is in the cast made me think this was a homage to Spinal Tap

i loved the cold open so much

― gr8080, Tuesday, 10 February 2015 13:35 (2 hours ago) Permalink

Me too!

AAAAAAAAAAAA

That was some nasty comedy, it's rare I genuinely lol while cowering

The second half was quite okay.

Yeah, now it does! The olde folie a deux, with a last spree and contest, to see who can do the most shocking confession and spin into the sun---will they both be doing interviews, books, as the culmination of this whole true crime/news media gold rush? Also, yes, a way to live with themselves, but there's gotta be danger in there too, as always: Kim might get sued for everything she has and all future earnings (at least, I believe some lawyer in there, probably Jimmy, put it that way, getting all turned on at the extremity of her amends), and he, though maybe the Saul of jailhouse lawyers, with 2 cartons of cigs as fee, could still get shanked by somebody hired from outside, a survivor of old, or just struck down by a rando: there's all kinds of ways for a prisoner to die, and sometimes it's even a celebrity, like Jeffrey Daumer.

Speaking of Saul's fees, he never was a true ambulance-chaser, with the big personal injury jackpots, right? Sandpiper was a long, long time in coming, and meanwhile, he's getting, what maybe an average of 200 bucks from how many hundreds of clients, while into conspicuous consumption---and nobody bothered to look at his above-ground practice as money-laundering, until the connection with the cartel was emerging---? I believe it, but all the more reason, along with headline fever, for the prosecution not to agree to seven years; oh well.

ambulance-chasers are lawyers who sue people, Saul was pretty much a defense attorney, defending lowlife criminals and such.

the irony of course is his biggest success as a lawyer was a major class-action lawsuit that two different law firms had to oversee, and it was completely legit and benefitted a bunch of elderly folks who had been fucked out of their money.

granted, he didn't do it for the right reasons, but still funny.

God that last episode was some of the most dire fan service and inability to figure out how to end a series since GOT.

Their legal consultant must have had the day off. They don't allow the victim's wife in for plea deal negotiations. Marie's entire scene was bad.

Lol, at Kim getting her law license back. Sure, sure.

Loved the series other than the finale and that Jesse-Kim scene.

ambulance-chasers are lawyers who sue people, Saul was pretty much a defense attorney, defending lowlife criminals and such.

There is a lot of overlap between these two kinds of lawyers.

she didn't get her law license back. the bar car had no expiration date on it so she lied and told the prison that she was visiting as his lawyer and showed that card as proof. just like when you show a student ID with no expiration date when you graduated 8 years ago.

(obv I don't know how realistic that is but that's how she explained it)

That's right. Works at the museum. Suckers...

xp that makes more sense, lol.

I mean, Saul also thought he was a fixer of sorts. They never showed him buying out the veterinarian’s little black book but it was strongly implied, right? Every defense case was like a little con, like getting a guy that looked a little like Walt gut didn’t mind some time up state to do the bid

Is Seehorn at an age where it has become difficult for female actors to get roles for way too long. Unless she is relegated to a backing role like someone's mother or otherwise not fully detailed. I hope that is a thing of the past but it is something I think has caused a lot of pain in the past.

i just binged this whole second half of final season in two days

one thing i will say on the finale is the black & white cinematography was such an amazing device for Jimmy & Kim’s scenes, giving them that doomed romance of something like A Place In The Sun

Their final interactions together were like mini homages to all the old movies they watched together, knowing they’re stuck with the life they’ve made but wishing it could be more. both spent so much of their lived being stubborn hardasses to the world and cutting off their nose to spite their face but their secret weakness is that they are both mushed-out romantics & the only ones who know it is each other.

thst scene against the prison wall sharing a cigarette with the shadows across them was EVERYTHING

oh and jimmy giving chuck the hg wells time machine book i nearly cried <3

https://www.agendasalta.com.ar/public/images/noticias/4741-better-call-saul-llego-a-su-final-consagracion-total-para-una-serie-que-nacio-a-la-sombra-de-breaking-bad.jpeg

i did not think about the TCM connection, ty VG!

Dow I have heard for severakl years that there is a habit in casting female actors that makes it difficult to get a lead role over a certain age. Which I think has tended to be late 30s when one is deemed too old to be seen as a romantic lead and therefore roles dry up until one can be cast as mother or older friend or friend of mother. Would appear that Rhea went against that by being cast back in 2014/5 since she was already in that age range. Looking back at her career as shown on IMDB it looks like she has mainly played supporting roles. Now that she has shown her ability so clearly I am hoping that that casting habit which I have heard several complaints about is something that is diminishing, but is just another aspect of gender imbalance in popular culture which is finding a way to perpetuate.
I hoped that seeing Rhea Seehorn had got a lead role in a comedy I hadn't heard of before meant she did already have good things ahead. I then looked up the show and it's a series of shorts on AMC that are all up on youtube too. It may be interesting but seems to be a bit mediocre from the couple of episodes I watched. Wondered if anybody else had even heard of it Cooper's Bar.
Am hoping that we are going to see Seehorn since she does seem to be a good actor (I was wondering if the word actress was still in widespread use since it is so firmly engendered and thereby valorised, like)

she'd be good in any number of roles, based on her range in this show. I hope she gets a career like Toni Collette's

who was born the same year, incidentally

I would be staggered if she's not getting lots of juicy job offers at the moment

Fuck the Emmys :(

Saw a tweet that said the show is now 0 for 46 in Emmy noms.

I mean, I like Succession too, but good lord. Nothing for this show? It is especially a crime that Rhea Seehorn still doesn't have one for this show.

I saw a tweet about this and assumed it was an ironic joke, since I assumed BCS would have won a bunch of Emmys.

What would explain that? Breaking Bad won 16/58--there's no inherent bias.

I'd be upset about this but I didn't see anything that actually won an Emmy so

Rhea Seehorn not winning anything is criminal though

bcs gets one more go ‘round for the last batch of episodes this summer fwiw

Julie Garner was probably the best thing in Ozark but this is the third time she's won for playing Ruth ffs xp

Although some people are saying apparently the second half of the final season is eligible next year so there may be one last chance

Good to know, I was wondering about the eligibility since the last episodes just aired. Garner was great and deserved an Emmy, but I don't know about three for the same role and def not at the expense of zero for Seehorn.

Other than constantly upping her "fucks"-per-minute, I don't know that Garner ever deepened that character as she went along.

i can pai, i can pai

Vince Gilligan’s Next Series Starring Rhea Seehorn Lands At Apple TV+ With Two-Season Order:

The untitled project, described as a blended, grounded genre drama, has received a two-season straight-to-series order from the streamer...Gilligan will serve as showrunner and executive produce through his High Bridge Productions.

"blended, grounded": cuhwawfee tawwwk!

srsly, whut's 'at mean??

Sounds like good coffee to me.

From back in August:

The series is described as a blended, grounded and thought-provoking genre drama and has been compared to ‘The Twilight Zone’.

Seehorn has come back from LA to run the desert roadside diner owned by her suddenly-blinded father. Travelers and locals stop by to tell tales, do other things. Is my hoped-for premise.

And yours?

So down for whatever

something like Maniac but also not too much like Maniac

Puppets

she teams up with the Swedish chef to sell meth and it's called Breaking Bork

hell yeah, give her a damn show

the black & white cinematography was such an amazing device for Jimmy & Kim’s scenes, giving them that doomed romance of something like A Place In The Sun

Their final interactions together were like mini homages to all the old movies they watched together, knowing they’re stuck with the life they’ve made but wishing it could be more.

oh and jimmy giving chuck the hg wells time machine book i nearly cried <3

What is it with airports? I had the same in the airport lounge leaving to Iran.

Miss this tv show, wish it would go on forever

yeah I've tried a few other shows since but nothing is on the same level

plus it was really nice to have Bob Odenkirk on TV every week. regardless of what you thought of anything else

There was a link to the Critics Choice Awards (whatever they are) on another thread: https://variety.com/2023/awards/news/critics-choice-awards-2023-winners-list-1235488828/. Weird: Better Call Saul won Best Drama Series, Odenkirk won Best Actor, Giancarlo Esposito won Supporting Actor, and Carol Burnett was nominated (but lost) for Best Supporting Actress.

Rhea Seehorn was not nominated.

While I'm not quite as high on her work in the last couple of seasons as everyone else (as opposed to early on, when I thought she was great), that's egregious.

Maybe this time

This guy looks pretty beat up...BUT, HOORAY! and THANK YOU to everyone who enjoyed Better Call Saul, and for this Nom. We all cared SO MUCH everyday we made this show. It starts with the WRITING and I'm so thankful Peter Gould and Gordon Smith are nominated. RHEA being… https://t.co/aiTsW9qU4T

— Mr. Bob Odenkirk (@mrbobodenkirk) July 12, 2023

No idea how they determine such things, but isn't Rhea Seehorn a lead actress? I've seen the first three seasons of Succession, not the new one, but to me, Seehorn was at least as much of a lead as Sarah Snook.

iirc the actor (or sometimes production) themselves decides in which category to submit

I want an entire series about season 6 Kim.

otm