Stanislaus: so Mike draws the line at killing his “guys” but killing kids is okay? 
That’s not consistent characterization.
And none of what you said explains why Mike’s beef is with Walt instead of Jesse. Walt tried very hard to get Jesse to back down and ratted him out to Gus. Jesse was always the loose cannon, and of course he ultimately ratted them all out to the cops.
To my ear it sounds pretty much like an early 70s big block. Had an early 60s T-bird drive past me the other day that didn’t sound as smooth.
Isn’t it cool how the early 70s cars made vinyl roofs look cool? My preference is for the likes of 69-72 Cutlass/Skylark coupes. Of course, then you had Mustang Mach II abortions… :rolleyes:
Mike is an enforcer for a drug dealer. He doesn’t think killing kids is OK but he understands that there is a way to deal with this sort of grievance and it doesn’t involve taking your own unsanctioned revenge that disrupts the operation of the drug business you work for. He also understands that sometimes innocents get hurt and he’s made his peace with it. He’s not a good guy. He’s a guy who operates in a vicious world by having certain rules for business relationships. He is guilty of kidding himself by doing this but yes, it means that he will not blink when low-level dealers kill a kid he’s never met but he will expect the people he personally has a relationship with to be treated with the fairness he promised them. That is an inconsitency but it’s not bad characterisation because it’s exactly the kind of cognitive dissonance and wilful moral blindness people employ to kid themselves they’re not as evil as they actually are.
Throughout Season 4 Walt, driven by his ego, refuses to accept that he is no longer “Heisenberg” but just a middle-ranking employee in Gus’s operation. He tries to get Mike and later Jesse to conspire against Gus without any sign that Gus is actually planning to off him. Mike is likely quite right that if Walt had just made the meth and taken his money he would have been fine. The only reason Gus had to kill him was that Walt wasn’t a team player, suggesting an obvious approach to addressing his worries over Gus that never even occurred to Walt.
No, you are really rewriting history now. The only reason Gus was planning to kill Walt is that Walt was loyal to Jesse and did everything he could to prevent Jesse from being killed. That’s literally the entire reason behind all of it. And Walt’s first move in that effort was to go to Gus and try to broker a peace. Jesse’s refusal to accept that peace was the catalyst behind the entire chain of events from there that ultimately led to Gus getting blown up at the nursing home.
ETA: so the only way for Mike to blame Walt is if he believes Walt should have let Jesse die, the opposite of his own code of loyalty. Yet by the time he issues this rant to Walt, Mike himself loves Jesse. So the whole thing is almost a paradox and certainly makes no rational sense.
I rewatched the end of the episode today after having read the thread, and I think it’s pretty clear that Kim is reacting to Saul’s suggestion that Lalo take the money. She’s not in the conversation at all at the start, but as soon as Saul starts talking about the money bag she stands up and moves into the conversation. It really looks like it’s the subject of the money that spurs her into action.
The Lalo-Jimmy-Kim scene was terrifying. Tony Dalton is scary and great in this role.
I love this show but there are getting to be too many layers on the Gus v Salamanca rivalry. Can anyone give me a refresher on this storyline.
I love the way that he is petrifyingly menacing even when he is being (ostensibly) friendly. He can make cooking up some tacos scary.
Hell, I don’t even remember the damned fire in which whoever was killed! 
I concur. And even if Lalo would never have taken the money, there’s no way Kim would have known that. I doubt she’s been following his character arc anywhere near as closely as we have!! She perceived a chance that Lalo might see Jimmy’s mug with the bullet hole, and moved to protect him.
I’m wondering if the mug with a bullet hole in it and the “Worlds best lawyer“ written on it, cause any red flags to pop up when Jimmy was paying bail?
Probably not, for the reason that Kim said. Shooting at metal cans or whatever is very common in those parts apparently, so they’d just guess it was from a target shooting he was especially proud of or whatever. IRL you are not going to jump to guessing a lawyer was involved in a shootout.
I could see them potentially asking him about it though, just expecting a funny story.
Well, if he fed the money through the slot one stack at a time and never actually turned over the duffel bags, the mug would not have been seen by the staff.
Of course, how this whole thing happens without feds converging on the site faster than Black Friday shoppers at a Best Buy, I couldn’t say.
Well, I’ll probably need to rewatch, but I’m pretty sure Season 4 starts with Gus having every opportunity to kill Walt and Jesse in the aftermath of all the events you describe - and slitting the throat of his own henchman instead, because he needs them both alive to cook. A tenuous peace. In which Walt’s next move is to go to Mike and suggest they kill Gus. So I can see why Mike might very well believe that Walt bears some responsibility for the subsequent breakdown in relations.
To the best of my recollection, the Walt/Jesse/Gus timeline:
[ul]
[li]Walt sells his batch to Gus through Saul[/li][li]Gus hires Walt and not Jessie because Jessie was using[/li][li]Walt fires Gale and hires Jessie[/li][li]Jessie finds out Gus’s dealers are using kids and that they killed his friend Combo. Walt brokers a peace with Gus[/li][li]Gus’s dealer kill the kid, Jessie tries to retaliate, but Walt kills the dealers first. Jessie goes into hiding.[/li][li]Jessie kills Gale before Gus can kill Walt. Now Jessie and Walt are the only people that can produce the good meth.[/li][li]Gus decides that Jessie will be easier to control than Walt and begins to turn Jessie against Walt[/li][li]Walt counters Gus, tricks Jessie and eventually kills Gus at the nursing home.[/li][/ul]
So, if Jessie would have let the child murder go, or if Walt would have given up Jessie, everything could have gone on fine. Those are pretty big asks, IMO. Could Walt have convinced Gus that killing the dealers was justified and continued on after that point? Maybe, but I kinda doubt it. After Gus knows how strongheaded Walt is, Gale’s the better option. IMO he needed to give Jessie up to have a long working relationship with Gus.
That’s a really cool insight. Unfortunately, I didn’t even recognize that object as the stopper from that scan. Again, a shortcoming in the way I watch TV.
Walt probably would describe the situation that way, but it’s typical Walt bullshit. The reason Gus was planning to kill Walt is that Walt chose to kill two of Walt’s dealers rather than go to Gus, reign in Jesse, or do anything remotely sensible in that situation. Walt wanting to ‘broker a peace’ after he just got done killing the people he made peace with is the kind of nonsense that makes sense to Walt, but not to anyone else.
I think that in Mike’s view, Walt should have reigned Jesse in instead of betraying Gus to murder two people the same day Jesse (and by implication Walt) agreed to bury the hatchet. I don’t think his own code of loyalty extends to the stupid point of backing them if they break an explicit agreement, go against his explicit instructions, don’t give him a chance to solve a problem, and instead kill two people who work for someone more powerful than you, irrevocably creating a hostile situation. If Walt had held Jesse back, gotten Mike or somoene else to help restrain Jesse, or stopped him at the site instead of killing the two guys, it would be different.
There’s nothing inconsistent with having a code of loyalty to people that work for you, but not having it apply when your people do really stupid shit in direct defiance of an agreement, your orders, and without even giving the person you made an agreement with a chance to fix things. Mike is portrayed as a smart guy, not a moron robotically following a shorthand code even when it’s suicidally stupid.
Pantastic, you are mixing up the order of events. See Snarky Kong’s timeline. Walt tried to broker peace BEFORE he killed those dealers. And he killed them about two seconds before they were going to kill Jesse, who had defied all of Walt’s efforts to defuse the situation. When Walt arrived on the scene, he could either let Jesse die or kill the dealers. There was no other option to “rein Jesse in” at that point, just a split second decision. So Mike’s bitter rant should have been directed at Jesse, or Jesse AND Walt. To direct it solely at Walt while Jesse is like his new adopted son makes absolutely no sense. And Walt, a super logical guy who normally always defends himself, would definitely have pointed this out had the writers not had a brain fart here.
You said it yourself in complete agreement with me - Walt didn’t try to broker peace before he killed the dealers, he arrived on scene and killed them in a ‘split second decision’. He could have attempted to reign in Jesse sometime earlier in the day instead of waiting until the last second, he could have gotten out of the car and said something, he could have called in Mike instead of arriving to kill the guys, or a host of other things. But to call running two guys over with a car ‘brokering peace’ is just nonsense.
It makes perfect sense for Mike to lecture Walt when talking to Walt, and there’s no logical flaw for anyone not swallowing Walt’s self-serving bullshit, which Mike didn’t. Also Walt is not a ‘super logical guy’, he’s an irrational, dangerously unpredictable egomaniac who continually creates problems for himself and only manages to survive as long as he does because extreme luck (and plot armor). He comes up with all kinds of self-serving explanations that don’t stand up to scrutiny and lots of outright bullshit (like “I am the one who knocks” speech).
I get the feeling you don’t like Walt very much.
Pantastic, whaaaat? He did try to broker peace well before that, setting up a sit-down at Gus’s trailer or whatever it was, where they even laid out a cheese or fruit plate.
I don’t know where you’re getting that Walt knew Jesse was going to do this hours ahead of time and just decided to be dramatic by coming flying in at the last possible second. It seemed clear to me that he only figured it out (how exactly is unclear) just in time to race to the scene and make that split second decision about whether to save Jesse’s life by killing the dealers, or let Jesse die. No other options.
ETA: And trying to twist the narrative to argue that he could have just gotten out of the car and “said something” is frankly silly.