Perhaps so. Potato, patata.
Also, now on the interwebs: http://www.saulgoodmanproductions.com/
Kim: “That guy has a lot of energy!”
<Snerk!> 
I agree with this, but I was impressed with the amount of effort he put in to getting Chuck to move forward. The expensive whisky is one thing; “I can do this all night if I have to” shows he’s putting time as well as money into this. But what really got me was the rank flattery. Chuck is a commercial lawyer. He helps big businesses make money by navigating complex legalities. That’s fine. But Clarence Darrow is the guy who gave up a corporate law job out of idealism. Chuck isn’t arguing for free speech, or defending a black family against murder charges because they defended themselves against a mob. He’s helping banks adapt to Sarbanes-Oxley.
But he’s got a high opinion of himself and his role as a champion of the Law, so the flattery works. It’s a nice portrayal of how well Howard knows his man.
Darrow continued to accept briefs from large cooperations when offered, he never gave that up.
Howard is really impressive character, I especially like that they opened by making him seem like a flat and generic ‘(former) boss who doesn’t like the protagonist and is also an egotistical douchebag’ and only later reveal that he’s a real person who didn’t even dislike Jimmy. Howard clearly admires Chuck, but isn’t going to let Chuck’s illness destroy the firm, and I find myself hoping that he either ends up running a Chuckless HH(M?) or ditches the whole edifice and starts a private practice. It’s also quite possible that Kim will end up working for/with him again, which could help drive Jimmy nuts.
There are a lot of good surprises in this show that don’t seem like cheap ‘jump scares’.
First, I’ll say I was so wrong in a previous post when I didn’t think Jimmy would get suspended.
I’m not a fan of Saul the Ad-man. Not because I don’t like Saul, but I just am much less interested in Jimmy as a character if he is not going to be a lawyer. We’ve already seen him as Saul Goodman the scam artist, and I’m not very intrigued about seeing him as someone selling advertisements. It was entertaining and funny, so I’m not really sure why it lowered my interest.
Hopefully, I’ll be convinced otherwise. It does provide a good explanation for his name change and new persona.
Any possibility we’ll see the older Hamlin? He isn’t dead, right? Howard still used the present tense to refer to him in the court scene with the bar association.
Also, will we get a montage to skip over Saul/Jimmy’s suspension? Or are we in for a season or two of non-lawyer Saul antics? Three seasons in, and we’re still in 2003, not even a whole year after the show begins. At this rate, we’ll never get to Saul Goodman, Esquire, let alone the Breaking Bad years. I’m not one to complain about the pace of this show, but it sure looks like that’s what they’re setting up, and four or five years too early, seemingly.
Also, what’s Gus doing with that industrial laundry? Didn’t Walt build that lab in 2009? What’s he going to use it for for the next 6 years, washing clothes? I have a hunch that he’s going to lure Nacho away from Hector somehow, by letting him use the laundry as a front instead of his Dad’s upholstery business, but I can’t connect all the dots in my mind for that theory yet.
I’m not sure how long that will last as a focus. He does after all only have 9 ( now 8 ) free air time slots to sell. Once that short-lived business model is exhausted he’s going to have to charge more to make everything work and his ad hoc college crew will definitely start requiring more in wages. And even his current scam is mostly only covering losses already incurred, not generating tons of new income.
I figure eventually he’ll have to switch to making clandestine legal advice for the veterinarian’s constellation of clients. He will not let his dream of a law practice with Kim and his own secretary die on the vine, so hustling it is. But his most marketable hustling skill is now his legal expertise. The advertisement business might survive as a front/minor income source. But sooner or later he’s going to need more income than it will generate to make his 50% of the office bills.
And down he slides into the criminal world…
Why is it so important for you that they get to the Breaking Bad years? That story’s already been told. I’d like to see eyebrows guy and a few others, but beyond that, I’m more interested in what happens to Omaha Gene.
That’s not important to me at all. But you have to admit, that’s what the writers are setting up. We’ve got all sorts of BB characters in play at this point, from Crazy-8 to Lydia, Gus has already bought the laundry where Walt makes meth, etc. I’m not in a hurry to get there, but it seems like the writers are.
That was also me, correcting myself once I realized who Dr. Cruz was. 
Fair point. Money’s useful if you want to buy stuff, after all. But he did the other stuff too, and Chuck, as far we can see, doesn’t.
I dunno, he seems like a natural at the ad-biz and it looked like he got quite a positive response from his “Gimme Jimmy” commercial. Now that he’s launched his new persona of Saul Goodman as an ad-man, it’s easy to see how that would lead to him becoming known more by the new name by the time the bar-suspension is over. He wouldn’t want to let all that goodwill and name-recognition go to waste, so he parlays it into the relaunching/rebranding of his legal career.
I think Nacho is going to be the link here. It’s not a criticism but an observation that this season so far has felt like two separate shows: Mike and Gus vs Hector on one hand; Jimmy and Kim vs Chuck on the other. Sometimes Mike and Jimmy have guest-starred on each other’s show, but the stories haven’t meshed.
Nacho is unhappy with his lot. He really doesn’t want his Dad involved in the business, but he doesn’t have much choice. He’s likely to turn to Mike at some point, but he is a character who knows Jimmy fairly well and I suspect he’ll find himself in a situation where he needs a lawyer and/or grifter to help him out of a jam. And that will be Jimmy/Saul’s introduction to being a criminal lawyer.
The irony is that as Saul/ Jimmy gets more recognition for his natural charisma in front of the camera, we also see why Bob Odenkirk was interesting and charismatic enough as a bit character to warrant his own TV show, sort of like Frasier from Cheers. Bob’s definitely upped his game to turn a rather despicable but amusing charlatan into a likeable and even loveable character. Well done, Bob. Well played, writers.
I think the names are an indication of his state of mind. When he was Slippin’ Jimmy, he was a con man and happy with it. When he tried to make his name as a legitimate lawyer, he was/is Jimmy McGill. I think that he is going enjoy the Saul Goodman persona, and decide to stay in it at the same time as he loses his desire to be legitimate. I think “Saul Goodman” is going to be much more of an internal decision than a practical one about rebranding.
I don’t agree. The show writers are certainly setting pieces in place for Breaking Bad, but I don’t think the writers are planning to go from now to the breaking bad years at a steady pace. I think we’re going to see Saul Goodman become a the lawyer we know, including some kind of split with Kim, then the series will time jump to the breaking bad era where we see stuff that was offscreen during BB (probably one season of that), then something happening in the Gene era.
But how could that work? “Advice” from Jimmy/Saul is all very well, but the veterinarian’s criminal acquaintances also have to pay a second lawyer to appear in court for them, file motions, etc.–why would they do that?
I think when everything finally hits the fan between Jimmy and Chuck, Kim will run off with Howard, maybe set up an H&W legal practice somewhere up north.
That’s a good point, though Saul does have the hustler’s touch that your average mall shark may lack. Whether that is worth it, I dunno. Guess we’ll see where the writers take us on that one.
After that dead-eyed glare he gave her after she dropped the nepotism bomb, I’m not sure how up for that Howard might be ;). Never mind Kim surely remembers her own painful exile in document review purgatory.