Better Call Saul

haha yeah me too maybe that's part of it

the Jimmy plotline is so much more vivid/engaging

my memory is Gus bought Mike off with the stipend/fake corporate job, and that Nacho tried to kill Salamanca against Gus's wishes (cuz Gus wants to kill him himself, or something?)

meh

Some excellent 'Mike rolling his eyes at someone being an arsehole' in this one

can anyone explain to me, bc i am dense, the deal with Kim & the judge?
why was she going there & hanging out in the first place?

in other news i love it when mike curls his lower lip over his teeth in disgust, i could watch him do it all day. the group therapy takedown was p great.

I think this was the very beginning of the Kim & judge stuff, no explanation yet.

the kim-judge stuff is kind of intriguing because that's where we found jimmy at the beginning of the series. maybe kim backslides and starts going down a slippin' jimmy kind of path? i hope not cause I adore kim, but who knows.

hmm ok good

also can i just say i really dont gaf about the salamanca twins at all

I was appreciating how they were being played more for laughs in the previous couple of eps because unlike say mike or gus their taciturnity comes off as a goofy pose the more exposure we get to it - the doctors reacting to these two idiots refusing to speak for as long as possible was great

Now they’re back to “badass” I’m less interested but I really liked how the shootout was staged

their pointy boots with the jewellery on the tips remind me of elf shoes

why was she going there & hanging out in the first place?

Looking over the model buildings for Mesa Verde's rapid planned expansion last week, she was deeply disheartened at the prospect of all this reliable ongoing employment in corporate lawyering. She's also at a crossroads in her relationship, with not knowing where Jimmy is headed and whether she wants to go there.

So this week she goes to the court to just sit and listen to cases, to see if she will be inspired and see a more fulfilling path for herself returning to defending lots and lots of single-client small cases; actually having an immediate positive effect on people's lives & getting the adrenaline rush of learning the situation quickly and defending on the fly.

Jimmy deciding he wants to be the go-to guy for burner phones feels to me the turning point on the road to Saul Goodman.

so was Mike right about that guy in therapy or what? loved that they left it open and both sides (Mike is an asshole/Mike is telling harsh truths) seemed to hold some validity

They seem to be telegraphing a pretty obvious punch here — therapy guy kills himself or someone else because Mike robbed him of the only way he thought he had to deal with some real pain, Mike says "fuck, I'm a bad guy, might as well live the part" — and I hope they go in a less expected direction. But expectation is a prison, so never mind me.

Finally went to see Incredibles 2 on Monday and was stuck trying to remember whose voice the millionaire sponsor was. Would noramlly have IMDBed it but knew girlfriend would have had a fit if i did so.
Bob Odenkirk as I'm sure you all knew.

Enjoyed that film.

their pointy boots with the jewellery on the tips remind me of elf shoes

― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Thursday, August 30, 2018 6:52 AM (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I thought of the extreme turn up point style of Mexican cowboy boots that I think were a fashion sometime around this. I remember it tied in with a Mexican techno/electronica scene and people were sharing videos about it at some point I think was contemporaneous to this. but not 100% sure, I don't think I have a milestone for the exact when.

what was the country song in this episode? I didn't recognize it

Carl Rutherford? dude doesn't even have a wiki entry

My brother-in-law just gave me a USB with this season's episodes so far. I'm in!

Caught up. Pretty good so far--a little slow, but things are moving along. Favourite moments so far: Kim chewing out Howard; the judge's ruse with The Verdict (and Kim's chastened response); Lydia and Mike, every time they're together; the cab driver, yes; and Jimmy's great "That's your cross to bear, Howard" as a prelude to immediately cheering up. I loved that, but I was left wondering who he was angry at--was it Chuck or Howard? Was he sublimating his anger at Chuck by humiliating Howard, or was he simply angry with both and loving that his insurance ploy left one dead and the other wracked with guilt? I thought it was always Chuck holding back Jimmy's career, not Howard, and that Jimmy eventually understood that. Great moment in any event.

At risk of being flayed alive by the hive mind, I'm finding this season a little boring.

It's very... deliberate.

There's a sort of Buffy season six thing going on at the moment, I feel. That was a season-long depression narrative which often came uncomfortably close to replicating the actual rhythms of depression. Jimmy is currently adrift and bored out of his mind, and it feels like they're trying to take the viewer on that same journey in as painless a way as possible (thank christ we didn't have to be present in his skin as he mindlessly bounced a ball against a window for x number of hours). The inspiration he found by episode's end seems to suggest that things will be opening up a bit very soon.

Kim chewing out Howard

man this was brutal

At risk of being flayed alive by the hive mind, I'm finding this season a little boring.

there is something about this and Breaking Bad that is very much focused on *how* things are done, the bare mechanics of accomplishing tasks

Thinking about how adept Saul was with burner phones in Breaking Bad (my introduction to the concept; I watched The Wire after Breaking Bad), I like the way they've built another bridge to the future Saul.

i like the “bridge” moments with Jimmy...where he instinctively chooses a course of action and then course-corrects. chooses poorly and corrects wisely (though maybe too late), or vice versa.

the thing that this show does is that i really dont want him to become saul. because as much of a fuckup as jimmy is, what future saul to become is just so much worse & depressing. it’s like watching a cancer spreading in real-time.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BYzRkZWJhNTMtM2QxMC00MGE2LWEzNTMtMTVjMmQ3ZjUxZTFkXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjQ2MDQwNDU@._V1_UY268_CR20,0,182,268_AL_.jpg

wife and I spent the last two weeks watching BCS from the beginning on Netflix and now we're caught up to real time. what an incredible show. BB was one of the best shows ever, but I figured this show was like some silly episodic Saul-helps-a-criminal thing (I'm pretty unimaginative). I know most of this has been said but:

- this is better written than BB in a lot of ways. way more character-driven, even more nuance. love how the characters don't follow a straight line in how they develop
- the visuals are excellent even though the show is much less action-driven. love the long shots of Mike in the desert, of characters doing mundane things. I'm usually too impatient for that level of indulgence in movies/TV but here it's endlessly watchable. there was a stunning shot a few episodes ago of a bridge at night and the lights in the background are out-of-focus and I was thinking "this is so showoffy but fuck it"
- so happy to have such a well-written major female character on the show, that was one of the weaknesses of BB. Seehorn is an amazing actress and by this point I'm most interested in seeing how Kim develops
- as the show widens its scope to include Gus, Lydia, and now Gale and others, I feel like it's losing focus a bit but this team has earned so much goodwill from me so far that I have total faith I'll enjoy where the journey goes

That was a season-long depression narrative which often came uncomfortably close to replicating the actual rhythms of depression.

The latest episode was really morose. Jimmy didn't even get to keep his cell-phone money. (Was the opening lifted right from Breaking Bad, or did all that happen out of view? Can't remember. I think it's the first actual overlap between the two shows.)

I look forward to this show like few others. It captures so much of the mundane aspects of being a lawyer, it is amazing.

A few calls:
- The person about whom Gale opines that he should "check his cookware" because of impurities - could that be Jesse, still working through his trademark chili powder added phase?
- I think Kim went to the courthouse out of an effort to become assigned to the public defender program more aggressively so she could eventually get Mesa Verde taken away from her while still saving face. This, of course, is NOT a good plan for her professionally...but I've seen worse career-minded moves.
- So good to see Francesca.

I thought this was the best episode of the season so far, certainly the most fast moving and entertaining. I see the point of them having made Jimmy so directionless, but it's kind of frustrating as a viewer.

I didn't buy the scene in the court bathroom with Jimmy and a cracked, broken and insomniac Howard tbh. I've always felt Howard is made of more sterner unflappable stuff than that. He falls apart at the seams because Jimmy tried a guilt trip on him over Chuck's death?! Seems a tad implausible to me

def the weak link of the episode, seemed a little too on the nose. Mostly I just fixated on how Howard was spending his entire time in front of the mirror fiddling with shit and never buttoned his collar + straightened his tie.

Howard had already guilt tripped himself pretty well, Jimmy just didn't offer him a lifeline. But yeah, his sudden weakness seems a little out of character.

it's clearly meant to be a contrast to Jimmy, who's basically in denial, but it seemed forced.

It's hard enough for me to remember to watch a show regularly--does Saul have a fixed place in the AMC schedule? It seems to bounce between Sundays and Mondays.

It only bounces between Mondays and Mondays.

I thought for sure that it was a Sunday when I watched last week...Not surprising, I guess; I had to stay up for the second airing because I'd checked F/X's schedule instead of AMC's.

Tonight's opening was powerfully sad. Don't know if I've ever empathized with Jimmy more--I'd also be the guy running the Oscar pool while all the important stuff goes on around me. Liked how Howard's self-pity snapped Jimmy out of his.

it didn't even click with me that that was Gale until I read this. fuck. it's been a while

I got the impression in the opening that Jimmy was pretending to be an idiot about law stuff while already studying hard secretly

The last shot definitely conveyed that he was studying on the sly, but I still found it sad because of the way that everybody either condescended to him or patronized him (especially Chuck, but even Kim). And he was doing something that was as vital to office morale as the cases Chuck was winning--things like Oscar pools are what make certain jobs tolerable.

I read the opening sequence as showing how much of Jimmy's law career has been driven by his need to impress Kim. She was the reason he started studying the law, he got into elder law after she suggested it, his whole motivation for resuming his legal career was so that he could set up a partnership with her, he even suggests desperately that they could go into criminal law together, when she talks about her plans to join a new firm. which tbh makes perfect sense for her, not so much for jimmy. they're on separate journeys now and he can't see it, and it's incredibly sad to see.

The gus/hector scenes are kind of a counter to the people who say that you should watch this series cold

In fact the more I think about it the more I think that suggestion is just a daft way of rephrasing the (very true) statement “this show is better than breaking bad”

I got the impression in the opening that Jimmy was pretending to be an idiot about law stuff while already studying hard secretly

Why would he pretend? Could just not say anything even if he had already been going into the chamber of law secrets prior to the lingering shot in which we see him do that.

The final shot on Hector's stationary hand felt like viewer trolling imo - ooooh maybe it moved a nanometer

I think it was just "this is the hand that will kill Gus Fring."

nice earl callback at the end

*huell

I needed Gus's tale to remind me what his motivations are. It's been a long time since the last season.