Here’s an interesting thought. In Casino Royale, the stunt man set a world record when he rolled the Aston Martin 7 times. In this episode, the Bronco rolled 7-3/4 times. Did they set a new world record? Wish I could ask Gilligan.
I did wonder what it means in practical terms for a judge to say “You’ve convinced me that bail is warranted, but I’m setting it at $7 million”. The only way that could make sense is if Lalo’s cover story maybe involves him being some sort of bigtime legitimate businessman? Possible, I suppose.
Good point, especially with just Jimmy as his lawyer.
I mean, if Lalo had a big fancy legal team, I could see the judge thinking Lalo somehow has lots of money even if he’s not a gangster, and bail needs to be set proportionally high to make sure he shows up to court.
But, there’s no indication of wealth, he has a bargain basement lawyer and a family to provide for. So the judge should think a lower amount, like a couple hundred thousand max should suffice. Or, if he doesn’t buy any of the story, and thinks he’s looking at a rich cartel member with a “criminal” lawyer, he should deny bail.
Right. I think this is one of those deals where the writers either didn’t think about it too closely, or hope we won’t pull on these threads too hard. They needed to set up this chain of events, and they couldn’t make it any more airtight than this.
Yeah. If you scroll up, you’ll note that I was responding to the idea that Saul should just report his car stolen. Although it is illegal and immoral to lie to the police, which would not concern Saul, I was pointing out that it wouldn’t work in this situation. Lies to the police lead to more lies to the police which buries the liar. These guys are pros and it is their job to have a bullshit detector. Even defense lawyers are no match when up against the pros in that field. (Which as an aside is a good reason not to talk to the police in general when you are a suspect)
I don’t care how smart you are generally. Don’t try to beat an average person in their field of expertise.
Just out of interest, I googled “highest bail ever” and, among a number of excruciatingly large bail amounts for wealthy businessmen, got this hundred million dollar bail story. Though it does note that the judge wasn’t actually allowed to deny bail altogether, so that’s more of a ‘Fuck you’ amount than anything she would have expected the guy to actually come up with
Yeah, interesting. I do think we have to put it in a separate category when the judge is literally not allowed to deny bail. Then it’s like when a judge is not allowed to sentence some heinous murderer to life without possibility of parole, so they give them 999 years or whatever.
In this case, the initial expectation was to deny bail altogether. To fall for the scam about the loving family and the coached witness (the latter of which was true in a sense) and offer bail, but to make it high enough that a highly connected cartel guy could pay it without too much trouble as a “get out of jail free” card, but the solid citizen he was portraying himself to be would not be able to afford it, seems like it’s all wrong coming and going. Unless, again, there is some kind of cover story about his being a successful businessman (Gus, for instance, would be able to come up with that kind of money without it seeming too fishy, since he owns a chain of restaurants).
The thing is, I didn’t think about it until you mentioned it SlackerInc, and it hasn’t come up in the discussion in this thread previously.
So we could consider it good screenwriting in fact. It’s like the Chris Nolan thing of e.g. cutting directly from day to night in a way hardly anyone in the audience notices.
They may have correctly guessed that the audience would be fine with the notion of “the judge is still somewhat suspicious, so sets bail at $7 million” even if that doesn’t make sense if you pull on that thread.
Colibri #394,
Well yeah, if you want to quibble over teensy weensy trivia like that!
When they wrap up for the train to restart it reminded me of the old movie serials where you were sure the guy got shot last week but this week he gets away just in time. But, it was exciting.
Apidistra #406,
Yes, that was the term that came to mind.
I don’t think they realize that he’s a highly connected cartel guy - they’ve arrested him under his cover ID name, no one in the legal system but Jimmy and Kim have mentioned the Salamanca name. And when they were arguing about bail, they only mentioned that he had no local connections, not that he had any cartel connections. So while they are pretty sure he’s got something illegal going on, they have no idea that he’s even involved with the cartel, much less so high up that he can casually order them to deliver $7 million dollars to him.
So what happens is they’ve got a common criminal who’s a foreign national, and they reasonably set ‘no bail’. Then the defense comes in and makes it look like the guy has actually been framed and that the prosecution hasn’t done their homework, and that the guy actually has a local family. The judge now doesn’t have any justification to deny bail, so sets a high bail (murder cases usually have bail in the millions from what I’ve seen). There’s just no reason to think that the guy is rich enough to toss $7 million and run, if he can come up with the money (or the $700,000 for a bail bondsman) he’s unlikely to leave.
The coached witness bit was completely true BTW - the kind of questioning where you keep bringing up a particular model of car and saying ‘now did you see one of these’ is very much coaching the witness and gets testimony thrown out when someone can show that it was done.
Two nitpicks:
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The judge set bail at $7 million “all cash” meaning no bondsman could post it. Lalo needed $7 million in U.S. currency at the clerk’s office. (Of course, that doesn’t mean it has to literally be cash, it could be in the form of money orders or cashier’s checks that the clerk’s office accepts)
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Even if it was $7 million cash or surety bond, no bail bondsman in the world would accept a $700k down payment leaving them on the hook for $6.3 million if the defendant flees. They would want some additional security like property
Yeah, if my bail is $10k and I pay $1k, they take a risk of losing $9k. Not $6.3 million.
Missed the edit window:
Further, the setting of bail at $7 million was merely a plot contrivance. The judge has discretion to deny bail altogether. If he thinks that the defendant may be an innocent guy who is getting railroaded and thinks bail is appropriate, he would inquire more about the defendant and family’s personal finances and set bail at an amount that they can actually post but would also be very painful, past crippling, if he flees.
He’s not going to pick a number like $7 million all cash which he knows that nearly nobody in the country can post except for the very rich and drug cartel members. If he wanted to keep him in jail, he will just deny bail altogether.
ETA: And he would put conditions on any reasonable bail: Home confinement, GPS monitoring, regular reporting, etc.
Holy shit that was intense. From the first phone call until Kim started in I thought that was going to end very badly.
Kim looked like she was enjoying that exchange an awful lot. I think the fear in Saul’s eyes was less Lalo and more about what Kim was going to do to him in the bedroom, if they made it that far.
Man, I was having such a hard time breathing during that last scene that I thought I had the virus… That had to be the tensest scene of the series so far.
“Holy shit” was my reaction as well. Kim Wexler is the BOSS. I thought Rhea Seehorn killed it in her reaction to receiving Jimmy’s phone call as well. If she doesn’t get an Emmy, there is no justice.
ETA: Any theories as to why Lalo is going to Mexico a different way? Has he sniffed out that Don Eladio is out to get him?
If I had to guess about Lalo at this point, I would guess that he knows that something, somewhere is wrong. He’s just not sure enough about what it is to take decisive action. His transition from certainty to uncertainty is what Kim Wexler, as Jimmy’s defense attorney, was able to accomplish.
Incredible. Absolutely incredible.
Of course, in the alternative, one could argue that Lalo is viewing all of these events in the expectation that Bolsa, unhappy about the restaurant fire, will try something.
If Lalo sees through everything, or even just gives the possibility a high probability… perhaps he decides to not kill Saul & Kim because he recognizes them as assets better spent elsewhere.
Bolsa trying to keep Lalo in jail is a half-measure. Maybe he saw it as appropriate punishment, because burning down the restaurant was also a half-measure. Bolsa probably should’ve given Gus the green light to take action instead of taking the action himself.
I think Kim is about to really embrace her scamming side and dive in with Jimmy to fund her pro bono work. She worked Lalo really well and seemed quite happy to do so. Maybe this is where Ice Station Zebra Associates gets formed, since she didn’t end up getting shot like the scene was pushing us to worry about.
Jimmy’s powers of persuasion just weren’t cutting it, and he was starting to screw up his story. Early on he was handling the lie right (‘remembering’ minor details that he remembered, admitting to the embarrassing bit) but Lalo was not buying it. When Lalo asked him if he pushed the car into the ditch, Jimmy looked defeated to me, and he started screwing up - the ‘I don’t think so’ isn’t sticking to the story. When Kim came in and called Lalo out on not having anyone of his own to get the money, she put him on the defensive and pushed him to accept that some yahoos shot the abandonded car. And definitely enjoyed doing it.
Also don’t think Jimmy was worried about Kim’s reaction to him after the fact, he was worried that he was about to get her killed and she’d die feeling he had lied to her.
He knows something is going on, just not what. Kim convinced him that Jimmy didn’t betray him, but the pieces still don’t fit together, so he’s not going to use his traditional method of getting across so that other people can’t predict him. Also I don’t think that Don Eladio is out to get him, there’s no indication that Eladio has anything to do with putting him in jail or trying to keep him there. Gus and Bolsa are the ones working against him, and I don’t think either is cluing in the top of the food chain.