Better Call Saul

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."

tíoooooo!

str breaking bad would also do this thing of having >1 stupidly long montage in an episode to fill time

This was great tho. Howard and chuck are such a pair of cunts. Have we seen the shitheel from the DA's office before? I didn't recognise him

Does Saul mention an ex-wife at any point in BB? I'm pretty sure he does but I'm not sure when in the series it actually happened.

Maybe coming up? Though Howard was informing/deferring to Chuck, re Kim's landing big client, so maybe now she might possibly be considered for redemption. Don't think Howard relishes having to please Chuck so fucking much.

"Though"--"Thought," that is.

Intro set up the other reason Chuck can't stand Jimmy -- people actually like Jimmy! It was painful watching Chuck be a charisma black hole around his wife

Scenes like the one between Chuck and Kim this week make me reluctant to think of Chuck as a villain. Jimmy is a career con artist who embezzled thousands from the family business (supposing that latter story is true as Chuck tells it); it makes perfect sense to think that he'd make for an unscrupulous, dangerous lawyer.

Chuck certainly can be conniving and two-faced, particularly when he needs Jimmy's help. But he's also helped Jimmy, as the opening this week reminded me.

just finished season 1 and mannnn was this good. hated just about everything the ending with jimmy turning down the partner-track gig but otherwise this was arguably at least as good as the best parts of BB, certainly much better than season 1 of BB

also marco totally died of a pulmonary embolism, not a heart attack

very Coen-y, the kettlemans especially

Chuck isn't a villain so much as a pompous control freak, as was made clear by the opening scene

Renewed for a third season:

http://mashable.com/2016/03/15/better-call-saul-renewed-for-season-3/

Yeah, a control freak with compulsions, some of them painful---running through the sunlight to the mailbox, while huddling under his goddammed space blanket, and staring up at the wires!. And his rejection of Jimmy for getting a "spurious" law degree, and without telling Chuck he was doing it, until he'd already passed the bar--his rejection seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy of Jimmy going to the shady side again---but, given their history, and Jimmy's own compulsions, how should/could he handle the little bastid? Family shit runs deep.

trying to imagine watching better call saul having never watched breaking bad and then watching breaking bad

^^I think about that every time I watch the show. I'm not sure what it would be like. BCS is slower-paced, and its take on Saul is of course much subtler, so if you've seen that first, it might seem like Saul is too much of a one-note joke character when he shows up in BB.

On the other hand, it might be cool. BB is a good show on its own, and it could be fun to be surprised by how Mike and Saul get mixed up with Walt and Jesse. Like the episode where Jesse's girlfriend overdoses: you're all horrified at Walt letting her die, and wondering how they're going to deal with it, and then all of the sudden "whoa, there's Mike!" That character showing up would have a weight to it that it couldn't have had for someone who saw Breaking Bad first (especially since IIRC Mike's role was not initially planned to be anywhere near that big).

How about the light in Chuck (and his wife)'s place? Man.

Chapette thinks this season is 'slow as fuck', and it's difficult to logically argue with her when you have like five minutes of Kim Wexler looking at post-it notes. I'm loving it however, it makes the moments of intense drama all the more rewarding.

Why does Howard have it in for Kim so much? Idgi

For showing him up by vouching/covering for jimmy, also he's a dick

I'm sure there's some more shit lurking under the surface as well.

Wow, Rebecca (Chuck's wife) is played by a Cusack.

Also, renewed for a third season!

This show can continue being 'slow as fuck' as long as it likes, afaic. Anyone bothered by that can go watch every other show on tv.

chuck and howard toasting each other - so much hate

montage soundtrack was hilarious

Howard vs. Kim: how much of it is really about her, about the offense of not warning Howard that Jimmy was making this commercial, thus Davis-Main somehow blaming Jimmy's *previous* sort of parent firm, how much of it is Howard being enough under the thumb of Chuck, that Howard is somehow threatened by/beholden to Chuck in all matters related to Jimmy especially? Taking out his frustration on Kim, or just doing what he thinks he needs to, in order to please/somewhat mollify/not look so weak to Chuck (more of a cold calculation than taking out frustration)?
Guess we're supposed to calculate all this for ourselves as it goes along, rather than having the characters explain everything to each other and the audience, like on regular TV and in lots of movies.

Yeah, and I agree that there's probably more to be revealed about Howard's position. We were led to believe that he was a dick all last season before the Chuck card was overturned.