Oh yeah :smack:
Some wedding. I eloped 30 some years ago with Mr. Salinqmind and we were married by a justice of the peace, no big wedding, for good reasons. We had two witnesses and we went back to work two days later with no celebrations at all…I say this, because why is it in most dramatic tv shows, the stars, the protagonists, they don’t have any friends or relatives? They get married, or they end up in the hospital, or they get shot, or they die. And there’s never anyone except their SO or maybe a co-worker. They all live in some vacuum. Lalo has a bigger nicer huggier family (in his real life, not the fakers) than either Kim or Jimmy. They live and die in a vacuum.
This is definitely common on TV: I think that unless the show is about a family, it bogs down the narrative to have to introduce various relatives. Even when it is about a family, it’s amusing to see how they work to avoid letting it get too out of control: on Parenthood, you had this big Braverman clan, but all the adult children were conveniently married to people who either were an orphaned only child, or were somehow estranged from their families, so that holiday episodes were not burdened with a huge extended guest cast but no one went to visit family in another city.
On Breaking Bad, it was kind of funny how in a very early episode in Season 1 (maybe even the pilot?) they had a birthday party for Walt and they appeared to have a house full of family and friends. Some of the dialogue indicated that these weren’t just acquaintances either. But then for pretty much the entire rest of the show’s run, it seemed like Hank and Marie were their only friends.
Wow! Hot take. :eek: As I said above, I thought it was one of the best of the series, and many others seem to agree. But I’ve been in your shoes before, either disliking an episode everyone else seems to love (see “Fly” in Breaking Bad) or loving an episode others loathe (like the *Orville *episode “All the World is Birthday Cake”).
FWIW people have said similar things about episodes 5 and 7 of BCS, immediately preceding and following the one you are talking about that I loved so much. In those two episodes’ cases, I thought they were just average quality for BCS, which is still really good but not as exceptional as many made them out to be.
People loved Fly? I thought that it was one of the worst episodes in the history of television.
Apparently it’s an audience/critic divide, but the kinds of non-critics I have hung out with on message boards and Twitter in the past have seemed to be more critic-leaning in this case. Here’s what Wikipedia sez:
ETA: I loved Darren Franich on the Twin Peaks podcast, but I must say: that quote from him doesn’t make any sense. How would the people who “despise” it be part of the “all” who agree it’s “one of the great bottle episodes”? 
I liked it. I thought it was an excellent two-man character drama that revealed a lot about the relationship between Walt and Jesse in the midst of all the chaotic shit they’re involved with. OTOH, I definitely understand why people don’t like it. It does interrupt the flow of the show’s narrative arc as a whole, and shooting the entire thing on a single set can be a little grating.
Like it or not, it’s definitely one of the ballsier things to air on television.
I liked Fly. It was imaginative and a refreshing twist on the usual style of storytelling. It showed us Walt’s obsession with details too.
I thought Walt’s monologue near the end was good. The rest I could do without.
I thought Fly was one of the best and most memorable episodes of the whole series.
It’s interesting how the whole transformation into Saul doesn’t just have Chuck’s disapproval of Slippin’ Jimmy as a backstory, that’s the huge driving force. The fact that Howard was still offering Jimmy a job even knowing full well that Jimmy tossed the bowling balls and sent the prostitutes to harass him shows how much Howard wanted to mend that rift, and Jimmy’s unhinged explosion at Howard’s back highlights just how much Jimmy isn’t over Chuck’s death. I think we’re pretty much done with the Howard part of the story now, though he might have some role in the Gene era. Also good to know that he had two previous marriages.
Kim handled Kevin much better than Rich did, hitting him with the ‘straight shooting’ lecture about how he ignored her advice gets his personality exactly and I think that the MV/Schweikart situation is resolved now. I think that Kim’s idea of marrying Jimmy to keep his schemes under control has already been a failure, on the first big test Jimmy told her about the initial setup but not the fact that someone else came and gave him the info he needs to get bail for Lalo. I think she’s almost certainly going to tell him not to pick up the $7 million for Lalo, and he’s going to do it anyway. I believe that Jimmy’s work with the Lalo situation is going to have dire consequences for her, either she’s going to try to get him to stop (and fail) or she’s going to get involved too much.
I loved Lalo’s lily white show family that magically appeared in the court room to show his community ties, and the little dismissive hand wave when his cell mate popped in to see what he was doing. I think that the plan Gus and Mike have for Lalo is to get him back to Mexico, then let the cartel know about his snitching to the feds and destruction of Gus’s property against cartel orders and let someone else actually kill him off. I think Nacho has at least one more major thing to do against Lalo, and it’s going to involve Saul somehow.
I think this was Jimmy’s first experience with doing the real bad Saul Goodman stuff, having to look in the eyes of a murder victim’s family while he works his magic for the murderer is clearly really hard for him. I think this is where he really decides that he’s willing to embrace and facilitate things like outright murder, rather than just sticking to charging huge amounts of money to get people off of relatively minor crimes (‘50% off guys’, prostitutes, and so on) or swindling ‘rich assholes who look down on me and never give people like me a chance’.
Also something spoilery from the extra clips:
In one of the extras you can watch on AMC or youtube, Nacho does a lesson on how to spot counterfeit bills. That hasn’t come up yet this season and the lessons usually reference the show, so I think that counterfeit money is going to play a big role before this is over. Maybe Gus puts some counterfeit money into the Salamanca’s stream to the cartel to add to the ‘case’ against Lalo?
I agree, I thought it was a really good look at the two characters, and took a pause in the middle of an action-filled sequence. I can see why people didn’t like it though as it was a much slower pace than the rest of BB, it was like suddenly having a quiet scenic stretch in a roller coaster ride.
I don’t think that’s what I disliked about it, since I loved the long stretches of “dock review” and so on in BCS that I know some viewers were impatient with. I just thought it was dumb and out of character for Walt to get that obsessed over a fly. I know he’s particular, but it was way too much (and yes, I understand they were pushing a heavyhanded metaphor about “impurity”).
Getting back to this episode, I thought it was notable that they made sure it was apparent that Kim was Saul/Jimmy’s *third *wife, so no one has to wonder if she’s somehow going to have an affair with his stepdad!
is it even true that married couples can’t be compelled to testify against each other?
Sort of relatedly, I loved how Gus took a moment to inspect the condition of the fryer basket before he blew the whole place up.
I’m sure it’s obvious, but can someone please explain why Gus torched his own restaurant?
And why Nacho vandalized it pre-torch?
mmm
I picture Lyle showing up and getting a “This is acceptable to you?” from Gus as a greeting.
I like the touch that there was one single chicken in the freezer that Gus had clearly placed there to prepare for this. “Our product is never frozen. Unless we’ve done so to destroy our own store, of course.”
Lalo ordered Nacho to torch one of Gus’s restaurants on the cellphone he received in prison. Nacho reported this to Gus, and Gus decided he had to go along with it to keep his plan against Lalo going. Nacho vandalized the restaurant so that it looks like he did it following Lalo’s orders. I suspect that Gus is planning to use Lalo’s actions against him to get Lalo in trouble with the Cartel and take him out of the picture.
I’m sure Gus’s restaurants are well insured, so that he might see taking one out of service temporarily was worth getting rid of Lalo.
I loved the touch of Gus inspecting the fryer basket (and nodding with approval) while having his restaurant getting thrashed.
Classic!
MtM