Better Call Saul

I think people are jumping the gun a bit with the 'better than BB' thing. They are good in different ways, aiming for rather different things.

BCS thing is a better thing

i'm just now watching the first season on netflix and i genuinely agree it's better than breaking bad. mostly bc it doesn't make me want to die from anxiety all the time

Breaking Bad seems to have suffered a bit of a backlash since it ended

frontin' imo

BB was great. this is better.

BB was a show with well-crafted stories that were ultimately about a bad person who did horrible things only for himself, with a little too much hope that he was still the protagonist

BCS is a story about a lovable two-bit con man who lacks a moral compass but really aspires to become a three-bit con man. Partially to spite his brother who doesn't want him to succeed, but mostly because it's all he knows how to be.

In this most recent episode I really did expect Chuck to be faking his disorder and the reason he didn't respond to Jimmy initially was because he was using a cell phone and he hid it under the blanket

Everybody has to remove their watch along with phones and electronic keys and such, yet Chuck was wearing a watch throughout that scene last night.

Yeeeah, I was trying to figure out if he has one that he winds by hand, or if it was an indication he's bullshitting

maybe he has a self-winding or wind-up watch and everyone else has quartz which is battery operated.

jinx

BB was all about forward-motion, tension and stakes constantly being raised by virtue of a self-interested protagonist addicted to high-stakes behavior. And it was very good at that, but it also means (for me, anyway) that after its over I really have zero desire to watch it again. Knowing how various conflicts get resolved removes the tension. There's still good/great characters and a lot of well-executed setpieces but it is lacking in a certain depth, I don't feel like I would be rewarded by repeated viewings.

But BCS is v different, so much more character-driven, and that makes it feel much richer.

I loved the moment a couple of episodes ago when jimmy answered his phone (that he clearly hadn't bothered to hand in before the meeting) to no reaction whatsoever from chuck

if you think of Hank as the protagonist of BB it becomes a lot darker

So the scared dude meeting with Tuco in the restaurant was Crazy 8 right? And the gun dealer was the same one who sold Walt his guns in BB.

Loved that final shot of Mike disappearing in a cloud of dust.

OH MY GOD, THAT WAS TOTALLY CRAZY 8. I knew he looked familiar. He looked so young and innocent, I hardly recognized him!

And the gun dealer was the same one who sold Walt his guns in BB.

The great Jim Beaver.

Loved that final shot of Mike disappearing in a cloud of dust.

Yes! "Why?" (Turns around, disappears.) Some Man With No Name shit right there.

I appreciate that they've provided some context for the insanity of BB-era Tuco. Establishing both that he's a maniac when he's on speed and that, by the time Walt meets him, he's probably just finished his prison stretch.

And it just occurred to me that, chronologically-speaking, BCS could easily stretch a good way into the second season of BB without stepping on the former show's toes. I do hope we eventually see some sort of reckoning between Tuco and Mike since that's now a retconned dangling thread.

Funny how this show has turned out to actually be Better Call Saul (or Mike)

arguing with a friend of mine who says this show lacks a really solid premise to hold onto. we all know Saul/Jimmy's journey is going from an amoral shyster to an even more amoral shyster and that Mike is more a complex character.

I don't know that it needs a solid premise. It's a character study, and I'm cool with that. I think it reminds me most of Men Of A Certain Age inasmuch as it takes a slow and ambling path around the characters without any grand destination in mind (ignoring what we know about the sister series).

I think it has a solid premise. What it doesn't have (or need) is weekly cliffhangers. Our investment in the characters is what keeps us (me) coming back, not a contrived sense of plot-drive momentum. Sure, Mike is a more complex character, but it's kind of a dual journey of lapsed morality, to different extremes. Both have lines they are unwilling to cross; the show is about where those lines are and how/why they get moved.

In other words, not unlike lots of lawyer/cop shows/movies, but much, much slower.

Otm. The ethical conflicts are front and center here, and more nuanced than they were in BB.

Feel like whatever's holding mike back is more pragmatic than moral, in both shows he seems honestly ok with what he is

Funny how this show has turned out to actually be Better Call Saul (or Mike)

yeah i wonder if this is something that prevents it from completely unshackling itself from breaking bad - like, if we didn't know where these guys were heading, it could seem a bit odd (just now at least) to be following the really quite distinct threads of jimmy's adventures in law and mike's adventures in becoming a magic crime guy

xpost I don't know, there's more to it than that. Like why he would rather get punched to a pulp and risk death for half the payday than take the seemingly simpler sniper route to more money, as asked (but not answered) in this ep.

I think he just has the most finely tuned risk/reward calculator of anyone in the show.

Yeah

I mean he did kinda answer it earlier when he pointed out that killing tuco results in scrutiny from the cartel

Yeah, kinda. But clearly ninja Mike could have pulled it off. If anything, starting a fight with an unstable and armed drug-addled dealer doesn't exactly seem any less risky. Clearly there's more backstory they have to hand out later.

Yeah, removing a pawn from the board was just move one.

BB is about the destructive power of high expectations, BCS is about the destructive power of low expectations. There's very little doubt in my mind that when Jimmy flips over into full Saul Goodman it'll be down to Chuck in some way.

If I had to guess, and maybe their conflict this episode was some clue, I would guess that Jimmy's downfall will come when he tried to save Chuck from something, either something Chuck finally done wrong or something Jimmy does to get Chuck in trouble.

Sorry, phone messing up subject-verb grammar.

I think Nacho's question at the end is answered in the Jim Beaver scene -- Mike decides against the sniper plan when he sees the old rifle he used in Vietnam. He doesn't want to go back to that if he doesn't have to.

I got that much. Hmm, I'm trying to remember how killing-averse Mike was in BB ...

Aside from situations when his life was in danger, the only people I remember him killing were the cops who killed his son.

He's no Walter White, at any rate.

He killed the Pollo Hermanos truck hijackers personally

http://49.media.tumblr.com/723764fd513c78910e638e684e7c711c/tumblr_nnoynblR1r1s0hs2uo6_400.gif

Yeah wtf mikes a killer, it's like his defining characteristic

he is going to kill jesse and walt in breaking bad because they've outlived their usefulness/are a liability

and only jesse killing gill stops him from doing so because the two are again indispensable to their enterprise

So I guess that is his moral line character arc - what will drive Mike to kill again?

I know Mike is a killer. I just genuinely couldn't remember if he had ever been a wanton killer in the Walter White mode. Like, he's always willing to do it if it's necessary but he'd always prefer to find another way, has been my take.

Nah he's definitely more trigger happy than that in BB. He's way keener to wack Lydia than either Walt or Jesse, for example.

Was the gun buying scene the first intimation he may have been in Nam?

Yeah that hadnt been mentioned before

Coasting/table-setting this week.

Pretty intriguing though, with Kim's secret striving, Howard and Kim, Howard and Chuck, Mike and Tuco's pre-stroke uncle, and deep background--Chuck's wife! Even deeper: the way Chuck tells it anyway, Jimmy gradually ruined their father's business, at least in part---"Dad wasn't the greatest business man"---then, after Dad had to sell, and died six months later, Jimmy cried the hardest at the funeral--"Jimmy's not a bad person. He has a good heart"---what did Chuck say after that??

"He just can't help himself."