What happened with the preview leading up to the finale?
Unless I hallucinated it, didn’t it feature Gene approaching the flipped over car in the desert and muttering/repeating the details about the hoover model to make another escape? What’s the deal with that?
The flipped over car was in the flashback to him and Mike in the desert. He was repeating the details of the vacuum in the dumpster.
Basically all the “previews” have been purposefully misleading. Like him saying “After all that a happy ending.” You think he’s talking to Kim but he’s actually talking about his fake lost dog.
So the image with the flipped car was from one scene and the dialogue was taken from another? I guess that makes sense --sort of. I hadn’t paid much attention to the previews.
Let’s see…
From birth until last night’s scene with Chuck, he was “slipping” Jimmy McGill. And that’s who he was when the show started.
As he came to become valuable to HHM, he started becoming James McGill. His brother… did not want, nor believe, this.
As the stress of fighting his brother to achieve his validation heightened, James… the lawyer… started using the law in a way that slipping Jimmy would not: to destroy people.
To destroy his own brother.
It was the psychological need to flee from what he did to Chuck which caused the two elements… Jimmy and James… to merge to become Saul Goodman (the court house scene at, what, the end of season 4?). The Saul Goodman split-identity was his shield. The things which were done to his brother? Done by that other guy.
However, Saul Goodman was toxic to Kim. Kim could handle James McGill, that’s who she fell in love with. She thought she could handle Saul Goodman, but Saul was darker than she expected… and led her, internally, to places she never wanted to know lived in her heart.
He remains Saul from the courthouse “It’s all good, man” introduction to his disappearance in BB, headed up Omaha way. And because of his Saul life, he was forced to become Gene, manager of a Cinnabon.
He does this for a few months, totally and completely Gene.
Then, one day Gene comes home. He digs for boxes. He pulls out a VCR tape. Goes to the TV, puts the tape in the VHS player, sits down, and roll credits. This sequence literally opens up the first episode of season one.
The rest of BCS is Gene sitting in that chair, watching that tape, remembering That’s why the ‘weird’, short intros - they were the VCR takes. Some were highly focused, some out of focus, but those short intros were from the tape he was watching.
And, sitting in that chair, he reminisces about his Kim days.
We get to when Kim leaves. The tape ends at that time as well, which is why all the B&W Gene-in-Omaha episodes started showing the “Vince Gilligan” blue cue cards (which were common at the end of VHS tapes) in the opening “BCS” sequence.
That episode, when the tape ends, Gene gets up and decides he wants to be Saul Goodman again. He is sick of Gene. He is tired of this nothing existence. We’re done remembering our beautiful, colored, life, it’s now time to focus on escaping this grey death.
To get Kim back.
He scams the department store/security guard. Builds up some cash. Has to put some pressure on his cohorts because they’re stupid, also meets Carol Burnett.
He is still metamorphizing back into Saul Goodman when it all falls apart. He calls Kim. Finds out that Kim has repented in a way he will not, and learns that all of this was for nothing. He is never, ever, going to get her back.
So he goes crazy. Wants to get caught, even though he might not realize it himself. Goes to the cancer guys house, etc. However… he is not a killer. No matter what Saul Goodman is, he is not a direct killer.
Gets arrested (and I’m glad there wasn’t a miracle escape). He is fully Saul Goodman now, the situation requires it. Negotiates as Saul Goodman, had that 7 year deal set up, just wanted that ice cream…
And he finds it is all for naught. Kim has ethically trumped him again by turning herself in. He realizes that, even in 7 years, there is no future with Kim as long as he is unwilling to join her on her journey towards the light, just as… six years prior… she joined him on his journey towards darkness.
So, sitting on the plane, he finally realizes there is no conning his way back to Kim. He has to take the hit. He has to confess like she did. In 7 years, as Saul, he won’t be any closer to her than he is now.
But… as James? Yes, that’s still possible. It’s his only shot.
And so Saul pulls his last con… on himself. He gets everyone together, and confesses his sins, blowing up all aspects of his plea deal. He gets the max, he is going to die in prison, he may not even know if his plan worked. Saul has to kill himself so that James McGill… the man Kim loved… could live again.
And it worked. Kim came back.
… anyway, that’s how I read all this Jimmy/James/Saul/Gene stuff.
I mean, I don’t know, I do think of it as a happy ending. He is going to die in prison, but he will live out his days knowing he is deserving of Kim Wexler.
Yep. Can’t forget about yep-guy.
I agree. It is a film noir-style happy, to be sure. But Kim and Jimmy love film noir.
Hard to say from a distance, especially as he seems like a decent guy (aside from “yep” - ugh). But I wouldn’t be surprised if that relationship became doomed the second Old Kim looked out of New Kim’s eyes to drink in the sight of all those sexy, sexy unorganized files. Cathartic Kim, having gone through hell and come out the other side, may no longer be able to hold much interest anymore in maintaining her sprinkler-catalog life. Even if it is merely because she starts neglecting her relationship to spend every waking moment volunteering at Legal Aid.
Thanks for that. Nice summary.
I always wondered if there was much meaning to the old VHS tapes in the intros. Were we supposed to pause the intros to catch a glimpse of something meaningful?
Agreed. Never in Jimmy’s entire life was he ever not a scammer, although he could do an occasional good deed. His grand act was just too out of left field without quite enough explication. I still liked it, but I wish they’d spent a bit more time making it plausible to his character and maybe a bit less time on Jeffie and the dept store heist.
very meh
Lovely, @JohnT.
So does anyone want to talk about those Esposito/Odenkirk trailers? Odenkirk’s was called Straight Man… a pre-prequel? I for one am ready to just let these characters lie.
I don’t think either is in the BB/BCS storyline.
Are those for real shows?
I would presume so, yes. I can’t begin to contemplate what “Straight Man” would be about. “Parish”, the Giancarlo show, seems to hint about something to do with church. Esposito would be a great performer to play a compassionate priest, for what it’s worth.
I checked Giancarlo Esposito’s Wikipedia page for more details on his new show. It shows a 2023 series on AMC to be called called The Driver, which is based on a BBC serial of the same name. So is that the same series mentioned in the AMC promo, or a second one?
I’ll give them a chance, though to be honest I watched BCS because of Gilligan.
I would imagine that it is probably the same one, just with a new title. The Wikipedia page indicates the new series is being filmed in New Orleans; if that is true, than Parish would have another meaning (that being the analogous government unit in Louisiana for counties in most other states).
I think Jimmy’s confession was a stunt to impress Kim. He won’t be working in the bakery, he’ll be a jailhouse lawyer running scams from the inside and working on an appeal. He’ll win that appeal because of the states bizarre handling of the matter which forced him to plead guilty to all charges in order to preserve his right to appeal. The wheels of justice move slowly, it could easily take 5 years before he’s free with suitcases full of cash he made from his scams waiting for him in a bus locker.
I don’t want to see a sequel but I can’t accept that Jimmy has become a new and different person. What did you mean about Chuck would have been pleased? Pleased that Jimmy got caught and will pay the price for what he’s done, or pleased that Jimmy did the right thing? I really can’t see Chuck being pleased about any of it.
AMC is really desperate with BCS and Walking Dead ending. Notice how they also kept pushing the new Interview with a Vampire show as “From the Executive Producer of Better Call Saul.”