Don’t forget, Kim’s got a ‘dirty’ side too. She loves scamming the sleazy folks. She may feel all angsty after, and refuse to actually take their money. But she loves hooking a mark to make the sting. And she’s accepted Jimmy’s altering of records, which resulted in her taking Mesa Verde with her.
Me too, and I didn’t either.
You’re dead on again — a great insight into the opposing dichotomies between the morals and ethics of Jimmy and Chuck.
It also makes you appreciate how much more interesting storytelling becomes when your characters are morally gray. Compare this to any other tv show about lawyers, which almost all depict them as fully competent and beyond reproach. Yawn.
For the very little it is worth I had presumed that Kim was recording that little interlude which included Chuck agreeing that he manipulated Jimmy into destroying a copy of the tape. But maybe not. No real need
Play the whole tape. It documents a Chuck convincingly and worrisomingly decompensating. The pictures and testimony under oath by Howard will attest to how ill Chuck is as a baseline and Howard can be forced under oath to testify as to all of Chuck’s long time belief that Jimmy does not deserve to be a lawyer, Chuck’s desire to see him not be allowed to be one, and that Chuck created a plan to get Jimmy to say that he faked the numbers out of concern for his health and hired a PI to be there when Jimmy showed up. Howard can also testify as to what sort of brother Jimmy has been, how he fought, selflessly, for Chuck’s best interests in face of Chuck’s long term incapacitation. How Jimmy has demonstrated time and time again that he would do anything for Chuck.
Chuck will admit to all that being true. It’s his code. Jimmy’s code OTOH has no problem lying under oath. And Kim is his lawyer and cannot be forced to testify.
The board is Chuck’s old associates and they all know that Chuck is now crazy, no longer functioning. So sad.
On its face given that, the story of Jimmy being successfully manipulated by the crazy but brilliant brother he adores, a brother is they all know and can see is both cooccoo for cocopuffs and long time driven to keep his brother out of the law (and thus subservient to him), is more believable than the schlub Jimmy being able to pull off the con of falsifying the documents.
Really enjoyed the ep - and really eager to see what happens next.
This brought back to me how superficially I consume TV, tho. Neither my wife nor I could recall where Mike got the money to buy his DIL’s new house. And the one guy who was Gus’ henchman - I really can’t recall the plotline involving him.
So I just enjoy each week as it happens, and then forget it. :o
I loved the “damaged” vs “destroyed” set up. They changed that wording knowing that Chuck would argue that point, thoroughly and vigorously. They got him to say, repeatedly, that the tape was destroyed. The tape which Kim then got them to admit they’ll play at the bar hearing. So good.
THIS!
Jimmy is very good at people handling. Chuck not so much. Look at how quickly he charmed Mrs Chuck off her feet despite hubby’s warnings of him being “an acquired taste”. I think he’ll charm Chuck’s “cronies” and get off. Which will break Chuck.
Damn - good catch!
The reason Gus handled Hector so well at Los Pollos Hermanos is because that’s what Gus wanted to happen. It’s very clear by the way Gus smiled afterwards and his later conversation with Mike that the whole point of disrupting Hector’s smuggling/distribution was designed as a way to get Hector to “force” Gus to smuggle Hector’s drugs.
That means Gus is now doing more of the work, has more control, and is that much more important to the cartel while Hector becomes less important. If Gus can do it all himself, why does the cartel even need Hector? The flashback at the beginning was designed to show that Hector and Gus already have a history, with Gus being better at the business and Hector holding a grudge.
Gus played him by tricking Hector into doing something he shouldn’t do, letting Gus control all the imports/smuggling.
I think the angle Jimmy and Kim are going for on the tape distraction case is that Chuck is crazy. Chuck screwed up the address and came up with this wild conspiracy theory about Jimmy changing it. Jimmy goes along with it on tape just to placate him, just like he does with all the electricity protection make believe. The covert pictures are building the crazy Chuck case.
The scene that seemed strange to me was the one where Gus addressed his employees. If I was a part time employee of a fast food restaurant, that would not comfort me. It seemed like a situation that I wanted to be as far away as possible from. Got specifically said he stood up to those guys and they wouldn’t be coming back. Sounds much scarier than a typical fast food job to me. Is this perhaps a way of Gus turning over his staff occasionally? Or just making sure the ones that are not going to be 100% loyal to him will leave?
Gus had to come up with some sort of explanation and the story he told was the best he could come up with. I doubt that there’s anything more to it than that.
But yeah, I would expect some, if not all, of his staff to leave. I can’t imagine that it’s all that hard to find another fast food job.
Boom! That’s exactly what I was thinking. I knew there had to be a reason why they were both arguing over the specific wording of the document. Also noting : Chuck kept insisting on calling it a “cassette tape” instead of “property.” They eventually agreed to call it “property.”
I don’t know how, but this is going to be a huge point going forward for Jimmy & Kim.
Yeah I got this feeling too. It just didn’t seem implausible to me that the customers would recognize the immediate situation and also recognize the importance of not calling the police.
If this were small-town Iowa I’d be shocked(!) but this is New Mexico. Different population with different knowledge/experience.
Not all of Gus’s employees are ignorant of the other side of his business. I think he’s always on the lookout for people to work both sides. For example, when I worked fast food, we unloaded the trucks ourselves. But Joe Chickenfryer can’t be part of the crew that unloads the chicken, because we know the drugs are hidden in the boxes of chicken. So some of Gus’s employees must be in the know, in order to separate the fast food inventory from the, uh, pharmaceutical inventory.
My guess is the assistant manager will soon be managing other aspect’s of Gus’s empire, for example. He held himself well under the threat of Hector Salamanca and applauded Gus’s speech.
Also, some customers might have called the cops. What of it? Not only will police basically ignore a call like “senior citizen has verbal outburst at fast food store”, they’re all great friends with Gus. He’s a real standup citizen in Albuquerque. If he says what happened at his store was no big deal, the police are going to believe it was no big deal.
I disagree. I think we can take Gus at his word that his employees are civilians. Was there ever a time in Breaking Bad when his fast food employees were shown as being employees on the drug side?
The drugs could easily be unloaded before the truck gets to Los Pollos Hermanos. Gus’ whole reason for the business is to have a clean business, boost his good guy image, and possibly launder money. Any time he adds suspicion to the business (like delivering drugs to it), he makes it harder for the smuggling to work. The competing business of Hector’s is a perfect example. After drugs were discovered on the truck, law enforcement raided the retail ice cream store, and apparently found something since they were shown carrying evidence out. (By my recollection – I didn’t rewatch to check.)
Is it possible to argue that Chuck lied in the settlement statement since he claimed destroyed when he actually still had a copy? (I mean in the real world, not on the show – for all its merits, we can’t expect the show to be right/realistic about everything). Could this be a reason to set aside the plea deal and dismiss the charges? I think it’s certain that it will play into Jimmy keeping from being disbarred, but maybe the guilty plea could be revisited as well.
I would think Gus’s sentiments are genuine. He has always been shown to take pride in his Chicken business, and IIRC in Breaking Bad he had hazard pay set aside for his meth employee in the event of their death. He is actually angry at the way Hector treated his employees and genuinely wants them to be ok.
I agree with this, I’m pretty sure the restaurants are a completely clean front for his operation, and the employees there don’t have anything to do with the illegal side. Compartmentalizing makes it a lot harder for someone to screw up and give the game away.
He claimed that personal property, in the form of the tape, was destroyed, and it was. He didn’t claim that it was the only copy of the recording, or that particular information was destroyed, he claimed specifically that personal property was destroyed. When he added a dollar value for the tape to the damages statement, it was specifically for buying a physical tape, not for any alleged value of the recording. I don’t think a case about property damage that includes destroying media has ever been thrown out on the grounds that the person had a backup - the physical property was destroyed even if there’s a copy of the data. And it’s not an error that would get the case thrown out anyway, Jimmy did confess to breaking in and destroying property, the door damage is still on there even if they have to ditch the tape entirely.
I think that Jimmy and Kim want to be sure the tape was specifically mentioned during the plea not because they can pull some trick with the backup, but because Jimmy wants to be sure it’s introduced at the bar hearing. Jimmy would likely get disbarred for confessing to a felony on it’s own, so it’s possible (though unlikely) that Chuck could just let him hang himself with the confession. By making sure it’s prominently included, it makes sure that the bar hearing will ask about the tape, and makes it more likely that Chuck will try to include it as evidence (which lets Jimmy pretend to not want it).
Well, for one, the people driving trucks are transporting both legitimate food for his restaurant business, and illegitimate drugs for his other business. They are the same truck drivers for both operations. That includes the people who pack the chicken and drugs into the boxes and into the trucks. Using one distribution channel for both businesses is hardly keeping them separate, but it’s a big part of how Gus gets things done.
For another, we know the chicken farm (at least in BB) is a meeting place for cartel business. They never show any actual farming staff, but that can’t go unnoticed. For a third, the laundry personnel know there is a hidden laboratory under the industrial washers, and they see the people who work there everyday (Walt, Jesse, Gale, etc) as well as the raw materials going in, and the drugs going out. They may not know the details of what they’re seeing, but they know something sneaky is going on. They are almost certainly paid well above market wages with the understanding that they will look the other way.
Furthermore, while they don’t mention it, someone is doing the accounting, and has to know they aren’t making millions (or billions) off of fast food chicken alone. Money laundering requires at least someone sympathetic to the crime within the nominally legit business. Gus can’t do it all by himself. He’s running a huge logistical operation.
Finally, fast food employees in any similar situation would have immediately called the cops. The one on this episode knew enough to call Gus first. That alone would require at least a cursory understanding that this is not a regular fast food business.
I do agree he cares about his employees, or at least does a very good job at pretending he does. But I don’t agree that he is (or even can) keep everything clean and nicely separated.
Plus you can’t expect Gus Fring of selling crystal meth years before Hank figures it out. What fun would that be?