There is no inconsistency or need to fanwank anything. Gus always wears a coati when it’s Chile.
That joke shamelessly stolen from whoever was the first of the thousands to post it.
[quote=“Pantastic, post:52, topic:848428”]
Yeah, absolutely. There was lots going on for Mike there. Obviously, he was hungover and in charge of a kid, which is no fun. And despite his valiant efforts to distract her on to another topic, she kept to the worst possible topic she could: her Dad, and how he died. This is an enormous deal for Mike, obviously, and was hitting all the high notes: he wanted to be just like you, you couldn’t protect him, etc. which we know for Mike translates into “I broke my boy, and then they killed him anyway”. And the way she’s doing it - she’s interested in her dad, but she’s not emotionally engaged. It’s just another story to her, no different from a story about some great aunt or other distant relative. It’s a bit fuzzy how young she’s meant to have been at the time of her dad’s death, but she’s obviously accepted the new reality fairly well. A couple of seasons back we saw Mike react very badly when her mum showed signs of processing and moving on - for him, dealing with grief is tantamount to forgetting his boy. So this could not have been better calculated to grate on his soul.
Added to which, of course, recent events should make it obvious to Mike that he’s going down the same track he went before. What would Matty say about his work with Fring and especially his shooting of Werner? The question answers itself. Whatever Mike told himself about his decision to be a criminal and accept what side of the line he was, we know killing Werner shook him (no retainer, turning to alcohol). So his granddaughters questions come with a huge subtext of “You know that time you committed crimes and innocent people got killed? Funny how history repeats, isn’t it?”
Mike is going to find a cathartic moment where he decides he can be the criminal fixer/killer Gus needs, or not. But getting there is going to be tough.
[quote=“Stanislaus, post:62, topic:848428”]
Excellent analysis.
Once you’ve sen last night’s episode, do you think that Kim’s story was real or something “Giselle” made up to try to scam the guy? It could have been real, but definitely didn’t hit the guy as true, and he’s clearly going to get evicted. Kind of weird that they needed Kim to personally close that down, seems like anyone from Schweikart could deliver the ‘screw it, we’re shutting you down’ ultimatum - I’m guessing the idea is ‘if anyone can convince this guy to go, she can, if not we’ll call the cops’. The $18k also seems an odd amount - an inflation calculator says $20k would be the ‘adjusted’ amount, and a round number like that makes more sense to me. I like that the writers make Kim so hard to predict, I’m feeling less sure that she’s going to split with Jimmy in the way I thought and she might end up breaking worse than he does but getting caught at it.
Crazy eight did go like I thought, and Saul set up a good scheme to trap our familiar DEA agents. Saul clearly doesn’t realize how well shady lawyer services pay, he asked for less than half of what Nacho was willing to pay a guy for some empty pill bottles. I think his rates are going to go up, especially now that he realizes the cartel isn’t out to kill him. Will Lalo reward his future services with something better than the Esteem, maybe the LAWYERUP Cadillac we see in Breaking Bad? His story seems to be going about where I’d expect, he’s getting himself into dangerous business that he can’t really back out of and making tons of money. Lalo is such a great character, always so happy-acting but completely ruthless behind that mask.
Mike is just sinking down, I didn’t catch what the pic he wanted taken down was but reading online it was of the Syndey Opera House. I think something is going to happen soon that will catalyze Mike back into action, but I don’t think he’s just going to casually pull himself back together.
I read the German guy who was killed had bragged about how his father had been instrumental in building the Sydney Opera House, and that didn’t sit well with Mike. Guilt. Then anger, resulting in his breaking that creep’s arm.
Yeah, the pic was reminding him of Werner. And I agree, ‘in control Mike’ would scare off the robbers or just show dominance, trashing his arm (especially the twist after they had clearly decided not to mess with him) is not his normal modus operandi.
I’m not sure if I liked Nacho going back to the apartment to retrieve the drugs, it was a bit forced just so he could do something to gain confidence.
There weren’t officers stationed behind to see if anyone tried to escape when the front door is forced in? If this was the case Nacho wouldn’t have been able to get out with the drugs.
I also feel like he would have been seen standing on the other apartment.
Yeah, I understood hw that fit in the intended plot, but it did seem especially over the top.
I really like parts of this show, but other parts really drive me nuts. The entire pre-credit on ants?
Given the limited number of shows, I wish there would be more action. Of course, it seems some of you perceive action where I don’t.
Hell, I can’t even remember what is supposedly going on w/ the Monte Verde S&L, why Kim does not view that as a cash cow any lawyer would love.
I think it was real.
Kim has been taking the cash cow Mesa Verde money and finding it ultimately unfulfilling. She was finding purpose and meaning in doing her pro bono work - hence her reluctance to come out to see this guy until pushed really hard. But he denigrated that utterly with his speech about Thanksgiving soup kitchens and chairty donations. He may have been wrong in the details, and was definitely wrong about how rich Kim is, but he did attack her sense of self very effectively.
The story about how she grew up was true, I’m sure. I think she’s mentioned before about how hard she had to fight to get where she is, and she started in the mail room with Jimmy IIRC. She was trying to be honest with the guy and show him who she really was - a very un-Kim tactic. She is normally very sparing of her emotions and her inner world - to reveal this much was a very big move for her. She really wanted to make that connection. Getting the door slammed in her face will have hurt.
I really enjoyed the opening sequence, although I kept expecting a giant foot to come out of nowhere and put an end to the ant’s feeding frenzy. On the podcast they had a pretty in-depth discussion about the scene; getting into how they had an “ant wrangler”, picking the lens they shot with and how they chose the yodeling music.
Yeah, I suspected as much. Someone decide that shooting it would be fun/cool, rather than thinking it advanced the story.
Impresses me as self indulgent, but I am in the minority. And if I don’t like it, I can stop watching.
So your take is that she tried to really open up, and wasn’t significantly embellishing the story at all. And since this is a rare instance of her opening up, having it not only fail to change the guy’s mind but also not even be believable it hurt her much deeply than her run of the mill activity. I think it’s also possible that she tried to pull a full-on Slippin’ Jimmy scam (her life was rough but actually nowhere near that rough) and completely failed without the Magic Man to help, but I like your take better. It definitely opens motivations for several changes she could make in several directions.
Yeah, I think this is going to be Kim’s arc this season - the conflict between her attraction to the glamour and thrill (and effectiveness) of running cons vs her belief in the importance of rules and her desire to be a good person. Her earlier blow-up at the intransigent homeowner - “Rules matter! Contracts matter! You can’t just break the rules! You’re not special!” was also an honest statement of her views and of course directly conflicts with what she’s being doing with Jimmy. We’ve seen watching Jimmy slipping and sliding that a scam might get you past your immediate problem but somehow you seem to end up mired in more and more shit. Kim’s slipped a little but she’s ultimately got more sense and better values than Jimmy (I think) so she’s going to pull up. But the only way to do that is to break with Jimmy. (Or Saul,as he now is.)
At the risk of being very wanky, this is the point of the ice-cream/ants scene. Jimmy had a good thing but he can’t keep it. As soon as one ant finds it, that’s it - more ants come and they swarm relentlessly till it’s ruined. There’s no recovery past that first contact. It’s practically systemic - it’s not about this ant or that ant, but about basic laws of nature that drive an ecosystem. As Nacho says, “Once you’re in, you’re in”.
That’s actually a pretty good analysis. I guess I accepted it from Nacho’s comment alone. I find myself curiously resenting what I perceive as “wasted time” given the limited number of eps offered w/ seasons widely spread apart.
That and my personal interest in things myrmecological. I didn’t see the swarm as a “bad thing.” Hey, even ants gotta eat! 
I find Kim really unpredictable - I’m not sure that she is going to pull up. I think it’s possible that seeing her heartfelt plea casually dismissed while her ‘oh, the deal is off the table’ scam worked will be enough to push her into more shenanigans with Jimmy but they’ll end up catching up with her. I don’t think that her values are that far from Jimmy’s - my impression is that she follows the rules because the punishments for Jimmy-style shenanigans could wreck the life and career that she’s worked hard on. She seems to enjoy running Giselle scams and hearing about Jimmy’s more respectable adventures. She was also willing to offer suggestions like ‘cover the copy shop’ and later go to bat for Jimmy when she knew that he had scammed Chuck to get her into Mesa Verde. I won’t be shocked if it follows the path you think, but I don’t think she’s necessarily going to pull to the ‘light side’.
Also, at this point Jimmy still hasn’t fully embraced Saul values - he still cares about his clients, unlike in the BB era where he will suggest just killing off clients. One thing that stood out to me is that when Jimmy was running his elder law practice, he felt genuinely offended at people taking advantage of his clients, and never even considered scamming them - even when he pulled the scheme for the Sandpiper settlement, he appeared to think it was in their best interest. Similarly when he set up the deal for Krazy Eight, he went to bat to make sure the guy didn’t get killed as a snitch and got a pretty good deal from the DEA. Jimmy still has one major ‘slip’ to end up the Saul we see in Breaking Bad, and that might be what does in Jimmy/Kim.
Even as Saul though he still had some ethics, (though not those the ALA would recognise I’m sure.) I can’t remember all the details but there were certainly times that he made sure Jesse and Walt got their money when it would be better for him if he skimmed it and left. I think his involvement in the Brock situation was also implied to be mitigating a more unpleasant outcome.
I’ve had more experience with formication, at least professionally.
What a ridiculous scene. Instead of being spectators while their friend gets his arm busted, the other four guys would have been beating the snot out of Mike. Having them freeze in shock and awe like Mike was the Terminator was just plain unrealistic. It could have worked if it was just two guys and Mike took out the bigger one.
I think Kim was telling the truth. I think she opened up to the guy genuinely because she has decided that she’d rather be a good person than a rich person. She’s not motivated by money, she’s motivated by success. And to her, Mesa Verde isn’t any different than what she was doing at HHM, but her pro bono work is a step up, in honor if not prestige. That’s why she decided to take some of her pro bono people skills and see if she couldn’t help the dude that the bank she works for was screwing out of a home.
I was struck by the thought that Kim was telling the truth to this guy and he didn’t believe her, whereas Saul would pull the same stunt, except he’d be lying the whole time and the mark would fall for it hook, line and sinker. Also, she’s doing it out of kindness but Saul would have done it for money.
The “Mike scares the gangbangers” scene works for me. A) These guys are still basically kids. They’re big enough to be threatening, but young enough that it’s mostly just posturing. Also, there’s no sign that these are actual gangsters rather than just young punks looking for a thrill and some drug money. 2) One might expect an old man to fight back or at least put on a show of fighting back to dissuade the punks from coming any closer. But laying out your friend, who you know as a strong, fierce man, and then proceeding to break his arm on purpose, while staring you in the eye and showing no emotion, is a whole different story. Could they have overpowered Mike? Probably. Did they have any taste for it after what he did to their friend? Not at all.
Also, I loved the ant scene. The whole time I was like “that’s not CGI, somebody brought their ant farm to work and the ants might even be trained”. Unlike Breaking Bad, this show gives you time to breathe. And it’s punctuated by little artistic scenes for that reason.
Time to breath, hell. More like time to hit the head and stop off at the kitchen for a snack! :smack: