These are guys who would literally cut off noses to spite faces. Or just because they felt like it.
If Lalo knew that, Lalo would have Nacho killed and Gus would lose one of his best tools against Lalo. Therefore, they need to make it look like Gus did not orchestrate it. This is kind of obvious.
“Fucking Salamancas” to quote Nacho.
Not very long, I think. Kim was hoping that the marriage would reign Jimmy in, and isn’t a fan of the ‘friend of the cartel’ business. Shes going to call him out on that even more, but might still go along with it because she has gotten on the ride.
I don’t think Jimmy has a choice. I don’t think he has since he first got involved with Nacho in Season 1. When you’re in the game, you’re in for life. At this point, if you’re given the chance to become a “friend of the cartel” and you don’t take it, then you become an enemy of the cartel. I’m sure Kim has to be able to see that. And now that she’s family, well, Nacho can tell you how the cartel uses your family. I was hoping for a nonviolent end to Kim’s story line, but recent developments have me thinking she’ll meet a violent end. The only doubt I have is, will Saul just become more Saul-like when his actions get Kim killed? I thought he’d be more deeply affected by that, but we know he doesn’t deal with the death of people close to him in a healthy manner. And the cartel may not give him the chance to grieve properly.
Does Gus have more than one restaurant at this point? I guess he must, since he owns an entire chicken farm and his meeting at Madrigal made him out to be a successful fast food chain CEO, not a guy who runs a single restaurant. But I think so far we’ve only seen that one location. I’m no expert on Albuquerque geography. Does anybody know if the restaurant in BCS is the same one we pretty much exclusively see on BB?
What doesn’t hold up? Kim is constructing castles in the clouds. She doesn’t want to break up with Jimmy. She knows she should, but she is lying to herself to try and avoid the reckoning by coming up with schemes that will fix everything. Just like so many, many otherwise intelligent people in shitty relationships that have self-deluded because they are still infatuated.
They frame it as a business arrangement, a bit of self-protection so they can continue to move forward with their awkward separate/but-not-separate love affair without getting too tangled up in each other’s shit. But they both really want this deep down. And they both are very smart and deep down really nervous it’s a horrible mistake( on Kim’s part )and will end badly( both of them ). And it almost certainly will.
I’m enough of a romantic that I really hopes that it works itself out even in some ridiculously cheesy way. I’m invested in/shipping their torturous love affair. But I know it is probably DOOMED :). It’s a marvelously entertaining trainwreck.
By the time of Breaking Bad, Gus has 14 Pollos Hermanos locations across the Southwest, not just in Albuquerque. We are now in 2004, while Walter White meets Gus in 2009. Gus probably didn’t open 13 restaurants in just five years. However, as far as I can tell the restaurant he torches looks just like the one seen in Breaking Bad.
The AV Club recap listed the names of the franchises at the Madrigal meeting; Stingin’ Rays Hawaiian BBQ, Polmieri Pizzeria, Haau Chuen Wok, Whiskerstay’s and Luftwaffle. And we learned tha Herr Peter knew Gus back in Chile.
One question; at the end of Breaking Bad, I think Gus owned all of Madrigal. Does he own it at this point?
Gus never owned Madrigal. After his death, we see Peter’s suicide and the Madrigal executives trying to deal with the fallout from the scandal. Lydia continued to ship meth to Europe via Madrigal after that.
Sorry. It’s been a while since I watched Breaking Bad.
The one that gets blown up has a completely different exterior. Even before it gets blown up, that is.
Different sign, different door placement, different interior layout, and a sign with Los Lunes, a different town name.
You forgot to mention it has a different parking lot.
Kim is not going to meet a violent end. I will guarantee you that right now. Not because of anything within the story that protects her, but for metafictional reasons: the writers just aren’t going to go there. (And I think it would make us all wonder how Saul could be so happy-go-lucky in BB.)
The one they torched was not his main branch where he has his office–they explicitly stated this on the official insider podcast. He has quite a number of restaurants across the Southwest.
Speaking of the insider podcast, this latest one was quite spicy. I have listened to them for years, going back to somewhere in the middle of BB’s run, and I can never recall an actor coming on and being so frank, “naming names” and so on. But I guess unlike many of the other players, Bob Odenkirk doesn’t have to be worried about being written out of the show! Kind of wild.
I’m feeling my periodic need to push back against this characterization of Saul (one that critic Alan Sepinwall pushes really hard, as do many commenters on various sites). I never saw him as a bad guy, all through BB. Sleazy, sure. But also really funny and kind of awesome. It’s clear from the podcast that Bob Odenkirk doesn’t see him as a bad guy either.
One thing I find curious about this narrative: do we really think they would have even made a show named Better Call Saul if this was the way BB writers and most of the audience saw him? It’s just weird to me, kind of a retcon.
Yeah, now that I look at it more closely, you’re right. But the town name is Las Lunas, which is about 20 miles south of Albuquerque. The branch where Gus’s office is (according to the show) at 12000 – 12100 Coors Rd SW, which is in northeastern Albuquerque (and according to Google Maps, opposite Bob’s Burgers).
There’s no way I’m going to start listening to podcasts, could you summarise what you’re talking about here in a couple of sentences please?
I’m too pro-podcast to enable such an anti-podcast attitude! 
But in any event, if you haven’t listened to the podcast before, you might wonder what the big deal is. It’s just that none of their guests have ever even hinted at casting shade on any other actors or directors, and Bob does so on two big names at least.
I don’t mean sleazy corrupt shitebag in a bad way. Saul is funny, and kind of awesome, sure, but he is (in BB) pretty much a moral vacuum. When he’s first introduced it’s because Walt and Jesse need his help to keep Badger from talking, and Saul is totally comfortable making the obvious suggestion that Badger be shivved in prison. And then taken rather aback to realise that these particular criminals he’s dealing with have ethical problems with that approach. He is, in fact, at peace with the world he lives in - a world where you don’t just lie to get your clients off righteous murder raps, you actively encourage them to do some murders.
There’s also a wonderful scene in BB, after Jesse is beaten up by Hank, where Saul switches from backing Jesse to backing Walt right in front of Jesse. And when Jesse complains at this lack of loyalty, Saul snarls back [something like] “In this game, kid, you go with the winner”. Saul is quick witted, amusingly chaotic, and has a gift for both creating a plausible spin on a problem and then undercutting that with a pithy comment. But he’s also utterly mercenary and happy to get paid for covering up and facilitating violence, even if he keeps himself at a distance.
If he’d been like that at the start of BCS, I doubt it would have sustained so many seasons or been as good. It’s watching his slide from hard-scrabbling street lawyer with a bit of a penchant for grift but a heart of gold re old folks to where he is now that makes it so interesting.
Saul as shown in Breaking Bad is a terrible person. He’s fine with suggesting and enabling murder, scamming people, and completely lacking in loyalty to anything but making big money. He’s a great character who is absolutely hilarious to watch on screen, but he is not someone you would actually want in your real life at all - great characters often aren’t great people. Yeah, he’s not as awful as everyone else on the show, but that’s because it’s BB, not because he’s good.
Look at this interview with Bob Odinkirk about the character of Saul. Starting at 3:20 he talks about the idea for BCS, and at 4:20 he explicitly says that he thinks Saul is not a likeable guy. I don’t think that’s retconning.
I’m pretty sure that IS the way people saw him, and of course the people who made Breaking Bad, a show about the absolutely terrible person Walter White, would see the potential in a show about a lawyer with absolutely no moral sense and no qualms about being the ultimate sleazy ambulance chacer. I mean, the original idea for the show was just going to have each episode be some sort of crazy Saul scheme, and Saul certainly doesn’t need to be a good person for that concept to work. The actual show we got is basically about ‘how does this nice but flawed Jimmy become the Saul we see in Breaking Bad’, which obviously has no problem with Saul being a bad guy.
What I’ve been seeing in BCS is how much Jimmy’s story mirrors Walt’s.
Each of them had multiple chances to be on the right side, and each of them chose to break bad.
I don’t think they are going to kill Kim off; I think she will get caught up in some scheme and ended up disbarred.