Yeah, it’s a tough one. If they botch it, the show will be worse in retrospect. BB was always great, but something that really elevates it, in my opinion, is that the ending is fantastic.
I think the fact that I feel so heavily invested in everyone, while there is nothing that begs for resolution in a certain direction, is really good writing. (Just about the diametric opposite to the clusterfuck of the last GoT season.) I mean, nobody really has any certainty where they are going to go in the last 4 episodes, except for the obvious restrictions of the BB future.
I just hope they give us more of Kim, since she has the most open storyline, and I think she’s probably the most popular & interesting character. Unless they are setting up Kim as the next spinoff series.
I live in a house, but do have several complexes.
Well, after an hour and a half in these last 2 EPS, we get some scenes with Saul and Kim. To paraphrase the Vet, “This cartel shit is too boring to me”. I don’t give a damn about Gus years before he met Saul. I watch the show primarily because of the title character, and Kim. I was watching the first part of this EP 9 just waiting for the main characters to appear, and when they did, I was not disapointed. I almost agree with you, Staniaus, if this were the final EP, we would fill in the blanks about what happened. I’ll trust the creators to give us something even better.
Was that the only time we’ve heard Kim and Jimmy state their love for each other - just as they break up? Theirs has been an intriguing, slightly distant, relationship.
I thought so too. Their only stated reason for getting married was so that they couldn’t be forced to testify against each other.
A lot of pretty good analysis here (NYT gift link). I hadn’t even thought of this, about Kim’s decision to quit the law and her marriage:
It’s difficult to fathom the inner life of someone who says, “I love you, too, but so what?”
Let’s leave aside, for a moment, Jimmy’s reaction and focus on a connected question: What will Mike think? Kim has been given instructions to deliver an Academy Award-worthy performance in a real-life documentary called “Nothing to See Here” in the aftermath of Howard’s murder. And now she has left her job and Jimmy. That will raise exactly the sort of questions Mike didn’t want. This is a problem.
Which she can attribute to Howard’s death causing an internal crisis of sorts without ever acknowledging that she witnessed it. He was, after all, somewhat of a mentor to her.
Is it so difficult to fathom? I’ve ended several relationships over the last 12 years, not all of them romantic, with the thinking, “I love you, but (for whatever reason) it’s better if we go our separate ways.” Admittedly, my life has probably been more “colorful” than most during that time.
Also, she’d just got done saying that together they’re toxic.
You can love someone and know that you need to stay a million miles away from them or bad things happen.
Yeah. I feel you.
How about another spin-off? Kim Wexler - Public Defender. She goes to another city to start a new life, but struggles with playing it straight as an attorney, tempted to cut coners like Jimmy. She could be an angry attorney struggling with the hypocricies of our time. Maybe she plays it straight as an attorney but in her off hours is a con artist but who only rips off people who deserve it
We’ll have to see how this series ends up. As it is now, I’m good with just Kim in this series. However, Vince Gilligan don’t miss. Until he does I will watch every show he puts out.
I would agree with this, but given the jump to Saul Goodman in full flow then clearly quite some time has passed so the assumption has to be that she got out and no one cared. (I mean, why would they? The cartel doesn’t know Kim exists and Gus is now in sole charge of the “north”. No-one is asking questions about some pro-bono lawyer’s life choices).
Yeah, this is a really good point.
I also noticed in the first half that the only time we see any lust in the relationship is when they’re ecstatically banging on the sofa after listening in on Howard falling for the big con. Otherwise they never appeared to be a particularly passionate couple. Which is unhealthy, really - the real passion is for the con. This is the dynamic that Kim rightly identifies as being toxic.
I keep thinking back to the finale of the big con. It’s all so - deliberately - silly. The makeup girl is in some ludicrous costume. We have a nice little check in with camera guy and he’s giving lectures now. What fun! Kim is running in and out of shot all flustered. Oh those guys. Then they have to face down Howard which looks like the bit where they’re confronted by the morality of their actions and he gets a nice speech so lesson learned… then Lalo shoots him in the head.
Remember that long shot a series or two back of the ants crawling over the ice cream? A few at first, then just swarming all over it so that what had been a lovely treat was now disgusting and utterly ruined.
Once you’re in the ants’ world, there are no more nice things. They will swarm over everything and make it theirs.
Edited to add - the now departed poster upthread commented that it was a plot hole for Kim to turn her car round and be part of the last minute photo shoot because hse wasn’t needed. The fact she wasn’t needed wasn’t a plot hole, it was the whole point.
Seems as if the discussion of Gus being gay is happening now.
I remember having arguments on here, as far back as when Breaking Bad was actually on, as I thought he was gay. It was just the way he looked at Max when he died which made it different from being a good friend and business partner. I guess that’s resolved now.
As I said then, it didn’t make a whole lot of difference then, just a lonely man straight or gay. I remember discussions as to the inference he had a wife and kids back in BB, but perhaps someone who’s watched it in the last five years might remember that…
Which silly little game? I assume you mean them screwing around with Howard, right? The vast majority of anything that should have become of that would have blown over eventually (they even mentioned that he’ll land on his feet).
Howard getting killed by Lalo was entirely coincidental. Lalo didn’t even know who he was. Anyone that happened to be there at that moment, even a pizza delivery guy, would have been killed.
On the other hand, as I write that, I’m thinking Howard getting killed by Lalo, even though he has nothing to do with anything related to the cartel in any way, shape or form is meant to be similar to the planes crashing in BB which could ultimately be (more or less) tied directly to Walt.
Their tricks on Howard wouldn’t have blown over, that’s them rationalizing. It would have ruined his career. It would have hurt HHM’s business, they would have hired less associates, causing collateral damage.
Just because it probably wouldn’t have ended with Howard homeless and shooting heroin in the streets doesn’t mean it would have blown over.
Even if he landed on his feet eventually, they’re doing enormous damage to him, and all the employees of HHM, right now. Not to mention the Sandpiper plaintiffs, who, rightly or wrongly but certainly on their own, decided not to accept the current settlement offer, but are now being forced to because their lead attorney appears nuts. The very kind of people Kim wants to help are being damaged by her actions.
That’s how they rationalised it to themselves, yes. But a senior lawyer blowing up a major lawsuit because of drug induced paranoia in front of his peers is not a minor embarrassment to be laughed off. It was always going to cause serious professional problems for Howard, not to mention any impact on his mental health. (I mean, how would you cope with being elaborately tricked into a similarly highly public, highly costly professional embarrassment? I’d get more than a little stressed out in a way that would affect my personal life, I suspect.) They were careless enough that they didn’t know that Howard’s homelife was a mess and the reason they were careless is that they literally didn’t care. “Oh, he’ll be fine” was a myth they told themselves.
In fact, the beginning of this series was all about Kim persuading Jimmy - who had his doubts about the ethics of the whole business - that it would be fine. A line he was eventually happy to swallow, I stress.
Yeah, that’s exactly the point. Once you’re involved with the cartel, you’re not only at risk yourselves, you’re a risk to everyone around you, even pizza delivery guys. They had no business running gleeful cons on previous employers. Jimmy knew this in the abstract and Kim knew it concretely. A cartel killer was on the loose and may be targeting them. This is the very definition of “fuck about, find out” and they had no business fucking about.
This is what Kim realised at the end - that she and Jimmy had spiralled into something horrific and they needed to end it now.