On this episode: definitely an inflection point for Jimmy, who has realised what involvement with the cartel really means. When he got up and put himself at risk to give Mike the shot he didn’t just commit to his own survival - he was taking his first active role in violence. Mike obviously didn’t fancy a direct shootout but it took Jimmy to find a way to give Mike a second chance at an ambush and a kill.
Also an inflection point for Kim - she’s now exposed herself to a very dangerous man who won’t be happy that she’s in the loop. The consequences of that are going to be pretty significant, one way or another - if Lalo is in a position to do anything about it.
As for the allegiance of the attackers: obviously, Mike and Gus want Lalo out the picture. They wanted him jail at first, but Nacho revealed that he was still interfering iwth Gus from his cell. So Mike’s next move was to help Jimmy get Lalo bail but casting doubt on the case. I’m assuming they’re assuming he’ll skip bail, cross the border and never return. (Killing him still being forbidden.) All this implies that someone else wants Lalo to stay in jail. This could be the remnants of the family that the cousins and Nacho wiped out after Gus set them up for the attack on Nacho. Or some other faction we haven’t heard of. But it seems odd to bring in someone new. Of cousre, the pay-off could have simply been the $7,000,000 dollars rather than the implications for Lalo’s future.
I thought perhaps it was Lalo himself who sent them. A way of disposing of Jimmy who’d asked for too much money. It’s got the Salamanca hallmark of using extreme violence to solve personnel problems, but it still seems unneccessary for what is a small amount of money in hte grand scheme.
Another point is that Mike obviously knew enough to know how and when the money was coming in, and that it was going to be attacked. But he didn’t know how many attackers there would be, which rules out any kind of elaborate play by Gus to make Lalo think he was under attack by staging the robbery and rescue both. But him knowing about it also seems to rule out that this was an opportunistic robbery by an unknown party.
At the current pace, knowing the number of shows remaining in the season, I’m guessing that final resolution of the matters involving Lalo won’t come until the next season. Perhaps this is why they re-newed the show for 2 seasons at one time rather than the usual custom of one at a time?
As for who attacked Saul, this is from an interview with Gilligan for Variety: Who are those thieves? How are they connected to the Salamancas?
VG: They are cartel-adjacent. In the teaser, you see the middle-aged gentleman who seems to be in charge of “Salamanca treasure cave” as we called it — that warehouse filled with exotic cars and then thousands of pounds of cash and the counting room and all that. He seems to be in charge of the facility, and at the end of that teaser seems to be ratting out the cousins. To who, Peter, Gordon and the writers know but I don’t think we have established that yet for the audience.
Which is an interesting point. If Lalo is still interfering with Gus’s operation in jail, he certainly can still do the same from Mexico. So what’s changed?
The only difference I see from Lalo being out of jail instead of in jail is now there’s the opportunity to kill him. I think Gus is going to have him taken out. He’s lost $700,000, several men, and a restaurant. He’s not going to show restraint. He needs to end this before he loses even more.
How did Mike know WHERE the ambush would take place? I’m fine w/ him tracking Jimmy and having an untraceable truck, but he had to do so undetected, and assume a sniper’s position in time. but, of course, he IS Super Mike!
Yeah, I pretty much enjoyed the ep, but seemed like a lot of airtime to spend on one day - even a pivotal day.
And the truck flip was pretty excessive and silly.
Lalo’s instructions are to go to Los Lunas and take highway 6 west to state 147. The only road south off of 6 is right after the Rio Puerco bridge at the base of Escondida mountain. It leads to the Valencia county trash dump and we are shown a Valencia county plate. The road continues south from the dump but there is no outlet. You go out the same way you came in. That may actually be where they filmed it because the plateau you can see in the distance looks like Escondida mountain.
Mike says he did not know about the ambush ‘he would have brought more guys’. So, he was following Jimmie. There were four cars in the ambush - 2 north of the ambush point and 2 south. They were positioned off of the road. No cars were south of the pick up well. The brothers would have to pass through them inbound and outbound. That’s plausible if the cars were hidden. Difficult but plausible, if they had arrived early enough to let their road dust settle. There is still their tracks in the road dust. Jimmie would have ignored them and possibly the cousins but not Mike. By the time Mike got there 7 cars had left tracks in the dust. 6 inbound and 1 outbound. He would have known it was a very busy traffic day. Mike could have surmised the position of the ambush from the tracks and got into position. The bad guys might have assumed he was just some local in a ranch truck who just happened to want to overlook their ambush site. Borders on Deus Ex Machina.
The most likely perpetrator of the ambush is Nacho and it’s Nacho’s car we are shown in the tease.
Oh yeah, interesting aside. Years ago an armored car was ambushed and robbed near the Rio Puerco bridge.
Thanks for that. Seems Mike was just keeping an eye on Jimmy out of general principles regarding the safe transport of $7 million. I’m prepared to believe Mike kept his truck out of sight of the road - it wasn’t till he thought everyone was dead that he drove down.
As for Nacho, I did think it interesting that Lalo’s view (as shared with Jimmy) was that Nacho was generally a good guy to have on your side but in the presence of $7M he might get real dumb real quick. Even if it’s not foreshadowing it does suggest that Lalo has picked up a trace of Nacho’s desperation - he took a big risk ostensibly for Lalo/the Salamancas and it paid off so on the face of it, great, well done Nacho but… what motivates a person to take that kind of risk, and what other risks might they take? Lalo is a bit more of a thinker than most Salamancas.
At the start of the episode when the cousins go into the warehouse to pick up the $7 million, one guy slips out back and makes a phone call when they leave. I think he called some people who’d be interested in a quick $7 million and put them on the trail. They might or might not be part of the cartel, but they’re not acting on any orders. Seven million dollars that no one knows you have and that the cartel bosses will blame each other for is a pretty sweet prize.
Presumably the well meeting point is a place that has been used before for cross-border transfers, so the guy making the call or the one organizing the attack know where to set up their road block.
That would actually be a huge lose for him and completely wreck Gus’s plans. Having Lalo in the US messing with his operations (even from prison) means he can’t go forward with the super lab, which is key to his plan to kill everyone in the Cartel leadership and Salamanca factory except for Hector, who he will then taunt once he has achieved victory. He can’t kill Lalo in prison because, as he said to the Madrigal guy, if Lalo dies in the US the cartel will blame him. If Gus wanted Lalo to stay in prison, all he had to do was NOT have Mike go to Saul with the background on the ‘detective’ and Lalo’s lily white local family.
Yes, like Mike pointed out Kim is no longer running an occasional fun scam on an ass, or using unethical scams to help her real work. She’s in the game now, and she’s really got three ways to go - jump fully into the game with Saul, run away from the whole situation (including Jimmy), or half-ass around it and get killed/captured for leverage.
Gus said that if he Lalo dies in the US, the cartel will assume he did it. I think that Gus has a plan to permanently deal with Lalo once he’s in Mexico, since the Cartel will assume it was another enemy when he’s on his home turf.
I don’t think Mike did know that it was going to be attacked, if he knew there was going to be a serious attack he wouldn’t have come alone. And if he knew that an ambush was being set, he’d have hit the ambushers by surprise while they were waiting. I think that Mike was following Saul just to make sure nothing happened like a car breakdown or opportunistic criminal.
Yeah, I shouldn’t get hung up on this minor point, but given the challenges of the terrain, it seemed quite unlikely he would’ve been able to get in position. But my experience as a desert sniper is somewhat limited…
Makes sense that Lalo is more vulnerable in Mexico although I’d think Gus would still be on the suspect list - just the waters would be muddier and the list longer. Agree this is likely the plan.
Yes, you’re right. So the call could be to anyone with the wherewithal to stage the robbery. Have to admit the guy on the inside of the Salamanca/Cartel money warehouse who is setting them up to lose millions has got some steely nerve on him. Getting that traced back to you would be terminally painful.
So I guess I’m the first to point out that they used part of Labi Siffre’s epic track I Got The - better known (or maybe not) as “the music sampled in Eminem’s ‘My Name Is’.” I wonder how many people watching that episode assumed that the music was simply an expanded instrumental remix of the Eminem track, unaware of the original that it sampled?!
I hope that Season 6 is half Gus & Lalo conflict and half Gene’s disposition. I hope that whatever happens with Kim happens quickly & quietly & takes as little screen time as possible. Her story is the least interesting at this point.
I’m almost literally on the opposite page from this. Almost. I AM interested in what happens with Gene. But for me Kim’s fate easily trumps Nacho, Lalo and Gus’ story arc.
Good episode…although obviously wouldn’t want one like that every time.
Important character-defining moments for Saul, Mike and Kim.
Notes:
Agree with the comments about super mike. During the shootout I thought it might turn out to be Mike, but was hoping it would be a crew. Not just because of robocop mike straining credulity but also because it’s getting that TV problem of the same handful of characters being responsible for everything. It’s a problem on all shows, but BCS has usually written good enough reasons for it to keep being the same people.
Car flip was cartoonish but didn’t bother me. Actually the responses afterwards took me out; I’d prefer Saul to have panicked (even in his shell-shocked state), and Mike to be worried he’d get hurt.
So…drinking your piss. Turns out you do get a net hydration from doing that. Just learned this from googling it after the show. The more you know.
If we assume it wasn’t Gus or the Salamanca administration, I’m having trouble figuring out who it could be. I don’t think either Nacho or Crazy-8 have either the cojones or can command the muscle for such a raid. I don’t think they would introduce someone entirely new, so it could be someone from Breaking Bad we haven’t seen yet, but I can’t think of likely candidates.
Given that her fate (whatever it is) is almost certainly the final straw turning Jimmy fully into Saul, I’m sure she’ll have a major part until near the very end.
Three things in that desert episode, I’ve seen Bear Grylls do on Man vs. Wild. burying the container so the colder night air would make a little condensation water, tying a shirt around your head if no hat, and of course the infamous ‘drinking your own pee’.
