I’m not sure they expected to keep the men completely in the dark that it was in New Mexico. If so, Mike wouldn’t have allowed them to spend time at the bar he took them to; there is no way to control that situation sufficiently that you’d be 100% sure they wouldn’t be able to glean from their time in the bar where they were. Like just knowing the bar’s name would allow them to look it up later, and that would be hard to scrub out from the entire bar.
I think they took pains to keep the candidates for the job totally uninformed as to where they were going, so they couldn’t easily narrow down the location. The guys they actually hired I think they knew they would have a little more knowledge. They still kept them in the dark as to the specific location of the facility, but they largely knew but letting them go to the bar these guys would know they were in New Mexico generally, if not a specific neighborhood/street. This makes sense too–these guys were hired to do a job that they knew was criminal in nature, and they were paid accordingly, part of that payment was their silence, so there is some degree to which Fring and Mike were fine with them, once signed on, knowing a bit more about the location–even if they didn’t want them knowing the exact location (not only is that extending too much trust, the workers really wouldn’t want to know, knowing that information is dangerous.)
After the first credit, there was a black and white shot of Kim’s condo and the words “So…after all that…a happy ending”. That makes me wonder if “Gene” eventually reunites with Kim, who flees back to Nebraska in the aftermath of all of this. But a happily-ever-after-ending doesn’t seem like something the show would do. So what could that be referring to?
Finally watched, and really didn’t enjoy it.
As already mentioned, playing the heist-movie plan to ruining Howard straight is both implausible and narratively the least interesting option for me. Then add on Howard’s clunky character-exposition monologue.
And, very unusually for BCS, pretty bad acting at times.
Finally after 5 seasons of setting up Kim’s descent, the final jump reminds me of a certain Anakin.
At this moment I can’t work up any appetite to watch the rest of the season. I’m sure I’ll catch it at some point, but it’s unlikely to be when it immediately comes out.
Sad emoticon.
Killing Mrs. Ziegler would have alerted everyone from the German Police to Gus in Albuquerque. The locals would have described the stranger who spent the evening with her in the bar. Tall dark, suave Hispanic. He’d never have made it out of the country.
The German thing is a boring, highly implausible diversion. It would better aligned with the story to have Kai secretly return to the US. He could do his woodsman thing in one of the numerous NM ruins. Or maybe shack up with a partner he met on the guys night out. Whatever - just a plausible target for Lalo.
That’s a good point about Mrs. Ziegler, whether her body was left behind or hidden, her disappearance/death would absolutely get on Mike and Gus’s radar and alert them that something was wrong. Given that, Lalo really did not have the option of killing her, not if he was thinking about it carefully.
The tip I had for a fizzed up can was to turn it upside down and tap the bottom. Has worked for me so far. Never heard the turning it idea, but sounds plausible.
It seemed pretty much an obvious dramatic cliche for the click on the landline to indicate a bug. What I did think is “that strikes me as very out of date, like a 1970’s movie”. Then again, the normal landline phone network is outdated or at least was then (before broadband was widely installed), it’s the click and whirr which mostly gave it away, I’d imagine bugging a phone involved some sort of computer in the last 20 odd years.
Still, it got the point across that the phone line was bugged to me, so did its job.
My big concern is hiring all these folks (twice) to fake the photos etc. They say two can keep a secret if one is dead—this seems like an awful lot of loose ends.
That kind of gets referenced when Cliff Main tells Howard they really don’t have time to investigate his claims about Saul bribing the judge and/or making it look like he did. THEY need to settle NOW for the sake of the elderly clients.
So much of the plot(s) rests on characters having precisely the exact response Jimmy’s and Kimmy’s plans call for them to have. The odds against such a Rube Goldberg-type plan working out, in which 20 separate iffy steps must go according to plan, is infinitesimal.
I disagree. I think the odds aren’t great, but as noted only a few things really need to go right for it to work. The rest is dressing - they humiliate Howard more (prostitute tossed out of car, cocaine at gym), but it is gilding the lily to prime Howard to act extra-paranoid in the meeting. Strictly speaking they are not necessary. Even the drug is just extra performance to make him seem more unhinged. Howard just needs to believe Jimmy/Saul bribed the judge and be agitated enough to call him out publicly.
The two key grifts is setting Howard up with the faux detective and getting him to believe the faked pictures. Both have serious potential flaws, especially the second, but I wouldn’t call the odds infinitesimal. More like a coin flip. But Jimmy and Kim seem more than willing to pursue it because after all in their minds the consequences of failure are probably low. Howard would have a hard time convincing anyone they were the villains (especially Kim, who Cliff admires) and Jimmy would still get even more money a couple years down the road. Humiliate Howard and get good money now or fail and get more money later. It’s a win-win for them.
I’ve read that a shaken can will settle down after about 20 seconds without doing anything. All the turning, tapping, flipping are doing nothing than passing the time.
You know, I realize there is one plot hole regarding the whole Howard plan. Why did Jimmy freak out so much about having to park the car in a different spot, if the whole plan hinged on Howard figuring it out anyway?
Why was it so vital to Kim, in retrospect, for her to have turned her car around, and messed up her shot at achieving her life’s dream if all she did was give a little help in re-shooting the judge photos? For that matter, what was so all-fired important about re-shooting the judge with a cast on his arm? Howard barely looked at the photos, just enough to get an impression of the judge in his head, and then the photos disappeared anyway.
That was interesting to me as well. The black and white is the Gene timeline and they are showing Jimmy/Saul and Kim’s condo in New Mexico. I wonder if he’s simply referring to Lalo not killing them and then Saul goes on to be a massive success… until he has to disappear. Makes it “happy” in a sense.
Yeah, Schweikert (sp?) didn’t know about the prostitute in the car or baggie of drugs, but barged out after the false accusation and said the previous settlement offer is on the table until the end of the day and then it goes down.
The rest of the stuff is helpful for Cliff to not take more of Howard’s side, but it probably didn’t need it.