Better Call Saul

Nacho’s pitch to Eladio about getting biker gangs to war among themselves is exactly what is happening among Eladio’s own lieutenants! The hit on Jimmy was definitely from someone that wasn’t Salamanca or Fring, which leaves..

Gus deduced that it was Bolsa who ordered the ambush on Jimmy

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/arts/television/tony-dalton-better-call-saul-finale.html

There are a lot of things I do in Spanish that I see people react to on Twitter. Stuff that the gringos don’t get, man. [Laughs.] The scripts are really specific. You say what’s on the page. But once in a while I get a “klah” in there.

The moment Mike assured Jimmy it was happening, I knew it wasn't happening.

― kinder, Tuesday, April 21, 2020 3:56 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Every time anyone made any allusion to it happening, I knew it wasn't happening. Suspend your relief until the deed is done, people!

Rewatched The Conversation last night and it seems that consideration of how Harry Caul's perspective distorted his interpretation of the titular conversation is perhaps instructive in reviewing what we/Jimmy thought we knew about Kim.

Thanks for the explanations, and the link. The clash ended poorly for the assassins — Lalo killed them all — So dark, I couldn't see most of what happened, so didn't have much reaction.
Will Kim take it too far for her endurance, nerve, will? Walt's wife decided she wanted to be a badass too...

I did and didn't want Lalo to be whacked: great character, but/and disturbing---"the charming sociopath," as NYTimes puts it, also professionally astute yet seemingly reckless at times, then really reckless (never know just when/how *any* of these characters may go rong, Mike incl.)

So I guess the whole thing, as W Breaking Bad, is about biting off more than you can chew, hubristics, breaking badly ultimately as well as breaking badass in this moment or that: casino life.
Of course it will have been even more disturbing if some characters do live happily and badly ever after (As may have already happened/will happen in BB? Can't think who though---so many to keep up with, incl. in shadows.)

Jesse would be the only one who even gets close to living happily ever after

The D.A. who was razzing Jimmy, I think he's going to make out okay.

Yeah! Of course, the casino-cartel-shitstem-suitstem, incl legit corparate life and politics, will go on and on, as in Godfather movies (maybe esp. II, where I became more aware of the mergers)

still think there's gonna be a vaguely happy ending for Kim. obviously something bad's gonna happen but I don't think they'll kill her off

one interesting fact that someone else spotted - the guy who recognizes Gene as Saul in the flashforward this season is the same guy who drove him to the hospital in the flashforward in S4

You mean the guy who drove him FROM the hospital last season, who recognised him last season which was the whole cliffhanger of the gene part in s4? I think most people spotted that lol

i like to think the my pillow guy is also gonna get this treatment when he ends up manager at a cinnabon

I was actually waiting for another Gene scene before this season ended.

yall must have a keener eye than I do, you don't really get a good look at him in s4

I felt like there were loads of visual parallels with BB, this season. The Lalo escape tunnel thing where he stuck his head down upside down reminded me of Walt hanging over his floor cubbyhole in his house for eg.

Last season’s flash forward ended with a guy from Albuquerque clearly recognising Saul and this season began with Gene flipping out and leaving town as a result. When the guy comes back in the next scene & says “I knew that was you” I didn’t assume it was a random different guy from Albuquerque lol

still think there's gonna be a vaguely happy ending for Kim. obviously something bad's gonna happen but I don't think they'll kill her off

I think Kim is absolutely going to die next season.

admittedly I have no clue how big Albuquerque is but I would imagine that if one of the big name TV lawyers from say, Milwaukee were to have been 'disappeared', people from Omaha would occasionally recognize him

That's a fair point, but I don't know how far that reach would be. I mean like Peter Francis Geraci is basically a minor celebrity in Chicago, but I have no idea what that name recognition would mean three or four states away.

xp maybe? it'd have to be someone who had been in both areas and then also went to a local shopping mall. doesn't seem like he has much of a social life

The Alexander Shunnarah billboard is the state tree of Alabama, but how famous is he really?

I could see him much more likely to be recognized by a retired snowbird who spends half the year around Omaha with grandkids and the other half living in Arizona when winter rolls around. That demographic would also love Cinnabon

True, but if I'm remembering right, Cinnabon didn't have much to do with it. Didn't he see him again when Gene was on his lunch break sitting elsewhere on a bench in the mall?

James Redd posted this on a Replacements thread:

http://myfavoritealbum.libsyn.com/303-bob-odenkirk-on-the-replacements-sorry-ma-forgot-to-take-out-the-trash-1981

My wife and I watched and loved the first three seasons of this, and then ... suddenly she was done. I don't get it. Anyway, finally began season 4 and while its Breaking Bad-isms (cast, mythology) gets a little much, it ... is a prequel to Breaking Bad, and the acting and writing remain top-notch. Rhea Seehorn is a treasure.

I also felt a little tapped out in the fourth season, but the fifth (!) is much more enjoyable

I agree, the fourth was a little meandering, trying to find a narrative path following the conclusion of the Chuck storyline. The fifth pulled it back.

still amused about the one certain character at the end of S5 that was clearly supposed to die but didn't

So one thing I don't understand (Spoiler for season 5) is why humiliating Howard will cause the Old-folks's home case to collapse?

I'd have to check upthread to see how I responded to S4--once enough time passes, a TV show's run mostly starts to blur together for me, especially the middle seasons.

I liked the early seasons of this a lot but I stopped watching eventually cause the Gus and Mike stuff was such a boring drag

That thread has been pretty enjoyable this most recent season, but there was definitely a sense of treading water earlier in the series.

I think Gus, like most charismatic villains, is best used more sparingly than he is.

All the stuff with him and Mike in season 4 so far, I don't mind it, but it's so hyper stylized that it borders on affectation. Like the Salamanca Twins, they're supposed to be kind of badass, and they are, but they are also particularly silly.

I finished the show a few weeks ago, and felt season 4 dragged a bit, but watching an episode a night alleviated some of that. Sometimes I wish this show weren't a prequel; I understand the cartel stuff is necessary, but I am much less interested in that than Jimmy and Kim. I dig the actors in the cartel segments but you could change the accents and it'd be any mob movie or Boardwalk Empire plot.

That said, season 5 was an uptick for me, even if that raid was pretty ridiculous. The best assassins in the biz? Felt like I was watching a bunch of incompetents play Rainbow Six.

lol, that is sadly accurate

lol

that's Gus's thing though, he always says he has the best people in the business and they wind up being....just okay. except for Walt I guess.

Gus is an interloper, like Walt: they both just showed up, made themselves useful, were will never be quite satisfied with their deals, their places in the cartel, which is also true of some others in the cartel, but these two aren't *of* the cartel. It's not where they came from, so they don't have the same kind of grounding, orientation, professionalism, that even the somewhat mercurial Lalo has (whatever their own personal standards and discipline may be).

OK, finished Season 4. This show is so well made and acted that it never loses control of the story - it's definitely still better than 99% of shows - but this season definitely seemed a little high on its own supply, focusing way too much telling Breaking Bad stories in reverse (look, it's the twins! it's Gabe! it's the Hector bell! it's the underground bunker!) and not enough moving the stories we still don't know as well forward. Jimmy was increasingly unsympathetic but also a little boring this season, because he and his destination are such known quantities. Kim's story, on the other hand, is really complex and compelling, but they didn't do the best job justifying her shifts in behavior and seemed far more interested in Mike and the German guy's doomed bromance. Still, can't wait to dive into S5.

yeah S5 is way better in that regard. still connecting the dots to BB but this time it really goes somewhere

the plot with the Germans was alright but I was kind of irritated with how long they took with it considering how much plot they have to go. the fakeout with Kai was weird, they signal so many times that this is the character who's going to do *something* only to just have it be...nothing

I'm not usually one to care a lot about awards, but it's absolutely shocking to me that Rhea Seehorn didn't get an Emmy nod.

yeah me too
she's outstanding!

^this

I don't know who's been nominated for an Emmy any year*, but just checked and she's never been nommed, so the actual winners are clearly wrong

* except for the similar fundamental incorrectness of Kyle MacLachlan neither winning nor being nominated for his four roles in Twin Peaks (2018)

Saw a good AVClub comment intimating that the Emmy folks clearly didn't even watch the show if they nominated Esposito (for doing ... what? glaring? stone-faced?) but no one else:

Oh it’s obvious they don’t watch anything. They recognize the name on the ballot, it’s why he got the nomination. The fact that he got one in a season where he didn’t have that much to do, especially in comparison to Jonathan Banks, Michael Mando and inhale TONY fucking DALTON exhale is telling. Same thing with snubbing Rhea Seehorn whose Kim practically graduated to deuteragonist over the course of the show and is probably its single best performance. Which is only bolstered by how many incredible ones we’ve got over the course of last season, let alone its entire run so far.

Seehorn is the best and I look forward to whatever she does next.

I don't follow the Emmys at all, but I'm guessing that she'll win this year to make up for that. I'm a big Friday Night Lights fan, and I noticed just yesterday that the two leads--after having never been nominated--both deservedly won in the show's final season.