Better Call Saul -- Breaking Bad spin-off confirmed

[Mark Antony]

Yeah that's after events in Breaking Bad and I 100% think that the show will finish Sauls story in a way Breaking Bad didn't.

[SweetPea]

That was the past. Anything wil long haired Saul is a flashback.

Wow, I feel stupid now. For some reason I thought that was the future, sometime after Saul started doing shady things, like the skateboard scam.

[Morpheus]

He was a con man before he ever became a lawyer (Slippin Jimmy, the watch scam) and the incident where his brother kept him out of jail was meant to be a turning point that lead to him going legit. That is why he is so concerned with how his brother sees him i.e. explaining away the hospital bill, hiding the paper, etc.

[RumHam]

I was under the impression that the electromagnetic sensitivity thing was a real condition. I remember I read a few articles about the National Radio Quiet Zone and how people with this condition were moving there to escape cell phone towers. I remember one of the articles mentioned a similar test, where someone secretly carried a cell phone that the patient didn't know about, and the patient knew the phone was there. I guess it's possible it is a real condition and Chuck just doesn't have it.

Here's one article:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/04/green_bank_w_v_where_the_electrosensitive_can_escape_the_modern_world.html

[DivisionByZero]

Here you go, Hank Schrader uses Tony the Toilet Buddy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4nFDQBNcQA

[Morpheus]

I was under the impression that the electromagnetic sensitivity thing was a real condition. I remember I read a few articles about the National Radio Quiet Zone and how people with this condition were moving there to escape cell phone towers. I remember one of the articles mentioned a similar test, where someone secretly carried a cell phone that the patient didn't know about, and the patient knew the phone was there. I guess it's possible it is a real condition and Chuck just doesn't have it.

Here's one article:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/04/green_bank_w_v_where_the_electrosensitive_can_escape_the_modern_world.html

Everything I have read suggests that there is no evidence that the condition is real and the symptoms are entirely psychosomatic. I read about studies where electromagnetism is introduced without the patients knowledge and none of their supposed reactions are triggered.

[The Human Abstract]

Everything I have read suggests that there is no evidence that the condition is real and the symptoms are entirely psychosomatic. I read about studies where electromagnetism is introduced without the patients knowledge and none of their supposed reactions are triggered.

Correct.

It is a real psychological condition.

It is not a real physiological condition.

[Azzanadra]

I really hope this series catches up with BB, blitzes through it and picks up afterwards. They have a great character ethically with Saul, it'd be a shame if it just ends with him giving up and accepting money from criminals. Maybe he gets back into elder law after managing the Cinnabon, although he looks like he's afraid of something there......I assume that's after BB?

I think its just that idea that criminals will always be looking over their shoulder, even after they go "clean". I do think think that they will expand on what happened to Saul after, though.

[Independent George]

Here's my question - how much money is/was Chuck worth? If McGill was offering $26k/month, and that was well below the value of Chuck's share of the practice... where did all of his assets go? He couldn't have spent it all on medical consults, could he?

[mcbigski]

I really hope this series catches up with BB, blitzes through it and picks up afterwards. They have a great character ethically with Saul, it'd be a shame if it just ends with him giving up and accepting money from criminals. Maybe he gets back into elder law after managing the Cinnabon, although he looks like he's afraid of something there......I assume that's after BB?

He's afraid that the guy in Cinnabon shop was making him as Saul Goodman. He paid a lot of money to go into hiding because he was fearing for his life. Definitely after BB.

[kairparavel]

Maybe he gets back into elder law after managing the Cinnabon, although he looks like he's afraid of something there......I assume that's after BB?

Re: Saul and Cinnabon

http://youtu.be/9lVAC1UFVCM

[DaveSumm]

Iiiiiiiiinteresting. To be honest I'd completely forgotten how things ended for Saul in BB.

[Samalander]

Correct.

It is a real psychological condition.

It is not a real physiological condition.

So... the Swedes just like throwing money away?

http://www.es-uk.info/information/8-ehs-in-sweden.html

[Independent George]

So... the Swedes just like throwing money away?

http://www.es-uk.info/information/8-ehs-in-sweden.html

From the article:

In addition, note the following: In Sweden, electrohypersensitivity (EHS) is an officially fully recognized functional impairment (i.e., it is not regarded as a disease, thus no diagnosis* exists; N.B. This is not special for Sweden, the terms "functional impairment" and "disease" are defined according to various international documents (see below)).

...An impairment is - by definition - not defined by someone else or proven by certain tests, etc. The impairment is always personal (private) and develops when in contact with an inferior environment.

Nothing there contradicts the the hypothesis that is psychological condition. The entire point of that letter was that people reporting EHS are still entitled to all the same legal protections as any other condition - not about whether EHS is physical or psychological in origin. There are plenty of psychological conditions that cause real physical symptoms (such as acute agoraphobia) - the Slate article does a good job summarizing the research indicating that this is exactly the case with EHS:

The primary way of testing is a provocation study, in which a purported EHS-sufferer is exposed to either an electromagnetic field or a sham field and asked to identify which is which. James Rubin, a psychologist at King’s College London who studies psychogenic illnesses, has analyzed the literature on provocation studies and conducted some at his own lab. His most recent meta-analysis—which covered 1,175 participants in 46 studies—found no rigorous, replicable experiment in which radio frequencies were identified at rates greater than chance. “It is definitely the case that some people experience symptoms that they attribute to electromagnetic frequencies,” he told me. “But is it really these frequencies causing the symptoms? At the moment, we can say that there simply isn't any robust evidence to support that.”

Some EHS-sufferers criticize provocation studies, saying that holding them in a lab means spillover radiation from equipment and nearby buildings even in the sham condition. They also argue that the experiments don’t necessarily use the correct radiation frequency. (“The scientist is pretending to be God, knowing what frequency that person will react to,” Diane Schou said to me.) But Rubin points out that many provocation studies start with an unblinded stage, where the participants are truthfully told whether the electromagnetic field is on. “They almost always report symptoms when they know it is on, and not when they know it is off,” Rubin said. “In the second stage, when the experiment is repeated double-blind, they report symptoms to the same extent in both conditions.” When the participants know whether the field is on, in other words, contaminant radiation and frequency specificity suddenly aren’t such big problems.

As such, the best predictor for whether a hypersensitive person will experience symptoms isn’t the presence of radio frequency—it’s the belief that a device is turned on nearby. An elegant demonstration of this on a much larger scale took place in 2010, when residents of the town of Fourways, South Africa, successfully petitioned for a cell signal tower to be taken down because of the sickness caused by its radiation—even though it was later revealed that it hadn’t been switched on during the time of their complaints.

[Disturber of Peace]

Psychological disorders can cause physiological symptoms but those physiological symptoms would be completely gone with the removal of psychological causes.

Also, electromagnetism is a very wide thing.

[RumHam]

I stand corrected about the electromagnetism sensitivity thing. Must suck for those people to be told you're making your syndrome up.

[The Human Abstract]

Psychological disorders can cause physiological symptoms but those psychological symptoms would be completely gone with the removal of psychological causes.

Also, electromagnetism is a very wide thing.

That is a good point that I glossed over with my simplification.

As someone who once had a severe phobia of flying, I can definitely attest that just being near airplanes once caused a severe physiological response.

[Winterfell is Burning]

Here's my question - how much money is/was Chuck worth? If McGill was offering $26k/month, and that was well below the value of Chuck's share of the practice... where did all of his assets go? He couldn't have spent it all on medical consults, could he?

His share at the law firm is worth $17 million. He probably has other assets, but he can't even go out of his house.

[Independent George]

His share at the law firm is worth $17 million. He probably has other assets, but he can't even go out of his house.

Land in New Mexico is cheap. He should have enough to buy a few acres, hire an architect to build a new structure with a Faraday cage integrated into the frame, designed for oil lamps, and maybe even a separate guest house with power and refrigeration. Heck, plenty of moderately-wealthy people own 'cottages' out in the countryside that aren't connected to the power grid; I would imagine that's in reach for him.

If this were almost any other show, I'd handwave it. Instead, I assume there is an in-story reason why he's living in that little house - I expect we'll be seeing it before the season ends.

[Jon Flow]

IG,

His house doesn't look that small. From the shots of the cops walking around the exterior it actually looked pretty big, especially considering he is the only one living there. Jimmy lives in the Salon after all. I would assume the interior is a set.