Better Call Saul

the Gus Fring/meth plotline continues to be a total drag on this show

Nahhh

The way gus is filmed and portrayed in this series is ridic, somewhere between a terminator and Satan

I just don't care about it. We know where his story goes, we aren't learning anything about the character, it just feels like fan-service wheel-spinning.

Mike is at least a little more interesting, his internal morality+guilt struggle is a new wrinkle

No way, the Fring stuff this episode hit pretty hard for anyone that's spent time toiling in a minimum wage job for a manager/boss with very specific requirements for how he (ime, it's always a he) wants his ship run but in no way intends to actually tell his staff what that is, preferring to browbeat and insinuate that everything you do is incorrect.

we already knew Fring was an asshole boss

his single-minded sense of purpose is kind of his defining characteristic

Well, yeah. It's also true that this particular episode landed in a very particular way, but maybe just for me.

Man Patrick Fabian is always so good as Howard, such a finely-tuned character. In the lunch scene - basically sauls grey matter moment - you can see that his regret over how he treated jimmy is real, as is his sleazoid admiration. Unlike Walt tho Jimmy’s tantrum isn’t just about resentment at being patronised, it also parallels Mike’s response to Kayleigh talking about her dad being killed by “the bad guys” in that the lashing out is more about his own guilt & self-loathing than anything

xp this whole show is about inevitable outcomes tbf. We know mike dies and Jimmy becomes an amoral criminal, who cares

Better Spare Kim

it's the journey, not the outcome re: Mike and Jimmy. Gus isn't on a journey, he's already at his end-state.

Maybe his identical, ne'er-do-well cousin is about to come to town and inadvertently instigate wacky hijinx, bet you never thought of that.

lol

His end state is dying having killed every member of the Salamanca family*, as a journey that frickin operatic! Not much personal growth tho true

*this is why lalo doesn’t survive the show btw

Gus isn't on a journey, he's already at his end-state.

I'm not sure that I agree this is his "end-state". I mean, he's clearly already in a position fairly similar to where he is when he enters BB, but surely there are moves for him to make yet that can play out in an interesting, unexpected way.

*this is why lalo doesn’t survive the show btw

I don't understand Lalo's deal - some fan wiki cited upthread noted that he was referenced as still being alive at the start of Breaking Bad, but i don't recall anything about him from BB at all

I thiiink that might be Saul’s intro where he says “it wasn’t me, it was Ignacio” or something which is the basis for the character of nacho - maybe he refs lalo as having sent them to kidnap him but I don’t remember

ie it would be a throwaway line

Gus's entire purpose in doing the unappeasable manager shtick was to keep someone at the restaurant with him, giving him an alibi in the long term, right?

We're also getting the backstory on why Hank seems like he has a really good rep in the DEA despite being a big dummy by the time Breaking Bad rolled around -- he was spoon-fed info in order to make certain busts!

that's how I read it mh

xps

Nice, I hadn’t caught on to either of those!

(Although hank does show some good cop instinct in bb, he was onto gus before being told to back off iirc)

xpost With the parallel utility of symbolizing the 'it is...acceptable' loss the money drop as part of a larger game.

Murdered that sentence like a German architect.

so Lalo never appears in BB, right? ergo he must die over the course of BCS at some point?

Yeah he’s only in bcs - doesn’t necessarily follow that he’s dead, could just be out of the picture (cf Kim we hope) but gus makes a big deal of having killed all of hectors surviving relatives

So yeah he’s dead

ahem, German engineer

As well as the possible alibi, Fring keeping the manager back shows us something of him that we haven’t met before. He’s not been an asshole boss in the past, he’s caring and respectful of people despite his very precise and demanding expectations. But here we get to see his weakness and stress during the bust under the gathered, mannered exterior, via him channeling his anger onto an innocent bystander. He has to endure this massive blow to his business without being able to ever show that he knows it’s his partner who’s responsible, and he vents that by making someone else inexplicably suffer at work, through no fault of their own.

Yes, well-put.

I thought the deal with the manager was just about Fring not wanting to be alone in the building when the call came in about the DEA sting. There was also a conversation on the way out between the manager and one of the staff about the fryer not being done properly (the manager said something about how he would fix it) so it wasn't just Fring being picky.

Uh, besides whatever of his own reasons Fring had for keeping the kid around, it was very explicitly about Fring being picky! Not sure how you read it another way.

it was all those things. but these were also all things we already knew about Fring.

I'll be honest: I'm finding some of the Fring/dead-drop plot a little confusing right now. I like having Fring still there, though...agree his story's a closed book, but I just like the character.

haha yeah I too have trouble following all the convoluted double-crossings and elliptical maneuverings. I content myself with the fact that none of it really matters.

Basically Gus paid 800K to protect his man in Lalo's inner circle.

Yeah, it more-or-less makes sense in my head but my gf was lost and I tried to lay it all out and, uh, well...

Nacho is stuck between overtly working for Lalo and covertly working for Gus
Gus forced Nacho to gain Lalo's confidence
Lalo is trying to take down Gus the only way he can (via his money, because execution is a no-go)
Crazy Eight got busted and was made a confidential informant contingent upon providing actionable intel to the DEA, and he's also reporting DEA info back to Lalo
The DEA followed a tip from Crazy Eight on a money drop
Nacho convinced Gus that he had to let the DEA grab the cash or Lalo would smell a rat
Gus deemed the money drop an acceptable loss and arranged a situation wherein the DEA would snag the money while the pick-up man got away

???
Profit!

haha

the only part of that I didn't get was why it was important that the pick-up man get away

Sacrifice pawns, protect rooks.

Can I just profess my absolute mortification over only just recently realizing that Crazy Eight was Crazy Eight? In my defense, it's been forever since I've seen the first season of Breaking Bad but I still can't believe I never put two and two together until they basically stuck a neon sign reading 'HEY VIEWERS, LOOK, IT'S THE GUY WALTER WHITE KILLED WITH A BIKE LOCK' under his face this season.

I would gather that Gus takes great pains to ensure that none of his men get arrested and wind up, say, becoming DEA informants.

Some of the most fan servicey things on this show have been the v superfluous origin stories like how crazy eight got his name or how hector got his bell (the latter explained in a long monologue lol)

Sacrifice pawns, protect rooks.

^^^

Can I just profess my absolute mortification over only just recently realizing that Crazy Eight was Crazy Eight?

I manage to forget this every season. If I ever rewatch Breaking Bad it'll probably come as a surprise when that nice quiet guy from the restaurant turns up as a nasty baddie.

I didn't make the connection either. Till just now. Onward.

I’ve forgotten everything the happens in Breaking Bad, which makes BCS more enjoyable, I think, and the alleged ‘fan service” goes over my head

Tbh I think it’s stretching it when every callback and character bit gets labelled as “fan service” - I’m not sure it’s a useful critique?

Aside from that I think this season’s been terrific - it’s always enjoyable but season 4 felt like a stepdown at the time

Almost forgot this last night--missed the 9:00, caught it at 11:00. Slightly confused by the end re Kim and her firm. (Not the photo, which I know will be explained. Just...in general.) I thought for sure I'd spotted Laurie Metcalf digging up soil at the site, but I checked, and no. Was that Kim?

lol at Mike wiring up his own cell phone charger