Oh, Lord! I quit trying to make sense of Breaking Bad in the first season. 
Gave up watching entirely in the second, and only came back to watch it with the wife.
After the train heist episode, tuned it out pretty completely.
I guess I’ve assumed that BCS would appeal mostly to people who were already fans of BB. Most of the drama is rooted in the fact that we know how Jimmy and Mike (and Hector, Gus, Tuco, and others) end up, and we want to see how they arrived at those places. Without that, a lot of the plot is going to appear pointless or mysterious. So will the cameos by Huell, Ira, and others. I suppose it would be like watching Godfather II without having seen Godfather I.
I don’t think he’s completely unafraid of criminals, we saw him get worried when a big buzzcut wearing white guy not in any kind of uniform came towards him in one of the early seasons. He probably isn’t confident that the Aryans were wiped out if he even knows they got killed. Like you pointed out, he wouldn’t be afraid of cops or beurocracy if he was in witness protection.
We see Jesse go offscreen after the confrontation with Walt, presumably there was some cash around to go with the arsenal of guns so he could really quickly grab some cash and some clothes, maybe a gun. Since the police didn’t know he was in the area, there’s no reason for them to put out an APB on him quickly, so he should be able to stop somewhere (like a Walmart) to buy toiletries and maybe clothes, then pay cash for a motel room to clean up, then get on the road, then buy another car with cash, then keep going. I don’t think it’s likely, but it’s not impossible for him to clean up and then be a nondescript white guy staying out of trouble. Not sure about the Alaska thing the producers like though, crossing the Canadian border seems pretty risky for him.
If you can’t cross the Canadian border as a single person from America then you don’t deserve to call yourself a career criminal.
Come to think of it, it’s not clear how much after BB those scenes with Gene take place. About 6 months take place between Walt and Saul becoming fugitives and Walt’s massacre of the Aryans. Saul/Gene would certainly have heard of that, since it would have been national news. However, since he didn’t know the Aryans directly he wouldn’t have known if Walt had got them all. So yeah, either way he could still be afraid of them - or friends/allies of any of the other people that Walt killed.
I just re-watched the scene. After the confrontation with Walt, Jesse is standing directly in front of the door to the outside. He turns and walks in the direction of the door, and although he goes offscreen we hear the door close behind him while the camera is on Walt. We can see the entire room behind Walt as he talks to Lydia on Todd’s phone. He clearly didn’t go rummage around for clothes or cash but went directly outside. And when he opens the door to the car, he isn’t carrying anything either. The gun he picked up he left with Walt.
It’s certainly possible to fanwank some way Jesse got away. After all, Walt’s eluding the cops in New Hampshire after they put out an APB was just as implausible, especially since he needed to go back to his hideout to pick up his cash. Maybe there were cash, clothes, or weapons in the car. But the first thing I thought while watching his escape was that it wouldn’t be for long, and even Gilligan thought he was probably toast.
I assumed that he was indeed relocated but not by any official witness relocation program. That’s one of the reasons that Gene is still constantly looking over his shoulder like he did with cab driver guy.
There’s an inner illogic to the Cinnabon scenes that would probably bother anyone who didn’t know that the reason the character is working as a manager of an Omaha Cinnabon is that the writers of Breaking Bad came up with that idea as a throwaway line.
Someone with “Saul Goodman’s” record would be highly unlikely to apply for a job with a chain like Cinnabon, because chains like that are pretty likely to require fingerprinting for their managers (if not for line workers).
More likely: Jimmy could have used his legal knowledge to make money by settling in a community near a large prison. A local hangout would provide him with many cash customers who’d be willing to pay for his expertise, strictly off the record (so the state bar association wouldn’t be a problem). He’d probably move from community to community, not staying too long in any one place. When he accumulated enough cash he could buy himself a small business somewhere, and just stay off the radar for the rest of his days.
Managing a Cinnabon happened only because of the random line used in that one BB episode; it doesn’t really make sense for a guy who fears the law catching up with him.
Good point. There’s also the fact that Cinnabon is going to have a lot of customer traffic, and it’s in a city on a major highway, which increases the chance that someone could recognize him. He shouldn’t be working retail anywhere, especially not in a large city.
On the other hand, maybe that was the Extractor’s cut-rate option. Saul didn’t have as much cash as Walt. 
Jimmy left in BB with a suitcase full of cash - while he had to pay a chunk to the vacuum repair man, it was only something like a quarter million dollars, and he had made a lot more from Walt. Also, the vacuum man comes up with a fake identity, so he’s got legitimate documents and doesn’t need to stay completely underground. So he doesn’t need to make money to live, he needs a boring job that lets him have enough legitimate income to live somewhere and cover health insurance and the like. Moving place to place while associating with active criminals and forming a reputation in each place (why would they pay him for legal advice if he has no rep) doesn’t really seem like a good way to hide, especially for someone who was a lawyer who worked with criminals before he went into hiding. I agree that some kind of bland, non-public facing job would be ideal, but (other than the fingerprinting) I’m not sure what kind of job you’d be able to get outside of retail without much real background or skills.
When did Cinnabon and other places like that start fingerprinting managers? I had no idea that was a thing but from poking around it looks like it is. Interesting some of the jobs that do require fingerprinting:
From talent agents to funeral directors: Who gets fingerprinted?
Yes, the chances for someone to recognize him are way too high.
You have to wonder how the Extractor would make such decisions. (Idea for a series!)
Pantastic, I don’t think Jimmy would necessarily have to do any major reputation-building–he could just show up and offer to look at a couple of people’s paperwork for free, and if he told them things that saved them from consequences they thought were inevitable, that would make his reputation enough to bring him more business.
But I’m not saying that’s the only realistic route he could have taken (as opposed to the Cinnabon manager idea the showrunners were obliged to use because of the throwaway line). As you say, most non-retail jobs would have been at least somewhat safe. The X factor is that we don’t know how much cash he had left after paying the Extractor’s fee.
Maybe that random line tells you something. Maybe the Cinnabon gig would be too random and so what we’re seeing is Saul’s daydream while he’s actually doing something else (and why it’s filmed in black and white). Just sayin’.
Actually, it’s not really the throwaway line, it’s that Cinnabon enthusiastically embraced the idea with a tweet after the show, then started tying in with the show. They could have thrown away the line on it’s own, but actually having Cinnabon involved when Gene was working at Cinnabon was too good to pass up. IMO it’s a really smart move on their part, it gets them lots of free advertising at the cost of training a couple of people and letting them use one location to film once in a while.
I guess I just assumed Saul/Gene owned the Cinnabon he manages. Does Cinnabon not franchise? If he owns it he doesn’t need to fingerprint himself.
The managing part makes it low key. Sort of like how Gus manages his chicken restaurant when he doesn’t have to. You look more like a middle class worker scraping by. Like you risked your retirement on starting your own business and you’re putting everything you have into making it successful. Instead of just dropping ill-gotten drug money on a scheme to legitimize your wealth while living a life of leisure. That’s how people start asking questions.
You’d think if that were the plan though, Gene would make himself look more enthusiastic at work.
Saul bought the Cinnabon franchiase as one of the ways to launder his BB drug money. It was all part of his plan to get a foothold in Omaha where Kim has retreated to work as a paralegal in the local legal aid office( after Jimmy caused her to be disbarred by using her name in one of his schemes without her knowledge )after their disastrous separation. The idea was to buy several in the area and make one last pitch: “Look honey, I’m out of the dirty lawyering business and now managing six Cinnabons instead! And I smell deliciously of cinnamon and cream cheese frosting all the time now! Love me!”
Sadly his plans were dashed when all he had time to do was purchase the one before Walt’s indiscretions brought him down.
It could happen :p.
It could be an interesting series. On the other hand, one wonders why a city with only 500,000 inhabitants would have enough business for someone who specializes in disappearing people.
(I also wondered how Albuquerque had enough very large (and necessarily expensive) houses that had enough room for a meth lab but were also infested by termites for Walt to set up in every week. Actually, I tried to figure out once how many times he had to cook in order to make as money as he was shown to have by the end, based on figures from when he cooked for Gus, and it was astronomical.)
Right, and my mind is especially blown by tuning out after the train heist. That means missing what are pretty universally recognized as the best parts of the show, including what many critics consider the single best episode of TV, ever (“Ozymandias”).
Vince has said on the podcast that he’s surprised by how many BCS-only fans he runs into, but his attitude is “the more the merrier”. Of course, that’s the attitude you’d expect him to have, since he needs viewership to keep the show going and he’s certainly lost some BB viewers (I met one when Uber driving the other day who loved BB but tapped out of BCS after S2). But it doesn’t seem like the ideal approach in terms of appreciating it artistically.
Stop it! My poor brain can’t take any more!
And just think if they hired a Gene look-alike manager …
That’s the ticket!
Houses are typically tented during escrow.