I’m loving this show. The camera work is very reminiscent of BB, not surprisingly. I would be stunned beyond reason if this show were to become something formulaic, as mentioned above. Gilligan always surprises us with his creativity and misdirection, and I have no reason to believe this show will be any different. I’m certainly willing to forgive some plot devices.
Nice to see the Mike we know come out of hiding when he was talking to the cops.
For that matter, do we have any reason to believe that Jimmy has a law degree at all, at any point in this series or Breaking Bad? I wonder if he’s using his brother’s identity to practice as a public defender. In the courtroom scenes so far he certainly doesn’t seem know a damn thing about the law.
In the opening scene where Jimmy is arrested, he doesn’t look much younger than he does now. That could be due to the difficulty of making 50-something Bob Odenkirk look like a 30 or 40-something for the prequel, and then a 20 or 30-something for the jail flashback. However I don’t expect Gilligan to overlook a detail like that…
Thanks for the heads up on this. Loved the BB podcast, so it’s great to hear Kelley Dixon, Vince, Bob and others talk in detail about the show and it’s making again.
No, I think Jimmy is probably a real lawyer, just not a very good one. From what I’ve heard elsewhere including previous threads, new lawyers learn a lot of the detail of actually practicing law from other lawyers in their first firm. If Jimmy has been a sole practitioner the whole time, he might never have learned the process. Also, perhaps he worked at his brother’s firm, which seems more like a corporate law firm. So he might never have learned about how to practice criminal defense work, except through the PD work.
We don’t know enough to know whether Jimmy is a good lawyer or not. The joke of the series (at least so far) is that he’s doing public defender work in which all of his clients are guilty as hell, so there is not much he can do but plea-bargain on their behalf.
I mean, if your clients are caught having sex with a severed head, and helpfully taped the proceedings, there is not much you, as a lawyer, can do - other than advise them to plead out rather than face a jury … but ultimately the choice is theirs.
The other joke of the series is that the hardcore lawyering Jimmy has done is all outside the court - as in pleading for the lives of the skater dudes. Lawyering is, above all, the art of persuation, and it looks like Jimmy is pretty good at that (albeit always having been dealt a bad factual hand! It doesn’t get much worse than facing a psychotic Tuco in the desert when if you piss him off, he could carve you up).
There is a persistent myth that a good lawyer can always, no matter what the facts, weasel a client out of trouble. They played with that myth in this episode, where Jimmy pleads with his brother at the beginning to invoke some loopholes to get him off (whatever he was charged with). Now a good lawyer can, on average, do better than a bad one, but he or she can’t change the facts … I dunno if anyone could get those severed-head kids off.
Why would that be at all confusing to new viewers? It’s basically what is happening. Nothing in Breaking Bad is needed to understand what is happening with Saul and Mike.
I would quibble with the part about Saul going to him whenever he has a roadblock. It may start that way, but since we learned about Mike being a former cop and he also helped Saul with the case, they’re setting it up for Saul to hire him as a PI.
The only twist would be if we find out he is already working for someone like Tuco to keep an eye on the goings-on at the courthouse, but that seems unlikely because how would a parking attendant really learn anything significant?
I got the impression when the detective put his hand on Mike’s shoulder that Mike really wanted to put him on the floor, as he’d done to Jimmy. Since he couldn’t without getting arrested, dropping the charges would do as a “fuck you” substitute.
Exactly. At the beginning, Jimmy/Saul sees Mike as just a grumpy old man. He’s just now learning that Mike follows his own code and has some valuable skills and knowledge. He may or may not already be involved with people in the drug trade, but that will presumably be revealed as time goes on.
In a way this reminds me of the Hornblower books, in that they weren’t written in chronological order, but the books can be read in chronological order or published order and make sense either way.
I noticed that power move. I suspect Mike won’t forget about that incident.
Well, this one guy could, but he was already dead.
In the Behind the Scenes video on AMC’s website, Vince Gilligan confirms that it’s Cook County jail, and they year is 1994.
Which if Jimmy is the same age (or thereabouts) as Odenkirk would make him 32 (or thereabouts), so, young but definitely not a kid and too old to pass off screwing up like that as youthful indiscretion.
Very good job of youthening both Odenkirk and McKean in that scene, btw. (The dark lighting helped, of course.) The implication to me is that the age difference between McKean and Odenkirk (about 15 years in real life) is also true of their characters.
I wonder if we’ll meet Mama Goodman. I have a feeling she would be a piece of work. OTOH Breaking Bad said as much of Walt’s mother and we never met her. (If we had I think she should have been played by Cloris Leachman as Lois’s mom from Malcolm.)
I’d like to see that scene again. There was a flashback scene in Breaking Bad with Walt and Gretchen lit with bright sunlight. Very different, yet equally effective.
I can’t decide what’s larger, the wash rooms or the court rooms.
Yeah - this is kinda the part I’m loving. He keeps dealing with that one dick prosecutor who keeps declining all sorts of deals without giving them any thought. Saul ends up seizing the opportunity when the prosecutor slips up - and I suspect now that Saul “helped” the state by finding the kidnapped family - he will I have a little bit more street cred. Of course - something bad is going to happen with Tuco - but obviously not too bad.
Someone earlier suggested Tuco is going to end up with the Money. As he seems a little displeased at Saul - and there just happens to be this bag of cash - that Tuco wants - it wouldn’t surprise me if Saul tries to make some grand compromise with the Kettlemens, Tuco, and the State.
As far as Mike looking pissed off from the Cops touching him. Mike has seemed kinda restrained so far. His “get your stickers or give me the money” attitude was mostly calmly delivered. He was even fairly restrained when Saul came back from ripping him off.
I don’t think that he is working in the drug trade yet. I think he had some sort of anger problem that manifested in a way that caused him to be kicked off the force. He is trying to rebuild his life. I gather he probably can’t get a job anywhere else - of course maybe some lawyer that finds a kidnapped family will start to get more business and need an investigator.
But when ever I thought I knew what was going on in breaking bad - I was usually wrong. They seem to do a good job of this - with somewhat minimal misdirection.
One of my favorite exchanges was when the prosecutor when the prosecutor said something like “No he’s not going to just do 6 months! He drove into a mall and killed three people!” and Jimmy had to show him that no, the guy’s offense was way less than that and didn’t kill anybody.
IANAL and I haven’t worked in law offices, but I have worked with insurance and student loans and banking and other businesses with overworked and arrogant personalities and seen mistakes just like that have major impacts on lives. I don’t have any problem imagining a petty criminal having his head put on a pike or an axe murderer getting plead down to littering depending on the mood and case load and attention span of the public lawyers.
What makes you think that? I think it’s at least 50/50 we’ll never see Tuco again (until Breaking Bad of course). (Or are you confusing Tuco and Nacho?)
I was sort of half watching for Kelley’s name in the credits and hadn’t noticed it. I’m glad to see she editing it.
When Chuck is talking to Jimmy about how a settlement could end the firm, he refers to Jimmy’s ‘cronies in the mail room’. So my takeaway is Jimmy worked unskilled labor jobs at the firm while going to law school and getting his act together. Also explains his familiarity with the staff when we first see him barge into the office.