What a masterful performance by Carol Burnett. The way she said, “I trusted you” was heartbreaking.
The episode was called Waterworks which in true fashion had multiple meanings. Kim working for the sprinkler company, her bursting out crying (another performance for the ages), the downpour after she sees Jimmy for the last time.
The next episode is called Saul Gone. A lot of ways that could go. Does he escape or is he in prison as Slipping Jimmy giving legal advice to the other prisoners and being a thorn in the side of the guards.
Okay, got it, thanks. Having all the timelines collapse like this is getting me a smidgen confused lol.
Oh, and Jimmy/Gene pushing the envelope here, daring the world to come get him, basically the same as Chuck nudging the lamp over and over and over. Not enough momentum to actually commit suicide or force the issue to an arrest but pushing. Pushing, pushing, pushing. Not feeling good about Jimmy’s chances of making it out alive. I mean, nobody else really did, except Jesse.
I’d assume very little beforehand from Florida. She would have been unlikely to keep up with old colleagues and that last glimpse of Saul’s operations while signing the divorce papers would have told her all she needed to know about who he now was. Afterwards though I’m sure it made national news - too many bodies and salacious details for it to have not. Saul would have been a footnote, but one she would have picked up on instantly. And she might have gotten a bit from Francesca when she called.
During the Talking Saul aftershow last night, Bob Odenkirk made the analogy that Jimmy/Saul/Gene at this point is almost like Ben Sanderson, the protagonist from Leaving Las Vegas. Just like how Ben decided to drink himself to death, Jimmy/Saul/Gene is performing scams until there is no coming back.
Given the often exquisite filmmaking evident in BCS/BB, I struggle to understand why they’ve gone with the Walt and Jesse cameos. Before watching this latest BCS I’d been rewatching BB season 2, to see how last week’s Walt/Jesse scene fitted in. But it made Aaron Paul’s scene with Kim all the more jarring. This is supposed to be a younger Jesse than we see in BB, yet along with the jowlier, 40-something face (obvs.) he’s much broader, his voice is lower, and both his physical stance and vocal delivery is far more confident. I liked the BB easter egg of Emilio turning up, but Jesse’s appearance was completely unnecessary. I can only assume they didn’t have the heart to cut the scene. Filmmakers of this calibre must have known it stunk.
The audience is supposed to meet the artist halfway. Yes, we know IRL Aaron Paul is older. But… we can pretend, right? We can meet them halfway and just accept Jesse as… Jesse.
Mostly that. I agree it’s unnecessary and I probably wouldn’t have done it. But it also doesn’t seriously compromise the last couple of episodes for me so I give it a pass.
I mean I’ve been happily willing to suspend disbelief on the noticeably aging Odenkirk playing a younger self, so I’ve already developed my mental muscles on that one. By the way kudos to the makeup department on Kim’s aging. I thought that was better done.
Also, we’ve been watching Odenkirk, 5 years after BB playing a character 5 years before BB even starts, along with flashbacks going back another 15 years or so.
I prefer to think of the process as not so much “suspending disbelief” as “entering secondary belief”, a term used by Tolkien for better enjoying myths, legends, fantasies, and other fiction.
As Tolkien noted himself: “the story-maker’s success depends on his ability to make a consistent Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is ‘true’, it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside”.
There’s really two points to these scenes. Walt and Jesse’s are Saul’s downfall. We saw last week that Saul was told to walk away before even getting started with them, and said no. Now in this episode we saw that Kim was part of that downfall, by vouching for him in the first place.
Yeah, that makes sense. I just found it curious there are a couple of shots that clearly show her hands. Gilligan and Gould are pretty obsessive about little details like that*. I just wonder what they were thinking when they gave us a peek into Kim’s humdrum life as a suburban housewife but make a point of showing us she’s not wearing a ring.
*Or maybe I’m the one obsessing about little details like that?
I suspect that you are right that they wanted to make it clear that it was a boyfriend rather than a husband but then again, they did show him leave at the end of the evening and she was home alone.
Hmmm…I guess I wasn’t paying enough attention when her boyfriend was taking off for the evening. I thought maybe he was heading off to run an errand or something.
I was paying attention right after that when Kim was driving into work–that big white building shaped like a giant sail you see as she’s making a left off the main road is the Port Canaveral Exploration Tower. I went up in it last year.
