Gus is not a believer in quick revenge; he is all about the long slow cold version. :shudder: Just shooting someone is not his ideal. He is living out the daily pain of his soulmate’s death, and so will Salamanca. If that is stolen from him, then I suspect Nacho will be receiving the punishment.
Good catch!
I think he cares deeply what Kim thinks of him. If his life were his own he’d like to have friends like Kim and Jimmy.
I will be SHOCKED if there was anything tricky or twisty going on with the letter. I think the obvious interpretation is that Jimmy read Chuck’s words, and Kim was disturbed by Chuck’s words, and/or Jimmy’s (lack of) reaction to them. More speculatively, I think she was just floored at how totally casual Jimmy was about it. Here’s his brother speaking from beyond the grave, and Jimmy ought to have SOME reaction.
I didn’t get a feeling that Kim was alarmed about Nebraska, specifically… my initial guess was that she just thinks “these guys are SO crazily overambitious, they’re going to flame out big time, what have I hitched my wagon to?”, although it’s certainly possible there’s something more than that. (I can’t remember what year this is supposed to be taking place in… any chance that Mesa Verde is going to get wiped out by the 2008 mortgage/financial meltdown?)
I think everyone’s treatment of Nacho makes perfect sense. Gus keeps him alive because that gives him a man on the inside (and if Gus is smart, which he is, he will realize that Nacho is smart and ambitious (and obviously was never loyal to the Salamancas given that he poisoned Hector), and will try to convert him to being an actual respected lieutenant, not just a blackmail target). The cousins kept him alive because of (a) family/gang loyalty, and (b) he was a potential witness to who was trying to go to war with them.
I’m not sure how Gus benefits from getting product from local suppliers. At the beginning of Breaking Bad, he’s already bringing his product over the border in the big Pollos Hermanos barrels… or am I misremembering?
If you’re doing one thread for the entire sesaon, could I make a request? Could the first person after the episode airs Stateside make it clear where discussion of the new epidode starts using some kind of Stand out Font to declare the new episode?
Well, there was that box cutter incident.
ETA, let me rephrase that. “Well, there’s going to be that box cutter incident”.
I don’t think the guy was actually living there–the strong implication of the dialogue was that they guy’s wife had thrown him out, probably that evening, because of the lame gift he’d given her.
So Mike might not have been able to catch that in advance by casing the joint. Unless he cased the joint just an hour or so before breaking in.
But in re the Hummel job: How could Jimmy have been so sure that the Hummel he looked at–quite briefly–in the office while being interviewed was the very-expensive variant instead of the more common variant? If they look so much alike, Jimmy would have to have some kind of trick memory (‘photographic’), or be an expert in Hummels, wouldn’t he?
That bothered me.
Perhaps his earlier experience with Alpine Shepherd Boy taught him a thing or two.
One question that struck me…
If these cartels are controlling the meth trade like it seems they are, we’re talking millions and millions of dollars. I mean, just look at how much they were able to pay Mr. White. With all that at their disposal, don’t you think they would have a “friendly”(real) doctor set up for bullet and stab wound situations? Not a second rate veterinarian? I mean it makes for good TV, sure, but it seems they’d be able to do better than Caldera.
The cartel had real doctors set up in Mexico on BB. Maybe it’s harder to slip under the radar in Albuquerque.
That was something that always bothered me about Breaking Bad. Why did Tuco have Hector stashed in a derelict house in the middle of nowhere, with no one to take care of him? At that point Hector wasn’t hiding out either from the DEA or Gus. (After Tuco was killed, the DEA just let him go, and he didn’t seem to feel immediately threatened by Gus.)
I was kind of puzzled by her reaction, but you guys are giving me some interesting ideas to think about. In the moment, I took it as “rapacious capitalism, gross!” But I’m not sure that makes sense, given that she would have always known that was what she was signing on to. Unless her accident and Chuck’s death have changed her perspective and she is now more Occupy Wall Street or something?
Good points, and I did wonder about #5. My sense was that this was kind of an “oopsie”, borderline plot hole, on the writers’ part.
Speaking of money, though: why is Chuck’s five grand something to shrug at, “pay off my MasterCard”, but four grand from a burglary is something to drool over? I feel they should have had it be a bunch of figurines worth a total of more like ten times that much to make the storyline more believable.
Also, did anyone else think the guy might have switched the wrong figurine? The one he left in the case looked awfully similar. (ETA: I don’t mean the one he brought with him but the one that was already in the case, which he did not take.)
I agree. I have been burned sometimes in the past when I scoffed at the idea of a big twist, but usually I’m right. And when I’ve been wrong, I’ve side-eyed the show’s writers for doing something pretty questionable. This would definitely be such a case. Kim was sitting too close to plausibly claim it said something totally different from what it actually did, and even “Slipping Jimmy” is not capable of that kind of ad-lib in the moment. (Try it yourself, with no preparation and a different text in front of you.) The other theories have been well-debunked by others already.
I think the truth is more along the lines of what TruCelt proposed.
You are misremembering. He was distributing it to his various stores, not bringing it across the border. And it benefits him because it puts more of the business under his direct control. Ask yourself: how did Netflix benefit by starting to make “House of Cards” and going on to make so much other original content? They were doing very well selling other people’s stuff, but they were vulnerable to having that content pipeline shut off. It’s basically the same here (though I’m sure Netflix would hate being compared to a meth dealer, LOL.
I agree that the guy was probably only there for the one night, but I think Mike would have set outside the place out for a while before breaking in (long enough to realize there was a person moving around in there), or would have checked the bathroom. It’s
Jimmy spent a lot of time with Mrs. Strauss going over her Hummel collection, including who was getting which one. I’m confident that one of the things she went over is distinguishing the different ones so that the wrong one didn’t go to the cousin she didn’t like, and that’s where Jimmy learned to tell them apart. He also wasn’t trying to figure out if something a random person handed him was real or fake (which would take more expertise), he’s presuming it’s real and just has to distinguish which one it is. Since they’ve actually spent screen time showing him learning Hummel identification, him being able to recognize a collectible one doesn’t seem surprising at all to me.
I’m sure that’s a deliberate choice. Jimmy doesn’t want Chuck’s sympathy money. He does want to hustle for himself and be his own man.
Sure, it makes absolute sense that Gus would want to control everything in-house. But he seems to be controlling less now. Up until now, he wasn’t involved in production, but did all the smuggling (I think). Now he’s still not involved in production, and also not involved in transportation. (Although I suppose one could argue that any third party manufacturers that he contacts and makes deals with are in some sense controlled by him…)
It wasn’t so much about the exact amount it’s that the amount was so low. Chuck had considerably more money than that. Yes, I’m sure Rebecca got a chunk of it, but Jimmy was essentially a caretaker for the last several years of Chuck’s life. I don’t know where the 5k number came from, but think about how much money Chuck had. He’s been a well respected lawyer for god knows how long, he just got bought out for, what, 10 million dollars (enough that Howard had to get a loan to pay him) etc. $4000 may have been chump change to Chuck, but it’s a lot of money for someone that’s out of work, drives a beat up Suzuki Esteem (the name’s a pun, too) and is barely making ends meet.
In other words, giving Jimmy $5k was meant as an insult. It’s like your sick parent leaving you $20 after you move in to take care of them while they die of cancer.
I think that Kim felt Jimmy deserved closer to a million dollars.
More directed at Max, but while Gus would benefit because he’d make more money, he was never interested in manufacturing the meth. IIRC the cartel made it very clear that Gus’ only job was distribution on this side of the border.
This episode appeared to be the beginning of Gus making the product on his own. He was instructed to do so because of the loads getting stolen. By the time we get to breaking bad, again IIRC, there was problems between Gus and the cartel over it, but Gale was making the meth.
I understand what Chuck did to Jimmy: Kim explained it very clearly in her great scene with Chuck. My point is more about why he’s getting so excited about four grand for the Hummel. I feel the reward is too low.
And I think you’re misunderstanding Gus’s motivations. The cartel told Gus to start making meth, or finding domestic manufacture, because he manipulated them into doing so
I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who thought that Jimmy might be making up what he was “reading”. I didn’t think about the idea that Kim may have already read it and knew that he was lying though, that would make sense.
I’m curious about Kim’s reaction to the bank’s expansion plans. It’s possible that she thinks they’re being overly ambitious and that concerns her, but I think there’s something else going on. Why, after seeing the models, did she suddenly have to go to the courthouse but wouldn’t say why? It’s like seeing the models or hearing the plans made her realize something.
Gus was always interested in making meth. In BB, in a flashback to the earliest part of Gus’ career, Don Eladio kills Gus’ close associate (Max) shortly after Max & Gus propose making meth for Eladio’s cartel. This is the death which Gus wishes to avenge by slowly ruining Hector.
The only way that the whole Hummel theft makes sense at this point in Jimmy’s career is if he is acting as a junkie. His ego is at a low point & he needs the boost that a scam can give him. The fact that he tried to do it at a distance, was, of course, just self preservation. He ended up having to personally intervene, which is what he wanted in the first place.
I’m sure I do misunderstand his motives, sometimes overly complex plots get lost on me ((ie I always had trouble keeping up with The Sopranos). But it any case, that’s why I back tracked a bit from ‘he was never interested’ to ‘his only job was’, as I thought about it more.
I dunno, 4k is a lot of money to someone that’s out of work
His esteem.
I don’t think Kim would have read the letter before giving it to Jimmy. Her principles wouldn’t allow her to. Howard told her that it was for Jimmy’s eyes only. One of the things that sets Kim apart from Jimmy is her principled ways.
He’s excited about running a ‘scam’, and selling the other person he needs on the $4k benefit. I think it’s he’s excited about the ‘scam’ itself and not the literal profit from it. It’s pretty obvious to me that he’s not acting rationally or healthily in this case, and it seems that Mike agrees since he was asking questions like ‘what did these guys do to you’. If you’re analyzing this based on the finances it doesn’t make sense, but Jimmy’s not acting on calculation, he’s doing some combination of distracting himself from his grief and angrily embracing what Chuck told him the final time that they talked.
I also put ‘scam’ in quotes because this is qualitatively different than his traditional scams. For one thing, it’s not any kind of trick or clever ruse, he’s just hiring a guy to burgle the collectible. There’s no ‘game’ element to it, he’s not fast talking the mark, and there’s no clever twist to it (like completely discrediting Chuck with a minor transposition error). Also, when we have see Jimmy scam people in the past, his marks are not ordinary decent people, or sheep like his father, they’re jackasses who usually think they’re pulling one over on him. The random guy in Chicago who wanted to scam Jimmy out of the coin when Marco ‘discovered’ it was worth more, the investment douche who wanted to talk him and Kim out of their inheritance, the music store owners who broke their agreement with him, Chuck, and so on. He didn’t think of scamming his Elder Law clients out of money even though it would be easy, and the one scam he did pull on them (the mall walking thing) was arguably in their interest.
I think that Jimmy targeting the ‘sheep’ instead of out-wolfing other ‘wolves’ is a major change for him, and is a major step on the road that takes him away from the guy who was personally offended at Sandpiper ripping off old people to the guy who wondered why they don’t just kill Badger.
Hector wasn’t in hiding – Tuco was. Since Tuco was taking care of Hector, where Tuco went Hector had to go. Since the brothers were coming to take Tuco back to Mexico, Hector had to be with Tuco to go with him.
How I figure it, anyway.