I also think one of the interesting things on this show is just how much of what Jimmy does depends on his choices. While he does have some bad things happen to him, basically all of his failure is either directly because of what he chooses to do or a consequence of something he chose to do, he’s not someone who has cancer or a car wreck strike out of the blue. For example getting sex offender charges for the Chicago Sunroof involved bad luck, but if he didn’t decide to crap in a car in the first place he wouldn’t have the problem. Having his brother press charges against him and move to disbar him was bad, but if he didn’t do the forgery in the first place it couldn’t happen. He had a well-tuned Elder law practice where he did his own thing then a comfortable, high-paying job at F&M - and left both of those with bridges in smoldering ruins.
So I think it’s a pretty safe prediction that losing Kim is not going to be some random tragedy, but a response to something that he does to push her away.
this point was well-articulated when Jimmy have his parole office the wishful thinking long-view on returning to being a lawyer (I’ll be better, more cases, more clients, more money, etc)
Yes of course there’s a distinction between those two words – I shouldn’t have said “You can’t say X, but not Y”.
But the point is (and I’ll use caps if you’re going to): THEY ARE BOTH NEGATIVE IN THIS CONTEXT, AND FOR THE SAME REASON
A more low-key entrance would have been better in many ways.
Anyone who sees them is going to be on high alert, and will call anyone nearby to come look.
As mentioned, they are not familiar faces here, and rocking up in a Lady gaga meat suit is not a good idea here even if it’s the last thing that they’d expect.
No, I mean the strange way they lower the guns down near the start of the firefight. At point 22:01.
Good analysis. I would agree that it’s unlikely that Kim is lost to some random tragedy, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if something awful happens to her as a result - directly or indirectly - of a bad choice that Jimmy makes. I think it’s more likely that one of those bad choices will drive a permanent wedge between them, but it could well go down ugly. I honestly don’t know which way would be more painful for Jimmy: knowing that she has made a conscious, permanent choice to cut him out of her life because of his bad choices, or knowing that she’s dead and/or grievously harmed because of one.
I think him having a therapy-style conversation with his parole officer highlights how much he needs therapy and how bad it is that he avoids talking to a therapist and instead dumps it on a guy who just wants a one-word answer to fill out a form. It’s interesting to look at him and Howard side by side - Howard appears to be a wreck while Jimmy appears quite happy. But Howard is actually healthily working through grief with a therapist and knows that he’s going through a temporary down time, while Jimmy is working hard to avoid dealing with any of his issues and engaging in wishful thinking. The little conversation about sleeping pills is really telling about the difference in their approach - I think Howard laughs at Jimmy’s question about ‘don’t they have pills for that’ because he knows the insomnia is a side effect of working through things, and he’s not looking for a quick fix for a symptom. Jimmy meanwhile is refusing to look deeply at anything, and is just grasping for quick fixes which keep hurting him.
My prediction based on how the show has worked is that Kim is going to pull away from Jimmy because of how she views something he decides to do (including negative actions like ‘not mentioning X’ or ‘standing by while X happens’). She may end up injured or killed by something he did before the show is over, but I think her turning away from him will be driven entirely by her response to something he chooses to do and any death/injury will happen after that. It’s not impossible for them to decide to go the other way, but it doesn’t fit the way I see Jimmy’s story in the show. I also think that Kim dying, even as a result of something he did, would be the easier way for Jimmy, that it would be much more painful to see Kim decide that she wants nothing more to do with him - especially since he could easily deflect the blame if she dies in some mishap.
Then again, 2/3 of my Kim predictions are wrong, so…
Have the creators of the show commented on whether or not they are going to depict what happens to Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill after the events of Breaking Bad? They keep showing flashforwards to him working at Cinnabon in Nebraska. I was just wondering if they have said whether or not they plan on showing him getting caught by authorities for his actions in Breaking Bad.
They’ve said that they plan to show more of the Gene timeline, though they haven’t said exactly how much of that they’ll show. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have some full episodes in that timeframe to close out the show, but there’s no guarantee. I don’t think it’s likely that Jimmy is going to get caught, and they definitely haven’t said that what happens to him in the Gene timeline (and probably haven’t decided yet). They definitely haven’t said that they plan on having him get caught by the authorities, and I don’t really expect that to be how the series ends.
(BB Spoilers if anyone cares about that) He used the vacuum cleaner salesman to build a new identity and escape during the episode Granite State, and his offhand comment about ‘running a Cinnabon in Omaha’ turned out to be prophetic. Here’s an interesting video that splices together the flash-forward from the last episode with the scene in BB where he comes to the vacuum guy. I like the attention to detail that makes them fit so well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3e9leJ0yLQ
[BREAKING BAD SPOILERS are scattered throughout this post.]
I see a lot of talk (here, and in recaps of the show) about how Jimmy’s talk to the parole officer about how he’s going to have a bigger and better law practice, with more clients and more money, is sadly completely wrong. But I don’t see it that way. It didn’t last, but for a few years it looks to me like he achieved his dream! He was actually a good lawyer in BB, not just a “fixer”. In particular, he came through for Jesse more than once. Remember when he helped Jesse finagle the house back from his parents? Or when he put the fear of god into the DEA after Hank beat Jesse? What about when he came into the Albuquerque PD and took charge when they were questioning Jesse about ricin? Oh, and he did pretty well for Mike also, when he had DEA heat on him.
As you guys are saying, they really did an incredibly job matching that Saul scene with BB—the insider podcast has a lot of interesting detail about how they did it, and the difficulties that arose going from 2K to 4K. Just coincidentally, I’m in the final stages of rewatching BB with my wife (third time through for me, first for her; she has never seen BCS at all). We’ve been doing it for a couple years now when we find time, and now have only four episodes left. I’m tempted to slip the flash-forward scene into the rewatch, right before “Granite State”. Do you guys think that’s a good move?
It’s a couple seconds earlier on my copy (bought from iTunes). But that’s a momentary flourish, to be “badass”, and even if you don’t like those kinds of moves, it was hardly a very risky one.
You left off the major piece of the law practice he described… that it would be with Kim. So no, he absolutely does not achieve the dream of he and Kim practicing law together in a bigger and better practice with more clients and more money. Yeah he ends up being successful as a lawyer, but not achieving his dream. Also the kind of stuff he was saying to the PO was just the kind of salesman hype he’s good at - he doesn’t actually have a plan for making a successful law practice, he just knows it will happen, and hasn’t even let his ‘future’ partner in on the plan yet, he’s just assuming she’s all-in.
Oh, wow. I just realized something. I don’t know why (I kinda stopped paying close attention to Breaking Bad well before it was over), but I have been under the assumption that “Gene” working at Cinnabon was part of Witness Relocation.
I had always figured he got busted, and had to this was the result.
Interesting! I wonder what the demography of the show is - it obviously can’t be ALL former BB viewers who watched until the end. I have to imagine your assumption isn’t unique. Would kind of add a slightly different color to the Cinnabon scenes.
First, why would the Feds need him as a witness for anything? His main client Walt was dead, and so was pretty much anyone else who had ever been involved with either Walt or Gus, including Mike, Gus, all of Gus’s men, Lydia, Schuler (the Madrigal contact), the Salamancas, the cartel leaders, and the neo-Nazis. (Actually, until listing them, I hadn’t realized how fatal any connection with Walt could be.) The other Madrigal executives pledged full cooperation. Although the ending implies that Jesse escaped,* he was a small fish, and even if they caught him his fingerprints would have been all over the meth lab and I’m sure there would have been plenty more evidence to convict him without Saul’s testimony.
Gene is clearly petrified of being discovered by the cops rather than other criminals seeking revenge. He waits for hours when he has locked himself in the garbage room rather than open the emergency exit and trigger an alarm that might draw the cops. When he is in the hospital after passing out, his heart rate goes up when he sees some cops.
Now, it’s possible Gene is also paranoid about being hit by other criminals, but there’s really nobody left to go after him. (It’s possible, though, that he doesn’t know that Walt entirely eliminated the neo-Nazis or Lydia.)
*I think this was the intent, but I couldn’t see how Jesse could elude capture for more than 15 minutes. He was physically and emotionally shattered, dirty and dressed in rags, had no money, was driving a conspicuous car, and his only friends were the criminal masterminds Skinny Pete and Badger. He would be nabbed the first time he tried to gas up. (His escape might have been more plausible if Walt had tossed him a big roll of money at the end, but he didn’t.)
Now that Kim is getting into being an Assigned Counsel for small-time druggies, that opens the door for several cameos. Not Jesse Pinkman himself, since I don’t recall that he had any priors at the start of Breaking Bad. (I could be wrong.) But when we first meet them, Badger was on probation, and Skinny Pete knew Tuco from having been in prison with him. So I’m going to be that we meet one or both of them through Kim’s new practice. Of course if they show Badger or Skinny Pete that does provide a way to get Jesse into the show.
Yeah, but if Gatopescado didn’t watch to the end of BB as he says, then he and folks like him would know little or none of this :). We BB cognoscenti have foreknowledge of where most( but not all )of this is going to end up. A virgin viewer has none and a casual, non-complete viewer of BB( or someone who quickly skimmed a wikipedia article )has only an approximate idea.
It’s interesting to me what a virgin viewer would make of the Cinnabon scenes. Clearly Gene has ended up in a bad place, but a non-initiate wouldn’t know how, why, when or what exactly he may be fearing. It adds another layer of tension I’d imagine.