Only those in the audience who didn’t recognize Giancarlo Esposito :). You don’t hire an actor of that caliber as a one-off restaurant manager.
Chuck is an asshole, but a clever asshole.
I had previously believed that Chuck’s wife, Rachel, had died. But, Jimmy said that she left Chuck. Very interesting.
This is what I don’t get - you keep talking about the show ‘requiring’ knowledge, but I don’t see anything happening that justifies the word ‘requiring’. Sure there are references to BB that you don’t get if you’re not familiar with the source material, but there haven’t been any plot points that don’t make sense without BB knowledge, which is where I’d draw the line at ‘required’.
I know that Frasier made callbacks to Cheers early in it’s run, and had characters and situations that a Cheers fan would recognize right away but non-Cheers people wouldn’t. Although I only watched them as a kid, I’d bet good money that The Jeffersons made some references back to All In the Family. The various Stargate and Star Trek spin offs all include references back to the main series and have characters cross shows. And some shows like Simpsons, Family Guy, and Big Bang Theory make references to dozens or hundreds of other shows and books. Monty Python makes a ton of references to then-current trends and events in addition to classic literature, though it’s absurd nature means if you don’t get a reference you can just regard it as silly. If you define ‘fully enjoy’ a show as ‘get every reference’, then there are very few shows that you can ‘fully enjoy’ by that definition. Certainly not any spin-off, prequel, or sequel that’s worth the name.
If you’re bothered because characters are introduced and you don’t know their significance until later that episode or later that season, then the show was ruined for you from the start. People who know Breaking Bad knew as soon as they came on screen that Mike is a quiet, highly competent badass who’s going to work with Jimmy and later work for Gus, that Tico is batshit crazy and highly violent and ends up in prison, and that Hector (the old uncle) is highly placed in the cartel. And we know that all of them have plot immunity in BCS because they have to be alive in BB - so Mike’s plan couldn’t be to kill Tico, he wasn’t going to make the shot on Hector, and he wasn’t going to get killed in anything risky he did. We know that the receptionist Jimmy hired is going to work out for him and isn’t going to get killed, because she’s working for Saul in BB.
That’s why I don’t get the complaint - it appears to apply to every ‘related’ show, as well as any show that isn’t explicitly, overtly self-contained. I don’t think I would enjoy a show that never had any jokes, situations, or characters that called on outside knowledge, and I certainly don’t expect it. And if that really is the complaint, then the ship has long since sailed for this show.
Honestly, half the BB references that come up in this thread I completely miss. I have very poor face recognition and I miss the return of many secondary characters (didn’t even realize that the new secretary was the one from BB until I read it here).
Yet I enjoy this show immensely and it stands on it’s own just fine.
I think you’re mixing up Tuco (not Tico) and Nacho… and their ultimate fate. We know what happened to Tuco (what you said wasn’t it) and we only have some clues as to Nacho’s fate, which doesn’t sound much better.
From BB, we knew that Tuco had spent some time in prison - because Skinny Pete knew Tuco from prison. We just didn’t know the details.
From BB, we knew only that Ignacio (Nacho) was known to Saul (Jimmy). Beyond that, nothing. Not his origin, not his fate, not his level of criminality, nothing.
Me too, it’s been years since BB was on TV and I only remember parts of it. I don’t remember anyone in BCS except for Jimmy and Mike, and now Gus, being in BB. Hell I forgot who the vet was until he asked about the dog. I don’t think there needs to be any knowledge of BB to enjoy and understand BCS.
From BB, we know where Tuco “ends up” and it ain’t prison. And what we know of what happened to Nacho is that Saul has a bit of PTSD about it.
Basically, the whole Salamanca clan rues the day they ever messed with Gus, Mike, Walter, Jesse and Hank.
(post shortened)
Yes, Chuck doesn’t understand Jimmy’s motivations, and probably never did, but he does understand the legal system. Chuck is lost in his own little idiot savant, anti-electricity world. He knows that if he does “A” (record Jimmy’s confession and letting Jimmy find out that he had), then Jimmy will respond by doing “B” (breaking into Chuck’s and stealing the recording). Chuck had planned for Jimmy’s kneejerk reaction from the very beginning.
I meant Tuco not Tico, but I have no idea what you think I’m wrong about other than getting a vowel wrong in the name. We know that Tuco appeared alive in Breaking Bad, so it’s simply not possible for him to die during Better Call Saul which takes place years before. He absolutely does have plot immunity against dying in this series, because he dies in a show that takes place years later and there’s no supernatural forces in this show’s universe that would allow him to die and come back to life to die again in BB. In his living appearance in BB, he just got out of prison, so any BCS watcher who remembers his BB story knows that his story arc in BCS is almost certainly going to land him in prison, since we know that’s where he ends up. Meanwhile, we don’t know anything about Nacho’s fate. Jimmy mentions that “it was Ignacio” when he appears in BB, but it could be a different guy with the same first name who doesn’t use the nicname since we never see him - which also means he could die in BCS since we don’t see him alive in BB.
And I’m definitely not mixing up anyone’s ‘ultimate fate’ because I didn’t mention any of their ultimate fates (and we don’t know Nacho’s), just their status when they entered Breaking Bad.
Ok, when you said “ends up in prison” I now see that you meant *after BCS, *not ultimately. But it wasn’t clear, because I wasn’t sure who you meant by “Tico”… could be Tuco, Tio (Hector), or Nacho.
We actually don’t know that anything happened to Nacho, and especially not that Saul has PTSD about it. We know that when Saul is hauled out into the desert at gunpoint he tries to blame “Ignacio” for whatever it is they’re hauling him for, which likely is “Nacho” but we can’t be sure, but not whether anything bad has happened to Ignacio. I don’t just mention this for nitpicking, but because the writers for this show have been very good at playing with the ‘history’ of BB and filling in holes, sometimes in unexpected ways.
(Edit since Voltaire posted after I wrote the original).
No, we don’t know *what *happened to Nacho, but it’s a pretty safe bet that it wasn’t good and Saul doesn’t want to share his same fate. We know that Nacho tried to hire Mike to kill Tuco, his boss, then settled for trying to get him sent to prison instead. Other than that, he also had extra-curricular activities with Mike that directly betrayed Tio Hector, his bosses boss, since he knew Mike was the one who robbed the truck and also allowed Mike to come to a sit-down with Hector while armed with a gun. Then he got half of the 50k that Mike was able to demand from him at the point of that gun.
Then we know that whatever happened to Nacho, for some reason the very first thing on Saul’s mind when two masked gunman appear ready to execute him is to blame it all on Nacho. Whatever happened to Nacho, it doesn’t look promising.
From Saul’s reaction in BB, I draw two conclusions:
-
Nacho is still alive (so far as Saul knows)
-
Nacho is not in prison (so far as Saul knows)
Here is the scene.
I know that might be stretching things. Maybe Saul would blame something on a dead man. Seems like something he might do. But, more likely, he was immediately selling out his (former) client, alive or dead.
Maybe Saul would blame something on a dead man? Why wouldn’t he? That’s the perfect person to blame, as dead men tell no tales. And he’s never really showed the propensity to sell out his clients and associates like that, if Nacho were still alive, that is.
From that scene, it’s only when he sees the pre-dug grave in front of him that he immediately jumps to the conclusion that it has something to do with Nacho. And we know that with Nacho’s repeated involvement with both Saul and Mike, and his double-crossing ways, that would put him on a pretty risky path among the Salamanca crew.
I don’t agree that Nacho must be alive or out of prison at the start of BB, I don’t see any reason to think that Saul would hesitate to blame a situation on a man who’s already dead or in prison, especially if his life is on the line. Also Saul doesn’t even need to know of a specific thing that Ingacio did to try to shift blame for him, Saul doesn’t hesitate to say whatever it takes to save his own life. I think Nacho’s fate is completely undetermined in BB beyond ‘Saul knows him and he’s involved in something’. I’ts possible that the Cartel discovered his treachery and he’s dead or in hiding, it’s possible they never found out but he was involved in something else that people might come after him for, it’s possible that he ended up working for Gus with Mike, or that he pulled some completely new scam and skipped town. It might not even be the same Ignacio, though I think that’s unlikely.
He’s been in the desert with Nacho when people were going to be killed, it may be the desert experience in BCS that makes him think of Nacho.
I’d bet money that he ended up working for Mike (and with Saul), but I don’t think Mike would have ever let him know anything about Gus.
Well Ernesto is out of a job. He obviously can’t be trusted with confidential information.
In fact, they must have distrusted him already to have guessed that he would go running to Jimmy if he heard the tape.
I assumed that the drop in the restaurant went ahead - that the courier put the package on the floor and Gus swept it up and into that contraption he was holding. But maybe not.
Remember that scene in BB when Mike tells Jesse that he (Jesse) wasn’t “his guy”. He (Mike) had once had a guy, but now doesn’t have a guy. And so forth.
Maybe Nacho was Mike’s guy?