Better Call Saul

This was a good episode, I love how Jimmy's real strength is shown to be his dogged determinedness of getting results no matter how humiliating it is for him. I guess he wouldn't have gotten there without all those years of taking hopeless public defendant jobs...

One scene which I felt hit a false note was the one where Mike's daughter-in-law (IMDb tells me her name is "Stacey", but I don't think it's been mentioned in the show?) suggested she and Kaylee would need more money... I mean, she must realize what sort of things Mike would have to do to get some extra money, and nothing we've seen so far has suggested she's the sort of person who would ask Mike for that. And if this is gonna be turning point for Mike, the one thing that leads him back to a life crime, I wish they would've put more effort into fleshing out her character and her motivations for pushing him into it. I guess the biggest flaw in BCS so far is that the writers haven't been very good at writing the female characters, they've been relegated to fairly stereotypical gendered roles: the suffering widow, the loyal (ex) girlfriend, the manipulative shrew.

Also, as funny as the scene was, I don't understand why Jimmy was wearing a good suit when he went dumpster-diving? He knew what he was gonna do, so why not dress in some cheaper clothes?

Jimmy so clearly doesn't own anything other than cheap suits.

But didn't he use some of Kettleman's bribe money to buy himself a fancy "Matlock" suit so he would look good in the eyes of pensioners? It looked like that was the suit he was wearing in the dumpster.

And by "Matlock suit" I meant the white suit he bought, not the previous one he got to piss off the jerkass lawyer at his brother's company.

"Also, as funny as the scene was, I don't understand why Jimmy was wearing a good suit when he went dumpster-diving?"

Good to see that Tuomas never changes.

Kinda liked how abrupt the mike thing was

"Money's a bit tight rn"
*sigh* "guess I'd better join the criminal underworld"

When you've already gunned down two cops everything else is a pretty short step from there.

Oh I agree, that's why I liked it! Worth remembering that mike is unambiguously a bad guy in bb & it'd be out of character for him to be wrestling with his conscience

Mike is prepared to go all-in as he Breaks Bad, per his established 'no half measures' code, but I think he certainly wrestles with his conscience. It's one of the things that makes him a more emotionally complex character than Walter White.

the mike episode a couple/few weeks back was a stright up masterpiece, mike is so good, they shd have a mike show too

xpost There's a tension between his willingness to do what he has to do on his path to damnation and his general decency that's in marked contrast with Walt's scorched earth sociopathy.

mike is unambiguously 100% business and his business happens to be criminal at this point

no matter what position you put him in, he gets results

No one was getting past him without the right stickers.

I guess the biggest flaw in BCS so far is that the writers haven't been very good at writing the female characters, they've been relegated to fairly stereotypical gendered roles: the suffering widow, the loyal (ex) girlfriend, the manipulative shrew.

Tuomas otm here, and it was the same in BB imo

I get the impression that this may not be Mike's first foray into crime. Besides murdering those two police, we've already seen him help Jimmy break into the Kettlemans' house, and he seemed completely at ease with that. And there's a bunch of time between the end of his run as a cop and his moving to New Mexico, right? Who knows what he got up to during that interval.

Then again, that would've required him to be fully involved in crime in the same city where he'd been an officer, and doing so while his own son was on the police force. So maybe not.

While I'm speculating, I have to think that Mike was already working for Fring by around the time BB starts. I know that wasn't the original intention for his character, but he was eventually depicted as too important to the Fring operation to have just gotten involved with it sometime after his first appearance at the end of season 2.

thought it was p clear Mike was dirty/doin crimes while on the force in Philly

Mike was important to the organisation because the rest of the Fring muscle were all complete fucking cretins.

I'm not sure I find the story of Mike's sons murder entirely plausible (his dad was a cop also on the take--seems like there are many ways of playing this short of Serpico-ing him).

Am I the only one getting a blackmail vibe from Mike's daughter-in-law?

Not a blackmail vibe so much as a 'morality-clouding proximity to ill-gotten $$$' vibe, a la Skyler White or Carmella Soprano.

the mike episode a couple/few weeks back was a stright up masterpiece, mike is so good, they shd have a mike show too

― lag∞n, Wednesday, March 25, 2015 10:39 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agreed, getting the sense BCS is gonna be almost as much the mike ehrmantraut hour as it is the saul origin/conclusion story although saul will prob remain the primary focus

xp good comparisons

Not a blackmail vibe so much as a 'morality-clouding proximity to ill-gotten $$$' vibe, a la Skyler White or Carmella Soprano.

Yeah, that was my thought too, but at least Skyler they'd already established her as a complex enough character so we'd understand where she was coming from, whereas with Stacey it came out of the blue, because we don't really know anything about her.

this bathroom legal documentation to serve the corrupt retirement home owners is amazing, some tour de force legal work

Chuck looking like he's in a catatonic state until he calmly demands twenty million dollars

the sandpiper crossing attorney is Dennis Boutsikaris who Law & Order fiends will remember from many L&O/SVU/CI episodes, including at least one stone classic

mike is unambiguously 100% business and his business happens to be criminal at this point

no matter what position you put him in, he gets results

Like I said

I don't know what to make of this show but it certainly ain't bad

latest episode might've been the best since "five-O" (the all-mike hour)

"pimento is a cheese. some call it the caviar of the south."

Welp now we know what's in Odenkirk's Emmy reel

Fucking Chuck.

great episode.

Bob O has been stupendous in this so far, gilligan is like some kinda middle-aged comedian emmy whisperer

best episode yet

chuck's cruel speech at the end was so much like something walter white would say to crush jesse. monkey with a machine gun!

what a prick

That was heartbreaking. Chuck is a monster.

The quality of this show is amazing.

What is really hitting home to me is just how realistic this whole thing actually is. Chuck has the self-righteous importance of an accomplished lawyer and from that springs his belief that he can simply deem things to be so, and they will and they will be right. I have seen and experienced this FAR too many times to have any qualms about the portrayal's realism. This type of shit happens every day in law offices all over the country.

What I find to be so compelling is that Hamlin turns out to be not that bad of a guy, and actually may be somewhat of a good guy. From where he's sitting, he didn't need to give any more of an explanation to Kim or to Jimmy. Jimmy called him a pig fucker and declined the deal. But because of Kim's plea, he relented and convinced her to go and talk to Jimmy one more time to take the deal ($20k + whatever 20% of the final settlement would be - assuming $20m, that's $4m to Jimmy). The sigh and look he gave in his office after he just couldn't convince himself of his own bullshit was really telling. He demoted Kim because she fucked up with the Kettlemans. But he could have just let Jimmy stew and hate him and not done anything else. But (I think) he recognized that this was some class A lawyering by Jimmy (which it was, regardless of where he went to law school), and decided that he would do what he could to help Jimmy out.

This show is good like a good pair of broken in shoes or a car with a well-driven and well-maintained engine - nothing new, nothing novel, but it does everything right and fucks nothing up. I cannot wait for the finale, and for season two.

I didn't quite take it like that as far as Hamlin. I think he told Kim that it was Chuck's decision, and that's what convinced her to to try to get jimmy to take the deal. I don't think he was trying to help jimmy out of the good of his heart. I think Chuck just as likely convinced Hamlin to give him that good a deal.

That was heartbreaking. Chuck is a monster.
― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Tuesday, March 31, 2015 9:46 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've gone back and forth a bit about how much of a monster Chuck showed himself to be here.

On the one hand, he's got many years of experience with his little brother being a career con artist. And we know that he turns out to be somewhat right about what Jimmy might get up to with a law degree at his disposal.

But then again, of course, what Chuck did is probably the very thing that guarantees Jimmy will backslide. And he can't see that because his vision is obscured by snobbery and by the bogus belief that somehow only he has worked hard to get where he is.

That scene was totally heartbreaking. I love this show.

Re Hamlin: I disagree. At the very least, that's $20k gone. Any lawyer who is in business for themselves would never do something like that without some sort of motivation behind it. Now, it could be that his motivation was to keep Kim loyal and still on his side as an associate. That's a very real possibility.

What Chuck did was monstrous, definitely. I wouldn't give him credit for an accurate prediction on Jimmy backsliding so much as blame him for leaving his brother little other choice.

Sibling rivalry (you're not my peer) is a better explanation for his motivation than snobbery. Chuck's standards are high -- just because Jimmy has shown he can meet and even exceed them is no reason to believe they've actually been equals all along.

Chuck's psychosomatic illness fits that pattern. Jimmy is at his beck and call, but he's OK with that: Jimmy has enough compassion for his brother not to point out that catering to his sensitivities is a needless waste of energy and time. Chuck does nothing to return the favor. Now that he's getting better (still sweating under the tinfoil lining his suit jacket), he gets a hero's welcome for overcoming nothing more than the power of his imagination, while Jimmy gets to lug the boxes and buy the kerosene and probably hand-stitch the lining into his suit too.

Chuck is used to having the world revolve around him. Just to make sure that never changes, he stabs his brother in the back.

Re Hamlin: I disagree. At the very least, that's $20k gone. Any lawyer who is in business for themselves would never do something like that without some sort of motivation behind it. Now, it could be that his motivation was to keep Kim loyal and still on his side as an associate. That's a very real possibility.

Hamlin's moral code is a complete mystery which is why I love that character. At a superficial level he's a dick but his actions are basically rational and all a part of the gig.

In a town apparently full of would-be Walter Whites, they're setting Jimmy up as the anti-Walt in a lot of ways - we're seeing him pushed down his path through the tyranny of low expectations rather than Walt's own astronomically high ones. I suppose the journey from Jimmy to Saul is about how long he takes to be beaten down and accept them.

The scene with Mike in the car park was flat out amazing.

Was half expecting the pill buyer to be Gus; Nacho was my second guess.

Woah. Chuck's speech was absolutely brutal. Was not expecting that Hamlin's dickery was a front with Chuck pulling the strings; playing the part of a dick was all business.

Reckon's there are number of motivations for Chuck: self-righteous, snobbery and sibling rivalry, yes. One of embarrassment, too - that his fuck up little brother can go all the way from Slippin' Jimmy, work his arse off and then become his peer? And embarrassment on a superficial level - Jimmy's personality isn't what you call 'corporate'.

Mike's side story was pretty damn fun!

I am enjoying the surprising lack of cynicism in this show. It feels refreshing to have a lead character (especially compared to BB but also a lot of TV serials - Mad Men etc) who is drawn so sympathetically. If Walter White was a good baddy, Jimmy is a bad goody. Or is it the other way round? At this stage, Jimmy has something rare in narrative today: a social conscience and a drive that isn't necessarily about an end-game. Of course he wants to be successful and accrue wealth/status as a lawyer, but somehow his conscience still affects the way he goes about things. He's seems genuinely selfless in his regard of Kim and Chuck, his elder clients etc... He takes huge risks, but he's not an 'ends justify the means' sociopath in the guise of Walter White.

http://40.media.tumblr.com/160ad915f6cd4adf60ed417578088f8f/tumblr_nlezlz96ae1tqy47po1_500.jpg

Jimmy is a good baddy Yeah, I think we're invited to connect his idealism x shadiness, his struggle for balance, with Mike's honor-among-thieves lesson (J. really didn't want to take the Kettlemen pay-off at first, 'til Mrs. K. presented it as a consultation fee, not a bribe, but when he did, it was sooo useful). I figured there would be a moment of at least partial disillusionment (though he alwsys seemed to be trying to do right by all his BB clients, def. incl. trying to talk sanity to Walt and Jesse, finally saving Walt's ass as he saved his own) and/or turning aside from the obsession with The Firm But hadn't consciously expected this, although it makes total sense, soon as I saw Big Brother making that call, so difficult for him, I thought back to the jailhouse visitation room confrontation, where he looked like he wanted to puke the whole time. And of course, as Plasmon says, he was always the one to sit in his Fortress of Solitude, waited on by Jimmy and The Firm too'
But once Jimmy pulled him back into law, into life, he had his own struggle, his own balancing act. So he demanded that Hamlin pay Jimmy off, as a condition of bringing the case to The Firm (got enough heft, partnership-wise and psychologically, to make Hamlin think it was still Chuck's deal or no deal---he's not only Chuck's Big Bro). It seems like a very fair offer, though maybe he knew it was a gamble, nevertheless, he it was one that he had to make (that Jimmy would accept it; or could Chuck have turned the case over to H. on his own? Prob not without risking litigation from Jimmy, the principal and orig. attorney of record)
"On some level you know it's true!" And, also as prev. noted, Chuck and their Mom have been dealing with Jimmy all their lives, so we can't be totally confident in condemmning Chuck, can we? Of course, there's also ye olde matter of the self-fulfilling prophecy, and implications about the treatment of habitual offenders, esp. when they're trying to go straight. Still "Slippin' Jimmy I can handle, but Slippin' Jimmy with a law degree?!" Then yet again, comparison to a chimpanzee takes us to the somewhat familiar other side of fine concerns...