Better Call Saul

(xxpost) Should have immediately cut from Lalo to the Beatles doing "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," Kim sitting on a sofa and listening intently.

also interesting to note that by the time Saul is introduced in Breaking Bad (which iirc is 4 years after the events of the last BCS episode?), he thinks that Lalo is still alive

lol good ep

Did you feel, as I do, that lalo is a lil stinker

BCS > BB

― PBKR, Thursday, May 19, 2022 10:06 AM (six days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Just a masterclass of pacing and tension all season long and what a payoff.

I know Lalo's supposed to be terrifying but whenever he's on screen I can only think of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gYE5TyijxE

Better Sean Paul

More Jimmy, Les Paul (I mean Saul).

Think Lalo might have been too clever turning up at Saul n Kim's like that- if he's planning to use one/both of them against Gus (or Juan Bolsa?), Gus could get wind of it and know what's up. Just cos Michael is fooled by the phone call bluff doesn't mean Gus is

Like the man says. "clever, clever chicken man"

does "mid-season finale" mean there is now a gap?

Yeah. Back 11 July

CLEVER CHICKEN MAN

Think Lalo might have been too clever turning up at Saul n Kim's like that- if he's planning to use one/both of them against Gus (or Juan Bolsa?), Gus could get wind of it and know what's up. Just cos Michael is fooled by the phone call bluff doesn't mean Gus is

yea I kind of suspect that they're going to play the full phone call for Gus, he'll hear that Lalo hangs up and calls back, and deduces that *he* knows and is intentionally throwing them off

Also, Lalo really lost his cool when he realised the phone was tapped, which I don't think we've seen before, which makes me think getting a msg to Hector was a key part of the plan

hector pinging away angrily to the cartel

turns out this show is garbage

The one thing they really screwed up between Breaking Bad (photo 1) and Better Call Saul (photo 2) is the age of Mike's granddaughter, she should have been around 3 in BCS pic.twitter.com/6nCmzx4jDC

— Gore Vidal Sassoon (@JimmyJazz1968) May 27, 2022

I’m not so keen on the Lalo as super-villain element of this show which verges on borderline credibility.

For me what is more interesting how Jimmy has the courage and determination to keep going and reinvent himself in the face of continually being “kicked in the nuts by life” (as it’s phrased above thread iirc)- and the personal cost of this to him and Kim.

perhaps Jimmy dies in the second half of season 5 and Kim does the spin the world backwards thing from Superman to save him but dies in the process

I’m not so keen on the Lalo as super-villain element of this show which verges on borderline credibility.

feel like most of the characters have that element, like 75% of the plot points in this show (and BB) revolve around one character knowing exactly how another character is going to act. Walt vs. Gus, Jimmy vs. Chuck, Jimmy & Kim vs. Howard, all these plot points relying on a character doing very specific things. obviously this is what makes the show fun and I think it's what makes that last scene work so well, seeing things suddenly and dramatically spiral out of control in a completely unpredictable way.

I agree that Lalo's superpowers seem to extend even beyond that, but I think the actor is so good at pulling it off that it works. it really does feel like his character was supposed to kick it last season but they liked Tony Dalton so much they kept him until the end.

Lalo loses that smirk sometimes, even loses his shit occasionally--though I'd forgotten that

by the time Saul is introduced in Breaking Bad (which iirc is 4 years after the events of the last BCS episode?), he thinks that Lalo is still alive

Jimmy and Kim like two little Walts

It's only when the ponderous Gus parts and the pranking-Howard arc took over that I lost some interest, though; the first 3-4 seasons, at least, were amazing, and I still hope Chuck comes back in some way, maybe just for a second in a bad Slippin' Jimmy dream, under the counter at Cinnibon's, or would that be too easy, like Walt and his family in a booth at Gus's place.

i was kinda behind just caught up on new ep

[sits on floor, breathes into paper bag]

holy shit u guys that was intense

the bit where howard is yakking and jimmy and kim notice like a breath of air or a draft or something

yeah the candle bit was a great touch

good “gothic” touch

also i love how all the plots hinged on surveillance in some form or other - gus watching lalo, lalo watching gus, howard watching jimmy, jimmy watching howard

very spy vs sy

there’s this other kind if tragic layer to howard (aside fron the obvious) that i loved that i can’t quite express.

like he is so committed to seemingly hopeless situations. or not that wording but something like that. in his marriage for example. as he reveals to kim & jimmy he’s been sleeping in the guest house for a year (!). so the kitchen scene in the previous ep is not a new turn of the screw, this has prob been playing out the same way for a year! he makes her a latte with the same howard level of fastidious detail …that his wife clearly could give two shits about… and in the moment her uncaring offhandness makes her seem like a jerk. but then, knowing this you gotta wonder why is he still even persisting in these fastidious performances for her? if it’s not benefiting her & makes him (i think) feel defeated. like ok he loved her but at the expense of his own self respect? it’s dark when you think sbout it.it’s like he’s pouring this love into a bucket with a hole in it. so why keep doing it? misplaced hope? passive aggressive commitment to a cause? self esteem?

i dunno

as a character detail i love it. his fastidiousness is so integral to who he his

was Chuck's death over a year ago? (Jimmy was disbarred for a year so I guess it's a little over that). I think Howard was really affected by Chuck's death, had lost a trusted peer and felt a small sense of responsibility.

Went into therapy,didn't he? And/or some kind of spiritual group? Carved up by his feelings of responsibility to the firm and to the increasingly difficult(/fucked with by Jimmy) Chuck, Howard's mentor (he got all the regard and benefits that Jimmy didn't, dammit!),still an inspiration, as we hear in the lesson H. passes down to the ambitious young underling, before going in, one more time----

--And maybe his wife perceives that it isn't really about her in particular, but Howard trying to fix everything, by excruciating attention to deeetail, including tiny, because it can be set just right: the art of latte foam, the centrifugal soda can, like so, yess. In a sense, he's become like Chuck, maybe always was---also Jimmy & Kim, Gus, Mike, Lalo, obsessed with details, thinking they've got The Big Picture.

Just one more,this next little bit, snap it into place.

there is a Slippin Jimmy animated series on AMC - it is terrible fyi

don’t ask how i know, i dont wanna talk abt it

good point you brought up dow: Is the Howard Latte really about his wife? Howard is definitely a tragic figure and I really sympathise with him, but if he has any fault it's a subconscious belief that the world revolves around him. Chucks death was about him. Within the scam, it was more about him than the clients. Even in his last scene you get the sense he still thinks he is the main character in the room that can sort this whole thing out. The heart is in the right place, he is a kind man, he didn't deserve anything that came to him, but within his endearing bravado is a genuine vanity. Deep-rooted, probably impossible for a guy like Howard to ever actually deal with as it seems so intertwined with his temperament/image. Did he make the latte because he believes he is the main character of this marriage that is going to win his wife back with his fastidiousness without actually respecting her autonomy/potential ability to see through him that its just inescapable posturing and self-love?

They really wrote some great characters into this series

same thing with Howard trying to win Jimmy with the job offer as some sort of penance for Chuck. Making a situation about him with kindness when it didn't need to be about him at all. Howard is self-absorption wrapped with immense kindness and humanity. Strange character

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osPVh1mT5Wo

^^this is Howard

ooh that’s a good point, i hadnt thought of it like that

I tried the first SLIPPIN JIMMY episode, it was ungood and pointless

VG and dow have helped flesh out why i'm less bothered than luna schlosser by lalo as supervillain: this show makes a strong nod to realism but of course it's a comedy, a comedy of subtle exaggeration and of clashing types, where the types (otherwise extremely different in affect, see dow's list) are all of them meticulous and detail- and victory-focused in the moment and not much given to stepping back and attending to the bigger picture (viz how things will be playing out in let's say six years time)

unlike BB there are no agents of chaos front and centre (some of jimmy's clients maybe but they're minor characters): it's abt how things play out between these several ppl who very much know what they're about in their specific adjacent yet different fields (law, heists, hits, pranks, the service industry legal and illegal: each field with its own ethos, if that's the word, and the crackle of energy arising when one ethos grates against another)

this surface of precision is a feint towards realism as genre but the whole is a kind of satire against the wider moral blindness of um empiricism, as worked up from and justified by the successful exactness of the individual projects (or i guess failure of same, in chuck's or howard's or werner's stories)

i think there's an unstated heirarchy of success being explored -- with mike perhaps at its pinnacle, bcz he's the most zen in the zone when he's doing his thing, and has managed to keep his family life best quarantined from danger) and i gueeeeess maybe jimmy as his rival there bcz his gift is so much insane improvisation on-screen to get out of a jam (eps in earlier series basically just cut between their clashing sensibilities tho (sadly, to me) mike seems is much more a middle-distance figure in this series

er anyway these are my tue morn thoughts 30 mins before i zoom w/my solicitor to finalise details of my will lol ("my takes i leave to ILXOR!")

dow's list: howard, chuck, jimmy, kim, gus, mike, lalo -- plsu werner. is there anyone else? nacho is the most major figure not on the list i feel but i'm maybe forgetting someone (i've never rewatched and this portmanteau project is now in its 14th year)

So pissed off I can't watch a new episode today.

Yeah I think I’ve said way back that everyone in these shows is either a genius or an idiot (and all are fools), Lalo’s hyper-competence is hardly a departure (also you have missed out HANK!)

wait is hank in BCS? i did forget that (everything pre-pandemic is mulch, blur, combination mulch and blur)

also i realised a while ago that i am secretly rooting for some plot turn in BCS which fully deviates from the BB set-up just to fvck with us lol

like lalo takes out gus and starts running the chicken place or something, boom!

I want rereleased breaking bad with Kim digitally inserted wandering through the background of several scenes

McClunkey!

this surface of precision is a feint towards realism as genre but the whole is a kind of satire against the wider moral blindness of um empiricism… I think there's an unstated heirarchy of success being explored…

BCS as Rorschach test!

also i realised a while ago that i am secretly rooting for some plot turn in BCS which fully deviates from the BB set-up just to fvck with us lol