Regarding the poker hand, I’m not sure if we’re supposed to take away:
Krazy 8 was scared Lalo would hurt him if he won, so folded a monster hand.
or
Krazy 8 was genuinely outplayed by Lalo’s aggressive poker bet.
If it was option 1 do you think his fears were justified?
I got the impression the fold was an attempt at ingratiation, with him taking a cue (consciously or unconsciously) from Nacho.
They already had a young child, it was there in the stroller next to the lady. What’s one more kid?
A little from option 1, a little from option 2?
I think Lalo would have respected K8 more if he’d played to win.
Right, he was already chafing under parental responsibility, which was going to double in the near future. It’s just the impression I got when he seemed to have forgotten that he had a kid and another on the way. I expect Pantatic’s “gambler” theory is closer to the mark - poor impulse control, lack of appreciation of consequences, thrill-seeking… he’s basically the kind of client Saul/Jimmy was chasing, and Kim’s discomfort will highlight the growing and inevitable divide between them.
Having Saul manage a Cinnabon in Omaha was really just based on a throwaway joke in Breaking Bad. If you were trying to hide out, the last thing you would want is a job serving the public in a busy place like a mall in a city on the interstate. In a back-room job in a small town you would be much less likely to be made.
No. Saul’s home was never shown.
Krazy 8 was intimidated by Lalo in general, and was playing a weak, passive game of poker. I don’t think he thought Lalo was going to attack him, (and I don’t think Lalo was), but he didn’t want to confront Lalo and probably thought that letting him have the pot would score points with the boss. His limp play and especially folding when he had a strong (not monster) hand did the opposite though, Lalo clearly thinks of him as weak, cowardly, and ineffectual.
Ignoring his earlier weak play, IMO the best way to look ‘pretty good’ in Lalo’s eyes there would be to call and say something like ‘you can’t just take my pot, man’. That makes him look confident, not weak. The best way to look really good would be to reraise him and stare him down. The Salamancas respect people who have balls, and reraising the boss is pretty ballsy. The reraise would also make ‘Loco Ocho’ a positive nickname instead of a negative one, being ‘the guy who went after me with eights’ instead of ‘the guy who folded to nothing with a set of eights’. It’s not so much ‘playing to win’ as it is ‘standing up for yourself’ and ‘don’t let someone take your money with nothing’ that would make him look good.
Two things:
(1) Is anyone clear on what the deal is with some of the product being inferior? Did Fring deliberately screw up some of his own product just so to make his lie about what Werner Ziegler did more believable? That’s a brilliantly believable lie, because who would go out of their way to fuck over the cartel and then admit they’d done so? But it’s also ballsy as hell for obvious reasons
(2) I feel like something is just kind of… off about the show so far this season. Like they’re just going through the motions. Everything is a bit obvious. Fring has been WAY more non-subtle than usual. Mike losing his temper with his granddaughter was broad. Jimmy was WAY too obvious when he trapped that lady in the elevator. The montages are just the same thing we’ve seen before, etc. It feels a bit like West Wing when it was taken over by the non-Aaron-Sorkin people, where it’s the same show but just… without the razor edge. Fingers crossed that I don’t keep feeling this way for the rest of the season.
(3) I just didn’t buy those two addicts at the beginning going so nuts and changing “50% off” as a mantra. Maybe I’d get it if I was a methhead?
I’m pretty sure he folded because he didn’t want to beat the boss because he was afraid of what Lalo would do.
A similar scene is in the movie “Four Brothers” when the gang is playing cards. In fact, that’s the first thing I thought of when I saw the scene in BCS.
In the previous season, Gus stages the hit on Nacho and his partner (who had been killed) - the guys shooting up their car out in the boonies, and then Nacho getting shot himself. That staged hit was to look like someone ripped off their weekly supply. There is a scene where Gus is discussing this with the other Don, and they agree to supplement that week’s supply from a local source - the inferior meth.
Hector’s nephews then drag the barely recovered Nacho around to identify the car that (supposedly) did the hit, and they proceed to slaughter the gang that was set up for stealing the drugs.
I don’t know about “off”, but I think this season is kind of a turning point for a number of the characters: clearly Jimmy is turning to the dark side, Kim is trying to find out where she stands as she sees Jimmy’s transformation, Mike is getting dragged into more and more of Gus’ dirty work. Up until now, the characters have been riding the line, and now they’re tipping. In some ways, it is like “Breaking Bad” and it’s now catching up to that BB “uncomfortable” stage.
I saw it the same way. “Let the wookie win.”
[quote=“MaxTheVool, post:48, topic:848428”]
Fring is a brutal sociopath who is happy to use extreme violence to achieve his ends, but is smart enough to only use it when needed. In Breaking Bad he states that he doesn’t think that fear is an effective motivator - but that is five years or so from ‘now’. I think that threatening Nacho’s father is going to motivate Nacho to desperate measures that throws a wrench into Gus’s plans, maybe something like he gets his father to safety but the way he does so gets him killed and keeps Lalo in the area and suspicious. We’ve already seen Mike learning his ‘no half measures’ lesson, so having Gus get his “fear is not effective” lesson makes sense.
I think that the building continually has problems with elevators getting stuck for 10-30 minutes, that’s why the DA was so nonchalant about it. If it’s just a regular part of life in the court house, you don’t think ‘oh this guy must have arranged it to happen’. IMO the scene would have rung more true if they had shown someone getting stuck in an elevator earlier - maybe have the scene where he’s waiting for her be him waiting for the elevator to get unstuck, or him and vending machine guy get stuck in together. (I wouldn’t be surprised if they had shot a scene like this then cut it without realizing it would make the scam seem out of place). Him paying off the elevator guy right in the hallway is like the handshake with the sign guy after the ‘accident’ or getting the money from the dealer right after browbeating the community service supervisor. It should ‘really’ be more subtle but doesn’t warrant spending the screen time to do so.
As far as Mike, I think we’re seeing him crack under the pressure of realizing he can’t be the ‘virtuous criminal’ he’s been trying to be. His scene is so drastic because he’s falling to pieces inside and losing control over his alcohol intake.
People who’s lives consist of doing drugs and committing petty crimes often don’t need any kind of deep motivation. The ‘50% off’ became a fun thing to say and got them to make tonight an exciting night instead of a regular one, but anything could have become the day’s catch phrase. It’s what pushed them to commit the spree ‘today’, but it’s not something they’ve never done before.
2?
I found this especially weak. I know I’ve been kinda dumping on this show, but when they only offer a few eps w/ a long time between “seasons”, that struck me as an especially wasted few minutes. I got the point WELL before it ended, it wasn’t particuarly amusing, entertaining, interesting…
Since the writers brought it up, they sure as hell better tell us what happened with Fring in Santiago.
I think in these sorts of cases (of what Fring did in Santiago) it’s more fun to let the audience’s imaginations run wild.
I think it’s hilarious how much older Krazy-8’s actor looks now than when he was in Breaking Bad. The guy was, like, only in the first TWO episodes of the show, and that was like 12 years ago. Dude looks like he’s 35 now. I know there are going to be some aging issues inherent to the prequel format, but it’s particularly noticeable with this character.
I noticed the same thing about Jonathan Banks (who plays Mike). He certainly looks older than in Breaking Bad.
Just like “The noodle incident”.
A season or two back, Fring told a terrifying fill-in-the-blanks story about a coati, a little creature he captured and apparently tortured. There was just one problem. Coatis are found almost everywhere in South America except Chile. Or as I prefer to put it, coatis were found in Chile until they pissed Gus Fring off.
They were introduced to the Juan Fernandez islands where they are noxious pests along with other introduced mammals( there were none historically ).
So now you just have to come up with a fan wank of how a young coati trapped by conservationists on JF islands was rescued from euthanasia by the teary-eyed young daughter of the lead researcher. She then smuggled it back the nearly 600 miles to Santiago, where it made a daring escape to freedom and discovered a new home near a lovely fruit-rich lucuma tree.
It would make for a great anthropomorphic animated children’s film.* Carlos the Coati in the Land of the Lucuma*. Right up until the rather dark end, anyway ;).