Better Call Saul

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

to escape the cartel, Kim Wexler undergoes hours of plastic surgery to become a grizzled middle-aged man with spectacles, then finds her friend Emmett who has built a time machine, and goes back in time, where she meets an attractive woman named Skyler and starts a budding romance

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 Gus Fring getting killed?

you will look at Breaking Bad differently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSNyiSetZ8Y

good posts re: Howard, almost feels a bit like Arrested Development where his character flaws are a lot more subtle and ingrained than everyone else on the show. at the same time they do a great job making him come off like a mostly good guy, the one major character in this universe who absolutely does not deserve their fate. even the scene where Kim is yelling at him seems undeserved. that's why I like the reveal that he's estranged from his wife, it implies there's just something about him that's impossible to reconcile with.

I was also starting to wonder how long the estrangement had been going on. It certainly seemed like there was a level of routine that hinted at it having been going on a long time, but Howard also seems like the kind of guy to not be willing to go without a routine for very long. Point being, is the estrangement a result of Kim and Saul's campaign (the drum rumors? the hooker?), or was it pre-existing? It was painted to be the latter, but the former makes it all the more sad.

I think one of the obvious routes for a big change in status quo pre-BB would be more information on Madrigal, the shadowy multinational that's been investing in Gus's business

The other obvious bit would be connecting the magic black book that Jimmy's going to try to get from the veterinarian, the Cinnabon, and some shady venture we haven't thought of that existed in BB to the BCS timeline

otm to all of that.
xpost, re Howard's marriage:
Yes, and you're reminding me of Chuck's marriage, which looked okay when they invited Jimmy to dinner, when she met him, and seemed pleasantly surprised, charmed, even, despite whatever Chuck had told her: an opportunity for superficial sociability, of course, but just so hugely different from Chuck's later life---she came back to watch the trial, with such a look of amazement and recognition--guess it wasn't really amazement, just being struck by how things had come to this: startling at first, but yeah, that's her boy alright, while she's thinking back, seeing how it all adds up, though she can't know all the leaps, plunges since she's been gone---having become more of a public figure, as a musician, as he became more hermetic, each one reacting against the other---all this is more sad because we're left to fill it in, as with Howard's marriage, so many marriages from the outside.

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.

The development of Howard is one of the main justifications or compensations for the weird long slog (some of it accidental, like w Covid and Odenkirk's hear attack) of this series, what gets churned and mulched, and it might even be like what Aaron Paul said about Jesse, that they were gonna kill him off pretty quick, 'til they saw what Paul could do, so breadcrumbed him into the big leagues.

Although of course Kim's turn around, on the road to justification and public service as success, is crucial, no turning back for anybody now. And she'll do something else just as heavy, if not key, pretty sure.

Yeah in think whatever goes down at the end of the series Kim will play a key, probably the crucial part.

Good reads on Howard although immense kindness is overstating things a bit (for one thing he was def a vindictive cunt to Kim when she worked for him, as he correctly identifies in his little speech at the end there)

Also true, and he feels, he knows, he can afford to acknowledge error, which no doubt pisses her off even more at this moment. (Jimmy, laughing, "Howard, you'll be fiiine--you always land on your feet." Howard, drinking, "That's true!")

immense kindness is overstating things a bit

I liked that they made the Sandpiper hearing one of his last scenes. one because he tells Irene (very politely) to stay in the wheelchair despite her protests, demonstrating that he clearly understands the role of showmanship in his profession & that he's not above Saul Goodman-type gimmicks. two because he's operating in a very grey area morally, as he's in a situation where the clients' interests do not line up with the firm's interests, effectively telling a room full of seniors that the right thing to do is hold out for the bigger payout even they need the money now and have a good chance of not making it to the end of the case. and so it's Jimmy who is actually doing the right thing by tricking them into settling, though of course he's doing it for selfish reasons as well.

in other words a much more nuanced situation than "securing my family's financial future by ruining the lives of everyone who comes in contact with me"

I'm getting this from a source that hasn't said anything about transmission so I found out that there is a gap for several weeks after wondering how they would top that. So now got to wait until July to find out apparently. Well good cliffhanger I guess.

yeah it was called a “mid-season finale” here

Was announced some time ago that, like Breaking Bad, final season would be in two parts (except only about 6 weeks between them rather than a full year) xp

It's all the rage these days

it is still lame but i accept it