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Better Call Saul


SeanF

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That was a slow one and structurally it feels oddly placed in the season. The big takeaway is that Gene has a taste for Saul antics again. Jeffy’s “bad crowd” back in Alburquerque will probably come into play somehow. 

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3 hours ago, Morpheus said:

That was a slow one and structurally it feels oddly placed in the season. The big takeaway is that Gene has a taste for Saul antics again. Jeffy’s “bad crowd” back in Alburquerque will probably come into play somehow. 

For quite a while there I thought Saul's plan was to slowly murder the security guard using Cinnabon. It did finally come together. I think the point was the guy can't rat on him as he has several crimes over his head he can give to the authorities. 

Seems crazy to burn an entire episode on this though and this late in the game. Kind of like the tunnel building scenes and some of the other Mike stuff. I appreciate the attention to detail, but I don't think we needed to go through a whole ep with this.

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As I feared, the new Jeff just doesn't have the menace that the first actor had. He just seemed like a total rube. So instead of Saul getting the upper hand on someone scary he just conned another sucker. Kinda blunted the impact. 

I thought for sure he was going to run into Kim as he was looking in the mirror with the clothes at the end. 

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Seems like most of us share the same feeling, that episode felt out of place. I mean it was done well and showed us that slipping Jimmy is still alive and kicking but it felt out of place after last week.

So on to next week.  The scene is a car at a crossroads in the middle of no where, which way does he go?  

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Is everyone for some reason assuming Saul is going to end the show in no danger of being caught?  Scot-free?  This episode seems like it is setting up him being caught.  The pebble that starts the avalanche.  We just don't know how yet.

 

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41 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

Is everyone for some reason assuming Saul is going to end the show in no danger of being caught?  Scot-free?  This episode seems like it is setting up him being caught.  The pebble that starts the avalanche.  We just don't know how yet.

 

I honestly don't have a feel for this.  VG universe definitely skews toward cause and effect, bad actions ultimately yield bad results.  But, it's also true that VG and co. are willing to give their favorite characters sometimes a better end than they deserve.  Walt got a lot more closure than he deserved.  Jesse got a much happier ending than reality might have yielded.  Some others are not so lucky.  It was only for a short time that I entertained the idea Kim would die, she's getting off scott free, IMO.  They obviously have much love for Jimmy, so will he get another chance? or not?  It's a tribute to to the show that either path will have been earned.  

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I think Jimmy has a bad end coming. He has the taste for the grift again, so he will probably have a hard time keeping straight as a humble diabetes peddler. I think the pointed reference to Jeffy’s “bad crowd” in ABQ could mean trouble; Jeffy or his mother are probably not done with him at any rate. And, I think there has to be some closure with Kim, I am not sure she will be too happy to see him knowing what he became. All of this in addition to the general fear of discovery means the walls are closing in, hard to see a path toward Jesse-like hopefulness. He had his chance at another out with Robert Forster, he chose to do things his way. 

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I think I'm in the minority here who liked the episode. I can totally get why other's don't however and I do think a large part of my enjoyment is also tied to the faith @dbunting and I share in the powers of this show's creative team to pull of a wonderful finale. If they decided that this was the right time for a Gene-centric episode in black-and-white, then by golly, they probably intend to do something great with it.

On its own terms its a rather fun episode. If this had come earlier in the season I don't think many people would have minded it. I guess the set up here that was important has already been mentioned:

1. Gene being tempted to go full Saul again, but rejecting it;
2. Jeffie having ties to a bad crowd in New Mexico

I really can't tell where they are going with this, although I retain resolute faith in their abilities. I find that exciting as hell. Initially I thought it was going to end in violence between him and the taxi driver (perhaps with a scam to get the latter send-of before Jimmy taking a ride out to the vacuum-repair guy), but previous flashbacks made that unlikely and this episode killed that idea.

My guess now is that Jimmy's story ends somewhere between that of Walt and Jesse. I feel they'll show us that his Jimmy side is ultimately stronger by having Jimmy safe Jeffie from Jeffie's criminal Albuquerque connections. In the process however, he gets caught by the police and goes to jail, where we end the show with him getting visited by Kim (who bettered her life and is now a pillar of the community, though very lonely). 

I have literally zero evidence of foreshadowing to support this prediction. I felt like Jeffie's mom was putting Jimmy in a sort of Chuck-like exemplar position to Jeffie at the end of this episode and that this is going to be the clench for Jimmy's growth as a character. The gilliverse loves to focus on the impact of role models (Walt & Jesse, Mike & Jesse, Gus & Walt, Nacho & his dad, Chuck & Saul, Chuck & Hamlin, etc.) in both the negative and the positive sense, but it's a bit of a rethread of Breaking Bad.

Long story short, I have got no clue whatsoever, but I'm along for the ride. 

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I enjoyed it as well. I think people are very stuck on what's happening "now" and not really thinking about the fact that "now" is already determined -- only the "Gene" story is truly revelatory because the destination is still unknown to us. The Saul Goodman material is excellent and it adds depth to the character and his origin, but it's not the ultimate end of the story.

@Veltigar I'm of similar mind, at least that Jeff ended up blabbing to his ABQ friends and that comes back to bite Jimmy/Saul/Gene in the ass. I'm not sure where exactly he'll end up or if that particular image of him in jail with a visit from Kim is right... but maybe? It's as good as anything else I can think of.

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I also really liked it, and kind of loved that it came out of left field, just like the Saul transition last week. In general, now that we've seen Jimmy fully become Saul, I'm a lot more interested in where Gene goes from here than in seeing Saul in the Breaking Bad years (though I'm sure that the writers will do a good job with it when we get there). As an episode, it was also just fun, entertaining, funny, and sad, reminding me a lot of a Season 1 episode. I can't get enough of just watching Jimmy work and pull scams, and I'll always take it over the (imo) tedium of Gus cartel scenes. I also thought the episode did a great job of tying together all the Gene vignettes from the past five seasons: the tedium of the Cinnabon job, the S.G. was here, the security guards and heart attack, and the threatening cabbie.

The only weaknesses for me were that the new Jeffy actor was not as good as the last, especially since he was missing some of that menace, and that Jimmy was able to turn the tables a little too easily at the beginning of the episode. But I loved how he legally checkmated them at the end. Of course, that legal checkmating won't stop trouble coming from other directions, like Jeffy's Albuquerque connections..

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12 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

The only weaknesses for me were that the new Jeffy actor was not as good as the last, especially since he was missing some of that menace, and that Jimmy was able to turn the tables a little too easily at the beginning of the episode. But I loved how he legally checkmated them at the end. Of course, that legal checkmating won't stop trouble coming from other directions, like Jeffy's Albuquerque connections..

Did he really though? We all know that if he wanted to Jeffy's lawyer could go the DA and say look he did this... but if I give you a really big fish can I get immunity? They would love to be the ones to get the Cartel lawyer.

@Veltigar man I don't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing but here it goes.  When you mentioned the last scene being Jimmy in a jail cell I immediately got flashback to the Seinfeld finale, except it's slipping Jimmy the jail house lawyer/com working with inmates to get favors.

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30 minutes ago, dbunting said:

When you mentioned the last scene being Jimmy in a jail cell I immediately got flashback to the Seinfeld finale, except it's slipping Jimmy the jail house lawyer/com working with inmates to get favors.

More like the Justified finale.  Although "we dug coal together" may have different connotations in this case.

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Yes, the MAD gambit is not that strong. Nitwits who stole thousand in clothes in a non-violent crime versus America’s most wanted high ranking associate of a major drug ring built on a hill of bodies- I think they could cut a sweet deal for cooperating. Have to trust in them being dumb and scared, the threat swaying them whereas the reality would be a lot worse for Gene than Jeffy and other guy.

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1 hour ago, dbunting said:

Did he really though? We all know that if he wanted to Jeffy's lawyer could go the DA and say look he did this... but if I give you a really big fish can I get immunity? They would love to be the ones to get the Cartel lawyer.

I think he's counting on them being too dumb to realize that.

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