The money came from Matty but he hid it because he was conflicted. Mike convinced him not to go to Internal Affairs. Once his two dirty partners found out that Matty wasn’t 100% on board, the off’d him.
Exactly.
I’ve been reading these episode threads for this show, and I’m puzzled about how quickly people’s minds seem to run off into zebra territory. It’s not that hard to follow.
I’m not saying Matt didn’t take the money. Certainly he did. I believe Mike’s tearful story. I just don’t know if the money he took was the same money his wife later found.
My impression was Matt took a little percentage, shared by the other crooked cops, of a drug dealer’s money in return for looking the other way. I don’t know if the large stack of bills his wife found is the same bribe. Mike would have been a lot wealthier if he had been getting thousands a week from drug dealers his whole career.
And maybe it wasn’t a weekly thing, it was a whole years’ worth of bribes that Matt took. Maybe it was his money his wife found. I’m just saying it wasn’t conclusively shown to be his yet, and there are other possibilities.
Well, there’s a straightforward reading of the story. And then there are the wild twists that show up in the next week’s plot. I’m just spitballing ideas because that’s what makes these thread fun. Predicting the next curveball.
The fact that it wasn’t conclusively shown to be Matty’s money leaves open the possibility that Mike snuck it into her luggage before she left Philly for New Mexico. It is certainly consistent with his character. Matty might have thrown his away because he felt guilty. Or maybe the straight reading is correct, and Mike’s son is who first gave him the idea to attempt getting ill-gotten cash to his granddaughter. Or some third thing.
Every time we think we know something about where this show is going, it switches gears and zigs when we predicted zag. I’m just trying to play along.
Why do you say that? The way I remember the scene, she said she found the money days after Matt died.
Oh. Maybe I was missing the point, then. Well, don’t let me ruin your fun. I just thought this was about, you know, the actual plot. 
Actually, I meant The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
I wonder if Sandpiper Crossing nursing homes get sold to settle the $20MM obligation and rebranded as Casa Tranquila where Hector Salamanca goes to live?
Now you’ve made me curious. Wiki sez - “At his home, Mike goes through the detectives’ notes, and discovers that Stacey was the one that called the detectives to Albuquerque. She tells Mike that she discovered several thousand dollars hidden in one of her suitcases, and decided to report it, hoping that it would help lead to the capture of Matty’s killer. She believes Matty might be dirty, which angers Mike, who maintains Matty was not dirty and storms out of the house in anger.”
Later he came back to give his heartbreaking “I broke my boy” monolog …how he told him to take the money, to ‘go along to get along’ because he was afraid for Matty’s life if he waited too long to take the money …Matty took the money and the bastards killed him anyway.
Oh. How. I. Love. This. Show. Better even than Breaking Bad, which I thought was excellent artistic TV.
I don’t consider it evil, because he was trying to shift the spotlight of a couple masked criminals with guns from targeting him to targeting their own criminal associate. If he suggested that when his own life wasn’t on the line, then okay.
I agree in general, though I sometimes miss things too (I didn’t catch on the first watch that Mike’s DIL was trying to shake him down for more cash, as opposed to just thinking out loud). But why do you call it “zebra territory”?
Probably referring to, “When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras.”
Ahhh…hadn’t heard of that, but it makes sense. (Depends on where you live though.)
It’s interesting. The show is written like it has nothing to prove. Which, I suppose, it hasn’t, so it’s all good.
Go back and have a look at some of the early Breaking Bad now. Compared to this show, sometimes it feels a bit like BB is running around with its pants on its head, shouting: “Look at me, pay attention to me!” Absolutely freaking awesome, but, well, also so very insecure. Especially the pilot and the first few episodes.
This show? It’s chill. It doesn’t give a shit. It doesn’t do insecure.
Not saying it’s better than BB, at all. But it’s confident, I’ll give it that. And it shows that you don’t always need big booms or flashy tricks. An old guy on a lawn dropping a box of papers just put me as far out on the edge of my seat as any number of exploding grandpas could. Somehow I guess it sucked me in.
I’m still not really buying Jimmy as being the same guy as Saul. There’s a dissonance there, for me at least. But it’s still damned good writing.
My guess is that Better Call Saul is exactly about getting Jimmy there. I have no doubt that Gilligan will pull it off.
[quote=“SlackerInc, post:110, topic:715799”]
I don’t consider it evil, because he was trying to shift the spotlight of a couple masked criminals with guns from targeting him to targeting their own criminal associate. If he suggested that when his own life wasn’t on the line, then okay…
Yes, now that you put that way, I agree. Reading his dialog words is so different than watching silver-tongue Saul fast-talk for his life …that’s exactly why he would’ve said something like that.
Don’t get me wrong, I am sympathetic toward Jimmy, who IMO just wants to lead a good life, fulfill his dreams, please everybody and gain the approval of his brother and Kim. I root for him and cheer him on like I never did Walt.
When Chuck said, “As what?” to Jimmy’s request of considering hiring him, the look on Jimmy’s face broke my heart.
At this point in his life Jimmy struggles to do the right thing, when his instinct tells him how easy it is to do the wrong thing - the instinct of a crackerjack legal mind I might add - but is knocked down every time.
With every episode we see another nail in Jimmy McGill’s coffin, as dark Saul Goodman gets stronger. All he needs is a break, a break he’ll never get. Yes, we do know how this ends, but the journey getting there is fascinating.
In Vince Gilligan I trust … love his fertile, twisty, often diabolically funny mind. We never know what’s coming next.
That’s a really good point. And it’s a rare luxury, as the exigencies of the TV business require most showrunners to be insecure and try to catch viewers’ attention right out of the gate or risk losing them forever. The only show currently running I can think of right now that doesn’t bother with that at all is an excellent program called *Rectify *that airs on the Sundance Channel. It has a couple Breaking Bad producers at the helm, in fact; but unlike BCS, it gets microscopic ratings (viewership in the low hundreds of thousands IIRC). Yet it still has been renewed for a third season, so go figure.
…man…
Now I’m intrigued. I’ll check it out.
What about the fact that Chuck is out of work on disability? I don’t know how different the rules might be for a Partner in the firm, but if I’d done any work while I was out after my back injury it would have been considered proof of fraud. If I could work, I had to cancel the benefits and go back to the office.
I wasn’t even allowed to check my e-mails.
So if Chuck is cured, he has to head back in or Hamlin has him by the short hairs, I think. And no way can Jimmy handle this case on his own, let’s face it. He’s brilliant, but not experienced.
One scene that amused me was Chuck using Jimmy’s fob to open the trunk. I thought: no way would that old beater have a remote opening trunk, and if it did, it stopped working years ago.
Then I put myself in the place of the writers:
- Chuck needs Jimmy’s keys to get into the car.
- Jimmy doesn’t know that Chuck has gone out to the car and needs the keys.
- Solution: Jimmy’s keys are in the mailbox.
- Problem: Why would Jimmy’s keys be in the mailbox?
- It has a fob!
- Show the fob being used to make all the above quasi-coherent.
I think Jimmy, on his own, is inherently bad. I.e., he is Saul. But Chuck and Kim have a tremendous influence on him. The decline of Jimmy will presumably be connected to Chuck exiting his life plus a nasty falling out with Kim. (Nastier than their previous breakup.)