Better Call Saul

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

the idea that chuck's illness is actually mental, is a p big deal for him now. like it's interesting to wonder if he was even aware of that himself.

aware yes, willing to accept no

the cynic in me wants to scream that of course it's a mental health issue, if a person can actually sense magnetic fields, send them somewhere to do a controlled, double-blind experiment and report back

his comparison of it to HIV etc. during the trial was sad

I was riding it out and seeing what the plot would do. I mean, it's a fictional show, there's nothing stopping them from creating internal logic where he's suffering from something real in the plot. But yeah, as soon as they started to question why no doctors had formally diagnosed him, all of the examples like HIV had me cringing

made you feel sad for chuck, you mean? this kind of logic is commonplace (and tbh understandable) in people with psychosomatic disease, even very smart people

yeah sad for chuck, the level of delusion

The last episode was the first one this season that's been consistently watchable and compelling. I'm still on board but I feel like this show missed something that BB had, which is the consistent onscreen chemistry between its actors - there's no pairing in this that I look forward to as much as seeing Cranston and Aaron Paul onscreen together.

I was kind of stoked for the return of Gus Fring but in hindsight it's a shift towards the show being over-reliant on the audience knowing where the story is going. I don't know if it's just my imagination but there's a lot more padding this season and maybe that's part of the reason why. Visually stunning as it is, I don't really need to watch multiple scenes of Mike grunting to himself in the desert before seeing the silhouette of a character I loved a few years ago. I certainly don't need to see a montage of Kim getting ready for work with a Todd Terje soundtrack.

this ep needed all its length to let the specific sub-climax unfold, but i totally missed endless scenes of mike grunting to himself, i think he's currently my favourite actor just to watch

the scenes showing his process definitely chew up episode time but it's essential to show that he's not Mike, the fixer who is kind of meticulous but he is The Meticulous Man

what he's trying to accomplish dissolves in the emphasis on his attention to detail and process. scripted and filmed like this, I could probably watch half an episode of him just cleaning his kitchen

couldn't disagree with mdc more. the scenes with mike are some of the best stuff in any show for a long time, other shows should follow suit.

tonight's ep was the first in a good few weeks that felt a bit padded out to me, but it was funny. i really like the perfect dickhead performance of the actor who plays howard. even the way he walks and stuff, his face.

after last week's all-jimmy show i was kind of hoping for an all-mike show, where all he did did was grunt and be meticulous, and no one else featured at all

the hector stuff was p good.

Hector's condition, jimmy's alias and gus's superlab all set up in one episode. Wonder if there'll be a bit of a time jump to the end of jimmy's suspension

i really like the perfect dickhead performance of the actor who plays howard. even the way he walks and stuff, his face.

there was an ep a good while ago where we just watch him walking through HHM from his office to the front door for about 40 seconds; the way he turns shoulders-first at any corner was a joy to watch

mark s I'm about to make you a very happy man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE-Az41wZs0

Kim's facial expression and body language having viewed the Saul Goodman ad was excellent

there was an ep a good while ago where we just watch him walking through HHM from his office to the front door for about 40 seconds; the way he turns shoulders-first at any corner was a joy to watch

yes! that was hilarious. also the way he walks to chuck's door in the most recent ep, this ludicrous businessman prance.

I liked this episode (I like all the episodes), but it felt weird. Seemed like it started out in season 3 and ended up back in season 1.

because jimmy's regressing back to his base state

this was an odd episode, felt unusual in that it covered like four different unrelated plots. Seemed like they were just kind of re-setting a bunch of the pieces.

I felt pretty sure that Chuck was going to kill himself after Howard left. Seemed like a natural way for the plot to go, since Jimmy had just refused Rebecca's demand that he go to the house. That would hang over his head, lead to further spiraling, etc. But leave it to this show not to go the obvious route. I don't think anyone expected the name Saul Goodman to reenter the plot this way, either.

Regarding the discussion upthread, I don't really mind 'unrealistic' plot contrivances as log as the characters' motivations and reactions are believable, which they almost always are in BB and SCS.

Uh, guys? LYDIA?! Clearly among the more earthshaking developments in this episode.

Eh, I've grown slightly immune to BB cameos at this point.

Suprised more fuss hasn't been made over TYRUS, mind you.

tyrus was kind of boring in BB tho

this ep was alright. thought the nacho stuff was the best part

by "this ep" i meant last week's!

I'm guessing the closing scene is the one Odenkirk was referring to as Jimmy's first sad shift toward hardcore Saul-dom.

he nearly had me going, there

i fear for kim's wellbeing. either she's going to prison or she's going to die