They’ll need a day off once a week for their bodies to rest, but Mike has them set up very nicely. Far more so than they are accustomed to, clearly. They were very surprised to see the bar and the movie theater.
Agree about the precautions and the ownership. I predict we’ll find out he has owned it for quite some time. Gus plans way down the road.
I don’t think they’ll be leaving the warehouse until this is done. If anyone does, he won’t survive.
There is no reason to worry about visas with all this secrecy. Or at least wouldn’t have been back then. Nowadays I could see someone being stopped and jailed trying to leave if they had overstayed their visa. But at the time that was utterly unthinkable.
Anyway, surely Gus could get them to Mexico if needed. I doubt the border patrol are checking for illegals sneaking out. (Again, back then. Good God how things have changed!)
They all have their areas of expertise. There could be some days where some of the crew wouldn’t be needed. They might not actually have to kill Kai. They just need to scare the shit out of him piñata style to knock him down a peg.
Let’s see Visas
No ESTA at the time, that came around 2008. Overstaying visas would be a problem, this is right after 9/11, they were very anal about it.
Taxes would not be a problem if they did not trigger the “substantial presence” test. Basically stay less than 183 days in country.
I do not doubt that Gus managed to deal with this easily. Got them business visitor visas (hiring them as “consultants”. No doubt they have structured it that it never gets triggered.
There’s no reason to assume that all or even any the surrounding businesses have round the clock security guards. If they are like the vast majority of businesses they have an alarm and maybe a car comes out to take look. And they have to at least take into account someone might get curious and a van visit every day is hardly the biggest concern.
Actually, it can be seen in Crawl Space that the laundry is immediately adjacent to a Red Roof Inn (the sign can be seen as Hank and Walt drive by), like the actual location in Albuquerque. (It’s labeled Rodeway Inn and Suites on the satellite image*, but you can see from the sign it’s actually a Red Roof Inn.) Also the top right photo (a scene from the show) shows an Ambassador Inn directly across the street. These motels will both have staff on 24 hours a day. The businesses on the other side of the laundry are a welding gas supply firm and a sign manufacturer. I’ll grant that the latter may not have 24 hour security, but there are going to be people around at the other locations, probably including a security guard periodically checking the parked cars, through the night.
Of course, they could just ignore it. These are just fleeting images in the background of scenes in BB. So the actual situation will be whatever the writers want it to be. FWIW, the actual location is right in the middle of Albuquerque rather than on the outskirts and near some major highways.
I’m really just saying, regardless of the magnitude of the actual risk, transferring the crew back and forth every night incurs more risk than housing them on site. The reason for not doing so could be as simple as there is not enough room to house them there comfortably (which seems to be the case).
I really think you’re vastly overestimating the curiosity that people have about a van full of white people traveling in New Mexico. In the case of a breakdown, I’m pretty sure Los Pollos Hernandos has a few spare vans they could grab quickly to get the Germans to work. And offering the new value of someone’s car in cash in lieu of filing insurance has a tendency to silence a lot of questions; there’s an awful lot of people who would take a quick $20k to leave the scene of an accident and not report it. It’s not like they’re going to be doing a lot of driving, so any accident is going to be some kind of one-off deal anyway.
In this episode, Mike, Tyrus, and Gus are all wearing medium jackets or overcoats, so it’s not mid-summer. On the other hand, Jimmy is wearing a track suit at night, so it’s not that cold. A cherry tree outside Stacey’s house is in full bloom and the grass is greening up, so it’s evidently early spring.
I normally enjoy a good debate about the plausibility of something in a TV show, and I hesitate to act like some kind of thread police, but… wow.
I see three possibilities:
(1) It will never be discussed precisely how the germans get from the warehouse to the laundry and back. It will be left up to us to imagine that Mike and Gus can come up with a clever and dependable way to make it work. Mike and Gus are smarter than us, infinitely more knowledgeable about the location and time period, and have spent their lives either keeping criminal things hidden, or uncovering criminal things. I have zero doubt that they can come up with a transport method that is damn near foolproof (which might well include corrupt cops)
(2) We will see how the germans are transported, because it will be relevant, and it will be something clever and well thought out, as we would expect from Mike and Gus (and Vince and company). And if it lacks a bit in actual real-world plausibility, it will make up for it in awesomeness (as has happened fairly often in BB/BCS)
or
(3) We will see how the germans are transported, and it will be something stupid and flawed which clearly wouldn’t work, and THEN and only then will there be any point in analyzing it, bitching about it, etc.
There’s a fourth possibility: That Mike and Gus have thought of some intricate, perfectly engineered, and apparently fool-proof way to transport the Germans, and some totally unexpected thing like a kid collecting tarantulas will screw it up, and that will become the focus of an episode. And because that’s the BB/BCS way, that’s what my money is on.
Could it be that Kim’s new law firm will get involved in the Sandpiper case on Sandpiper’s side and cost Jimmy his big payout? The scene with Chuck getting a big payout for his client by finding obscure case law could have foreshadowed that.
Schweikart & Cokely are Sandpiper’s attorneys. They offered Kim a job, with a partnership within two years, a couple of seasons ago, but she declined and went out on her own with Jimmy instead. They clearly don’t hold that or her relationship with Jimmy against her, at least if she’s bringing a big account like Mesa Verde with her.
Although Kim won’t likely be involved in Sandpiper herself as head of the banking division, there is certainly a lot of potential for conflict between her firm and Jimmy, which could affect their relationship.
Thanks. I’m sure that’s the key then. She might have the opportunity to warn him about something but she, correctly, won’t because of ethics. Or she could help her colleagues when she overhears something.
Yes, I’m sure that her going to that particular firm is going to be bad news for Jimmy (even worse than breaking up Wexler and McGill). Somehow Jimmy is going to be screwed out of his cut of the settlement, which will further convince him that legit is not the way to go.
