So I thought, nothing then. Guess I’ll go with “No major state felonies or federal charges”
I agree, Lalo isn’t definitely dead in the BB time frame where Saul comes in. What I think is definite: Lalo and Nacho end up with a deadly conflict, probably not about the pill switch itself, but either Nacho’s connection to Gus, something Gus has Nacho do, or Nacho trying to escape the dealer life. At some point Nacho attempts to use the Canadian IDs that he pulled out of the safe in this episode to get him and his dad to safety. Jimmy is involved in the scheme (or appears to be) in some way that if Lalo knows for sure would lead Lalo to want to kill Jimmy, but that Lalo doesn’t solidly figure out near the ‘present’ time. Lalo is definitely dead (or believed dead) by the time Gus kills the cartel in S4 of breaking bad and taunts Hector that he’s the last Salmanca left.
I think it’s not impossible for Lalo to die pre-BB, but nothing said that he did. If he does die, it needs to be close enough to BB that Saul would think he’s still alive and sending people out when he first shows up in Breaking Bad. I think that whatever happens with Lalo, Nacho, Jimmy, and maybe Mike will be a big part of Season 5 of BCS. I think the most likely course for Lalo is that he survives until Gus is executing his endgame against the cartel in S4 of BB. If they end up having part BCS take place at the same time as BB, then they will probably show the final fate of Lalo then.
I think you might be dipping into the CSI-effect a bit, here. The situation is basically a big bluff, with the threat that if Huell goes to trial, the galley will be filled with angry Bayou folk. If the DA could get a continuance, she might be able to do some of the forensics testing you suggest, but there is no reason the judge or Kim would agree to it. The DA might suspect that the situation is fishy, but there is a not-insignificant chance that it’s for real and she probably won’t want to take that risk for such a minor case.
I’m sure the show’s writers could find a plausible way for it to unravel, but it looks like this is going to be a minor stepping stone to the complete downfall and pre-BB disappearance of the Kim character, so I wouldn’t bet on revisiting this issue in future episodes unless that DA becomes a recurring character and she and Kim develop a long-standing mutual animosity.
I suppose if we wanted to close a potential pothole, we could have had a moment when Kim sees the boxes of letters in the judge’s chambers and says “what are all these?” and runs her hands as many envelopes as possible and mixing them all up to cover any potential DNA discovery later.
Everybody assumes Kim is gone by Breaking Bad and I don’t think that’s necessarily true. We see nothing of Saul’s personal life. For all we know he goes home to Kim every night after his daily adventures with Walt and Jesse. Gene does seem to be flying solo in Omaha though. But that may be temporary.
I gather she’s out of his life by the time he decides to leave town since there’s no indication that he even thought about making arrangements for her.
Also, while she seems to thrill at the scamming, I have trouble believing she’d ever go “full Saul” and get knee deep with murderous drug dealers.
The beauty of it is that the writers don’t even know the answer to this yet. We’ll all find out in a year or two.
Picture: A back room at Saul’s office. One we’ve never seen before, with mahogany fixtures and understated oriental carpet. Kim is behind the desk, looking grim.
Saul: (shaken) I think this guy Walt is into some pretty serious shit. Like I think he’s messing with the Cartel!! We gotta get out of this, who can I refer him to?
Kim: (undeterred) Cartel money could get me my horse at last. Stay involved, but push for a contact to negotiate with.
Saul: (trembling) No! Please, honey, we’re in over our heads here!
Kim: (gleeful) Over your head, maybe, I’m just getting started. Bwaaaa ha ha haaa! Now send Man Mountain to deal with that ADA. She looked at me wrong in court today!
Cosigned.
Why would she have to? She didn’t even know Jimmy was selling phones in a vacant lot. Why would she know what Saul is doing in private meetings with clients?
ETA: Nacho definitely seems gone by BB. Obviously he could be dead, but I hope he and Papi made it to Canada.
I would just love it if it turned out that Jimmy/Kim were still together and we find out that they masterminded a lot of stuff that happened in BB, with Kim being the real genius. Extra bonus points if we find out that Nacho eventually allies with Saulberly and is in on it too.
I can just see the last scene, with Saul closing down the Cinnabon and walking out where a black car is waiting. He gets in, and Nacho is driving. We think, “oh shit, Saul’s going to get whacked.’ Then Nacho grins, and the camera pans to the back seat and Kim is sitting there, looking ecstatic. She says, 'It’s been long enough, Jimmy. My contacts at the DA’s office say the heat is off. We’ve got a jet waiting to take us to Dubai. Jesse is already there, making arrangements to move our money. Walt and those cartel idiots never knew what hit 'em. Poor Mike - he deserved to be here too. Walt was such an asshole.”
And they drive off into the sunset.
Your statement was that you don’t see how the ABQ ADA could prove the scheme existed, and in context clearly the issue of whether Kim and/or Jimmy was involved. That was the statement that I was addressing, and as I’ve shown there is a ton of proof available both that the church is a scam and that Jimmy and Kim are involved. You seem to be making an argument against a scenario that no one is arguing for, that for some reason the ADA would just start doing forensics testing on the letters out of the blue. I agree that would be silly, but no one claimed that would happen, and it doesn’t change that the evidence does exist.
To reiterate, I don’t think the ADA suspects the church is fake. If she did, she could show that it’s fake without doing any forensics work by calling the local PD or attempting to pull public records for the church (both of which can be done with a phone call or letter), and she would do that before doing more intensive work. Once she hears the local PD say ‘first freewill baptist don’t exist’, the IRS say ‘first freewill baptist is not a registered nonprofit’, the county say ‘that address just has a gas station on it’, or one of the other bases that haven’t been covered, she has clear proof that the church is fictional. Once she has that, only then does she start doing more intensive work like fingerprinting the letters and checking if three obvious suspects are involved, pulling local records in bulk to see if any of the people writing in exist, pulling records to find out who created the website, pulling records of the phones, checking for Jimmy or Kim’s name on a bus, plane, or train ticket to the location at the time to send the letters, and so on.
And no, pointing out ‘this guy’s fingerprints are all over the letters’ is not delving into “CSI-effect” - fingerprinting is old, real technology, it’s not at all unrealistic to dust a batch of letters for prints and see if any of three specific people turn up. Also ‘if the DA could get a continuance’ is wrong - before the show ended the ADA had cut a deal with Huell, so there isn’t a trial for him, and therefore there’s nothing to get a continuance for. And the defendant in a case does not have to approve of forensics work for it to happen; if the ADA wants to test stuff, she would have to answer to the police, DA, and possibly the court system, but Kim or Huell doesn’t get to say ‘no you can’t test those letters that were sent to the judge’
This doesn’t work. First off no one claimed Kim’s DNA would be on the letters, because what she did on the show and this would not get a significant sample of her DNA onto the letters. The only DNA mentioned or that would be relevant was from Jimmy licking the letters, and having Jimmy come into the Judge’s chambers to lick the letters in front of the ADA to muddy DNA discovery worries would be absurd and absurdly suspicious. Even if we assume you’re talking about fingerprints and not DNA, that doesn’t cloud the issue of Kim’s fingerprints being on cards INSIDE of envelopes, or of Jimmy’s prints being all over these letters unless he turns up in the judge’s chambers, which (again) is highly suspicious.
The showrunners will reissue the Breaking Bad episode where Gus poisons the cartel leadership and digitally insert Lalo (or put his head on one of the extras in the background). They can ask Lucas for advice.
Called it.
Yup, I thought of you when I heard that!
I’m pretty sure I didn’t bring up the issue of looking for fingerprints and/or DNA on the letters. I did indicate that I thought the scheme was provable if the DA had infinite resources to investigate it. It is not plausible that she does, with time being the scarcest resource of all given that the judge wants the matter disposed of quickly. You can slather on the verbiage all you like to support whatever argument you seem to be making, though. I stand by the comments I’ve made, CSI-effect included.
One minor thing, though:
Why would Kim’s fingerprints be on the cards? On review of the scene where she goes shopping at the office supply store, everything she buys is in boxes or wrapped in plastic. No big deal.
Being only about 40 minutes from Choushatta, , the way they pronounced it, as well as Pontchartrain hurt my ears, and bothered me at first as poor research, but then figured The DA, Kim, or Jimmy probably would have no reason to know how we pronounced it, ad was OK with it, now if they had spoken to anyone in the town then I would expect them to know how to pronounce their home town.
What was the orange(?) pointy thing Kim pulled out of her desk and fondled for a bit before finding Jimmy and saying she wants to scam again? Was it a memento of one of the minor scams they pulled?
It was a cork from a preposterously expensive bottle of liquor that she and Jimmy got some sucker to buy for them after they implied they were wealthy heirs looking to make a large investment in or with the sucker’s business.
As I recall.
Look DNA does not work that way. By the time the letters get to the ADA office, after being posted from Louisiana, they have been handled by multiple people, been place in multiple closed spaces, with other such letters so treated and exchanged DNA and smudged fingerprints. Getting a match on any of them would be functionally impossible. Getting something flagged quickly, in that era without connected databases; a legacy of the WoT, yeah forget it.
As for her digging deeper., well remember, we have God’s eye view. She doesn’t. Sure, the use of a high powered lawyer and big firm associates raises an eyebrow, but there are other explanations than, “engineered scam”. How about, “Ms Big Shot lawyer, is going the extra mile to help her current bed warmer’s associate, and at the same time giving her young lawyers some additional experience”? That’s far more of a reasonable understanding.
And, no it’s not realistic that she couldn’t just call and find out from Louisiana Police and the local District Attorney or the IRS. Such inter agency request take weeks to make officially and longer to actually realise, and the most likely return is basically a request for clarification or the answer to a question not even asked, trust me, I have experience with this type of things and it’s in our era of much grater data sharing. The ADA does not have time and expense to run such things, for a small case. She does as much due diligence as possible in an afternoon, in the confines of her office, using a landline and 2004 era internet.
Zafiro Añejo, I believe. The same fictional, rare and expensive brand of tequila that Gus gave to Don Eladio in BB.