Wait, someone remind me; are Nacho and Lalo alive in Breaking Bad?
Ha! I’m glad I’m not the only one!
I loved Breaking Bad and watched every episode religiously as they aired, but it’s still be quite a few years since I did so. So details like this are fuzzy.
Color me surprised. I had formal training by a professional locksmith back in the 80s, when I worked for Diplomatic Security. We were taught most of the ways to defeat a padlock (including using two open-end wrenches), but that wasn’t one of them.
Nobody knows.
Both are mentioned once, when Walt and Jessie grab Saul and take him to the desert. Saul thinks that Lalo sent them to kill him, and Saul tries to push the blame to Nacho. We don’t know what Saul thinks Lalo wants him dead for, or if Saul knows for sure who is alive.
Later, Gus tells Hector that the Salamanca name dies with Hector. So, IMO, Saul probably believes that Lalo is alive, but in reality he’s dead. I don’t think there’s much to speculate on about Nacho.
Saul believed so when kidnapped into the desert in BB “Did Lalo send you?” Otherwise, there is not much mention of him, and he is certainly never seen. Gus taunts Hector in BB, after the pool-side poison-palooza “Now the name Salamanca does with you”. Of course not proof Salamanca is dead, he could be exaggerating the success of his Mexican mayhem. But you’d think Hector would know if Lalo were still extant.
Nacho is not even an appetizer or side-order in BB.
Saul says “it wasn’t be, it was Ignacio (Nacho)” before he asks if Lalo sent them. But to me that doesn’t say much about whether Saul believe Nacho was alive at the time. Depending on what Saul thinks he’s about to be killed over, it’s just as easy to throw a dead guy under the bus.
Another interesting thing that comes out of Saul throwing Nacho under the bus is that there must be something for which Saul is blaming Nacho.
In other words, something that Nacho did, that Saul knew about - maybe even participated in, angered Lalo.
I’m not sure that we know what that something is that Nacho did. Maybe the gate? Probably not… but, potentially? I don’t know why anyone would blame that on Saul - and he certainly wasn’t involved at all. But, it’s yet another thing to keep in mind next year.
I was thinking about this. At this point Lalo knows exactly who betrayed him, and has no reason to suspect Saul of anything (well, any more than he already does). And Saul knows nothing aside from the fact that Lalo was going to be hit; he doesn’t know anything about Nacho’s involvement. Given that Saul’s outburst takes place four years later, I would think it must be related to something that takes place later.
I can’t say I know what the recoil is like on an automatic weapon, but I just thought Lalo must be incredibly strong to be able to hold it at arms length at right angles without bracing it in any way and not have it jolted out of his hands when he fired it.
He didn’t jump down because the two guys in the tunnel would be able to shoot him - by holding the gun and spraying bullets, they have only his hand near the top as a target, not his whole body at the end of the tunnel. Since the tunnel is basically man-sized, if your whole body is in it, and a bullet goes all the way down, you’re almost certainly going to get hit.
Personally, I expected him to have a trap of some sort in the tunnel. The little metal ductwork in the ceiling seemed like the perfect way to release something flammable, corrosive, or poisonous into the tunnel. (Flammable stuff wouldn’t need to burn the people, it would just need to burn out all of the oxygen so they’d suffocate).
Nacho and Lalo get one line from Saul in Breaking Bad, and the line is consistent with either or both of them being alive or dead (or presumed dead). Lalo is likely dead by the time Season 4 of BB happens because Gus brags to Hector that he has killed all of the Salamancas, but Gus could be lying or misled. I think the last scene in this episode of BCS where Lalo makes the guy call home could be Lalo faking his death.
Earlier in the episode Gus specifically says that he hired assassins, and tells Mike that the one thing they lack is a guy inside, then they call Nacho on his cell number assuming he will go along with the plan. So it seems pretty clear that Gus hired these guys and that he gave them Nacho to contact, as no one but Gus’s guys know that Nacho is betraying the Salamancas.
Here’s a video.
I was confused by the fact that when Nacho first checked his phone, he saw “no service,” but when he checked it later it showed “missed call.” He then called the number back. IIRC Mike told Gus the house was in an area with no cell service. How did they get a call to him?
You don’t need to do something to get blamed for it.
The way I saw it - the tunnel was pretty darned narrow for the people crawling down it. It would not have been a simple thing to stop crawling, turn around, get your gun in position, and fire - if you heard a noise behind you.
I don’t know the geometry, and I’m not much of a marksman, but I would think there is a pretty limited range within which one would have to aim, to ensure a bullet went in a particular direction. IIRC, they said the tunnel was something like 100 yds long. If the guys were half way down, that would necessitate hitting an approx 4’ diameter target 150 feet away. Yeah, any bullets going down the tunnel would hit the target, but the vast majority (all?) would end up in the walls of the tunnel. Maybe I’m exaggerating the accuracy needed…
Yeah - all I figured was they had some super portable cell transmitter or something. IIRC, AFTER the call, he again had no service.
My guess is that they brought a portable signal booster of some sort within a half mile of the compound. I’m not sure what was available back in 2003, but there were a plethora of them by 2011, and I’m sure they could have had something that would fit in a van back then. That would let them connect Nacho and give him a call, then once they heard from him they’d shut it down so he’d go back to ‘no service’.
It was the phone call and the amateur goons that made me think somebody was hacking into the plan. Also the phone call was foreshadowed by the phone call prior to the last attack.
Earlier when Mike was explaining to Gus that Nacho couldn’t be contacted because there was no cell service, Gus made a dismissive-sounding exclamation of “technology.” From that I gathered that Gus didn’t regard a lack of local cell service as an insurmountable problem. Presumably this is an issue he’s tackled before and like you I’m assuming some portable booster.