It’s a bit route one, but I’ll go with “Auld Lang Syne”
And the Royals’ AAA team is in Omaha (and has been since both teams’ inceptions in 1969). Lots of cross-pollination there. It used to be the “Omaha Royals” from 1969-1998, and 2002-2010, and the logo was the same.
There was a short scene after the ‘heist is completed when Jimmy/Gene covers for the unconscious Jeff with a distracting emotional outburst’ scene; in it, Jimmy/Gene, having just left the security office, leans against a wall and hunches his shoulders in anguish and pain.
I can’t see why the BCS makers would have included this scene if their intent for the heist-distraction outburst was ‘we want to convey that Jimmy is conning this guy in a cold-blooded fashion and actually feels nothing of what he’s displaying.’
Another movie reference in this episode is the ‘making an outline of the department store on the ground, to use for practicing the heist’. The same device was used in the 1955 cult film Bob Le Flambeur.
(The only online reference to this I’ve found is at TV Tropes, in the section “Model Planning” on this page:
I interpreted it as adrenaline and relief having pulled it off after the glitch.
Same. I don’t know where Sherrerd got “anguish and pain” from that.
Relief? So he smiles during the scene?
I’ll have to watch it again; I didn’t see a smile.
You can feel relief without smiling, when something dangerous and terrifying ends. Relief isn’t happiness.
But we’re back again to ‘what the show-creators wanted to convey about Jimmy’s state of mind.’
Why would the teleplay and/or the direction Odenkirk was given be ‘you’re really relieved that your distraction worked. And we want to be sure the audience understands that Jimmy felt no real emotion, so in order to convey that sense of relief, be sure you keep your expression distressed and unsmiling because people feeling relief never have a positive expression on their faces’…???
(Which is not the way humans express relief. They don’t express relief by looking stressed and stricken. A smile, whether small and fleeting or broad and obvious, would be a normal expression for a feeling of relief. )
I get that we all become invested in our interpretations of what we see, but…this amount of work put into clinging to the theory ‘Jimmy felt nothing during his outburst’ seems like a stretch.
Have you ever had a near accident driving? Maybe your car hits an icy patch and spins out of control, but you manage to get it back in control and off to the side of the road.
You’re shaky from the adrenaline wearing off, you’re both relieved that it’s over but terrified of what could’ve gone wrong. You might burst into tears or vomit from the anxiety. The relief is there, but it’s the relief of having cheated death. It’s not a happy relief, but the relief of terror and panic.
It completely read that way to me. He had to keep the illusion up until he was out of the room and out of camera view, then crashed. Relief from the panic and close call he just had.
FWIW I don’t think he felt nothing. I think he drew on some real feelings. But I don’t think the take home was he had a moment of honest emotion. It was method acting and probably stung a bit, but that wasn’t the motivation for the collapse after he left. I don’t it takes a whole lots of manipulation to get to that conclusion.
Can someone remind me about this? I think I have conflated it with something or other…
Season 4, Episode 5 “Quite a Ride” opened with a semi flash-forward (in color) to Saul destroying his records at his office in preparation to flee Albuquerque. He asks Francesca where she is going to be at 3:00 PM on November 12th; Francesca replies that she will be there but will leave immediately if the phone doesn’t ring. Saul replies “Don’t worry … it’ll ring.”
Saul also gives a card to Francesca for a legal representative that she can use when the DEA come to speak to her. He tells her to tell this person that “Jimmy sent ya.” That’s another plot thread that has yet to be tied up.
False.
This.
Of course there are moments of relief where you smile and laugh. But there are also moments of relief where the gallons of adrenaline tearing through your veins make you shake and cry. It’s a spectrum - you shouldn’t force your round peg into the entire field of holes on the board.
40 years of practicing medicine has shown me many times that your assertion is definitely untrue. Some do express relief that way, but MANY do not.
A shout-out to the Onion AV writer for the neologism “monochrOmaha.”
That is literally what I thought as I watched the episode (and I am not alone). What he did clearly worked if that what was he was trying to convey.
It seems to me that with the video tape ending w/ the blue “created by Vince Gilligan” slate, the reminiscing now done, Gene is ready to become Slipping Jimmy again, the man Kim fell in love with. This episode was him putting back on the Slipping Jimmy suit, seeing if it still fits.
It does.
Bizarrely, I’m interested in the opening credits scenes for the last three episodes. Surely they’re different now - Gene is no longer watching his old ads.
How I have come around on this show:
She’s from “a small town on the Kansas/Nebraska border” which I think was later identified in her childhood flashbacks as Red Cloud, Nebraska. She’s from the general area, basically, which will probably become relevant, but not Omaha specifically.
Is Saul’s location in Omaha explained yet? I know he made the offhand comment to Walt about ending up managing a Cinnabon in Omaha but he could not then have been thinking he would be someplace near where Kim was from. I mean, Jesse asked the Vacuum guy for Alaska and got it, and Walt I can’t recall if he said New Hampshire or just “someplace far that is not ABQ”. So perhaps Saul wistfully recalled what he said to Walt and reckoned Omaha was indeed a good place? His decision has not so far been explained right?
It hasn’t. I don’t think we even know it was his decision, or whether it was a random, distant spot Ed sent him too. Though the fact Saul mentioned it to Walt makes it seem more intentional (and of course Kim is from the same general region). Or maybe Ed was running through various options for Saul to choose right before Walt showed up, and he just happened to mention the one he ended up going to?