I do think that Werner’s escape was a spur-of-the-moment thing that he decided to do after his long phone call with his wife. It wasn’t planned much in advance.
I don’t think that is probable, because setting up a code (which, tbh crossed my mind while racking my brain to figure it out) would alert the wife to the fact that Werner was involved in something really shady, which seems out of the question to me. I think Colibri’s more mundane and less exciting explanation is probably it.
I think you missed that he was on video at the the money transfer place talking on the phone. The simplest explanation is that she was the one he called collect from the pay phone that Mike saw on the film, he told her to wire him money with some cover story (‘my wallet accidentally got washed and my cards are ruined, can you believe it?’) and made plans then based on the brochures that Mike looked at to figure out his location. That’s why he had to wait at the place instead of the money already being their, and why he picked a location from the brochures that Mike also looked at.
The code theory doesn’t make any sense - nothing was shown supporting the idea, and if Werner was aware enough to make elaborate codes then wouldn’t he realize just how terrible and dangerous of an idea this is? Also if he did have enough of an idea of the danger to think to set up a code, wouldn’t he have an ‘EMERGENCY, ABORT’ code word that he could have delivered at the end instead of pretending to be angry? Same thing with bribing a guy, there’s nothing to support it and all of the muscle know that doing so is putting their (and Werner’s) life at extreme risk, plus he doesn’t have any cash until his wife wires him the money so the henchmen have to believe that he will succeed at his plan and come back to make the payment.
I think she has to know he’s involved in something clandestine, although he could have told her it was some kind of top-secret government project instead of a criminal enterprise.
Three interesting factoids from the insider podcast:
(1) Lalo going up through the ceiling tiles is directly copied from reality, that’s how a Western-Union-esque place was in fact really robbed
(2) Giancarlo Esposito broke his ankle skiing, so for this episode (and some number of previous episodes) he couldn’t walk at all. So any scene with him walking was actually a stand-in (apparently he’s such a distinctive guy that it was really hard to find a good stand-in, but they eventually did). Whenever it’s actually him, he’s sitting down with his ankle up on a crate
(3) The actual chicken farm that they used for Gus’s chicken farm was torn down around season four of Breaking Bad. Since then, every shot of it has been CGI or a matte painting. This shot (with Lalo overlooking it with binoculars) was particularly tricky because it was the opposite angle from the one usually seen.
Also that scene was a live stunt, no CGI or editing trickery beyond switching between the stunt man and real actor at the end.
A existing basement in any building would be a matter of record - there would be building plans on file, property tax records, etc. Gus wants a basement whose very existence is unknown, so that when the Feds look for potential locations for a lab the basement isn’t even on the radar.
In BB we see Gale setting up the lab, but I don’t remember anything that tied it into Walt’s timeline. Gale could have been cooking for a while.
Which brings me back to a question I raised a while back: is the cartel dealing in meth at this point? Any time they show Gus’s shipments from Mexico it looks like a fine powder which I have been assuming is cocaine. Don Eladio was extremely disparaging about meth when Gus and Max broached the subject with him. Gus argued that Max’s recipe produced a product far superior to “biker crank”, but Eladio didn’t go for it (in a big way, as Max found out).
The problem with Lalo being around at the “Better Call Saul” episode of BB is that he needs to be dead by the time that Gus kills off the cartel - he tells Hector that the Salamanca family is finished after Jesse shot the youngest member.
I had the impression that Walt walked into a virgin lab still shrink-wrapped. I have nothing to substantiate that, but it’s the impression I remember having had the first time I saw it.
Note to self: Always keep a full pack of chewing gum in the glove compartment.
mmm
In the flashback after Gale died, Gale was cutting plastic off of newly delivered equipment after Gus and interviewed and declined working with Walt. Gale comments on how pure Walt’s meth is and how they have their work cut out for hem if they have to compete with that guy, which apparently convinces Gus to put up with Walt. So if Gale did cook solo, it was only for a very short time to break in the lab before Walt came in, and there may be something I’m forgetting that says he didn’t.
I don’t think they are, I am pretty sure they’re dealing cocaine. Gus had Gale test some meth earlier in the season to see how good it is, but I think that was him researching the marker. He’s still just planning to get into meth at this point, not selling it himself.
I don’t think that really poses a problem though, Gus just needs to kill him as part of his ongoing war against the Cartel. Gus does a lot of stuff offscreen from us in BB, so the fact that we didn’t see Lalo during that show doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. I think that we’ll either get some ‘offscreen during BB’ episodes or fill-in-the-gap flash forwards like the Saul preparing to disappear one we got this season, and Lalo’s final fate will be one. Though this doesn’t mean he can’t be killed off in this series as long as Saul doesn’t know for sure that he’s out of the picture when BB rolls around.
Like I said, it’s a trade off. They are incurring much greater risk of discovery during prolonged construction vs having a more secure location later. But Hank became suspicious of the laundry even without knowing of a basement level, and if the DEA had serious reason to suspect something was going on there they could have sounded the floors and easily detected the lab.
Saul at least thinks Lalo is a threat to him when Walt and Jesse abduct him. And Gus could easily be lying to Hector just to torment him further. (Or as suggested he was killed offscreen after Saul referenced him in BB.)
You are right, I just watched the cold open of Box Cutter where Gale is just opening the equipment and he tells Gus about his results from testing Blue Sky. So that puts the opening of the lab to a point in BB after Gus and Walt have met.
Agreed, I just wanted to see if anyone else saw it this way.
So far the only ‘offscreen during BB’ scene was Saul and Francesca clearing out his office just before Jimmy orders his vacuum cleaner filter. I’m kind of hoping that they don’t do too much more of that, so I was assuming they would solve the problem of Lalo’s existence in the BCS timeline. Although if they end BCS with Walt and Jesse walking into his office there’s a little bit of overlap that would occur naturally.
Man, I’ve installed drop ceilings before, if a real Western Union was robbed that way there must have been something more substantial above the drop ceiling for an adult of average size like Lalo to be able to crawl onto it. Any drop ceiling I’ve ever worked with even a young child would knock tiles loose if you had them try to crawl over it.
I assume it was like the HVAC ducts in so many TV shows and movies that are large enough that an adult can crawl in and secured well enough that they won’t fall down when some tries to do so. In short, fictional.
But imagine being that kid in the Western Union store. He already had a bad feeling about Lalo (and this after Michael’s weird behavior) and then he saw the guy was gone and the ceiling disturbed. If I was him, I’d be hitting the panic button right away.
I’d consider finding a place with a basement, then having the basement condemned, file paperwork saying you filled it in and permanently sealed off the entrance (while creating a far less obvious secret entrance somewhere else).
Heck, it’s New Mexico. There have got to be some abandoned missile silos around somewhere.
Question: Was the “it’s all good man” thing part of the canon already or was that just introduced here?
I loved how Mike’s glove compartment looked like something out of a point-and-click adventure game.
“Need to lose this tail. What do have to work with here? Pistol. Nail file. Pack of chewing gum. (Click)”
It goes back to the fourth episode of the first season, Hero, when Jimmy was running the Rolex scam with Marco in Cicero.
In BB, Saul tells Walter that he took the name because it sounds Jewish and his black clients like that.
Apparently Gilligan originally based the name on the pun as Saul Goode/'S’all good, and it was later changed to Goodman.
I disagree with this. Digging the basement is a massive undertaking and they are going to extreme lengths to keep is secret. Not just from the DEA/Cops but from the Salamancas and any other would-be rival. The difficulty of doing what most people would say is overkill is the whole point! Gus is ridiculously cautious and discrete, this totally fits his character.
Of course he could buy a place with a basement and try and bribe someone to bury the plans and everything else, but you can’t be certain. Bureaucracy being what it is, there’s tons of copies and file storage and backups. There’s people who know things, who used to work at the old place, who built it, etc. If it’'s for sale, it’s on the MLS and whatever else goes into selling a property all with more paper trails. Anyone he bribes to cover it up is a loose end. Erasing something is REALLY hard and really uncertain.
Getting these foreigners to build it in secret is costly, but it’s pretty secure. Gus could whack them all if he had to. They are foreigners who would be really hard to track down if they didn’t want to be found. They don’t even know where they are if they were found. Compared to some random lady at the city recorders office, they are nigh impossible to find.
Think of it this way. You find out Fring is selling meth and has a unknown supplier. You start sniffing around. First you assume he’s buying it from someone when that comes up dry, then you guess maybe he’s cooking himself. You follow him, you bribe/threaten his men, you look up his businesses and property, you start probing. At what point does it occur to you to go to Germany and start interrogating construction workers and engineers?
Well, aside from having the workers walk through an active laundry in front of dozens of witnesses, bringing them out in public to a strip club where they can find out where they are, and using padlocks as security at the warehouse.
Why would you even need to do this? Why would you care who built it?
Hank became suspicious of the laundry when he discovered that it was owned by Madrigal, and that Gail had ordered equipment suitable for a meth lab from them as well. If Hank had been able to investigate fully he would have discovered the lab, but this became moot once Gus was killed and Walt destroyed the lab.