Better Call Saul

He got Sandpiper money, which was 7 figures I believe. And it's clear that when Kim left he aggressively committed to Saul's persona and work, was king of that hustle in ABQ. After a few years of that with almost zero expenses (Francesca, Huell), it's not hard to believe he'd be very well off.

I'm going to try to withhold any more comment until the final episodes finish, but as it stands now, they still have at least one very important thing that requires a lot more explanation than was given last night (which was essentially none).

Hector angrily dinging his way all the way into the distance was cracking me up

lol ok I forgot about the Sandpiper thing. I guess housing prices hadn't spiraled out of control yet :)

So basically, this was my assumption early on in the Howard thing: that it would go rong, that she would freak out and run away---given that, very well done, and her speech--which she had ready, knowing she's gonna see Mrs. Howard at this thing, which I guess they have to attend to be normal members of the legal profession, per Mike's orders, also maybe the guilt, sense of duty, self-punishment? is in there---the speech, right after Jimmy spoke the truth as far as he thought he could without actually confessing, but going so far, in front of witnesses, that a civil suit might find a good place to start peeling the layers---she saves him, by breaking the widow, so sympathetically, insuring self-reproach, "You were married so long, you must have known somehow, seen something," whatever the exact words, the tall widow pratically keels over, how could she not have seen he needed help (and she may have put such thoughts aside indeed, but not re signs of drug use, because there fucking weren't any, that we ever saw). Kim at her most accomplished, and most odious, uggghhh get outta here, exact right time for exit, even w poignant confession to Jimmy, peeling her own layers. So now I'll miss the actress, but not the character. Well-PLAYED!
(And now they gotta have Burnett and WaltnJessie, having flushed most of the major characters who can be flushed, who will not be in BB.

(Although---Kim is still a person of some interest to some on both sides of the law, so we may see her dealing with them while on the lam---?)(though I assume she's got her cut of the Sandpiper money, but even so)

agreed that Kim just hit the absolute lowest there

Jimmy's ability to prevaricate is almost always based in ambiguity or hypotheticals and Kim can just... lie

that entire conversation with Howard's widow was insanely cruel gaslighting, just a top tier performance she knew she'd never come back from

yeah that whole thing was brilliant b/c she knows something that nobody else there does - that Howard and her were on bad terms, and had been for a long time, essentially blaming her. definitely the low point of her character

guessing this is not the end of Kim's story - I would imagine Carol Burnett is cast as her mom, but what she winds up doing I have no clue. if nothing else she would appear to survive the series, given the fate of everyone else

that scene with Gus talking to the employee at the restaurant -- the sommelier? -- was kind of heartbreaking

dude gave up the entire possibility of having a relationship or life that includes anything other than chicken restaurants, drugs, and revenge

giancarlo esposito is so incredible in this role

agreed. his body language and expression in that scene was amazing, he just flipped the switch and looked like he was on the most romantic date for five minutes until he flipped it back off and left

Was thinking about how long they let that scene go on, too, and I think it really drove home just how little space Gus has given himself to mess up. 10 minutes at a restaurant talking wine with a cute guy. Then it's back to the meth and the death.

at least the guy got a big tip out of it

that Howard and her were on bad terms, and had been for a long time, essentially blaming her. Yes, and his last speech, he said, in effect, Jimmy's one thing, always gonna be Slippin' Jimmy---Jimmy's ability to prevaricate is almost always based in ambiguity or hypotheticals and Kim can just--lie---she knows just when and how, with the deeper insight than Jimmy, the greater sense of other people, and of right and wrong: and Howard can't get over, how, with all she has going for her, and fighting for the little guy, that she can choose the bad side too, eyes wide open.
Limits of choice, we see how her mother messed her up early, but also scamming turns her on, the way she says "fun" at the end of her confession: with such despair, such commitment, and the way she kisses him after coup de gras to the widow, the way she comes out with "Giselle," oooweee in the fateful first playtime adventure.

Xpost Yea the closeup where his face suddenly drops and becomes sullen and heavy is remarkable.

Practically saw 10 years add to his face in a moment

Yeah, like he suddenly thought of something he had to take care of, like when Mike's kicking back with a beer, fuckin finally, and then calls Nachos' father.
(xpost Kim's craving for revenge on Howard is maybe even greater than Jimmy's, or going deeper, more creatively motivating, because she knows, on some level, that Howard's read her so well.)

But in Gus's case, I guess it's more that the guy's gone for a minute, and "back to reality" overall

spell is broken---what if he hadn't left? Gus looked happy, but also kind of flustered---

he's a man not used to letting his guard down.

esposito is so so good at letting those little hints of emotion shine through

When the show started, I felt like Kim was mostly a straight arrow but one who enjoyed minor swindles of rich douches, and wouldn't play ball when shit escalated to like, federal crime.

Then the episode where Chuck accused Jimmy of sabotaging him by changing the address on his applications and Kim defended him to Chuck.

I knew it was just her presenting a unified front for Jimmy, but expected when they got in the car that we'd get the cliched "I need you to tell me that you didn't do it, Jimmy" speech.

Instead she just fucking punches him, hard, multiple times, signaling she believed Chuck and just wanted no discussion on it. No pageantry of making him lie to give her plausible deniability to assuage her cognitive dissonance. No need to make it "right" in her head.

Just "fuck you for putting me in this position, and we will pretend it didn't happen". She got her client back, unintentionally got her revenge on Howard/Chuck, so it was cool as long as both forgot the incident.

Definitely started to think after that, that she didn't have much of a floor for how low Jimmy would have to sink for her to stop loving him

seems like she didn't have a floor for how low jimmy would sink, but did ultimately have one for how low she would sink herself

And it turned out to be---pretty damn low.

Xpost otm

lingering on that "World's Greatest Lawyer" mug a few minutes after the reveal that Kim is no longer a lawyer was pretty good

yeah that whole thing was brilliant b/c she knows something that nobody else there does - that Howard and her were on bad terms, and had been for a long time, essentially blaming her. definitely the low point of her character

ah yes, I'm a bit slow and was trying to work out what the 1.5 years ago thing was but obviously she knew when Howard and his wife started 'separating' and was making it tie to that - where/how did she find out about this? Was it one of Howard's earnest pleas? I remember Howard saying but not the context.

Thought this episode was mostly a collection of rather self-conscious set pieces in the BCS style, and overall a bit too aware of itself.

Def my jam: That intro montage with all the shameless match cuts ending exactly where you know it will, with j&k staring at the spot where what didn’t happen happened, then gus driving to the cartel meet with that throbbing music cue (tptr vibes this season at times) I was like 10 mins with almost no dialogue, “things we already know”… yes… ha ha ha… yes!

Loved then going into gus’s evening off - I thought we might be staying with him for the whole rest of the ep (I’m among those itt that have criticised how they’ve handled him in this but there have been moments like this & last week’s call to Lyle)

Howard bringin the lols from beyond the grave

I think we’ll prob get more Kim but it would be kind of awesome if this were her actual exit from the show

xpost to myself - looks like that was a mere two eps ago in the mid-finale when he tells them 'I've been sleeping in the guest house for the better part of a year.'

Mike's kicking back with a beer, fuckin finally, and then calls Nachos' father

and it's right after Mike's been staring at his granddaughter's toys. the little monologue he gives is basically what he wanted someone to say about his own son, or what he wishes he could believe

but Mike's dirty in his own way, and Nacho's father wasn't

It’s a bit different because Mike’s son stayed honest, he was killed because he wasn’t bent.

The Gus scene was really great, one of the few times you see him act outside of a scheme or a coverup. At first I thought this was where he gets the idea to poison the cartel but in retrospect it’s probably more remembering what happened to his ex boyfriend

xp lol I misremembered

Finally caught up on these last two episodes, and man, they did some impressively radical, or at least subversive things. First they get rid of their larger than life, almost comically charismatic multi-season monster villain after a ton of build up in kind of a pretty straight-forward way, which of course they can do, because the *real* villain of the show is the one we know from "Breaking Bad," which means we also know that nothing can happen to him (or Saul, or Mike), which makes the show's sustained tension and suspense all the more impressive. And *then* they manage to almost perfectly extract Kim from the picture and fast forward all in one fell swoop, still with four episodes to go, which is almost the ultimate audacious pull the tablecloth off magic trick. Just masterfully handled all around with a kind of perfect formal precision that I can agree runs the risk of coming off self-aware, but maybe because it *has to be* so self-aware, not just of the mythology it needs to set in motion and adhere to but its particular eccentric rhythms and aesthetics, which along with being technically entertaining also come off a little surreal and disorienting, which again helps keep a story whose broader conclusion we already know stay compelling. It's all so almost ... mathematical.

Yeah, absolutely, to keep guiding this thing through the years, with Bob's heart attack and Covid restrictions and who knows what other considerations added to the strictures of this freakin' prequel (bet some are saying, behind the scenes, "Never will I get involved in one of these again," sure)
"That's not justice, it's just revenge. You gangsters are all alike." That's what it all comes down to, that's all Mike could do for his own son, was kill the even dirtier cops who killed said son.
'I've been sleeping in the guest house for the better part of a year.' Jimmy and Kim look concerned. As well they might: it could be the opening line of a Loudon Wainwright III song.

Mike talking to Nacho's dad... Mike has a decent working knowledge of Spanish doesn't he? So he pretended to not know even the most basic, 'justicia', so that Varga sr. would talk unguarded in his mother tongue, clever. This post started out as a question and I realised what was up as I was typing lol

I'm no longer an attorney" was some great delivery too

It was a great line and great delivery - but is it really believable that Kim would just give up law so abruptly? Isn’t it an area where she strongly believes she can do a lot of good?

I’ll hold judgment until I see the full Kim resolution though and (perhaps) see what she does do.

She's been steadily working her way down the ladder, iirc. Big law firm. Big law firm, but focused on pro bono work. Smaller boutique law firm but still really preferring pro bono, and dipping into scams with Jimmy. Working for herself but still focusing on small clients and pro bono work, plus bigger scams. But the way she gave it up so abruptly ... I guess it does depend on what happens next. If Jimmy enabled her to break bad, then you'd think it'd be easy to just move on from Jimmy. Yet those occasional flashbacks to her childhood have implied something more going on, and the promise of Carol Burnett as perhaps her mom (though it's anyone's guess) might answer a few questions.

Jimmy, fwiw, has been working his way down the ladder, too, but he's suited for the first rung, or lower. He pulled himself out of the ooze but in the end prefers it down there.

how quickly we forget the distinction between a criminal attorney and a criminal attorney

if better call saul characters were on politics twitter

kim: warren-to-biden. feels vaguely gross about it. reads a lot of 538
jimmy/saul: tulsi or yang, not voting in the general
howard: bloomberg obv
lalo, gus: trump probably, gus might be a return-to-normal biden type

— 𝒌𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒏 𝒌𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒓 (@radiokeller) April 10, 2020

based on patrick fabian’s recent likes (liz cheney, the lincoln project), I feel proud to stand by this tweet I made when I was stoned 2 years ago

howard is totally a radical centrist

I can see Kim giving up the law: she's always evidenced more of a sense of right and wrong, and of personal responsibility than Slippin' Jimmy->Saul, as Howard said to her there at the end, why he was surprised that she would get so into fucking with him (not surprised at all by Jimmy). She's had time for self-awareness to land and stay with her, not in the middle of the night, as has probably happened, as long as she was trying not to think about Lalo being out there somewhere--but in the daytime, in halls of justice etc., walking around and acting normal, per Mike's orders.

Kim has become scarier than Gus, who would just have you killed: she's capable of torture, as with Howard and his wife (though yeah, also prob would have shot whoever answered the door, for love ov Jimmy).

Lalo might torture you (or anyway Gus), then mercy-kill, in effect. Kim just tortures, leaves you twisting.

Carol Burnett and Gene

And Jeffie

Shit it’s The Rehearsal

had to remind myself of who Jeffie was because I watched Season 5 more than two years ago, and lol different actor, but once I looked it up...pretty ingenious maneuver by Jimmy/Saul/Gene

Exterior daylight b&w cinematography was exquisite

the heist made me anxious af. always does. Jimmy NEVER plans for the unexpected happening and always has to wing it.

I mean shit, what if security guy had said "ugh, got bad diarrhea tonight, no buns for me plz"