Kim also has never been an angel. She really really gets off on the thrill of the con. She’s definitely a “better” person than Jimmy in an overall moral sense, as she seems to quite seriously want to defend pro bono clients as her main thing in life. But, she’s certainly not purely lawful good.
I’m still trying to piece together what happened with Nacho and the safe and the hotel in a way that fits with the motivations and positions of everyone we’ve already seen. Mike seemed very sincere about respecting Nacho and trying to get him out of there, but he was the one who put the envelope in the safe. And the worst possible outcome for everyone in Gus’s orbit is for the Salamancas to catch Nacho. So… what gives? Hopefully it will be clarified in the future, as BB/BCS are usually very very good at making sure things like this end up making sense.
The simplest explanation for now is that Gus has just come up with a bad plan. Mike would rather save Nacho instead, but he’s willing to go along with what Gus has ordered. So Mike swaps the safes, but takes out Nacho’s dad’s ID, since he draws a line between Nacho, who’s in the game, and Nacho’s dad, who isn’t.
One thing I was thinking about is that there are all these supposed masterminds, and their plans are kind of all falling apart. Gus’s plan for Nacho is backfiring. Lalo may have undercut his own plans by telling Hector, who has immediately tipped off Gus. And Saul’s plan with Howard could go wrong about a hundred different ways.
Not clear to me HOW Hector tipped him off. Were we supposed to conclude that Gus read his body language somehow, or was there a specific tip-off that I didn’t catch?
I think it was just Hector’s smug demeanour and willingness to shake Gustavo’s hand; he wouldn’t have been like that if he thought (his nephew?) Lalo was actually dead.
Yes, that is how I understood it as well. The only reason for him to shake the hated Chicken Man’s hand is to deceive him. If he thought Lalo was dead, he’d rather go for Gus’s neck than his hand.
I’d say Jesse and Nacho are more the same person–the poor schlub trying to be a baller who gets caught up in the shit and finds out they really don’t have the stomach for it but by then they’re too far and can’t get out. They’re kind of the moral focus, if those shows could be said to have one. I think Walt and Mike are closer analogues–regular lawful guys (a school teacher and a cop, even) who get into the shit and discover that they’re incredibly good at it–but Walt loses almost all his humanity in the process but Mike never really does no matter what he has to do. Walt started out WAY further down the scaredy incompetent axis and Mike started out way further down the competent killer axis, but when they finally crossed we all know how THAT turned out. Mike died with his fundamental humanity intact but Walt lost all of his and had to redeem himself at the eleventh hour. Fascinating characters, the lot of them. I hope Vince Gilligan gets his propers in history for turning out such a complex analysis of pragmatism, evil and redemption in 21st century America.
Aside from cartel business, I’m wracking my brain trying to figure out how Howard’s car is going to factor into Jimmy and Kim’s plan. Anybody got any guesses?
An amazing episode and a triumph for
Michael Mando (Nacho). I just realized that he’s been part of Better Call Saul since the earliest episodes. Not much actual Saul this week but that’s okay—the intensity of the story made up for it. 9.8 rating on IMDb and many comparisons to Ozymandias.
Plus, I think she’s seen enough of “The rich get to do what they want, everyone else pays”, and wants to fix at least some of that. Consider some of her cases, like the kid whop was up for armed robbery last week. He got conned by his rich friend, who then used his family’s connections and money to avoid taking any blame for the crime.
Also, she’s met the Kettlemans, who just reek of rich white privilege. They’re so convinced that they’re good people they can’t even admit that they stole millions of dollars. They act like everyone who tries to hold them accountable for that are the bad guys for “ruining their lives”.
Well, they could get photographed buying drugs in a bad part of town. It’s a fancy car with a distinct license plate, so Howard trying to deny it was him is going to sound pretty lame to anyone concerned about his “drug use”.
Amazing performance by Mando. “You twisted f …” and the rest of that speech is up there with “Say my name.” And the call to his father was heart wrenching. When Mike growled “Do it,” he wanted Nacho to kill Bolsa? I find it hard to believe that Mike would not have discovered that Nacho had palmed a shard of glass. So I’m wondering if he just let it slide or if he was in on it.
It’s got to be something like that - it looked to me as if their first choice was to come up with a look alike stand-in for Howard’s car, but they ultimately decided it would be easier to just steal the real thing and return it without Howard’s knowledge. The storyboard approach makes me wonder if the film crew Jimmy’s used for commercials will play a key part in this plan.
When they were discussing the plan, it sounded like Nacho was supposed to make a break for it, and then get shot by Fring’s guy. Mike insisted on being there with the rifle because he didn’t trust Fring’s guy to do the job properly, and wanted insurance.
But then Nacho took a hostage instead of running, and it felt to me like this was all one giant “Fuck you” to all of them, Fring and the Salamancas. Basically, “You all think you’re so smart and in control of everything, but even now, I have the power to fuck up your plans.” Fring only wins because Nacho decides to let him win.
I wonder if Jimmy & Kim care whether Howard figures out that they’re doing this. It’s one thing to have Howard’s car show up in some suspicious place, but it’s another to do it in such a way that Howard doesn’t find out. Like, if they take his car while he’s in court, or something, and have it photographed, then if nothing else Howard will know something is going on.
Maybe the idea is to have Cliff see it in passing, rather than having it show up in a photo or video.
Howard is going to figure it out no matter what. He already knows Jimmy is targeting him (prostitutes and bowling balls, remember?), but if no one else knows what’s going on, that’s just going to make Howard look paranoid and/or defensive. “Oh, sure, it wasn’t you buying that crack (after I saw some coke fall out of your locker, and a former client told me you were using), no, it was these other two lawyers setting you up. Sure, sure.”
The thing to remember here is that this plan actually ends up costing Jimmy and Kim money, which gives them plausible deniability. If they just played it straight, it’s likely that the Sandpiper case would pay out more, just at a later date. They’re trading money for time, because they want the money now, not several more years down the road. Howard’s protestations will look paranoid at best, and obviously only motivated by his drug use, because the characters don’t have our omniscient viewpoint.
