I suspect that Gus is also happy to have someone with an interest in not getting caught poking around Lydia’s operation to shore up security, if Mike can just walk in and get tons of records like that then someone else could just as easily. Gus probably couldn’t force Lydia to let him poke into her business himself, but now he’s got a man inside who’s on the books as doing that sort of thing.
Have you tried chewing holes through a heavy-duty plastic bag that doesn’t have a lot of slack using only your mouth to get a grip? I don’t think it’s an easy thing to do, even when you haven’t just been scared to death, thrown to the ground, and are only breathing the air in the bag. Since it’s been used in real murders, I think it’s not that easy to get out of. Also even if he did manage to escape the bag, he’s helplessly zip-tied in front of a bunch of armed men who want him dead, so it’s not like it would do him much good.
Actually, I don’t think Jimmy is going to hire Mike for a B&E job, because it doesn’t seem like Mike would take it. Stealing collectables to resell seems like a really risky job that Mike wouldn’t take on because it’s too easy to get caught, especially since the business owners will think of Jimmy. Plus he’d be stealing from innocents, which isn’t his way - he was fine robbing an embezzler or the cartel, but he doesn’t knock over regular people’s houses for cash. I think Jimmy’s going to get Mike to come in as an old man who’s deceased wife used to collect them (or some similar sob story) and offer to buy the whole set for ‘my life savings of $500’ or something along those lines, like the reverse of the coin scam he used to pull with Marco.
Yeah, I thought that when I saw the copier bit in the preview clip. I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what Jimmy’s experience was with that particular model.
I’m a bit late to this since I let the shows stack up on my DVR a little. Really glad to have the show back, but count me among the number who found the first 2 episodes a bit dour and plodding. I actually was tuning out a little bit at times and had to rewind to figure out what the deal was with the Hummel on fake eBay since I must have been glancing at my phone during the start of the interview scene. I also didn’t really like the ambiguity about Jimmy’s turn after the interview. Maybe they’ll explain it later, but it just seemed out of left field. Something changed his mind or prompted him to go back for the second conversation. Jimmy’s reaction to Howard’s confession seemed more than a little bizarre too. I guess this is just their way of showing Jimmy going off the rails as he fails to cope, but right now it’s just question marks from me. Jimmy will probably come clean to Kim at some point and lay it all out, but these 2 episodes felt a bit empty.
Here’s to hoping for more Mike and Gus. Those cat and mouse games always have a pay off and make sense once it’s all said and done.
I think their easily suckered nature reminds him of his father falling for con artist after con artist, and that he doesn’t really respect people that he can con, even though he’s good at it. QUOTE]
I agree, That’s why Jimmy couldn’t accept the “win.” He lashed out at the copier guys because they were so gullible and reminded him of his father.
I remember a scene where young Jimmy is working in his father’s store and tries to warn him about a grifter, but his father insisted on helping the man. The grifter told Jimmy, “There are wolves and sheep in this world kid… figure out which you’re going to be.”
He hasn’t actually mentioned anything about stealing them yet. As my wife observed, he could just ask Mike to show up there on some other pretext and “notice” them: “Hey, my Mom loves those things! Would you take a hundred bucks for the lot?”
I agree that having Mike go to the copier place on some pretext and then offering to buy the Hummels makes more sense than a burglary.
I do think there’s another possibility however. The manager mentioned that he’s planning to throw them in the trash. Could Jimmy be planning to ask Mike to periodically dumpster dive outside the place looking for the Hummels?
Whatever the plan, I think it’s likely that somehow or other it’s going to end up a complicated mess. Maybe Mike will find something much more interesting than Hummels in the trash.
Totally agree with this, and I would add that Jimmy’s most recent experience of people falling for his smooth-talking ways* has been sufficiently traumatic for this to crystallise for him. There’s also, probably, an element of blame/transference here: if you idiots had the wit to see through my shenanigans, then the world would be spared a lot of misery. It’s really your fault for letting me get away with this nonsense. Taking it out on them was a way of taking it out on every sucker who’d ever suffered having fallen for his patter, (e.g. Irene, the Air Force guard) and on one in particular.
There’s also the self-destructive element to what he did - clearly, Jimmy could do very well as a salesman but that’s not the life he wants. As SmartAleq says, he’s looking for something else. This goes back to Season 1, where he doesn’t stick to the money he and Mike took from the idiot embezzler client, but later asks himself what he was possibly thinking by not taking it. That instinct got derailed by the Sandpiper case and the prospect of legit millions, and then further by the feud with Chuck over Mesa Verde etc. etc. But we’ve seen Jimmy articulate quite clearly that he’s ready and willing to go outside the law to get rich, and that (as we know, of course) is the path he’s now ready to revisit.
*He didn’t lie as such when he let the insurance know about Chuck, but he was manipulating them by spinning his presentation of the story and they never even knew it.
Also, while I’m coming in to agree with people (UK doesn’t get BCS till Tuesday), Rhea Seehorn’s performance was amazing this week. Not only in the unleashing of fury at Howard (and I loved that she even then didn’t absolutely lose control, just as far as she would ever let herself) but also in the quiet moments when she was interacting with Jimmy. There’s a measured quality to the way she reacts to him that suggests she’s at least considering that she’s seeing a performance (especially with hyper early breakfast juice Jimmy, but also with “Hey, they offered me a job. Didn’t take it” Jimmy in the evening). She’s doubtless putting that performance down to covering grief and I felt that her anger at Howard comes from the fact that she’s measuring Jimmy’s grief by the thickness of the facade she sees. Of course, that facade is about more than grief, and it’s when she realises that she’s been wasting her emotional intensity on an unrepentant conman that it’s all going to go south.
Stanislaus’ mention of Jimmy’s hyper breakfast making reminds me of how often Gilligan uses breakfast scenes.
I think this particular scene may be a callback to Walt frantically making breakfast in a desperate attempt to reclaim a normal family life and Skyler not buying it.
I want to know how they do a stunt like that. Plastic bags are pretty flimsy, and will easily be sucked to your mouth and nose when you inhale. How do they make it work for the actors and keep them safe? Had the same question in Lucky Number Slevin where both bad guys are executed with plastic bags. Seems there must be some trick to it other than, “trust us, you’ll be ok while you can’t breathe,” but I can’t see it.
I was wondering about that as well, but then there was a blink-and-you-miss-it moment when it looked like he was trying to do just that, but failed. This moment also showed that the bag wasn’t a thin plastic, but a much heavier industrial type bag, which would be far more difficult to bite through.
It’s the entire theme of BCS, encapsulated in one short scene. Jimmy tries to play it straight, and get a job as a salesman, does all the usual job interview things, shows enthusiasm and knowledge of the job, and gets blown off with a “We’ll think about it for a week” line that everyone knows is just a soft “no”. Then he just says “Screw that! you think I can’t sell?” and goes full Slippin’ Jimmy, gives it to them with both barrels and blows them away. He gets the job, but then throws it away out of contempt for the “suckers”. Those losers don’t deserve to have Slippin’ Jimmy doing their bidding as a copier sales guy. Slippin’ Jimmy is bound for better things.
It’s what the whole series is about, all in five minutes.