When they bring in the workers you can see a big screen TV and theater style seating. We also don’t know what they may have inside the houses.
Plus they said they would get them anything they want “within reason.”
Mike was the one who suggested all that. He told Gus it wasn’t enough to just keep them alive or they’d strat climbing the walls.
I agree. It’s almost as thought the writers bought into a Hollywood meme that cool crooks hve some special look that makes them inviolable.
Yes. As I watch I wonder how someone unfamiliar with BB could possibly tolerate the slowness of plot and what seems to be directionlessness. For one thing, Mike and Jimmy are the two main protagonists but hardly ever interact.
I assume you weren’t able to read the yellow legal pad that Kim picked up off the bed when she found Jimmy asleep. It had a series of sketches for possible “Wexler and McGill” signs. Wexler’s specialty was always listed as “Banking Law.” McGill’s specialty was different on each sign, including Insurance Law, Immigration Law, Bankruptcy Law, and Gaming Law (and of course prophetic regarding Saul’s range of practice). She thinks that’s cute, and smiles to herself. Then she turns the page and sees the big WM logo he’s designed and looks rueful.
By the way, per the credits the other guy is Man Mountain, who was last seen in season 1 in Pimiento as one of Pryce’s applicants to be one of his bodyguards along with Mike and Sobchak. Sobchak ridicules Mike for not having a gun, so Mike takes him down and takes his gun from him. Seeing this, Man Mountain runs away..
Yeah, that coati story was seriously chilling.
I don’t agree with those who are saying Kim doesn’t love Jimmy as much as he does her. I think she loves him very deeply, as evidenced by her passion for him on the couch and her righteous anger at Howard. I just think she has the instinct that it would be a bad idea to form a law partnership with him. And that’s not so unusual, for people in a relationship (including the happily married) to not want to work all day with each other. In her case, she has to add in the factor that she knows Jimmy is willing to cut corners she’s not comfortable with.
Of course the point of the story is to emphasize both Gus’s vindictiveness and his patience in seeking revenge. I’m sure he tortured it for a long time until allowing it to die, just because it stole some fruit from him.
Hector is certainly familiar with coatis, since they are common in Mexico, although I don’t think they are known by that name there. (The name is from Brazil.) And although Gus is supposedly from Chile, that is the only country in South America where they are not found.
And Jimmy should have gotten his money back.
This might be a sloppy oversight on the writers’ part, or it could actually be very purposeful (BB spoilers follow).
So maybe this is a very subtle little clue that Fring indeed did not grow up in Chile.
I think it’s more likely that the writers just needed the name of a Latin American animal that might steal fruit, and didn’t particularly care about looking up the range. If it actually is intentional I will be extremely impressed.
When they first referred to Fring as being Chilean that seemed anomalous to me, since he is clearly of partly African ancestry, and that’s is much less common in Chile than it is in most Latin American countries. He would be much more likely as a Colombian or Dominican.
His accent also doesn’t fit, but of course this is because Giancarlo Esposito is not a native Spanish speaker. Even as a non-native speaker I find his Spanish a bit jarring and unnatural. Esposito was born in Copenhagen to an Italian father and African-American mother, and I don’t think he spoke much if any Spanish before this role. (Given this, however, I’ll say he’s probably pretty convincing to a non-Spanish speaker.)
It’s virtually impossible for us to have proof that it was intentional. I don’t know if this is the only forum where someone raised the point you did about the animal’s range, but if it has been mentioned in many places (and BB/BCS fans are nothing if not notoriously nitpicky), or if someone working on the show is reading this thread, they may point it out to the writers. At which point they can just say “okay, our out is exactly what SlackerInc points out” and write in a non-Chilean origin story for Fring.
Or they could leave it unresolved in which case you can’t really prove it wasn’t intentional. The only proof we could get would be on the other side, proving you right—if they don’t read this thread and it isn’t brought up on places they do read*, and they show us some actual flashback of him as a kid tending his tree, and there’s a title card or some irrefutable evidence in the scene that they are in fact in Chile.
*Or if such a sequence is in the next episode, which is already “in the can”, too late to change after reading this fact-checking revelation.
I still am not seeing it. If I am in the criminal lifestyle and off the grid, then I “have a guy” to buy drugs, stolen items or illegal guns. These are perfectly legal and untraceable items that can be bought in any drug store (or arguably at the time) a retain cell phone store.
Even with cameras in the store, the government cannot track where it was purchased, by whom, and when. They cannot pull all retail video from all retail establishments in the entire world for an indefinite period of time.
Second, Jimmy has to have a markup, right? We saw him buying the phones from his cell phone store and then making a profit. That would be like me buying a burner phone from Wal-Mart and selling it at a profit. Would a customer rather buy the phone from Wal-Mart or from a stranger’s car trunk in the dark outside of a motorcycle joint?
And not just a handful of people, but enough where Jimmy makes a ton of cash. Is there something I am missing?
It doesn’t have to actually make sense to buy from Jimmy in the parking lot. They just have to think it might be safer and be willing to make an impulse purchase.
Plus, if they roll their Harleys up to the store in the light of day and buy a strangely large quantity of phones, then come back a week later, how do they know the “straight” clerk isn’t the sister, or wife, or friend, or brother-in-law, of someone like Hank or Gomie? They sit by the pool and talk about the tattooed bikers buying all these phones, maybe Hank takes a look at the surveillance footage or even arranges some special phones get sold next time.
Those wannabe clones of Walt and Jesse at Home Depot were also buying legal items, but suspicious ones. They might have been wise to pay a premium to get them on the black market.
Part of it is that he’s built a desire for an impulsive purchase- he is bringing the phones to the clients, educating them on their need for a phone, building up a sense of urgency and scarcity, resulting in them making a purchase they originally had no idea they wanted in the first place. I doubt his clients are choosing his phones over going to Walmart. They’re choosing his phones over not buying a phone at all. Maybe some will switch to buying at Walmart, but it’s likely that for many of his clients, Jimmy’s their phone guy now.
It’s basic sales. His compatriot in Hummel heist sees the need to burn a phone for privacy with regularity but most on the street in that marketplace have not yet felt that. He is going into the field and selling them on why they need this product, and then providing the product conveniently on the spot (and in, what he sells as, an untraceable manner).
Nothing stops me from going into a grocery store and buying some lemonade (or cold water bottle) fairly cheaply. But y’know I didn’t realize I was thirsty until I saw the stand, the kid hawking it, and it is right there … They probably don’t really need burner phones, they’ve been doing fine without 'em, but he is able to convince them they need them.
ETA, yeah what ITD said.
One of the selling points for the bikers was having throwaway phones to sneak into prison, which is a legit need. Also, Jimmy is buying the phones bulk now, so he could probably undercut the Walmart price a bit and still make some money.
I’m pretty sure that Gus is not going to want anybody on that crew left as a witness.
Did you miss the earlier scene where Gus brought Mike in and showed him the setup when it just had two trailers with bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens, then asked Mike if there should be anything else? Because the projection TV, theater seats, bar, treadmills, and basketball court were all specifically suggested by Mike to keep the guys from climbing the walls, then absentmindedly approved by Gus as he went to deal with Hector. Gus probably would be fine living in a box for 9 months to finish a project with nothing but digging to occupy him, but regular people obviously would not deal with that well.
Where do you get the idea that everyone at the hot dog place (or everyone ‘in the criminal lifestlye’) lives off the grid and ‘has a guy’ for fencing goods or buying guns? We actually see very few people who live off the grid in this series, the cousins are the only ones I can think of who do. There are a HUGE number of people that know a dealer to get drugs but have a legitimate job and ID, and the majority of them don’t have a fence or gun dealer in their rolodex. (Rule of thumb: If you need to launder money, then you’re actually on the grid, because if you’re actually off the grid then the IRS doesn’t know about you spending money)
Jimmy is introducing burner phones to people who aren’t used to the idea and selling them conveniently. It’s really, really common for people to buy things as impulse purchases when a salesman does good sales work, and when it’s more convenient than sorting out how anonymous a phone in a drug store is yourself. The entire business model of convenience stores wouldn’t exist if people always avoided impulse purchases and never payed more for getting something without hassle.
Yeah, during the episode I saw the sketches but couldn’t really read the list of things. I saw a screenshot and that explains answers that, plus the fact that ‘criminal law’ isn’t on it is pretty telling. Jimmy and Kim both tell a lot of soft lies to each other.
I thought he looked familiar. He’s did a better job intimidating kids than resisting Mike’s Dead Mackeral Stare ™, that’s for sure. Its kind of funny that one of Jimmy’s ‘muscle’ guys has already had and lost a run-in with Mike given what happens in BB between him and Mike.
And while he’s telling the story to Hector, the better analogy to the coati is Nacho - he was just trying to defend his father, like the coati was just an animal seeking food, but both interfered with Gus’s plans and Nacho’s already taken two bullets. Looks like Nacho’s only long term options are disappearing or Mike intervening with Gus to go easy on him.
They’re not native to Chilie, but they’ve been introduced to some Chilean islands. If it’s not just an oversight or an outright lie from Gus, then we have a fairly specific origin area for him.
https://www.arkive.org/south-american-coati/nasua-nasua/video-00.html
I…ummm…as I was watching I sorta thought he was just saying he ended up keeping it as a pet. Y’know - in subjugation and all. Somehow as I write this I flash on Fring telling the same story to Gale Boetticher, but as a more jolly cautionary tale - something about the pet coatimundi Paco that he had for years as a child that he caught after he found it stealing from his fruit tree.
Now that think about I’m sure you guys are much more likely right. I guess I am just predisposed to think the best about even murderous, cold-as-ice drug lords when it comes to animals :D.
That is the feeling I get as well, once the job is complete, the crew will be disposed of.