The guy Hector Salamanca killed at Don Eladio’s pool in Mexico in a flashback in Breaking Bad, which started Gus’s whole revenge obsession.
When Gus tells Mike he understands revenge too, is he talking about the crooked cops in Philly? If so, how did he know about them? Or is it something else?
Kim is taking herself to the dark side - Saul is fine with leading her there, but he was clearly willing to wrap things up and stop for her sake. I don’t think this ride ends well for her. I think what she saw at Kevin’s house was some art that looks just like the Mesa Verde logo, and it probably has a copyright violation.
Yeah, Trevor (don’t remember his name in the show, but that’s his GTA V character) was the bodyguard who got throat punched back in season 2. Saul contacted him through the vet (‘I know a guy who knows a guy’) when Mike was unavailable. He wasn’t the one from the Hummel heist, that was Ira (who does have a beard). I suspect that Ira only does thefts and not all of the rest of the PI stuff that Trevor did.
Since Gus is looking into bringing Mike into his organization as a major player, I’m sure he hired a PI in PA to look into Mike’s background. Hiring a PI to look into someone is going to cost a few hundred dollars (maybe a few thousand?) while having local guys tail Mike 24/7 costs (or ties up guys worth) way, way more. A PI would certainly find that Mike’s kid died while on patrol with a cop, then that cop and his partner died just before Mike left the state since that’s all public record stuff. Gus could easily connect the dots - there’s no hard evidence linking Mike to the murders so there’s nothing for cops to charge him with, but Gus isn’t trying to formally charge Mike with anything.
Kim is acting really self-destructive - I think that’s part of why she stays with Jimmy, they both seem to handle stress in a similar, unhealthy way. I can’t see this track ending well for her - Schweikart is already suspicious, and if Jimmy pulls some kind of direct attack on Kevin then Mesa Verde is going to be really pissed and looking for a target. I’m surprised that they tried to pass off Jimmy getting involved as ‘well, he’s been advertising a lot, Acker must have seen an ad’ - it would be much more believable to me if they used the closer-to-the-truth story that Kim came home and vented about having to evict an old man (which I don’t think would violate confidentiality), and that Jimmy then got a wild hair up his ass about big money pushing around poor people. No one would fault her for venting about an unpleasant situation, it makes Jimmy’s involvement seem like a natural result of circumstances instead of a suspicious ‘coincidence’, and it makes her trying to push the alternate site more defensible (she’s been trying to avoid a conflict she doesn’t want to have, rather than the alternate site being her real goal).
I think this marks a major change for Kim, previously while she might be willing to blow off Mesa Verde, she’s never done anything to betray their interests, now she’s actively working against them which is a much more major ethical violation than creating a pie video. I think her reaction to Trevor is really telling - she’s a bit surprised at all of the underhanded stuff, but she doesn’t even flinch when he suggests taking Kevin out in the desert in a van, she’s completely into what she found in his boring office. I suspect the show runners wanted to bring back Kuby (the guy who was with Huell in a lot of BB scenes) as the PI, but Bill Burr has posted publicly that they wanted him in this season but he wasn’t able to commit to filming because of a friend’s death. I think Trevor worked well there, we get to see that he’s not just an incompetent blowhard but can actually do useful work (though he does have a propensity towards violence).
I really like that all of the slick, wealthy lawyers (other than Chuck) are actually decent people - it would be really easy to make them all assholes who look down on Jimmy the way he thinks they do, but it’s much more interesting the way the show has done it. Schweikart is clearly trying to quietly save her from a potentially very costly mistake, and even tried to make her plan work in spite of his misgivings. Kevin (not a lawyer, but big money) was willing to give Kim a chance at a job that should have been overwhelming, and trusts her beyond what he should. Whatever Kim doesn’t like about her current situation, getting into the situation in the first place is entirely on her and Jimmy - she didn’t need to make a major push to work for people she doesn’t like, and even then she only got the job because Jimmy pulled the number switch on Chuck. If they had just let things take their natural course, Mesa Verde would have gone with HHM and would be fine now (maybe switched firms during the Chucksplosion, but still fine), and Kim could be doing whatever she wants. Jimmy might be a ‘monkey with a machine gun’, but Kim seems to be a ‘vixen with a silenced pistol’.
Mike’s part of the episode was mostly development - I think seeing the memorial village is good for him, but I think BCS should actually give some background on Max. I loved the bit where Mike went through one of his ‘making stuff’ montages to hack together a charger and the lady just drops a regular charger for his phone on top of the mess. I liked watching these scenes, but I’m ready to see Mike move forward.
Howard still wants to hire Jimmy, so I’m guessing he either doesn’t realize who dropped the bowling balls or thinks of it as ‘well, that’s the price I pay for screwing Jimmy for Chuck’s sake’. Something is going to happen with that job offer, but I’m not sure what.
I think what Kim saw in the photos was the cowboy logo for Mesa Verde - gonna be some kind of copyright infringement issue. The next time we see Kim, she’s in her office on her laptop and the same logo is visible on her screen.
The charger thing seems anachronistic, in retrospect. It was a good scene, but I remember cell phones in 2004. Every single one had a different charger. I knew several people who worked at hotels, and they’d keep a box of abandoned chargers behind the desk in case a customer forgot theirs, and fairly often someone would have a phone that didn’t work with any of the maybe two dozen chargers in the box. Though if you had a common model, it was easier to find the one you needed. Did anybody recognize the model of Mike’s phone?
So throat punch guy was Simon from the Walkjng Dead (Negan’s right hand man for a time).
Mike’s phone was an LG, made by Motorolla.
I’m guessing that whatever charger was needed, Gus had them supplied because of his network of people all using burner phones, so he knew which chargers would be needed.
I didn’t take it as anachronistic, I took it as a sign of Gus’s thoroughness. I think that Gus arranged for them to have the correct charger for Mike’s phone so that Mike could get back in contact with Gus when he was better and to avoid Mike feeling like he was trapped. The fact that they’re casually doing international calls might be anarchonistic though, I think that you had to do a bit more to set that up, and Jimmy would have gotten a message about extra charges. OTOH people near the border might make a point of setting up their phones to work in Mexico.
How does Kim know Bob Loblaw? Did I miss a crossover episode?
Recall S4E8: after the 40-minute mark Kim gives Jimmy a big kiss, delighted that the scam has freed Huell. At the 48-minute mark Jimmy apologizes profusely for the scam, closing with “We are totally done with all that. Over and out. No more.” Kim replies with … “Let’s do it again.” And in the next episode she leads Jimmy on a scam that seems far more illegal than the Free Huell scam.
Kim isn’t a reluctant crime partner. She instigates, and enjoys the crime!
But in S5E5, Kim begins a scheme to attack Kevin, a nice guy as CEOs go, in order to … what? To help an unlikable illegal squatter stay in his ridiculous home? Because she doesn’t like Kevin’s “good ol’ boy” diction? A scheme likely to lead to disbarment or prison, and with her boss already warning her? She is no longer a smart lawyer indulging in occasional crimes — she’s become stupid and psychopathic. I’d say the series “Jumps the Shark” here if it hadn’t leapfrogged over several sharks already!
I regard Breaking Bad as one of the greatest epics in human literature, on a par with Homer’s Odyssey! So of course I’m going to keep watching the prequel, however peculiar. But, like some others, I find it MUCH less fascinating than Breaking Bad.
When I read a thread like this, I click “Multi-quote” on posts I agree with. In this case, I found I’d clicked on several posts by Dinsdale.
I think it’s been made pretty obvious over seasons 3 and 4 that Kim doesn’t really like working for Mesa Verde, and that it’s been dragging on her more and more. And that, while she put up a fuss at first, she really doesn’t mind pulling wildly illegal scams - creating the false history and mailed in cards for Huell or swapping legal documents is much worse (and much easier to get caught at) than making up a pie sitting fetish video. So combining those two, trying to scam the old man is like Jimmy defecating through the sun roof or Mike picking fights with gangs of people 1/3 his age - it’s risky behavior, but I can see the motivations, and I certainly don’t expect cold rationality from anyone on this show. As far as doubling down when Schweikart warns her, I think she’s tied her pride into this, and is making bad decisions because of that - and we’ve seen that she tends to go all-in once she goes in. She doesn’t really have a middle gear, either she’s just drinking beer or throwing it off the balcony, in contrast to Jimmy who is dropping one and catching it over and over.
I think part of their plan doesn’t fit with the rest. I can’t fathom why they made up the obviously fake story about ‘Jimmy’s advertising must have reached him’? She could just say that she vented to ‘her Jimmy’ about how she hated having to evict an old man, and he went on a tear about how awful Mesa Verde is being. That’s not revealing any client secrets since the eviction is a matter of public record, and it’s technically a lie but no one can prove it is one, and it’s completely understandable instead of weird and suspicious. Not only is it more believable, but it also explains why she’s been pushing the alternate site - she doesn’t want to have to go hard against Jimmy, and she feels responsible for the situation, but he’s forcing her hand.
I don’t think “not wanting to go hard” against your boyfriend is acceptable. That’s the kind of thing you’d be risking disbarment for if you admitted it.
I think BTW that she pushed back so hard against Schweikert not because of her pride or anything like that, but because the scam they have planned (whatever it may be) requires her to continue being the lead attorney on the case.
He also has an occasional recurring role on Modern Family.
Yeah, I noticed him in that. Cam’s dad.
No, that’s not risking disbarment. Disbarment happens for stuff like stealing from money you’re holding for a client, committing felonies, committing fraud on the court. “She suggested a viable alternative plan that would save the bank from Bad PR, but we think she suggested it because she didn’t want to go up against her partner” isn’t going to lead to disbarment. The absolute worst that would get is some kind of reprimand, and that’s if both she admitted that was the reason rather than letting them draw the conclusion, and Kevin decided to push a complaint instead of just quietly letting someone else finish this particular case.
But there was no logical reason that I can see to make a giant public scene - he wasn’t forcing her off the case, just suggesting it. Even if he was, she could confront him in his office without making it a big deal. If she’s not planning to leave then she’s probably not going to do well at the firm after having a public tantrum at a named partner, and she’s got him watching her like a hawk now.
Also, If their plan does require her to be lead attorney and throw the case, then what she has planned IS actually something she could get disbarred (and maybe arrested) for. Suggesting an alternative plan that is arguably in the client’s best interest is way different than actively working against your client. I’m not sure if she’s going that way, but if she is then the scheme is even riskier than was I thought.
I interpreted your post that I responded to as suggesting that she *should *openly admit that she was trying to go easy on Jimmy. If that’s not what you meant, then certainly I agree it’s not something she could get in deep trouble for.
It’s Chuck-work, when she’s at heart far more of a Jimmy. Frankly, both Kim and Jimmy have shown a penchant for compulsive self-destructive behavior. I gather she will eventually take herself out of the picture just like, as we’ve already seen in Breaking Bad, so has he.
Oh yes, I don’t think she should say it openly. What I mean is that she should set the stage for people to draw that conclusion. The way they’ve done it now, Schweikart is certain that she’s put Jimmy onto the case and is working with him in some way to save the squatter, and a key piece of that is that it’s unbelievable that Jimmy ‘just happened’ to stumble into the case. If instead she said that she vented about the unpleasantness to Jimmy and he got angry at the bank and crusaded, there’s no unbelievable piece. Rich can still see that she’s pushing in a bit of an odd direction, but there is no obvious lie for him to catch onto, and ‘she is hoping to defuse this without going against Jimmy’ whether it’s from kindness or because she thinks he’s clever enough to be a real problem isn’t something he would hold against her in the long term, unlike ‘she is committing a major ethical violation and attempting fraud on one of our clients’.
The guy who plays Schweikart, by the way - Dennis Boutsikaris - from the moment I saw him on the show, and ever since, I could SWEAR I’ve seen him in other things, yet I looked over his full list of credits and I haven’t seen any of them. So I think it’s that he reminds me strongly of another actor. But who?