I do think Gus is smart enough that he would change the tale to be about keeping the coati as a pet if he was telling it to someone like Gale, but I’m pretty sure the real one did not exactly get a gentle life of treats and walks.
Honestly, I have no read on this. I can see both Gus letting them go since it was all done in secret, or Gus killing them to make sure the secret is buried. Will be interesting to find out.
One thing that has been a constant with Gus has been how well he treats his employees. Look how patient he was with Walt. Look how well he treats Pollos employees. I think it would be totally out of character for him to kill them.
As for whether there are coatis in Chile well, have you ever wondered why Chile is the only country in South America with no Coatis? It’s because they pissed off Gus. Obviously 
I loved the flashback with Chuck and well-coiffed-Howard. This show is so good and telling little self-contained 3-minute stories like that.
I’m curious what people think about Jimmy’s claim that Howard is a bad lawyer but a good salesman. I guess the implication is that HHM used to work because Howard was the salesman and Chuck was the lawyer, and now it’s falling apart. Is there any truth to that? I guess we’ve never actually seen Howard in a courtroom, that I can recall…
I think we can fall back on Occam’s razor regarding whether this was a slip or intentional. While BCS/BB does make some effort to get things right, there are dozens of minor (and major) goofs that are of absolutely no significance. Factual accuracy is not the show’s strong point. IMO it’s far more likely that this was just overlooked than that it was intentional, or that the writers will bother to give Gus a different backstory based on a small goof.
Obviously Gus’s place of origin was not originally of major significance, or otherwise it would have been revealed in BB since they had no idea that they would be able to return to it in a new series. So whatever backstory he has (before his involvement with the cartel) is something that’s been developed for BCS. Of course BCS is all about giving backstories to characters we already know.
Like I said, if such a tiny point turns out to be significant I will be both surprised and very impressed.
BB spoilers.
Whatever Gus might want to do, you can be sure that Mike won’t go along with it. He insisted that “his guys” continue to be paid after they were in prison, because as he said to Walt “That’s what you do.” Walt kills Mike in part in anger because Mike won’t give up the names of his guys so Walt can eliminate them. You can be sure that if Gus had the Germans killed merely to keep them quiet Mike wouldn’t still be working for him in BB. Mike is a killer, but he does have a code of ethics.
Now Mike is utterly ruthless with fellow criminals and direct threats to security. He’s dismayed but continues to work with Gus after he kills Victor in front of him. Mike will off Kai in a second if he becomes a serious problem. But he’s not going to cooperate in the mass killing of mere workers.
This is completely true of Mike, but I also doubt that Gus would want to kill them. These guys are ostensibly solid citizens with lives and families in Germany. If they were all to suddenly disappear it would provoke an investigation, centering on recent communications and travel plans. However thin, there would be some trail that would bring an investigation into a distant orbit around Gus. Gus is already betting that he’s provided enough opsec to keep any connection between the Gernmans and him invisible, but mass murder increases the stake on that bet massively. The alternative bet - that paying people well plus giving them a scary warning about the risks of talking will serve to keep them silent - isn’t appreciably more risky.
If Gus was planning on killing them all, there really isn’t much reason to bring in an entirely foreign workforce. And I agree it would be out of character unless he’s given a good reason not to trust them.
That said, there would be no reason to have Mike know about it even if he did. Just have the bus driving them back to the airport drive off a cliff.
But Gale would know that coatis don’t occur in Chile…
Good point. If you are planning to kill off the workers, just hire a bunch of undocumented Mexicans who won’t be missed. There’s no reason to bring in Germans if they are expendable.
IIRC, when Walt has a couple of the laundry workers do some chore in the Superlab, they are apparently sent back to Mexico instead of being killed. (And if they had been killed, BB would have shown this as adding to the unintended consequences of Walt’s actions.)
Mike doesn’t watch the news? Even if made to look like an accident, he would know what had happened. And Mike’s the kind of guy who will find out about something like that even if it’s done clandestinely.
Plus, these guys sound like a crew the head engineer (forgot his name) as worked with before. He vouched for them to Mike when they were being rowdy (especially Kai) ahead of time. Unless they’re planning to kill the engineer too, I don’t think he’d stand for having his guys killed off.
Does he watch the news? Regardless, there’s any number of ways to kill them without informing Mike of it.
It’s possible that something will go drastically wrong that will result in the German crew being killed. But planning to eliminate them from the start is not the way of either Gus or Mike.
If Mike were the kind of guy you could conceal something like that from, Gus wouldn’t be employing him.
Not really. These guys, as far as Mike is concerned, are supposed to disappear forever right after the job. Mike isn’t CIA. He isn’t going to know if they are in Germany or the bottom of a ditch somewhere.
In the real world, maybe. In the BB/BCS universe, Mike has superpowers. He will know.
Besides that, it’s not Gus’s way either. We have never seen him kill or order a killing on an innocent merely to shut them up. Nearly everyone he kills is a member of the cartel, the Salamancas, or rival gang.
He kills Victor because he screwed up by allowing himself to be seen at the scene of Gale’s murder. It’s possible but not confirmed that he ordered Andrea’s little brother killed, but the kid himself was involved with drug dealers and has committed a murder.
Okay. This is good.
The Germans would have had the same treatment that their boss had: bused in from a different state with bags over their heads. That was clearly a looooong trip, too. If one of them wanted to give information to the authorities, they would be able to narrow down the location to the southwest of the USA. That’s a pretty big area. Gus has very little to fear from the Germans once they’re back in Germany. No compelling reason to kill them, good reasons not to kill them.
But aside from that, your examples just show that he treats people well when it doesn’t interfere with his plans. The Pollos employees are all public facing people that he has to treat well to maintain his public persona. He was only patient with Walt when he needed Walt’s abilities, he was prepared to let the Salamancas kill Walt after their deal was done. He treats his crew well because good help is hard to find and that keeps them loyal to him, but he doesn’t hesitate to brutally murder one when it suits his needs. I don’t see any evidence that he has any moral or ethical issues with killing people when it suits his plans, his niceness comes from maintaining his public facade, practical reasons, or low-effort reasons (he doesn’t enjoy pushing random people around the way the Salamancas do). If he did decide to kill the engineers, it would be a part of pursuing his goal of destroying the cartel and torturing Hector, and he’s been shown to be utterly ruthless when pursuing that goal.
I don’t get a read that he’s planning to kill the Germans, but I don’t see anything that rules that out completely as his plan. I don’t think that Mike would go along with that, but a conflict between Mike and Gus would be a dramatic conflict, not a problem with the show.
I think that Jimmy is exaggerating, that Howard is a competent but not exceptional lawyer, that there is nothing wrong with having him work a case, but he’s not going to find that really obscure bit of case law that someone like Chuck would. He went to a good law school and did fine, but was never the most amazing law student, and would not have been able to quietly complete a distance-learning law degree on the side of a full-time job the way that Jimmy did. His father was probably more in Chuck’s league, and he feels like he’s in the shadow of the two of them, which makes Jimmy’s jab at him really hurt even though it’s probably a gross exaggeration. I think HHM is falling apart because Howard has no confidence and is working through grief, there’s no other senior partner to cover for him, the firm’s reputation is trashed by the McGill brothers circus act, and they’re buying out Chucks share. Having a senior partner go crazy, retire, then die in a weird fire that’s almost certainly rumored to be a suicide can’t help the work environment either.
Why would Gus kill them and get the interest of authorities in two countries piqued?
He has a pretty good OPSEC plan, which was seen last episode. He, as stated elsewhere, probably used that on the rest of the workers. Hell, it’s good enough that he can safely send them on holiday to LA or NYC or even for a short furlough to Germany.
Plus, his man management is such, if there was an accident which killed one of the Germans, he’d probably send his widow the balance of his fees and a cheque for compensation.
I also don’t think (as some suggested) that Gus was oblivious to the need for entertainment when he spoke with Mike, the discussion was more of what they should get, not why.