Mike’s a big believer in letting people learn from their mistakes.
zbuzz,
Last scene of tease
There’s a ‘making of’ on YouTube for the episode. The stunt driver is assisted by an air ram.
Yeah, this idea that Saul was a nice guy living the high life who got it all disrupted when he ran into Walt just doesn’t hold up. Saul is in a position where powerful people that he doesn’t really understand or know force him to do things (though they also pay well) and threats to his life are routine. Getting kidnapped and taken to a shallow grave in the desert by two armed men would be a terrorizing, life-changing event for most people, the kind of thing that you spend years dealing with. For Saul as soon as it turns out the gunmen are not with the cartel he is relieved and back to business as usual, and even decides to work with the pair on a long term basis.
When ‘kidnapped and taken to a shallow grave by armed strangers’ is just a part of doing business, you’re not leading an awesome life. You may well have money and a nice car but you’re also spending a lot of time literally one step from the grave.
I really don’t get how people can argue that Saul Goodman (in BB times) was a decent person. He had worked with the cartel in something serious enough that they might decide to kill him and was, like you say, perfectly willing to break with law and legal ethics to sell drugs to hopeless addicts and murder people for profit. He’s an unethical, immoral person who seeks to profit off of others misery and clearly takes pleasure in pulling scams on blameless people (like Jesse’s parents), and lacks even ‘honor among thieves’ type loyalty to his criminal partners (ditching Jesse for Walt).
Then again, I’ve seen that some people here believe that police typically have sub-five minute response times (not the 15+ minutes seen on real world shootouts), gangsters risking their lives stealing $7 million from the cartel always carry plenty of water in their cars, and no one ever gets confused by a bizarre and unexpected turn of events like prostitutes turning up at a nice restaurant and will always respond calmly and rationally to it. So there’s clearly some wildly different perspectives.
One interesting thing that we know from Saul’s experience being kidnapped by Walt & Pinkman… When Saul begs for his life, he guesses that Walt & Pinkman are Lalo and Nacho.
Saul believed that it was possible that the men were Lalo or Nacho. … which means that Saul believes that both are still alive during the BB time period. … which means that Saul isn’t involved if either man dies prior to BB.
On a different topic, Lalo now knows that Saul has talked, at least a little, to Kim, because Kim told him. Gus/Mike now know the same thing because Saul told Mike. Will Saul & Kim tell each other what they did?
Saul also likes the excitement of the danger. While most people would be on edge all the time being crime and danger adjacent, Saul loves it. If he didn’t like it he would have kept the Davis and Main job. Yeah, unmarked graves in the desert is past his comfort point, but that comes with the territory. I definitely think he’s closer to being comfortable, before Walt, than he is a nervous wreck.
Seeing as no one else mentioned it, I liked the nod to Chuck at the end with Saul wearing the space blanket.
I think that was played for laughs though (and was one of the funniest lines of the series IMO).
Which actually illustrates a little of the issue with trying to understand the BCS character by looking at BB.
As a side character, Saul was something of comic relief in BB. Yes he had serious moments, especially towards the end, but at first he was just a funny, greasy lawyer caricature.
In BCS he’s played straight; yes he does funny stuff sometimes, but he’s a real person, and his experiences are not just throw away lines.
So the extent to which we can take the character seriously is a little different across the two series.
Just watched this scene. You almost had it, but Saul tries to blame Nacho for whatever he thinks he’s going to get whacked for and thinks that Lalo sent the hitmen. He doesn’t actually think Walt and Jessie are those two.
Interesting that Saul knows that Nacho fucked over the Cartel though. I wonder if he knows about Nacho working for Gus or about something else?
Also, just before this scene, Saul hits on his receptionist which suggests Kim isn’t in the picture. Or, sensibly, the writers hadn’t gotten that deep into Saul’s backstory. Or, I suppose, that Saul is ok cheating on Kim, but I don’t think that’s it.
No, he clearly knows that neither is Lalo or Nacho since he refers to both of them as if they aren’t there:
Saul: “On no no no no no. It wasn’t me, it was Ignacio, he’s the one. Oh no no no no no. Siempre soy amigo, siempre soy amigo del cartel!”
Jesse: “Shut up. Just speak English.”
Saul: “Lalo didn’t send you? Not Lalo?”
Jesse: “Who?”
Saul: “Oh, thank God! Christ!”
Saul clearly believes that Lalo is still alive at this point. Since he refers to Nacho in the present tense, this implies he thinks that he’s still alive as well, although this isn’t completely certain. But Saul may not know the actual fate of either.
How do you figure? Saul says “It wasn’t me, it was Ignacio!” and “Lalo didn’t send you?” Those were his only references to those two in all of Breaking Bad. Doesn’t sound like he thinks it’s those two just from that.
While it does seem to imply that Lalo is alive, I don’t think it gives that same assurance for Nacho necessarily still being around.
Yeah, the two space blanket bits were great. Jimmy deciding to be cold rather than use the blanket because it reminds him of Chuck was a nice touch, and Jimmy charging through the desert wrapped in the blanket just like Chuck did when going outside when he didn’t have things under control was a great callback.
I am glad that I read your interpretation, because I’ve never heard the words in that way before… but, I was wrong & you are right.
Saul is absolutely throwing Nacho under the bus. Absolutely.
I agree he obviously doesn’t think Walt and Jesse are Lalo and Nacho. But the line is weaker on information that what you say here - it only implies that Saul thinks Lalo was still alive recently enough to give orders. Saul doesn’t really have an intelligence apparatus working in Mexico (unlike Gus), so if in the ‘near future’ (3-4 years before breaking bad) or shortly before breaking bad Lalo dies and it doesn’t make the ABQ news, it’s still reasonable for Saul to think Lalo can send people after him. If Lalo dies within a few months of Saul’s entry to BB and Saul knows about it, he can still think that Lalo sent people before he died and they’re just now catching up to him. There is a lot of room for the writers to decide exactly what happens to Lalo that is completely consistent with that one line.
And I agree, it gives zero assurance that Nacho is still around, and actually supports him being dead, believed dead, or completely out of the scene - trying to pass the blame onto someone who isn’t around to contradict you is safer than someone who might get pissed off at you ratting them out. If Nacho dies while betraying Lalo in the next episode, it would still be completely consistent for Saul to try to blame ‘it’ on Nacho in the BB time frame.
While I don’t disagree with this in general, remember we are still a good four years before that scene in Breaking Bad. So that whatever happened probably occurred in the fairly recent past. Otherwise Saul might be more surprised that something from that far in the past had suddenly been discovered.
As I mention above, Saul refers to Ignacio in the present tense in that scene:
One could explain that away by assuming Saul is confusing his tenses under stress, but at face value it implies Nacho is still alive, or at least Saul doesn’t know he’s dead.
We may well get a significant time jump between seasons or even next week.
That’s amaze-balls!
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I disagree. If Saul was involved in or knew about some sort of large scam/betrayal/etc. involving a member of the Salamanca family, it is certainly reasonable for him to worry that they found out what he did years later and that it’s finally catching up to him. One would certainly expect someone in general to be mad about a major betrayal four years later, and the Salamanaca’s actively revel in violence and revenge.
The witness protection program certainly wouldn’t be surprised if one of their witnesses went back to their real identity after a mere four years and was subsequently killed in revenge for testimony.
Saul gives no indication whatsoever that he things Ignacio is alive, saying that someone is to blame for an action does not imply that they are currently alive, just that they were alive to take the action when it occurred. He’s not ‘confusing his tenses’, he is referring to events in the past and an ongoing condition (blame for the events) in the present tense, which is gramatically correct whether the person is alive or dead.
I’m not going to get into this much more because I had my fill of arguing about absurd English usage claims back in the great “Kim knows” war in season 2.
I don’t see his car anywhere. You’re talking about the cold open to the most recent episode, right?
I found myself fast-forwarding over a number of montages. The episode struck me as mildly interesting but overly contrived. Once Mike saw that the Sunfire had been hit, he should have checked the remaining vehicles of the thieves. Maybe he could swap the tires around to get at least one vehicle with intact wheels (or just drive on rims because what difference does it make, really?) because any of those Jeeps would be a better choice for desert driving than the Sunfire even under ideal conditions.
Of course, in retrospect, Jimmy should have rented an offroad vehicle of his own instead of bringing his crappy questionably-reliable Sunfire on a long desert drive, given the stakes of the mission.
My only real feelings of tension for the episode came near the end when I couldn’t remember what vehicle the last thief had been driving and I was afraid Kim had managed to change Lalo’s mind about telling her the details and had come looking for Jimmy, only to get sniped by Mike.
Of course, on even further retrospection, it would have been logical to leave the cash bags on the road in the path of the last thief and set up a sniper’s nest a few hundred yards away and just pick him off when he stops to investigate.