I chalk all that up to Gus comprising for Mike’s sensibilities. BB Gus would never have allowed the strip club visit. And the laundry workers likely see a lot of stuff after the lab is up and running, so they would already have been managed somehow. The padlocks weren’t really security…the cameras and the 24 hour surveillance were, Werner just figured out a way around it largely because Mike was getting a little too chummy and didn’t install the proper fear in them.
They don’t care who built it. That’s the whole point and why they would never find these Germans. Hiring them is basically zero risk.
Gus wants a secret lab. Eventually it turns out to not be super secret because of the supplies they end up needing, but building it wasn’t where the failure was. And that’s what the original criticism was, that creating the lab in this way is stupid. I argue that buying a place with a basement would have sent up red flags way before Hank sniffed it out, probably noticed by the Salamancas.
The Germans aren’t a big problem once they are back in Germany. They are a problem going back and forth from the warehouse to the laundry, walking through the laundry, and as a bunch of foreigners with an accent will attract more attention when they are out in public as at the strip club.
Probably not more so than buying a laundry in the first place, which Hank immediately knew would be a great place to hide a meth lab.
In any case, the Superlab never turned out to be a great long-term success. After spending a lot of time and money building it, they’ve already had a disaster due to a blatant security lapse that forces them to suspend operations. I’m going to bet that a major plot point next season will be Lalo figuring out about the lab. (He’s already has the chicken farm under surveillance, and it’s only a matter of time before he figures out that there’s a link to the laundry.) And that will cause further years of delay. And after six years in planning and construction, the Superlab only operates for about five months before it’s destroyed. True that Gus made a shitload of money while it was running, and it’s downfall was because he hired a loose cannon like Walt, but the DEA was already sniffing around.
The issue of when the superlab began to be used by Gale has been much debated. Going back and looking at that “Box Cutter” teaser, it seems pretty clear it was indeed newly minted shortly after Walt first sold Gus a batch of blue meth. Those arguing otherwise are presumably operating on hazy memories of that flashback, as was I until a minute ago.
Back to this BCS episode: Mike’s sleuthing, and detection of his tail and then escape from it, was all very impressive. But wasn’t it all quite unnecessary? Not that he would necessarily know this, but it sounds like if they just waited a few days, Werner would have turned up and they could have simply killed him then without Lalo being involved. Or was the big worry that he would tell his wife about the project? If so, that would also be a concern after he went back to Germany.
Although they built scaffolding to make sure he didn’t crash through on the way. I’m going to guess the real life person who did this was pretty small and light.
Great catch!
The DEA was only sniffing around because of Walt. He conspired to have Gale killed, and Gale (a vegan) had a Los Pollos Hermanos bag in his apartment, which Hank found suspicious.
If Gus had simply told Gale the sample he tested was from a competitor, but “do the best you can”, or just refused to hire Walt even after what Gale said, he would have been fine.
There are lots of laundries, and Gus was a well-respected member of the community and friend of the DEA. There was no reason to investigate him until well into the BB time frame.
This comes up a lot in threads here - it’s easy to look back or forward with your TV semi-omniscience and say, once you know someone is dirty, that everyone should have noticed earlier. But there are 300+ million people in the US - and generally if you don’t do anything to draw undue notice, no one is going to investigate you.
And Gus is careful to not be noticed except for his good works.
Heck, if Gus had just built the basement under the laundry with proper permits and said it was for storage, most likely no one would have taken a second look. He could have even hidden the entrance later and odds are strong that no one would have noticed.
Maybe true for the DEA…but not for the Salamancas. They know Gus is dirty and if they noticed he was running a construction project, they’d have climbed up his ass about it and would have immediately known where his meth came from.
The DEA wasn’t sniffing around Gus and his buildings at all until Walt had Jesse kill Gale. Even after they had Gale’s notebook with meth lab drawings, looked into his ‘coincidental’ connections to Gus, and spotted the Los Pollos Hernandos wrappers in his apartment, it was really only Hank that really thought there was a connection, and once they interviewed Gus everyone but Hank and Gomez think Gus is clean until Gus explodes. If Walt doesn’t exist, or Gus takes from Gale’s ‘we’ll have a hard time competing with this’ that he needs Walter White dead (and so lets the cousins kill him), then the superlab plan would have been fine. Even with Walt blowing things up he managed to kill all of the cartel except for Hector, with no Walt then there’s no Gale death, so no DEA involvement, and Hector has no allies left to help him strike back at Gus. Even in it’s ‘failure’ state, it was good enough for Gus to achieve his real objectives (death of the Cartel, rubbing it in Hector’s face, outliving Hector) even though he died very shortly after.
Again, I agree that their handling of the superlab work was bad this season, I just disagree with your saying that the superlab overall didn’t work. With Walter White in the picture it was good enough for Gus to achieve a Pyrrhic victory, and without him there’s nothing that would have derailed his plan.
No, you can’t just let the guy you’re trying to ensure keeps secrets who plotted an escape from your secure compound out to run around wherever he wants for several days. Without looking at the script, they simply don’t know what he’s going to do, and he’s already released info that he shouldn’t have and is clearly acting irrationally. The big worry is that a guy who’s already blabbed some about your secret project has just escaped your security detail, and who knows who he’ll tell, or where he’ll end up if you let him go wherever he wants for days?
The other problem is that even if Mike wanted to wait a few days, Gus was having none of it. He had agents set to tail Wener’s wife, who were going to kill her and Werner once she led them to him. Mike’s efforts to find Werner were purely an act of mercy, he wanted to save Werner’s wife and maybe Werner. The only way Mike could choose to wait a few days would be to keep the escape secret from Gus, which would break their working relationship permanently when Gus found out about it (that can’t happen since it would break BB), or to let Werner and his wife die to Gus’s men.
It’s no worse than the ‘person climbing through ventillation’ ducts that’s typical of TV, and definitely below the ‘explosive that blows out the windows but doesn’t hurt people standing next to it’ from BB, so it doesn’t throw me off. It’s also possible that he ‘actually’ went along the top of the wall to get to the drop spot, which is not that unrealistic. I’ve seen people IRL go over the top of a wall through a drop ceiling in an office, though I wouldn’t try it myself.
Whether he hired Walt or not, he could have just let the cousins kill him to get rid of him. The Salamancas already knew they wanted Heisenburg dead before Gus even came into the show, although the cousins didn’t turn up until after him.
The problem a lot of us have with the Superlab building plot is that he’s not actually being ridiculously cautious and discrete in what we see on the show. He’s got the Germans walking around seeing and beeing seen by laundry workers, they know the address of the building (it’s on the truck they get into each day), and has whatever paper trail he’s using to cover the foreign workers (probably they work for Madrigal as far as INS knows). The operation comes off as needlessly complex, and rather carelessly run, not as ‘ridiculously cautious and discrete’.
Actually, other events this season make this a much weaker claim. Jimmy and Kim were able to get the plans for a building changed to one with 13% more space with a simple scam involving one clerk, so I don’t see why Gus couldn’t put in a similar effort for a plan that no one really cares about. Or he could do a more Gus-like operation and fund a new records building or computerization initiative, and have one of his guys slip in and change the plans during renovations or data entry. (He funded a new hospital wing to get the doctor for Hector so he’s definitely willing and able to spend that kind of money). Fixing records to cover up a decent sized space under an old building, or bribing someone to claim it’s been filled in to prevent a hazard really isn’t a difficult task in the real world.
There are real-world ‘superlabs’ that operate without getting caught based on building records that don’t go through the hoops Gus used here, it’s not just a TV show concept.
Didn’t really pay close attention, and not a big fan of AMCs, but was that a Javelin or an AMX?
Personally, I’m a big fan of A-bodies, and hated to see his Cutlass get destroyed. Funny how often 69-72 Cutlasses are shown as the “classic” car in ads/TV. Just last night I saw a 72 vert used in some medication ad I was FFing thru…
How difficult would it have been to take the Germans on fairly regular tours around the country for R&R and keeping the exact location of their worksite secret?
I don’t want to come off like the S&G police. But when I see a word repeatedly misspelled by multiple people (or the wrong word used, depending on how you look at it), I can’t contain myself.
The Business Week quote could actually be either.
Aha, I didn’t think of that but you are likely right!
I agree he did a bad job. I noted that earlier where he’s being overly deferential to Mike. Mike I think gets the lesson on his own in the finale too. I still think the logic of the plan holds.
[quote[Actually, other events this season make this a much weaker claim. Jimmy and Kim were able to get the plans for a building changed to one with 13% more space with a simple scam involving one clerk, so I don’t see why Gus couldn’t put in a similar effort for a plan that no one really cares about.[/quote]
Totally different animal. Gus had 3 options.
Build in secret
Build in the open, conceal later
Buy something old
If he chooses #2 the problem isn’t going to be with the paperwork, it’s going to be with the neighbors, inspectors and the Salamancas. He could run the Kim/Jimmy scam to get rid of any newly submitted plans, but lots of people will know it’s there.
If he chooses #3 the Kim/Jimmy scam isn’t going to work. Those old files will be buried and duplicated. You won’t know who has them and you won’t be sure that you changed/destroyed them all. Plus you have the same problem of old employees/owners and neighbors and the realtors.
Feasible…but doesn’t do anything about the people that know.
In the real world cops and drug dealers are generally stupid, reckless and have no attention span. My point is that the subplot is consistent inside the BB universe.
My excuse it that I need to use discrete frequently in my work…my fingers type it on autopilot.
Any suggestions for about six BB episodes to binge this weekend that would be good to watch now that we have four seasons of BCS? “Better Call Saul” seems obvious. And the introduction of Gale and the superlab. What other BBs take on some extra meaning now in the context of BCS?
I think this is the proper read of this scene (and I missed it), but it is also possible that it’s just Chuck’s standard stick-up-his-ass approach to the sanctity of the Law.