Better Call Saul

nearly completely self-imposed, too. gene exists in nebraska because he went through the identity washing process and people are looking for him for known crimes. kim's were all covered up, and if anyone did want to find her, she's living under the same name, although very quietly

the initial airport scene had a nice red herring when she was standing under the alaska airlines entrance, but it ended up being a bit of a tease for that last cameo

I've been pretty clear on this thread that I've had mixed feelings about this season the whole way. But I think there's one genuine tragedy (I mean, as genuine as can be for fictional characters in a TV show...) that was underscored by last night's episode, especially when Kim looks over at that lawyer (a Kim lookalike, one of the reviewers said--didn't notice) advising her client: Kim was a great lawyer, especially when she was taking all those pro bono cases. And she walked away from all that--perhaps needlessly.

Kim's breakdown on the bus was amazing, very uncomfortable to watch.

Second-guessing my "perhaps needlessly"--I guess she was so deep into an ethical swamp, there was no sustainable way to continue.

Yes--but, as she admits, obliging with the legal eagle critique for Howard's widow ("C'mon, Howard always said you were this great lawyer!"), there's no physical evidence of what she's confessing to---so maybe no indictment, and would a civil suit, brought by widow, fare any better? Widow might need a Saul-type to accept the case.
So---Kim still in purgatory, unless she can provide more details? Guess she could say that Jimmy's still alive, but evidence for that? Does she know where he's calling from? May soon be moot anyway, of course, the way things are going for him.
Would she have made this disclosure w/o Jimmy's call? "You're the one with the guilty conscience!" Might have done better to appeal to his sense of self-preservation, but either way, back when he was unsure what to do, she was the one who said, "Do you want to be a cartel lawyer? Or a rat?"

Jeffie panic attack wrecking his cab was hilarious

Like he's the last dude you'd wanna do crime with and Jimmy knows this!

Dude is so unhinged that cops eating their dinner in a car makes him basically Thelma and Louise

Not to mention the stupidity of taking expensive watches, which would make the dude know quite obviously that he'd been robbed

Jeffie panic attack wrecking his cab was hilarious

I didn’t think so at the time but during the call to “dad” I def thought that must have been the play

I disagree, I think he was absolutely shitting his pants by the time he peeled off, he was clearly panicked and I saw nothing to make me believe he would be that clear thinking as part of some master plan.

I loved this but Kim’s final scene should have been with some random miscreant imo, the Jesse of it all felt like a total misfire

What were the last lines of that? I got distracted.

xpost Yeah, and such a plan b seems foolhardy at best, but then the whole thing is---I do think taking the watch looked kinda childish, petulant, also impulsive like the whole stubborn half-assed caper: "Well fuck this guy, I'm-a get somethin"

“Is he good?” “He was when I knew him”

I enjoyed seeing Kim smoking again. Great Kim scene, not great Jesse scene

see, but in a sane Jeffie's mind, Jimmy didn't need to 'escape'. their robberies always involved photographing ids and credit cards and typically left their victims not even knowing they were 'robbed' until much later, and so much later that they couldn't tie it back to them.

he didn't know Jimmy was going to steal actual watches, so if he was thinking clearly, Jimmy would have likely been fine if Jimmy just pretended he lived at the house and had called a cab and came out as if he was the house owner. homeowner probably has no reason to think anybody was in his house if Jimmy doesn't move shit around and take watches.

Actually I think it’s “when I knew him he was”

xpost but paranoid Jeffie sees cops behind him and assumes THEY'RE ONTO US because that's what cops do, they magically know when you're up to no good and park behind you silently

yeah I think you’re all right, it’s jeffy being a dipshit - that works best with the fish taco gag as well

my mom was so afraid Jimmy was going to kill Carol Burnett (I felt it was too out of character for him so I was less worried), and she was yelling defiantly THAT'S RIGHT, NOBODY KILLS CAROL BURNETT after he left.

I usually like Aaron Paul's portrayal of Jesse, but I thought he was pretty clunky last night, like he'd forgotten how to play the character.

You can kill Lyle Waggoner or Tim Conway, but not Carol Burnett.

xp - I wasn't too worried, but credit to Odenkirk for that brief moment where he starts wrapping the phone cord around his hand and you can clearly see he's contemplating it at least, just as scary imo

Jesse's probably a hard character to do in short fits and starts, because it's easy to turn into a caricature

Now you've got me thinking that killing Carol Burnett would have been a truly shocking moment that the writers might have either missed or shied away from. (I'm blanking out: did Saul/Jimmy ever actually kill anyone? Am I forgetting someone obvious?)

nah, wasn't his style. as far as I know, I don't even think he arranged to have someone else do it either.

I woulda had a hard time with it. it seems like that kind of violence is de facto a line that Jimmy won't cross, that it carries trauma with it, and survival instincts or no, it woulda rang false to me.

though Carol Burnett doing a slapsticky death woulda redeemed it

I had this idea that we might get a whole Kim episode showing how she dealt with the intervening six (apparently) years, but that maybe her present was in colour; kind of heartbreaking to see her basically living like gene & suppressing every part of her personality, except that with gene it’s been forced on him & he is dying to get back to what he tries to believe are the glory days whereas Kim is maybe doing the “hairshirt” thing per Saul (but I think there’s a lot of fear involved here too, just not fear of cops/gangsters)

The bus scene was really incredible, and the whole scene with the widow beforehand

Jimmy (as “Saul”) was pretty constantly suggesting murder as a solution in breaking bad

I usually like Aaron Paul's portrayal of Jesse, but I thought he was pretty clunky last night, like he'd forgotten how to play the character.

last week was pretty classic Jesse, being completely over Walter's churlish bullshit and being too fatigued to raise his voice about it

#BreakingBad 509 x #BetterCallSaul 612 pic.twitter.com/Yb4hsXN40A

— Brian Davids (@PickYourBrian) August 9, 2022

Some interesting shot comparisons in this thread, not sure I'm down with all of them though.

I think this is the most anyone has ever subverted Carol Burnett's persona (~2:15):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uqLRkQ7OSA

xxp Even though it was a slight recontextualisation and fit perfectly into a bcs episode it really felt like an outtake from the original bb ep, in a good way - obv the actors are older than they were in the past, they flagrantly & correctly have never given a shit about this & I am rooting for the inevitable chuck appearance in the finale to be a classic “odenkirk plays a 13-year-old Jimmy and they just put him in a propellor beanie” deal

xxxpost looked like he would have clocked the guy w urn of doggie ashes, if the guy hadn't passed out ( prob hoping just to knock him out), so that helped make the possibility of strangling Carol seem more likely (that, and actually wrapping the cord around his hands or through his fingers)
Jimmy (as “Saul”) was pretty constantly suggesting murder as a solution in breaking bad Yeah! But not doing it himself.
Totally hoping for classic “odenkirk plays a 13-year-old Jimmy and they just put him in a propellor beanie” deal

Gag, that guy as a first blood murderer would have been clumsy, painful, but she might could have shoved him away, kneed him in the crotch, obv., as written & played, still had some moxie (hell, give her an Emmy too: BCS better sweep it this year, acting-wise, anyway)

She goes to jail for murdering Jimmy and an ex-lawyer familiar with the deceased gains back her law license to defend one last client.

Not familiar with her tbh but she’s been great. Really sold the corny gag that she asked Jeeves Albuquerque + conman

re Saul murder, I remember a couple episodes ago confirmed that he took it upon himself to make the Walt/Gus connection. I think we're being led to believe that his processing of this fact, in the aftermath, has only made him a worse person.

Loved this episode

yup, he totally thinks he's a smart crime matchmaker/guy behind the scenes for hooking up Walt and Paul, having a guy that'd do someone else's jail bid, a series of second floor guys in the rolodex, etc.

he's a pretty good con man and a decent lawyer and his strengths combined the two!

the scene in BB when the patsy gangster in the park rapidly surrenders practically before the cops tell him he's under arrest still makes me laugh.

could be remembering wrong, but ah.. so, we've heard the other end of the call with Kim that made Jimmy smash up the phone booth. Not only was she generally unmoved by the occasion, but she might've made him think that she was going to turn herself in... as she does.

Right after that call, he decided to start smooth talking well-to-do singles in bars and stealing and selling their identities? Is he looking to pick one to steal for himself? Does he think Gene might get tracked down through Francesca/Kim? There was probably a quicker way to go about becoming someone else?

the idea that he had to think for an hour about how exactly he would act for Kim when signing the divorce papers was really funny

I think the idea was more “fuck your judgment, I’m good at the game and there’s nothing wrong with that”

The phone call seemed to be the last straw, after what Francesca reported to him, which was stuff he should have figured on---he calls Kim as I-can-still-blow-minds bold move/desperate need for reassurance, though I don't know what he consciously expected her to do for him, how she should respond---so, beyond the tantrum, maybe she did rattle him---after all, back when they were a team, she did reassure him, and encourage him, tell him, to go farther.

And I'm sure that's a big part of the guilt and self-image she carries around now, and can't really lay down in the Halls of Justice, not with 0 physical evidence, it seems---so----do something else---? Maybe if she finds out that Jimmy's been captured, unmasked, she can---testify against him? Not so much about Howard, but other stuff, cartel stuff, and she can get Jimmy to rat after all, and they can go into witness protection, though probably not together---naaa, he won't do that, will he? But she already knows something like xpost Ray Liotta's Goodfellas suburbia, so (and that could be the spin-off, with her trying to be good, but things get complicated)(from Breaking Bad to Making Good)

The whole point of the Jesse cameo was that Kim had the opportunity to tell him Saul was garbage and didn’t right? I wonder if that’s something that would eat at her. If she remembered who that guy was that is.

gene's at the absolute hilarious rock-bottom going back into the rolodex and deciding it was best time to combine the slippin' jimmy/walter white personas only to tragic results.

Definitely felt like that xp

Not sure she'd have twigged (months) later it was Jesse she'd been talking too though.

Not sure how you get to season 6 of this show before realising this

Have to admit the black and white tripped me. My brain assumed: b&w = Saul’s pre-Breaking Bad past. Instead, it’s the post Breaking Bad “present”. Gotta rewatch last few episodes now.

— Eric Frazier (@ericfraz) August 9, 2022

Jesse's cameo value was only to remind the BB nation of how great Combo's run was.

Kim seemed to have a lobotomy like personality bypass. Like not sure to what extent she had intellectual pursuits but this eventuality seemed to drop her IQ multiple double digits. Like she embraced banality wholesale. So yeah must be purgatory or is that just the supposed expectation for non feminist behaviour in the Midwest of the time or something. Anything to stop oneself being noticed. So wonder how long she would have kept that up if Gene hadn't rung.
No wonder she had a meltdown.

Jesse seemed to be stoned or something.