I agree that it could seem boring but to me it was a nice throwback to what made me (and presumably a lot of people) fall in love with the show. A good con, beginning to end. No drugs, no guns, no death, no fixers, no multi-million dollar secret lairs. Yes it was a turn from what we’ve been watching the past few episodes but a turn back to the heart of the show.
I’m not confident Jimmy has closed the loop on the department store scam. I can see there being a conversation with the security office “do you remember seeing anything out of the ordinary on this particular night? The tape has since been deleted, but maybe you remember something.”
Does the security guard admit he was distracted? Does he make the connection? Does the cabbie draw too much attention selling clearly stolen goods?
And, more importantly, is the insurance fraud investigator a former attorney from the Albuquerque area?
I thought the manager was going to spot an extra scuff mark on the floor where he slipped.
I liked the episode well enough. It was a nice throwback to the smaller-scale scams from earlier in the show. Just a solid episode that probably won’t end up being too memorable.
I’ve seen a few reactions similar to this, and I’m not sure I really understand them. It’s not like this episode took the place of another one that would be more impactful to the overall story. I don’t know what will happen in the three episodes that are left, but I’m assuming they have three episodes worth of story to wrap things up. I don’t think there were things left out to accommodate this episode.
Huh? Of course it did. There are only 4 episodes left, and this was one of them. There is nothing that needs to be done to wrap up unresolved plot lines, the point is that they could have done something better.
But they have no idea what particular night it was or that it was at night. They will just know that some time between the last inventory and the next one, a few more thing than normal were stolen. The more obvious thing to suspect is employee theft or someone going in a taking a few things on different days. Why would they think it was a sophisticated scam involving weeks of planning and a guard distracted for three minutes?
There was the crate full of 2 stroke engine sprayer pumps that spent a night on the loading dock. That store manager seems sharp enough and dedicated enough to her job that she’d find that suspicious and
worth further investigation, even if she wasn’t sure exactly when the thefts occurred.
But yes, more likely it just gets put down as a rash of shoplifting.
We’re starting to circle around the same “Well Cliff knew something was up so if the police look into it…” conversation. The way the BB/BCS world is set up is that there is this vastly complicated criminal underworld that no normal person has concept of. When 3 of a bunch of different items are missing in inventory they’re either gonna think “We’ve had a shoplifting problem” or “We must’ve screwed up some order.” They’re not going to think “Well someone obviously hid inside the giant crate and managed to steal a few very specific items from all across the store without security noticing.”
Yes we are and I hope it doesn’t continue, not that I’m in charge.
If a bag of fries was out of place, we’d all assume Gus Fring would run through every possible scenario involving how it could have happened, and logically land on “it was Ms. Peacock in the Pantry with the candlestick”. Is it unreasonable to think that an investigator looking into a possible shoplifting spree could possibly ask a handful of questions that make people think “gosh - maybe something could have happened when I had an unauthorized person in the control room, which happens to have taken place the month of the theft in question?”
I’m not sure how you think that’s unreasonable. I’m certainly not suggesting they immediately leap to “it was a sophisticated scam involving weeks of planning and a guard distracted for three minutes“.
But let’s say Special Investigator Kim Wexler interviews the manager. “Walk me through your typical close out routine. Can you think of anything unusual that happened around October 2009 (or whenever it was)?” As mentioned upthread, the manager seems savvy enough to register the odd delivery as something to mention. That gives our intrepid investigator a small bite to go on. Ask the security office if they saw something, if they are following protocol, etc.
Is there really anything there that’s unreasonable? It’s all idle speculation. I hope I’m wrong, because this show has never been that predictable.
Or, you know, this episode is a completely sealed one-off with zero ramifications for the conclusion of this series, 3 episodes from the finale. That seems…less likely.
I don’t think that there would be a full blown investigation. Management would just change up their anti-theft methods a bit and assume that that worked when the next inventory came up back to normal. There is no reason to think that it all happened on the same day. Investigator Kim would more likely ask, “did you notice a suspicious person wandering around a lot over the last month?” Gene intentionally limited the take ostensibly for time purposes but probably also to limit the loss so that it wouldn’t that big a deal.
I honestly have no idea what the threshold is for an insurance adjuster to come out and assess things, or open an investigation. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s “once it’s a felony amount of merchandise”. I also wouldn’t be surprised if it was “several orders of magnitude above a felony level of theft”. Next episode could very well be Gene realizing he got off scot-free, and starts scheming bigger (and riskier).
So will we have another entire episode dedicated to him bringing pizza to the security office, which takes 15 minutes to eat?
I’m just hoping that this episode was deliberately designed to manage our expectations downward, so that the last three will blow us away.
I hope the two guys Gene worked with on the shoplifting scam are smart enough NOT to try to “return” the items they stole for a cash refund.
Because there have been actual criminals THAT STUPID!!
I agree it’s unlikely this episode could have zero ramifications, as it was surely primarily to demonstrate that Gene has got some of his Slippin’ Jimmy mojo back. Not that there’s time for some grand final scam, but I also can’t imagine it’ll be three more episodes of a cowering paranoid guy making iced buns.
Did they steal all the stuff from one store or from multiple stores?
I knew a professional shoplifting duo years ago whose scheme did involve returning stolen goods - but also a good knowledge of store policy, travelling between different branches, etc. to avoid being caught. Jeffie doesn’t look like one for that level of forethought.
It would have been the same store. It was after hours with no staff on hand - the gates into the inner mall would have been closed.
The episode made me tense because for the first time we don’t know that Jimmy pulls a scam off. Up to this point, we knew Jimmy got away with everything because he did not end up in prison or dead. That’s over now. We didn’t know if Jeffie would get up in time or be discovered, causing Jimmy to run. There’s no more plot armor and anything can happen.
Still, with cleaning staff etc having access to the mall, it seemed odd to me that a store carrying such high value merchandise would not have one of those mesh security grilles that roll down.