Better Call Saul

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

Also see: splitting up the last movie into two separate parts a la Hobbit, Harry Potter, etc.

yeah also lame

I have to assume this is for practical purposes due to delays like odenkirk’s heart attack - as a marketing/whatever ploy, a 6-week gap surely achieves literally nothing - but much as I want the next ep now I have to admit that works damn well as its own mini season

I really doubt it is a practical thing, so many shows are doing this now - Ozark and Stranger Things being two others right now.

They're actually combing this thread for our reaction to see if they need to do reshoots

And if that is true hi I would like Flea to be in last few eps

lol really, that’s so weird

idk about ozark tho but st is a Netflix “drop all eps in a day and everyone has forgotten it two weeks later” joint right, splitting that into two chunks actually makes sense to me

yeah, same with Ozark. weird thing about ST is that they dropped 7 of the 9 episodes now, saving just 2 for later.

combing for Flea mention, and they got it. Waiting til July is nothing compared to prev waits for this and BB and MM, and thought for sure it would be another year, as usual. This is just enough time to gather our combworthy thoughts and stoke the fires of anticipation (or is it coals that are stoked)

it's weird in that I prefer entire seasons to be dropped at once, but not because I will binge shows. I can't often stomach watching more than two back to back episodes of the same show. I just like the option to be able to regulate it.

for a serial show that's a one a week deal, I tend to put too high expectations on an individual episode and be disappointed.

yeah, I know this is how TV was pre-streaming, obv, but most of the serialized TV I watched prior to Breaking Bad, I only discoverd/watched after it'd already migrated to DVD. I caught up with BB in real time by Season 5 and I remember at first having trouble adjusting to the one at a time format.

then again, it was fun to make BB night an event, invite over my friend who would bring weed, and both of us yell with glee when Uncle Hank pressed the button to push down the garage door before clocking Walt.

xpost yeah the BB wait was hard, but my life was so much better then that I didn't need it so much lol....

Just caught up, holy shit at this show, A+ television, we are lucky to live in this golden age.

based on succession especially i cant even binge a single episode any more -- and also lalo's home invasion -- i just have to pause for five mins when it gets too stressy

(also true of rewatching seinfeld i am a STREAMING SNOWFLAKE now)

and also OLD ENOUGH, this is just too much what if the 2-yr-old cant find the the shiitake mushroom vendor oh noes

Great thread:

Missing #BetterCallSaul this week? Well, I'm going to try my best to fill your hole.

Over the next few days I'll post some pics & behind-the-scenes stuff & answer your questions for Ep #607 "Plan and Execution" in the thread that follows...

— Thomas Schnauz (@TomSchnauz) May 31, 2022

Sketch-comedy icon Carol Burnett will join as a character named Marion, according to a press release. The final six episodes will begin airing on Monday, July 11, and finish on August 15 on AMC and AMC+. Burnett joins Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, who will be reprising their Breaking Bad roles as Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. “I’m thrilled to be a part of my favorite show,” Burnett said.

Whoah, marathon today! Now: Season 6/Ep 7. 'Til 4:30 Central.

season was ok, too slow, not enough stuff happened, not enough lalo,