Agreed. I do think that Saul will soon learn that Lalo is still alive. Perhaps will be the ‘cliffhanger’ at the end of Part 1 of this season.
I saw this posted elsewhere and went back to watch again for the brilliance. Besides Nacho, there are eight other guys in that scene, including Mike. All of them are dead by the end of Breaking Bad. Hector fires eight shots into Nacho’s corpse.
When Hector starting furiously ringing his bell, I cried, “Jello! Jello!”
I slay me.
I’m really glad he got his “it was me” moment to Hector.
How does Mike, who saw the whole thing, not tell Jimmy of Nacho’s death until after Breaking Bad begins?
You wouldn’t want to spook your new lawyer too early. People who work with the cartel often end up dead, and it’s in the cartel’s interests that new recruits only learn this after they’re already committed to being a part of it.
Why does Jimmy/Saul need to know?
We are all probably overthinking the hell out of this which, admittedly, is part of the fun.
That was great but I’m worried about his father now. Mike said he would protect him from Gus but can he protect him from Hector? I don’t see Hector being satisfied with just Nacho’s death as retribution for crippling him.
I don’t get Nacho being satisfied with Mike’s promise anyway.
Gus is clearly capable of having Nacho’s dad killed and then telling Mike “Deal with it.” Or killing Mike.
And Hector was always going to be a major problem.
Also, wasn’t it tempting for Mike to kill all eight men from his sniper’s perch? I might have.
Mike is a good asset; Gus probably doesn’t want to screw that up. A guy like Mike doesn’t come along in a drug cartel every day, I reckon.
It was a shard of glass the marks the spot where Nacho will die at the end of the episode.
Interesting interview with the director of Episode 3
Are we to assume that Saul saying ‘Lalo’ when speaking to the prosecutors was a genuine slip of the (silver) tongue? I can’t see how it would benefit him for them to make the De Guzman/Salamanca connection, but a blunder like that does seem surprising for him.
Pretty sure that ambiguity is there for us to be pondering right now: did Slippin’ Jimmy slip or did clever Saul deliberately plant that seeming error?
Mike seems like the sort of guy who, when asked by Saul what happened to Nacho, would respond “You don’t need to know that”.
I think it was a genuine slip. Saul’s been under a lot of stress lately, is beginning to worry about Kim breaking bad, and just recently both was almost murdered in the desert, and then almost died walking out of the desert. That has an effect on a guy.
I had my hands covering my eyes during that whole scene, because a fly was buzzing. Flies always signify death, so a corpse must have been coming – I expected rotten and horrific. The corpse did come to that spot; it just took the whole episode to get there.
Exactly this.
It’s really noticeable the extent to which the power balance has shifted towards Kim this season, right from the get go. The scene in the last episode where she led Jimmy by the nose towards “Let’s get Howard disbarred and take his Sandpiper money” was a seismic moment, and we can see the after-effects:
Kim is in control now. Telling Saul “you’re not going to like this”; pushing him towards the Howard scam, pullng out the stick - this is her show. And after she saved Saul when he screwed up under Lalo’s interrogation, that’s understandable.
Similarly, Saul is still in shock from that. He told Lalo “I don’t know” [if I pushed my car into a ravine] - the worst and stupidest thing he could have said. Saul knows you pick a story and stick to it, but in the aftermath of his desert ordeal, he wasn’t together enough to perform - and that nearly got him killed.
Now he’s letting Lalo’s name slip and has to go and sit in a quiet room afterwards, he’s slow to get going with the Howard scam, he misreads the Kettleman’s need for money. Even when he is scamming, at the golf club especially, it doesn’t seem like his heart is in it. He doesn’t have the same zest.
(One titbit from teh interview @hajario shared that I wasn’t sure about - Kim (and Saul) smoking indoors is a new departure, and is an indication of how things are slipping. What used to be a bright line rule now has exceptions, and once you have one exception…The scams are taking over.
So much for Saul and Kim. The main story was Nacho’s Last Stand, and it was a depressing triumph.
Ever since Gus saved Hector’s life and twigged that Nacho had played a role, Nacho has been heading towards this ending. Nacho is smart, charismatic, decisive, and while capable of violence he’s not a psycho like either Gus or the Salamanca cousins. But he only ever had limited options. In the end, he got the best outcome he could: saved his father by telling the Salamancas what Gus needed them to hear; told Hector what he’d done; spat his hat at the Salamancas generally; and made Gus shit himself when it looked like he’d taken control. But his control could only last so long, and he only had one way to use it.
I thought Michael Mando did an amazing job, especially with the pivotal call to his father. Before that, he still had the choice to try to keep running and prolong the inevitable; afterwards, he knew there was only one thing he could do. The way you could see Mando realise he was going to save his father and do the right thing, even if his father would never know, was heartbreaking.