Yeah, pretty good pun there. “Face Off” level, I would say.
Not to brag but I predicted Saul and Kim would inadvertently lead Lalo into a deadly confrontation with Howard, and that the ensuing guilt would lead to Kim’s downfall.
Here’s another prediction i don’t think anyone has come up with: we assume Kim is out of the BB scene because she’s dead or in jail……but what if she got pregnant and vanished without telling Saul in order to protect their baby from growing up in a world of crime?
We hardly ever see Saul and Kim getting frisky, but we did tonight. Was that scene a way to plant a seed, so to speak?
What if the final “Gene” scene is Kim showing up at Cinnabon with Saul Jr. in tow?
The plan also doesn’t work if: anyone at HHM had ever met someone at the PI agency they keep on retainer, Howard visits their office, the PI gets stuck in traffic, someone else touches the pictures, Howard touches the pictures outside a ~5-10 minute window before the meeting starts, Howard keeps the pictures on him instead of leaving them in his unlocked office with nobody watching the door.
Like, it’s fine. Still a wonderful show, but I don’t recall not buying a plot point in BB or previously in BCS other than Kim’s heel turn, but I’ve come around on that.
I had previously predicted that Kim was playing Jimmy and she’d leave him. That seems less likely now. I don’t think she’s dead or in jail during the BB timeline so I’m still pretty interesting in seeing why she’s not there.
Yeah, their plan is too much, but the individual details aren’t too bad, there’s just a lot of them. There are maybe ten things that have to go right, and they each probably will, but taken all together it’s very fragile.
I assume that had they used the original set of photos, they’d have applied the drugs at roughly the same time.
You mean intercepting Lalo’s call? I assumed they had a tap on the phone at Hector’s place.
No, that shouldn’t make any difference. It’s an agency with multiple employees. No reason Howard would have known any of them, nor would he have wanted to chat with any of his employees at HHM about this (other than his secretary). Even if he had, it shouldn’t have made any difference - agencies hire new people all the time.
This part of the plan doesn’t bother me at all. Jimmy and Kim cleverly planting the new number to divert their agent into Howard’s confidence is perfectly plausible.
But yeah, THAT would have been a disaster. Everything else depends on them knowing Howard well enough to predict his likely thoughts and movements. As borscevsky notes the odds are in favor of most of those individual pieces falling into place, but it is a pretty fragile plan taken together. I mean I would have preferred if the fake PI was the one applying the drug before his meeting with Howard, that Howard had tried to hold onto the photos and the PI made some excuse to hold onto them instead, etc. - tie up loose ends better.
But, eh - stretch of plausibility but still a damn good show 
.
All in all not one of Howard’s better days?
Yeah, good call. Retract my objection to that.
Yes. And Lalo realized it which is why he hung up the phone and had the tantrum. He then made the second call which he knew would divert resources so he could get to Jimmy and Kim.
What was in the music that made Lalo realize something was wrong?
Secondly, why kill Howard? It leave a mess for him to deal with, when he could simply have waited until he went;
First time for a Sopranos common expression in BB/BCS when Lalo admits that Gus is a “good earner.”
It wasn’t the music, there were clicks and a buzz on the line.
I’m overall fine with the screw Howard scheme, it was a little hinky in parts but a lot of the Jimmy / Kim schemes are. I think narratively it all served two major purposes:
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Demonstrate how far gone Kim truly is, just for people who may not have realized it. She is as morally compromised as Jimmy.
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Demonstrate that finally their behavior causes real, true harm (Howard’s death.)
I do kinda agree that the specific death scene for Howard requires a little more suspension of disbelief than I would have wanted–in that specific scenario it just isn’t logical for Lalo to walk in and kill him, and would have made far more sense for him to wait until Howard left, then gone in. I’m willing to overlook it because I like the show overall and narratively speaking they needed a really bad result like this from one of their schemes to hammer home that the Saul Goodman ethos produces real harm–this is part of the grand Breaking Bad arc ultimately, which likewise was setup to show you that “yeah Walt isn’t just a cancer riddled science teacher trying to help his family, his actions are hurting real people all the time and he’s become a monster.” Jimmy and Kim have now gone down that same road irrevocably.
I wondered that as well. Probably because he’s a sociopath and didn’t feel like waiting. Also it made him even more terrifying to Kim and Jimmy.
Not really. It has as you said, many moving parts, but most of them are optional not essential. What’s essential is that Howard sees the photos of Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman with Judge McCool’Stache (retd) and then blows up at the real man. Which will happen if he has just seen the photos. Clifford Main trust in Howard is shot, and at the he already is right at the limit of dumping Howard from the matter. That will be enough to get him across the line.
Everything else, the drugs on the photos, even the picture replacement is a nice to have rather than an essential to have. They can explain it away as a fake, especially since the PI guy was working for them and would disappear, and the judge would truthfully say he had never met Jimmy/Saul.
Frankly, the biggest unknown is Schweikart, if he sees the opposition in disarray, he may as well drop all offers (not just return to the original with a monthly penalty) and decide to go to trial.
Just finished bingewatching the season. I don’t think it’s fair to lay the blame for Howard’s death at Jimmy and Kim’s Sandpiper antics. Two of Jimmy’s worlds collided but without the elaborate scam there could have been any number of reasons why Howard had visited their apartment or someone other than Howard could have been a visitor that got the sharp end of Lalo’s impatience.
As an aside I asked in the OP that people would mark their posts when being the first one to discuss a new episode, and am disappointed that other than Qadgop episode 3, (and he was actually the 2nd post for that episode) nobody bothered.
I stop reading the thread at 6pm Eastern Time on Monday. This is much easier than expecting others to follow my weird requests especially when most of us were totally unaware of said requests.
It was bold capitals in the OP. Dunno how much more aware I could make it, given I wasn’t going to read the thread until now.
After we have seen Lalo be super careful in Germany and he isn’t in any less danger in New Mexico.
Even if Howard saw him, even if Jimmy and Kim reacted with horror in front of Howard, its not something that really affects him. Killing him, does (though I suspect a long and convoluted plot of disposing of Howards remains next episode).
I am in two minds about how they showed Howard’s domestic life, not really shown how and why his marriage breaks down, maybe the stress from the Chuck suicide? Might have been better thematically to show him happy family man.
Yeah, just in terms of mess too–remember Lalo nearly lost his freedom permanently over a relatively unknown Western Union employee he murders, killing one of the biggest names in the Albuquerque legal community is creating a ton of potential risk. On the flipside after Lalo’s breakdown in the sewer, it is obvious he’s wound very tightly over all of this.
My guess is because Lalo shot him in the temple at very close range, they will arrange to make it seem a suicide–given his now very public breakdown, his previous documented troubles with depression, marital strife, professional troubles, debt–a perfect picture is painted suggesting suicide. Hell, they could potentially just call the police right to the apartment and say Howard showed up drunk and raging, and then suddenly pulled a gun out and shot himself. They would need to put the gun in Howard’s hand and fire it into something to put powder residue on his hands (assuming the police even would investigate it that far in such a situation), but otherwise fairly straight forward.
All these complications make for a very thin line between “complexly ambiguous” and “silly.”
Lalo’s sudden realization that Hector’s phone is tapped by Gus, for example, goes over the line of silliness. Someone as smart as he is wouldn’t consider that a possibility in advance? And only realize it when he hears some clicks on the line? And immediately come up with a diabolical counter-plan on the spot?
Too much for me.