I would not characterize someone as “always honest” if they made statements that they knew someone would take as ‘your brother didn’t do X’ when in fact their brother did X, even if none of the statements they made are an explicit lie. Maintaining a multi-year campaign of deception while being careful to only use omissions and implications, never outright lies, is just not something that an honest person does, and I certainly don’t think that Kim is going to see the person who maintained a multi-year campaign of deception as ‘always honest’ regardless of whether any particular statement was explicitly a lie and not just misleading.
If my wife asks “did you sleep with Sarah on Tuesday” and I say “How dare you ask that, I had dinner at Joe’s Diner, then watched a movie!” but leave out that I watched that movie at Sarah’s place after sleeping with her, I’m not being “always honest” even though the statement that I made is technically true. And I certainly wouldn’t expect my wife to think of me as an honest person after years of that kind of deception.
Can’t Kim travel a route-into-vindictive-madness comparable to the one taken by Walter White, destroying people just because she takes pride in the ability to do so? Let’s not be sexist, after all.
A theory I heard on a fan podcast, which was actually bolstered by something showrunner Peter Gould hinted at near the end of the insider podcast, is that Kim is actually not sincere about the plan to go after Howard and the Sandpiper money, but is kind of engaged in a kind of entrapment of Jimmy, to see how far he is willing to go. If it’s really *that *far, she may cut him loose. I would actually prefer this turn out to be true.
This was the first time in the show that I didn’t like Kim. Looking back, I’d bought too much into the idea that Kim represented what Jimmy could aim for: coming from a hardscrabble background, putting in the hard yards to get qualified, building up a respectable practice through hard work. And there was a lot of truth in that view, but it wasn’t the whole story.
Kim knew what the rules were, and she generally considered it wise to play by them. But that didn’t stop her taking advantage when Jimmy broke them for her. In small ways (e.g. when they conned that client who wanted to take the deal) but really also in the biggest possible, when she didn’t blow the whistle on Jimmy’s address-changing scam that won her Mesa Verde. Sure, she didn’t know about it till after the fact but the righetous ethical option was to tell the authorities what she suspected. And yes, she was clever enough to make sure that she was never directlyl told, but (at the risk of dragging up an old argument) she knew perfectly well Jimmy had pulled a fast one. The consequences of that fast one were:she got Mesa Verde; Chuck mentally disintegrated. That’s what she was, in the end, happy to go along with.
She always like scams, and she told Jimmy and us that. Her objections were that they were a risk, and that they might hurt undeserving people. She’s got more comfortable with risk and, as is always the way, the definition of “people who deserve to be hurt” turns out to be pretty flexible. Her “rules matter! You’re not special and you can’t just break them!” rant at the holdout landowner now comes across as less of a statement of principle as rage against the forces that bind her from doing what she wants.
It’s really interesting how the balance of power has shifted - earlier in the series, Jimmy was manipulating Kim into scamming Mesa Verde with by dangling the carrot and taking it away (“We could always…No, we shouldn’t…No, no, you’re right, we’ll leave it…please don’t ask me what I’m thinking of…”) but now Kim, having saved Jimmy’s ass from Lalo and gone to the next level of “criminal lawyer-ing” is leading Jimmy on with a fun little game about getting one back on Howard that turns in to “we get him disbarred so we can get our hands on the Sandpiper money”. (And how long has she been keeping that payout in mind?).
One thing that makes me think they may get the Sandpiper money - in the flashforward, Gene had a small fortune in diamonds. That makes sense in some ways - in terms of value/cubic centimetre, diamonds are a much more efficient means of transporting wealth than bags of cash (as Jimmy knows) - but where did they come from? Obviously it could be Saul’s BB earnings - we don’t have a clear idea of how much that was - but it could equally well be an older stash.
…and that half of the story is so much more interesting than Nacho/Lalo’s escapades.
Gus is making mistakes here. Not only by clearly not hiring experts but by trying to get too cute with using Nacho. Maybe he was making a point to Mike but if you look at what would have happened without Nacho, Gus really screwed up by over-complicating.
Lalo was, as per his usual custom, sitting up late. He was by his firepit, maybe 10 feet from the gate. If Nacho hadn’t maneuvered him out the way to open the gate, what would have happened? The team would have scaled the wall or blown through it/the gate - and Lalo would have been right there, defenceless and in the open. If they’d used explosives, he’d have been at least disorientated and possibly wounded. A sitting duck.
But Nacho started the pan smoking, which gets Lalo indoors and gives him an improvised weapon. Then the team fucked up the rest, but it could have been so much easier if Gus had just let Nacho be. Worst case, he would have died in the crossfire, which Gus would have been OK with.
I have thought from the first season that the Sandpiper money will be used (somehow) to rescue Gene at the very end. This money is something that is morally pure. It’s not the result of any sort of criminal activity. In fact, it’s the result of Jimmy having discovered someone else’s criminal activity.
It’s been fun to see that even Tuco Salamanca’s family regard him as something of a hot head.
Another parallel of sorts is the comparison between Lalo’s compound and Gus’ compound. One has walls. One has guns. One has a doctor. One has children.
Probably, but I don’t think it’s for sure. Gus thinks Lalo is dead right now, because Lalo had the last assassin guy report back that their mission was a success. So Nacho and Lalo are both kind of on the run, and where can they each go for help? Neither of them can really trust any of the cartel at this point. Maybe Lalo comes back to “recruit” Saul to figure out exactly who’s against him, and Nacho goes to Mike since he knows Mike is sympathetic to him. Maybe Saul helps Lalo without Gus knowing about it, or maybe Mike takes out Lalo some point after Saul has met him again.
Does Nacho know if the mission is really a success or not? He ran off before it really got going and he’ll just hear the shooting. Maybe he’ll find the assassins vehicles and know that they didn’t come back. If Nacho knows that it’s a shitshow, he will call Mike who will tell Gus.
Nacho doesn’t know that the mission failed, at least right away. Although it wasn’t communicated to him before, he probably thinks he’ll be extracted by the assassin team. Otherwise he’d be faced with making his way out of an isolated area on foot with Salamancas looking for him (or anyone associated with the hit). His best course is to take one of the assassin’s vehicles and try to get away before anyone shows up. He won’t be able to call Mike until he gets back in an area with cell service (although maybe the portable signal booster is with the assassin’s vehicles).
Lalo had the last assassin call the middle man on a walkie talkie to say the mission was a success. But the middle man is surely going to be aware if the team doesn’t return.
It’s not clear if Lalo has any backup method of communication. He can call on other Salamancas like the cousins for help, but not Don Eladio (because Don Eladio will know he screwed up by trusting Nacho). He may have to drive out before he can get in touch with anyone.
Yes and no. It is sometimes something a kind person does. I thought at the time that Howard was horrified that Chuck was holding his brother down, and thought the firm could have used him. I think he disliked having to tell Jimmy “no” but did his duty for the firm. In many ways Chuck treated Howard the same way he treated Jimmy.
Now Howard is trying on Chuck’s shoes, trying to be the big man, the powerful one who doles out jobs and manipulates reputations, and everyone is letting him know that it’s not going to happen for him.
That was my feeling as I watched it. I think Kim is trying to figure out what Jimmy’s end game is. She started out assuming that he didn’t want to be a mob lawyer. Then she thought maybe being a rich mob lawyer wife wouldn’t be so bad. She could do a lot of good in that position. But in order to be that, he’s going to have to be a real hard ass and bring home the bacon.
I think we may find that she is like the wives in Ozark, that she’s been there the entire time, in the background, running Jimmy’s show, maybe even on the other end of the phone a couple of those times he called for help. Maybe she comes in the door from her job in Omaha at the end.
We see Gene’s pitiful bachelor pad in the flash-forward at the start of season 1. It’s obvious he lives alone, in particular because his TV faces his chair, rather than the two-seater couch to the side.
Plus he’s such a sad sack. He’d be smiling if Kim was in his life at that point. I hope that she is alive at that point in the story and that they end up together in the end somehow though.
I think something terrible happening to Kim is the most likely way to trigger the final transformation of Jimmy to Saul. But Gilligan does have a soft spot for his antiheroes. He allowed redemption for Jesse, and even gave Walt a far better end than he deserved (by allowing him to get revenge on the neo-Nazis, leave money for Walt Jr., protect his family by killing Lydia, and rescue Jesse.) So maybe Saul will get some mercy too.
Incidentally, when Gene is shown weeping over the loss of his old life at the beginning of Season 1, he isn’t looking of pictures of Kim, he’s watching tapes of old Saul Goodman ads. Of course, if he were shown weeping over Kim it would be a big spoiler, but he could have been shown looking at photos where we don’t see the subject.
I just re-watched a couple of old BBs, to get some of my Saul fix while we wait for the next season. And the way Saul interacts with Francesca (the secretary) is definitely not that of someone who’s going home to a loving partner at the end of the day - it’s 100% bitter sleazy douchebag.
So, while the writers could probably try to retcon that, my vote for Kim’s trajectory is “dead or cut ties” by the start of the BB period, with no comment on whether she might re-enter Gene’s arc if it’s the latter. But any such entry would have to be exceedingly late in the series, otherwise that kills half the suspense
Unfortunately that’s one of the unavoidable drawbacks with a show that very deliberately plots by the seat of its pants. Back in the beginning of season 1 nobody on the show had the remotest idea the character of Kim Wexler would grow to loom so large in Jimmy/Gene/Saul’s life several seasons later.
Shows how far behind I am regarding technology. I didn’t realize they had gotten so small. So the assassin could have been calling the middleman anywhere. If any sat phones had been left with the vehicles, Nacho could use one to contact Mike.
As a followup to my previous post, the assassin team wouldn’t have received their whole pay up front. So if they were successful, they would have come to the middleman to collect pretty soon, he’ll know something went wrong. But maybe the middleman won’t be so quick to communicate that to Gus, especially if he already told Gus Lalo was dead.
So the assassin could have been calling the middleman anywhere. If any sat phones had been left with the vehicles, Nacho could use one to contact Mike.