Better Call Saul (Season 3)

I agree totally – but did you notice that Jimmy didn’t really mean to provoke such a nasty reaction from The Other Old Ladies (TOOLS)? He went out of his way to say that he thought Irene was just being thoughtless, not selfish. As I pointed out in my previous comment, he probably lied to TOOLS by saying Irene wouldn’t get more than they would from the settlement – as class representative, she probably would’ve gotten more, and the lawyer would’ve tried to get her more.

Not that intent is much of a mitigating factor – jimmy is acting selfishly. Still, he did actively try to make the social pressure on Irene less than it would have been if TOOLS had known she was getting a bigger payout than they were.

Victimless? He destroyed a nice old lady’s life on purpose to try and get what he wanted.

And he rigged a bingo game! Beyond the pale!

A few more points about the recent episode:

I loved Jimmy’s Bingo chatter. B-9 vs Benign made me laugh more than it should have.

The Gollum reference felt weird at first until I remembered this takes place in the early 2000s when the Lord of the Rings movies are still fresh pop culture.

He didn’t destroy her life tho. She still has a life and some extra money now, as do her friends. It may take some time to get into the mall walkers’ circle again. That part, turning her friends against her, was slimy. But it certainly didn’t “destroy” her.

It was certainly interesting, but mainly in light of what we know of the future of these characters–throughout the scene, I couldn’t help thinking of their future encounter in Lydia’s apartment (season 5 of BB).

*This *interaction was a bit less fraught with emotion.

But there was a certain appeal to being shown the way in which Gus and Mike’s association was initially set up. And I did wonder if Lydia was being candid about being new to the money-laundering biz.

Did anyone else notice the parallels drawn between Hector and Chuck?

When stress and anger triggered Hector’s condition, taking the phony pills had a placebo effect. I’m not saying Hector’s condition is total BS, but certain aspects of it are psychosomatic.

But the placebo effect works just as well on actual diseases too. That’s what makes it so fascinating. I’ve no problem accepting the scenario that he had actual angina when he got angry, and he felt better once he’d taken his medication. I’ve seen such things in my own patients many times.

A few weeks back when Nacho first was obtaining the empty capsules I looked up information on angina and thought I read that untreated angina might be painful, but did not lead to heart attack or stroke (the underlying condition does). If that were the case, then since Nacho put ibuprofen in the capsules (thus creating a placebo) he is not really increasing Hector’s risk of dying (or ending up in a wheelchair ringing a bell). Is this correct?

The placebos won’t have any effect though. High blood pressure is not actually something you “feel.” That’s why it’s called the silent killer. For one in five people with high blood pressure the first symptom is a fatal heart attack.

No, it’s not. Unstable angina often results in acute heart attacks and other untoward outcomes, and should be treated quickly.

Stable angina (that which only occurs with certain levels of exertion and those levels remain unchanged over time) may not need such intervention, however.

Thanks. I clearly misunderstood the information on stable vs. unstable angina, or maybe I thought that Hector’s angina triggered by anger was stable (repeatable and predictable, triggered by a specific emotion) rather than unstable.

I still think Nacho should have put something more potent than ibuprofen in the capsules…

You Tease! :smiley:

Angina?! But he’s a man!

Just to clarify, I’m pretty sure the lawyers are getting 33%, of which Jimmy’s share is 20%, with HHM and F&M splitting in some fashion the other 80%. That equates with the $ figure Jimmy estimated - 1/5 of 1/3 of $17.4 million = $1,160,000 dollars.

Which, assuming it is taxed like ordinary income, would net him $650k-$700k after taxes. A nice windfall, but I’m sure Jimmy could blow through that pretty quickly. Assuming he ever sees it in the first place. Which i suspect he won’t.

With that in mind, I’m not sure how far this series will go, if it’ll cross over into the BB timeline, but I’ll be curious to see how Jimmy lived during his Saul years. I don’t think we ever saw any of Jimmy’s non office life during BB. I doubt if he had to go back to living in the back of a nail salon.

I don’t think he was trying to avoid a nasty reaction, he was just being an effective manipulator. If you tell someone that their friend is just being a jerk and screwing them over, they’re likely to jump in to support the friend. But if you tell them that their friend is really being nice but drop hints that their friend isn’t really and let them draw the conclusion that their friend is screwing them over themselves, they’re much more likely to believe it. And if he really was surprised by the nasty reaction, why did he have the Bingo winning plan ready to go and go through with it? The Bingo rigging doesn’t make sense if the TOOLS just talk to Irene about the situation, it only works if she’s isolated, having no clapping for her amazing win is designed to really twist the knife in her.

If he didn’t have and go through with the Bingo plan I’d say maybe the bad reaction was an unanticipated accident, but he had a major plan ready to go that depending on the bad reaction, and went through with it knowing it would tear Irene up.

It looks to me like the right about to buy a run down building in a not great area and fix it up to be the Saul palace we saw in BB, and he could easily spend the next ten months doing that. If they want to jump back to Jimmy being a lawyer, it could solve that problem for them. I suspect nothing so straightforward will happen though.

Well I used 1/3 of 1/5 in my estimate, so it’s not exactly surprising the numbers are close :slight_smile: if the lawyers are getting 33%, it knocks my ‘1000 client’ estimate down to $11.6k, still the same ballpark.

It’s actually a specific crime in New Mexico since, like in a lot of states, Bingo is a form of gambling that has a special law treating it as not-really-gambling. I’m actually surprised Jimmy didn’t do more to cover up the tampering after he was done, because even though it’s pretty minor a conviction would violate his probation and activate the felony charges for breaking and entering.

Um, HOW does he have a cool million? I’ve only seen up to episode 9, and 10 isn’t slated to play for another 5 days. Are you guys talking about an episode that hasn’t been broadcast yet?

Well, it wasn’t established that the seniors were paying to play, i.e. they weren’t shown buying their bingo cards, if that matters. Also, the prizes looked like stuffed animals, rather than cash.