Better Call Saul: Season IV

Cafe Society
1083

I think he went over to the Saul side after his talk with the shoplifter. That whole speech was really talking to himself. He knew that no matter what he did, no one would ever really respect James McGill, Esq. The speech in front of the board may not have been planned but that was Slippin’ Jimmy winging it for real and that was it.

I found it hard to believe that Werner would be so naive. He knew he was working for criminals. I would assume it wasn’t the first time since someone had to recommend him for this job. It was all too “sweet”. The juxtaposition between that guy and the one who accepted that he had to die was jarring.

1084

I thought he was sincere and working through deep feelings at at first, but I realized he was running a con once he started talking about how he would never live up to the great man that is Chuck. Jimmy doesn’t actually see Chuck as superior to him, so that twigged my ‘WOW that’s a serious con’ detector.

They said in the episode that Jimmy paid $23,000 for the library. I think Jimmy does have that kind of money from selling phones - I estimated before that he was grossing $2000-6000 per pallet (200 phones that he pays $20 each for, then marks them up to $30-$50 per phone and resells them) and he’s been doing that for a year. He doesn’t have much in the way of expenses - they never talk about his and Kim’s finances, but my guess is she’s covering rent and utilities on the apartment, he’s obviously done with payments on the Esteem, and the nail salon office is cheap. He’s got a large wardrobe of clothes since he bought the flashy suits and track suits last season, and his scams fill his ‘hobby’ niche so he’s not spending money clubbing or collecting model trains or whatever. Overall he’s really not spending that much money.

I write that off as “That’s just TV,” like the way no one ever spends ten minutes finding a parking space. Kim/Jimmy (and other TV characters) often celebrate the success of their plan at a place that’s too easy to be overheard, it’s just easier to fit substance into an episode if you don’t have to include two additional travel/change of location scenes to go away and then back. They do that a lot in this series so I just think of it as a conversation that doesn’t ‘actually’ happen where it’s filmed.

1085

I agree. I thought Werner kinda was asking for it, right? His flippant attitude was totally unbecoming of the job that he was undertaking. He had a great opportunity and he blew it - what did he think was going to happen? Also, how the hell are they going to finish the job without him? Hire a new lead engineer? Mike claimed that the crew would be sent home. Really?

1086

Wow, what a great episode of television.

-Lalo chasing Mike
-Mike’s heart breaking before he kills Werner
-Jimmy literally saying “boo hoo” as he cries at the grave
-Jimmy conning the board
-Kim staring at Jimmy in disbelief as he transitions into Saul

I think this was probably the peak for the series so far.

And I don’t think there’s a simple answer about precisely when Jimmy was telling the truth and when it was all a con. After all, the best lies have a kernel of truth.

1087

I loved seeing Gale again and I am really hoping we see more of him in the next season. It sounded like Gus was going to need his help in putting the final touches on the underground lab, so I assume there will be some scenes of him designing the ventilation system and some of the specific fittings that will be needed for the equipment that will be installed there.

The one character I thought would be in BCS by now, is Kuby, Huell’s co-enforcer in Breaking Bad and the one loose end of that show (we never find out what happened to him at the end.) I’m hoping Kuby shows up next season, because I always loved Bill Burr’s performance in that role, especially his ridiculous con job with the dump truck in Dead Freight (the train heist episode.) “Hey, you guys know anything about engines? Of course you do, you’re engineers! Uh, I think it’s something in there.” [gestures vaguely at truck’s engine.] His lines in the scene where they go to Beneke’s house are also hilarious. (Although how could Beneke not have cable?)

1088

Well, I think we saw Jimmy make the metaphorical full switch to Saul Goodman with his breakdown after talking to the shoplifting kid. He’s been getting more comfortable with his his darker side, and the world has been gut-punching him when he’s trying to be legitimate, and he’s just done. I feel bad for him even though so much of what he’s done is self-inflicted. Although I doubt he’d admit it, he fully bought into Chuck’s little speech last season: “You’re telling me that you have regrets and I’m telling you don’t bother. What’s the point? You’re just going to keep hurting people. If you’re not going to change your behavior, and you won’t, why not just skip the whole exercise? In the end, you’re going to hurt everyone around you. You can’t help it. So stop apologizing and embrace it. Frankly, I’d have more respect for you if you did.”

Poor Kim has been in denial about Jimmy. She sees him as Jimmy McGill, Elder Lawyer who can pulls off the Matlock look by day and clever cons by night while never doing anything really bad. This whole episode she was thinking that Jimmy being forced to confront the memory of his brother was going to make him dig up and deal with emotions about it, and she kept reading things in even when he’d tell he it was just a con. She fully, 100% believed his final speech to the appeals board and was torn apart when he sneered at them for being suckers in the end. “That asshole” wasn’t the only one with a tear in their eye at Jimmy’s pretend baring of his soul. The fact that he jumped straight from “I hope to live up to the name Mcgill” to “I need a Doing Business As form so I can work as Saul Goodman” completely floored her.

Lalo looks like he’s going to be a good antagonist for Mike/Gus next season. Most of the Salamancas are too brutal and dumb to do more than annoy Gus, but he’s clever, patient, and observant. Tuco or Hector couldn’t have tracked Werner down, but he followed Mike’s trail like a pro. I like that, like Mike, he packed a lunch (in the little cooler) so that he’d be ready for a long day of observing. And his cheerful ‘Michael’ when Mike took the phone was just the perfect touch. IMO the cartel side of the show has been weaker than the Saul side this season, it has had some cool moments but doesn’t really have much story, and I think that giving Gus and Mike some real opposition while putting even more pressure on Nacho in S5 will improve that a lot.

I’ve been expecting an Old Yeller moment for Werner and Mike ever since Werner started talking about his wife, and that was just a beautifully shot scene, with lots of parallels to the scene where Mike almost shoots Walt and Walt’s last call to Skyler. Werner was really in deep denial about what he got himself into, people who pay you bucketloads of money and construct a secret warehouse lair are likely to be… intense. Didn’t surprise me at all that when Werner needed to die Mike chose to be the one to pull the trigger, and I really liked the 2001 reference in the Mike and Gus conversation: - YouTube . I think that Gus’s anger at Mike for saving the wife will turn into respect for how strongly Mike sticks to his principles, he does his job but he’s not just an underling.

I think Gail, Werner, and Pryce all made the mistake of getting mired in the criminal world without thinking of themselves as being a criminal. None of them really accepted that they were on the wrong side of the law, and really understood how dangerous the world they decided to step into was. Jimmy stands as a stark contrast - he got complacent and caught by surprise by the three robber kids, but instead of going to the police or expecting to work things out peacefully, he hired ‘bodyguards’ to terrorize them and keeps them on speed dial for the future. Mike is a different kind of contrast, he didn’t want to kill Werner but he’s known from the beginning that he might have to kill any one of the people working for him and accepted it, even if it’s painful.

1089

That’s not the impression I got. I got the impression that he paid $23,000 for the party which was held for the purpose of spreading a false rumor that Jimmy anonymously paid for the library, hoping that the rumor would reach the bar association. Watch the segment starting at 25 minutes in, especially the conversation between Jimmy and Kim outside.

$23,000 seems excessive for a party but it doesn’t seem like enough for a library.

1090

But did he really know how ruthless Gus really is? He’d only met Gus a couple of times, and we know how charming and nice Gus can be. Sure Werner’s worked with criminals before, but has he really worked with someone who would just outright kill him? Gus did give them a nice place to stay, Werner probably didn’t think of how ruthless Gus really is.

That was a brutal scene though. I mean, Werner figured out he was a dead man, then having to talk to his wife, then yelling at his wife knowing full well it would be the last thing she would ever hear from him. Then he walks out to look at the stars knowing full well he’s gonna get shot.

1091

The deep care taken to house, protect and entertain the crew, contrasts with the almost childlike naivety they treated the cabin fever that they have to have known would have resulted.
We saw how they handled security, and the worst thing was ghensystem was clearly good enough to handle it. Ok, bedrooms are there. Knock yourselves out on the beer fountain and games for rest. Every two weeks we take you to a town for R&R over the weekend. In three months you can go home for one week. These gentlemen will go along for the weekend trips to “assist” you, you will not get paid until after you return from your home trips. Procedure for out of town trips is the same as what got you here.

1092

Was that $23,000 for a whole library? I thought the ‘Chuck McGill Reading Room’ plaque was for a donation to an existing library, to name one room or wing for Chuck. Or something… All that money could not possibly have gone to putting on the party! If they were drinking Dom Perignon, eating imported Russian caviar, and getting lap dances from the most expensive skanks in all of New Mexico, it wouldn’t have cost $5,000.

1093

Yeah, I think they did a really bad job with setting up the build environment. There’s a lot of really inconsistent security, like an elaborate ‘airlock’ to get in and 24/7 camera monitoring on one hand and cheap padlocks on the inside of doors on the other. They go through an elaborate scheme to keep the engineers from knowing where they are, then ship them around in a van with the address on it. They go ‘spare no expense’ on the physical infrastructure that has to be created secretly, but then their only R&R outside in 10 months is a visit to a local strip club that wasn’t even part of the original plan. I think they were going for something super-well planned, but flopped.

The plot with Werner cracking under the stress, not realizing what he’s gotten himself into, and escaping is great, but I think the world building around it has been really weak. And note that a better R&R plan would fit this plot even better; the young guys are off getting girls or hitting clubs or whatever which makes them happy, but Werner doesn’t care about that and just misses his wife so still cracks. Like I said before, the Saul part of the story is miles better than the Cartel part this season.

1094

I don’t think it was for the whole library, I think it was a large enough donation to get a reading room named for Chuck. A $20k donation that gets you a plaque, and then $3k for the catered party seems reasonable to me - they weren’t naming the whole library for him, after all.

1095

Yeah, $20k to end up with a room named after you seems inline with what I found with a quick google search:

1096

I would add Kim to that list. I think when she said “Let’s do it again” he thought he had carte blanche to just go for it. When she said she would know which were all right, he was clueless. He came out of there fully expecting Kim to be damn proud of him. But she’s another one who thinks she can just dip a toe in the water. That never works out well in this universe.

Except that Mike told him, outright after the bar incident. This was not Werner’s first strike. Like P said above, Werner was in denial that what he was doing was supporting a criminal enterprise. He judges others by his own values instead of watching to see what theirs are. He’s every bit as much in denial about Kai. He thinks Kai respects him.

I sincerely doubt the other guys are going home at the end of all this.

Chuck singing with Jimmy was adorable. But watching his ego kick in and him grabbing the microphone was illuminating.

1097

Who set up the indoor houses, the bar, the TV, etc? What happened to that crew?

1098

I think taking a dip works in the show’s world if you take a dip with your eyes open. If Werner just realized he can’t mess around and finished the job, he’d be rich with his wife. If Pryce kept Mike as security until he was done with Nacho and avoided the pimp school bus, he’d have made a nice profit with his dip. I think what Kim is fundamentally closing her eyes about is that she wants to think she’s using her powers “for good” but isn’t really doing that - how does getting MV a 13% larger bank count as a blow “for good” and not “for profit”? Since she won’t even admit what she’s doing, of course she doesn’t see everything about Jimmy until the shocking reveal.

Except I think that it wasn’t spotlight stealing, I think Jimmy really wanted to get Chuck to loosen up. He looked to me like he was really happy that he got Chuck to let his hair down and be silly, and that the ‘duet’ was really intended to get Chuck onstage to take over the Mike. Yeah, it might have been Chuck’s ego driving him, but Jimmy was happy to indulge his ego, and both of them had a great time together. Although I did notice that when Jimmy was talking about adding another M to HHM, Chuck started grasping his arm like the electric pain was starting.

1099

Why? Mike clearly intended Werner to go home (had he played by the rules) and they’ve played by the rules.

Not to mention that the German government is a lot easier to fool with a report of a single accident than seven accidents.

1100

Bullet to the back of the head is going to be difficult to explain away regardless. Bodies and family members are problematic if you don’t have an excuse. A fire might have been a better idea. Or getting him blown up. That you can explain. Real life cartels don’t kill when it could backfire on them. They can’t even dispose of the body without people getting suspicious, as Werner said. That would bring more people down on the project.
This whole sub-plot got way too intricate this season. Too smart by half.

1101

Moment they bring back Werner headshot affected body or dispose of it and don’t tell the widow, the police will inquire. What will start off as a basic inquiry, will quickly reveal that Herr Ziegler had connections with the criminal underworld. And he last went to America. Where he was killed/disappeared. Oh by the way, his work crew is back, from America. At this point there will be boners throughout the German and American law enforcement. This is a jackpot, a career maker. A lot more attention is given to the case. They go speak to the guys. Who tell them they probably worked in Albuquerque, given they went to a strip club there. And they can identify Mike, and the fact it looked like a laundry. Pretty soon the cops come down on criminals on two continents, as Gus and his contacts who got him Werner and his crew are caught.

Also, Mike is on a CCTV in a shop where there was a murder shortly after, in a place which Mike is seen going in (the murderer is BTW also clearly visible), and so is the guy who had his head shit off/disappeared.

Whole next season is going to be how Gus used his Chilean Intelligence contacts to get the German LEA, DEA, FBI, Alberqerque PD high on his product. Cause that is the only reason they missed in by the time BB era rolls along.

1102

That was all Mike. What, do you think his only skills are laying concrete and disassembling cars?

I liked the cold open with Chuck singing karaoke. It was one of the few positive interactions they’ve shown between Chuck and Jimmy in this show. Michael McKean is a good musician, so it’s nice when he gets to show off his skills.

And I never would have guessed Chuck would be the one to vouch for Jimmy’s admission to the bar. (Is that a thing? Does someone have to do that, in person? I had to get another engineer to write a letter of recommendation for me to get my PE license, but he didn’t have to show up somewhere, stand by my side and vouch for me in person.) Still, it was a pretty powerful scene, reminding us that these two were once brothers, not always bitter archenemies. Though we know their animosities go way back.