Better Call Saul

it's not an actual legal proceeding, so the provenance of the pictures is neither here nor there. it's part of the plot to show Chuck's not a clear-thinking person, even in his EMF-free cave imo

all the details were mostly there to get Chuck to crack, or to further the line of questioning -- Chuck has a condition but he's reasonable? no, he has this condition and is doing crazy shit like putting gas lanterns on top of newspapers

or more accurately "has this condition"

i can see that but i guess they maybe dismissed the pictures a bit too quickly, like the panel didn't even look at them really. felt like they were almost useless given we had a fairly long scene showing how they were taken.

I just mean it doesn't seem in Chuck's character not to notice the pictures in the evidence, recognize that they were probably taken recently, and make something of that. It might have fit nicely into his meltdown at the end--"where did he get those pictures of my house anyway? he hasn't been there in weeks! he sent someone into my house to take pictures!!!!" etc.

I thought the idea of the pictures, and the phone, was to challenge chuck's sanity in ways they knew he could handle to begin with - the battery thing hits harder because it comes after chuck's triumphant performance

I don't think they knew for sure how much it'd take to get him to crack, having a bunch of small pieces sure helped

this show is fuckin' great

I found the end of this episode powerful not only because of the schadenfreude for Chuck, but out of sympathy for him, because we all know he's right: Jimmy is an inveterate conman who will hurt others and himself. And he gets away with it because he's charming. He's charming the viewers of this very show, even though we all know what kind of person he turns out to be.

― JRN, Tuesday, May 9, 2017 2:32 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is a very well-stated mission statement for the show in general.

Gilligan & co. really do a fantastic job of walking the line between making the viewer root for Chuck's downfall while also sympathizing with his plight.

yep good post JRN

Yeah chuck is as repulsive as Jimmy is likeable, a sanctimonious hypocritical control freak (his yammering oblivious "you'll thank me one day" speech reminded me of Walter white) but at the same time he's - I don't want to say right because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy but let's say not wrong. And he's mentally ill and it feels weird to be cheering the tormenting of a vulnerable person no matter how shitty they are (I still am lol)

Jimmy's a con artist at heart and by the time of BB is facilitating all kinds of felonious shit that ruins lives and gets people killed, but he's a mate

In the flashback, when Jimmy was asking Chuck whether he'd prefer that his ex think he's mentally ill or a raging prick, I couldn't help but think that the two are by no means necessarily mutually exclusive.

witness our president

lol

wouldn't the bar frown on jimmy's way of setting chuck up?

jimmy setting chuck is is morphologically identical to chuck setting jimmy up, which chuck has just (rather smugly) talked us through -- they can't really denounce one and accept the other, i don't think

why even have the mike as workman plotline

having mike as workmen indicates an increasingly overlap of jimmy's and mike's spheres, which is presumably an element in the story to come (albeit not directly picture-related);
at this stage, though. jimmy's professional relationship to mike is quite slight, not much greater than his relationship to huell: he knows him as an expert fixer he can rely on and trust, and employed him as such -- the story dwelt on the mike-as-workman scene more bcz mike's activities are also a focus of our interest in this series, than bcz there was a big jimmy-related reveal coming (as opposed to a meticulous-detail reveal)…

^^^aware that this is a slightly forced explanation, bcz we can't help feeling set up for the big picture-related reveal we didn't get (unless something else is coming down the pike)

(adding: obviously this was a terrific episode, the classic catharsis of courtroom drama -- plus shenanigans and reverse shenanigans -- coming out the direction yr rooting, but, haing mentioned mike, i found myself thinking that i did actually miss the mike half of the show, i don't want a show that's just jimmy for more than an episode at a time)

just joining the chorus of "this episode ruled"

never been a fan of courtroom dramas, but this show really brings it

Classic BB-style setup with the phone battery planted in Chuck's inner pocket. Everything had to go improbably just right, but was inner pocket really easier than outer pocket?

It had to be his breast pocket

the constant twists and hijinks are getting a liiiiiiittle gimmicky but this show is still great

one thing i've noticed over the past few weeks is kim increasingly compromising herself to help jimmy. this is not going to end well for her and i think we're gonna hate jimmy at the end of this

def seems like she is being setup to suffer blowback from Jimmy's antics

She's definitely going to lose her big account. That was a foregone conclusion as soon as she went into 'full disclosure' mode about Jimmy and Chuck while conveniently omitting details.

Mesa Verde. That's the one. I kept thinking 'Alta Vista' but I knew that wasn't right.

imo Jimmy's main interest is in screwing over the system, he just happens to be working for the people within it now

by the time BB rolls around he's still kind of doing the ambulance chaser gig, but his actions get worse as his clientele gets more interesting

believability is not something that matters to me with this show. like consistency or whatever, fine. but a con like the phone in pocket, who cares. breaking bad was good at pushing the story along via unbelievable ruses - to question their likelihood is to fundamentally misunderstand the value of either show.

like the world in which both shows take place is not exactly our real world, even if it's not an alien planet or entirely a comic book fabrication.

i think the shows are supposed to be pretty realist, no?

i never thought that myself. like bb was completely absurd at times. half of gus fring's body being burnt etc. i find it all has a sort of tint of silliness to it. the pizza on the roof. prob hundreds more moments i'm forgetting. it's like sideways noir or something. sort of what i like about it.

the escape from tuco's apartment in season 1 lol

BB definitely tried to have it both ways a little too often, one of its weaknesses imo

i guess better call saul is prob a better blend, yeah.

Breaking Bad's plots were a lot more credibility-straining than Better Call Saul's have been thus far. I enjoy both shows immensely but BB's contrivances became an increasing bugbear with me as time went on. When a plot development is barely believable even within the show's own universe, it can strain your emotional investment in that universe and in the characters that populate it. Did for me, anyway. I hope they don't start piling on the coincidences and shortcuts on BCS.

it's a strength obviously: BB and BCS are both comedies, and they use various registers of comedy against one another

sooo otm

when I started watching bb I had many "nah cmon not really" objections and then I realized: who fuckin cares whether this is realistic

eh, it takes away from some of the emotional weight imo

BCS, a better show with better characters, has more to lose on this front so i'm hoping this kind of stuff is limited

k3vin I'm 100% not trying to condescend here but comedy is special precisely because it's fantasy also: it's bigger than stuff that's realistic. but it requires a different style of reading than "do I believe this or not": it's larger than that. it borrows some of its tones from realism and then has a vastly broader palette to draw from because it's inherently disruptive. a lot of work done on this in Greek/Roman comedy & also obv Shakespeare if yr at all curious but I think this is a point that Vince G. grasps instinctively

The Wire is probably the most realistic dramatic TV show I've seen and even it wasn't ultimately very realistic.

Actually, something like Men of a Certain Age might've been as close to realism as TV ever got.

Chuck has been reminding me of Tony Blair these last couple of episodes

imo real life is pretty fucking weird

Regarding purpose of Mike as handyman plot line, maybe I heard it wrong in the show, but after Mike was at Chuck's place I think he was asked if he found "it" and Mike said it was on/in the desk. I assume "it" was Rebecca's current contact info? It's not like someone as controlling as Chuck was likely to have allowed Jimmy to know where she was otherwise, since it was clear he was hiding the truth from her.

Yeah i can't remember what kim was saying 'bingo' about...?

It was when Chuck confirmed that they'd be playing the tape in the hearing and they knew they'd be able to spring the trap they were planning.

i thought the fact that he'd made a backup of the tape and that they'd changed the wording in the statement to 'completely destroyed' was somehow going to come up, but it didn't. I'm not sure what that change in wording was about.

xp oh yes, thanks. I imagine as well Jimmy's phone didn't have a battery in in case of any reactive playacting to that from Chuck.

I thought Jimmy's phone didn't have a battery in it so Chuck's hubris at 'proving' his condition was real would kick in.

Yes.

And it's probably worth noting one of the implicit undercurrents of this plotline, which is that Chuck doesn't know his brother nearly as well as he thinks he does (misjudges how Jimmy will go about trying to retrieve the tape, clearly underestimates the methods by which Jimmy will manipulate the bar hearing to his own ends) but Jimmy absolutely knows Chuck (even if, at times, he's been unwilling to admit to himself the lengths to which Chuck will go to express his underlying contempt toward him). Also, obviously, Chuck embodies many of the same qualities as Jimmy but always uses his eye-rolling fealty to the law as a shield.

So I assume this season we'll see the transition of HHM into simply HH, and Jimmy trying in vain to keep the brother he still amazingly loves from teetering over the brink once he no longer has a tether of respectability to hang onto.

I think one of the things that really burns Chuck's ass is that Jimmy is the smarter brother