To be fair I can see this as a natural outgrowth of wanting to talk through why a show you used to like no longer makes you as happy. If you once loved Game of Thrones, but hate season seven and want to engage about the things you now dislike it can be easy to get hyperbolic when people start pushing back on you. It becomes a fine line between legitimately criticizing (your view) and thread-shitting (a fan’s). Something like GoT is easier because a LOT of people disliked the last seasons, so there is built in thread support.
I feel the urge to “thread-shit” about certain things I dislike that other people are praising all the time. It’s human nature. I mostly try to restrain myself, but man that urge is there. Why can’t you see that thing there you like so much is just STUPID ?
I’ve never felt that need. I don’t post in threads about things I don’t like. Especially just to provoke or denigrate those that do like it. There are plenty of other shows for me to watch.
I think one aspect of Jimmy and Kim’s relationship isn’t being given much attention–they share an intense trauma bond. They had not-great childhoods, struggled up from the mailroom to become lawyers then found themselves being cockblocked at every turn by more powerful people–Jimmy had Chuck blocking every avenue to becoming legit and Kim had Howard casually demoting her and taking credit for her client and just being a dick to her as though she didn’t matter. Then Howard was the one to deliver that incredibly dismissive inheritance from Chuck and offered Jimmy a chance to paw through his burned possessions–I think that sent Kim right over the edge. They both have huge chips on their shoulders toward these casually powerful people who damage them without consequence (that they can see) so I think they both see themselves as agents of karma without realizing how over the top they are. Well, I think Jimmy is starting to see Kim is way out in left field but it’s too late now. There’s always a chance some random factor can introduce itself into your tidy plans and turn them to chaos–and that’s Lalo. The ultimate random chaotic evil motherfucker around.
I feel pretty positively about S6 Part 1; I agree that some elements of the Jimmy/Kim plan were massively “overdone”, but I actually don’t view that as a narrative fault. I view it as part of the character traits of the two leads. Jimmy and Kim have ran a number of schemes now, all of which involved steps where I think you could plausibly argue they were going above and beyond what was necessary for the scheme to succeed. I think this is partially because they are literally getting off on it–like they are genuinely feeling pleasure at concocting these schemes, which means taking it beyond what is strictly practical.
I also think it juxtaposes how they exist in broader society. The main reason most of their schemes have been dramatically overdone is because in real life, most normal people aren’t expecting to be scammed in these fairly normal interactions, there is such a huge element of advantage for a scam artist due to this core reason. But if you are a scam artist, which Jimmy is going back to his upbringing in the greater Chicago area, and Kim has adapted to quite enthusiastically, you are intrinsically going to be more paranoid because you yourself as a scammer know all the ways a scam works and better understand how a scam can fail.
The one big exception to their scams not being overplanned was in the broad Jimmy vs Chuck situation. Chuck deeply understood, on a core moral level, who Jimmy is–a dishonest con artist at heart. Chuck was also smarter than Jimmy and a brilliant lawyer, so that combined with the intrinsic distrust of anything relating to Jimmy, Chuck was the perfect guy to expose Jimmy’s bullshit. He mostly succeeded until the very end, when he was undone frankly because of a mental health issue (his “condition”), that Jimmy chose to use against him. If Chuck had been of sound mind there wouldn’t be any Saul Goodman, there would be fully and permanently disbarred James McGill, probably working at a cell phone store for the rest of his life. Also note that Jimmy was savvy enough that he understood by using Chuck’s mental health issue against him, he was also weaponizing Chuck’s own entirely rational skepticism and distrust of Jimmy–his claims of Jimmy planning / manipulating things seemed like more evidence of paranoia at the end, but of course it wasn’t paranoia.
On the topic of the plausibility of the heist, I don’t think it matters if it’s really-truly-real-world-100%-plausible as long as it’s not total-nonsense. BB/BCS have always been just a step from magical realism… Walt’s science powers are nearly magical, Gus’s always-being-a-step-ahead-planning powers, and Jimmy’s scamming-powers.
I mean, obviously it would bother me if the laws of physics just started randomly being violated or something. But as long as the humanity and emotions feel real, I’m happy for the scamming (or Walt’s magnets or whatever) to be a bit exaggerated for storytelling purposes.
I do agree that “their scam led to Howard dying” is interesting, in that obviously Howard could have been killed by Lalo even if they were being super friendly with him and he came over to play cards and eat pizza with his two best friends, Kim and Jimmy. But… I don’t think they’re going to see it that way.
Makes me curious about the timeline. Jimmy was disbarred for a year, right? So Howard was just moving into the guest house when Chuck died? I wonder how long his marriage lasted, and how rocky it was before he moved out. It kind of colors those earlier scenes a little bit.
Like Jimmy, he’s always putting on a face for the public. But was his marriage falling apart when he turned Jimmy down for a job? Was he married happily while Jimmy worked in the mail room? Or was it a short lived marriage that started falling apart soon after it started? Either way that timeline makes those earlier Howard scenes more interesting.
I hope we at least revisit the subject of his marriage. It doesn’t need to be a big thing, but a shot of his wife grieving (or not) and maybe saying something about when they met would be a satisfying nugget of info.
Frankly, I’m also curious what happens to HHM. All the founding partners are dead. We don’t know any of the remaining attorneys, do we? I made a joke about the law offices of Ernesto, Viola and Cary after the last episode, but I don’t think any of them are actual lawyers, just paralegals or other helpers.
In the podcast, the writer said he learned it from his dad. If it works, it’s only because the time causes the soda to settle and not foam. This happens quicker than most people think. There’s a trick on one of the Penn & Teller books that relies on this.
The thing is, I have a hard time seeing Saul Goodman as inevitable and I do blame Chuck for a chunk of that (Jimmy himself is not absolved, by any means). I think Jimmy might have always ended up having minor issues with skating up to the margins and cutting corners where he really shouldn’t. But Jimmy McGill, at one point really wanted to be JIMMY MCGILL, successful straight lawyer. Chuck’s belief became a self-fulfilling prophesy and sent him spinning straight to hell. If Chuck had supported Jimmy to the hilt, Jimmy would have tried his damnedest to hew to the straight and narrow. How successful he would have been it’s hard to say. But he certainly would have been unlikely to end up a “friend of the cartel.”
At least Howard generally meant well. He was economically predatory (but all’s fair in love and business) and a little petty towards Kim, but unlike Chuck he wasn’t motivated by seething resentment. But Chuck, a mostly good person one presumes, let his sibling baggage encourage him to sabotage his brother. That’s hard to forgive.
Definitely - it has become more and more obvious why Kim was so drawn to Jimmy, beyond just his sense of humor. The difference between them was that Jimmy spent his young adult years hustling on the street before he tried to reinvent himself, whereas Kim buried herself in books and struggled to make it in the straight world. But circumstances has done a number on them and together they’re absolutely a toxic mix for anyone in the way.
I think you’re misremembering this scene. The car skids around a corner directly in Cliff’s field of view. And they do so because the license plate is the most obvious and identifiable thing, and it’s on the back. Kim is the one who turns around. That’s why she got there first and was already sitting at the table.
Jimmy-as-Howard’s hairline is definitely visible in the shot, so at least the hairstyling is relevant to selling it.
I don’t think that’s what this is. I think that’s Howard feeling a weird feeling on his fingers because the drug is affecting him there before it starts to affect him systemically. When the vet gave Jimmy the test dose and asked him how he was feeling, he mentioned feeling something (tingling? itchy?) on the part of his skin the vet had applied the drug to. Then shortly after, we see his dilated eyes.
This is supposed to be early 2000s, right? I bet a private eye would still be shooting film then. Better quality for low light and longer distance unless they had just replaced all their equipment with digital.
I agree with this. The parking space is important. If Howard comes out to find his car moved, he is potentially on the offense, looking for the crime, gathering evidence. He plausibly calls the cops right then. When he figures it out during Cliff’s accusation, he’s on the defense, he’s maybe not assuming that Jimmy actually stole his car, but used a lookalike with a fake plate or something, which is also technically a crime but probably not one you could get APD as interested in as grand theft auto.
A few people have mentioned that this plan falls apart if Howard keeps the photos on him, but there are a few things that make this a reasonable risk in my opinion.
The private eye has been giving him photos, and knows what he does with them. If he hasn’t been putting the other ones into a briefcase and carrying them around (and why would he?), there’s a good chance he won’t do it this time either.
The private eye controls the timing. He’s showing up right before a big meeting that Howard doesn’t want to be late to, so he’s going to hurry off to do that. We see the PI step away from the desk and pull out his phone just before the scene cuts, so he’s plausibly also tested Howard’s reaction to him doing so and whether he gets left behind in the office on PI-related business in the past. Everybody knows that the plan requires Howard to leave the PI where he can switch the photos, and there is time earlier in the plan to test that the basic elements of that are plausible.
I’m not too sure about that. From just the first couple of episodes we see that Jimmy has hired the twins to scam Betsy Kettleman, he’s bribed the courthouse clerk for better cases or scheduling or whatever, and he’s taken a bribe from the Kettlemans. I’d call all of that skating over the line and none of it has anything to do with Chuck. I agree that Chuck is part of it — it’s his petty insistence that Jimmy stop using matchbooks that use the McGill name that makes him pull the billboard stunt, for example, but with or without Check, Saul Goodman is inevitable. Its in his DNA. Even the season 6 BCS advertising poster shows Gene putting the Saul jacket back on.
I assume, at some point, Howard would have mentioned his marital problems to Chuck, given how much Howard looked up to him. If someone really wanted to, they could go back through the first 3 seasons and see if they can find anything. Even just a throwaway comment from Howard saying “Cheryl’s mad at me” or a half-sarcastic “I can’t stay late tonight or I’ll be sleeping on the couch”.
I’d be surprised if the writers knew, almost 10 years ago, that at some point Howard would be dead, or even knowing they should leave some breadcrumbs to show Howard’s always had a rocky marriage. But who knows. If there’s one thing this show’s good at, it’s planting those clues so far back the vast majority of people won’t pick up on it. That or they’re good at finding random lines from old episodes and expanding on them.
That is entirely possible.
I agree, that makes sense.
But a PI didn’t take the picture, the film student that Jimmy always uses did. Even if Jimmy wanted them on film, would the University of New Mexico, today, keep a film camera , and film, in their inventory and have a stocked/working dark room. (I honestly don’t know)? In either case, maybe Jimmy asked them, just in passing, if they ever use film cameras.
It’s almost always this. They don’t have a grand plan that lasts beyond seasons, I think, and so they’re not placing clues early on, it’s more like they make a very detailed world and then find ways later to work that into stories as they come up. They do it well enough that it seems like it was planned, but it’s usually not.
Looking back at the scenes, Howard has always been wearing a wedding ring. He says he has been in the guest house for over a year. The show has covered the period from 2002-2005 or so thus far.
Howard’s marital problems probably began sometime back in season 4 or so. Just after Chucks death and it’s aftermath.
When was the scene with Cliff and the prostitutes? That was fairly public and his wife would have heard. May well have been the start.
I know Vince isn’t nearly as involved in BCS as he was in BB, but during BB, he would often mention that they would purposely back themselves into a corner with no plan for how to get out. According to him, usually WRT a cliffhanger, [paraphrased] “If we don’t know how to get out of this situation, you won’t be able to guess”. In other words, if they write a cliffhanger without knowing how they’re going to resolve it, they’re not going to, unintentionally or otherwise, leave clues behind as they guide the story to a known outcome.
Ok, a different thing from 50 odd posts about how the scam worked or didn’t work, a question.
Does Lalo have a grievance against Jimmy? I know they were generally scared of a murderer in the house when he was there, and Mike was watching over them with a sniper rifle, but is there something outstanding which they need to talk about? It’s been so long since the episodes where that happened…
Yeah, scam aside, DSLRs are really just coming to market in the early 2000s and and still pretty expensive and not that great of quality. And if you were delivering pictures to your client, you would need expensive photo printing. Film, photo paper, and chemicals were dirt cheap.
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