On Better Call Saul‘s penultimate episode, the past catches up
"Waterworks" also boasts perhaps the best bit of acting in the show's history
TV Reviews Better Call Saul
Kim Wexler told Jimmy, back when she was about to leave town and end their marriage, that while they were often having fun with each other, they were creating chaos and misery for those around them. And finally, as the two former spouses orbit each other’s paths once again in this penultimate episode of the series, the fun is all gone. Bring on the misery.
That call from last week’s “Breaking Bad” episode of Saul, the one in that left Gene so angry that he slammed the receiver and kicked the glass out of the phone booth, was to his ex-wife’s employer in Florida, where Kim is writing copy and designing product layouts for the tubing used in sprinkler systems. She’s living a low-key lifestyle: having serious conversations about the virtues of mayo versus Miracle Whip in potato salad, dating a guy who wears mandals and shouts “Yep!” during sex, and listening to lunch conversations with co-workers who wonder why you never hear about crack on the news anymore. It is a meticulously crafted life Kim is living, where she works hard to offer no opinion, even about the flavor of ice cream a colleague might prefer, and spends her evenings working jigsaw puzzles while her boyfriend watches The Amazing Race in another room. That Zafiro Añejo stopper is truly a lifetime ago.
Then, the call: “Victor St. Claire” (yet another alias for the man born Jimmy McGill) is on the line and he’s just ringing to catch up after six years. “Still out here, still getting away with it,” he tells Kim, as if he really thinks she might be impressed or happy with his continuing lifestyle, given…everything. Kim has little to say to him. His intrusion into her new life, or rather her performance of a new life, has rattled her. Gene thinks she’s ignoring him, though, and when he presses her to say something, she tells him he should turn himself in. “Why don’t you turn yourself in?” he responds in a bit of “I know you are, but what am I?” childishness, hurt and angry that his charms are lost on her. He continues, telling her there’s no reason for her to keep their past dealings with the cartel and the scamming of Howard a secret. All the other parties involved are no longer alive, he hears, so she should feel free to come clean if she still feels so guilty about everything.
And because Kim is self-aware and does still have a conscience, she takes his suggestion to heart. She tells Gene she’s glad he’s alive, and ends the call. She arrives in Albuquerque, where she makes a stop at the courthouse, and then rings the front gate buzzer at the house of Cheryl Hamlin, Howard’s widow, the one Kim so coldly lied to at Howard’s memorial, saving her own bacon by leaving Howard’s reputation in tatters. Now she hands Cheryl a folder, one that she’s already shared with the ABQ District Attorney, with a thoroughly detailed account of the McGills’ dealings with the cartel, including the night Howard was murdered and Kim was blackmailed to try to murder Gus. She unfolds the plot to humiliate Howard and ruin his professional life, too, with disclosure that she and Jimmy were motivated by amusing themselves more than getting their hands on cash. Cheryl is crushed, somewhat surprised to learn this overwhelming story, and angry that Kim tells her Howard “didn’t suffer” when Lalo caught him at the wrong place at the wrong time. Cheryl begs to differ. (Rhea Seehorn’s portrayals of Florida Kim and ABQ Kim are incredible here, and her breakdown during a shuttle to the airport may be the most moving bit of acting in the show’s history.)
Things don’t go any better for Gene after his call with Kim. We knew whatever he heard on the other end of the line sparked him into a reckless new plot of crime back in Omaha, cruelly taking advantage of a cancer patient, a hapless Jeff, and a trusting Marion.
But it goes further than reckless and careless and cruel. When Jeff, as he was destined to do, panics and gets himself arrested, Gene embraces the opportunity to tangentially blow up his own world. He’s not going to turn himself in, like Kim suggested; he’s going to make the universe work a little harder than that. When Marion, suspicious that her Jeffy has called Gene instead of her when he goes to jail, searches for “con man” and “Albuquerque” on the laptop Jeff bought her, she finds those “Better Call Saul” commercials Saul has always been so proud of.
It leads to a tense standoff between the two, as Gene rips the telephone cord from the wall and Marion threatens to push the button on her LifeAlert monitor to call the cops on him. For one terrifying moment, Gene stands with the telephone cord stretched across his hands, making it a perfect strangulation weapon. But when Marion, no shrinking little old lady, looks him in the eye and sincerely tells him, “I trusted you,” Jimmy/Saul/Gene proves there is a line he won’t cross. Marion wins their game of chicken, calling for help with the LifeAlert, while Gene turns around and runs out of her house.
In their own ways, both Kim and Jimmy made the decision to stop running from what they did. So…who else could use one of of Gene’s drinks right about now?
Stray observations
- “Waterworks” was written and directed by Vince Gilligan, who gave us two of my favorite scenes of the final season: the levity of the two cops arguing about a fish taco while Jeff wrecks his cab and possibly leads authorities to a much bigger criminal in Saul, and the scene in Marion’s kitchen, with Gene’s glasses reflecting the “Better Call Saul” commercials from Marion’s computer in color. It’s a beautiful shot and a reminder that there is nothing the writers of this universe love more than the characters being hoisted by their own petards.
- When Kim is in Saul’s strip mall office to sign divorce papers, he tells her she should have taken her share of the Sandpiper settlement. It is not a surprise to learn that he did take the money, even after Howard’s death, and that she didn’t.
- When Kim is talking to Cheryl about possible repercussions for everything she confessed to, she mentions her ex-husband, “assuming he’s still alive” Was that her attempt, after everything, to protect him, in case she is prosecuted or sued for any of her actions? Or protect herself?
- Jesse Pinkman, while sharing cigarettes and conversation with Kim outside Saul’s office, asks Kim if Saul is any good. “When I knew him he was,” she says.
- The title of the series finale, written and directed by Peter Gould, is “Saul Gone.” Until then.
474 Comments
I wonder if the “I trusted you” line reminded him of his Mom, the first person he took advantage of.
More cynically (you’re welcome), he may have realized that killing Marion wouldn’t do much good. Jeff and Buddy know who he is, and Jeff even knows Gene/Saul was in Marion’s house. G/S would have had to go on the run anyway, with a Nebraska murder charge on top of whatever the feds can pin on him.
A big part of the show is the difference between Jimmy and Walter. Walter kills, Jimmy/Saul/Gene doesn’t.
I’m pretty sure this episode contained the only two instances in which Jimmy/Saul/Gene considers committing violence himself across both series — when he’s going to smash the cancer guy with the dog’s urn, and when he threatens to strangle Marion. Both times he doesn’t actually go through with it, because he’s not capable of violence. Even on Breaking Bad, Saul was constantly recommending that they send people “on a trip to Belize,” and yet he never actually arranges a murder. The closest he comes is when he has Huell lift the ricin cigarette to facilitate Walt’s poisoning plan.
Walt, on the other hand, is quite capable of violence.
Oh, I don’t know. Had that guy not fallen back asleep, I’m fairly sure he’d have been wearing his dog’s ashes in a gaping head wound.
The wild thing is, I had assumed he was just going to toss the urn into a first floor hallway as a distraction and dash. But two almost-attempted murders in a couple of hours, yeah, he’s in a bad place. Hopefully he doesn’t find himself a cornered animal in the finale.
quite capable of telling other people to do it, or doing it in some way where hes removed, like poison or planting a bomb. The only time i remember him doing something himself face to face is when he shot mike. But i havent watched it in a loooong time.
He kills Emilio with poison gas in the pilot! Then chokes Kraft 8 to death with a bicycle lock a couple episodes later. He later kills two of Gus’s street dealers (one by running him over with his car, the other by shooting him in the head), shoots two of Gus’s meth lab employees to death when he’s rescuing Jesse after arranging Gus’s death, the aforementioned Mike, and finally he shoots Jack face to face (after machine gunning his entire crew) and poisons Lydia in the last episode.I’m pretty sure Walt winds up killing more people himself than Tony Soprano did, and that’s not even getting into the many additional murders Walt arranges.
I mean , hasn’t yet possibly , only one episode left..
well, most people dont. hes a sleazy lawyer, but still just a lawyer. Hes probably never even been in a fistfight.
I’ve read other speculation that his plan was just to tie her up with the cord, which is why he’s still talking about how everything was going to work out.
No need to inject cynicism into that moment: he was threatening/genuinely considering killing Marion (however you choose to see it; I personally think he was just blustering and channeling Heisenberg to intimidate her but that’s my interpretation), she said that she trusted him, hearing those words snapped him out of the mental state he’s been in since the phone call with Kim and brought back his conscience, at least for that moment. Which is why he doesn’t even attempt to stop her when she clicks the LifeAlert button. Vince Gilligan confirmed this in an interview last night.
Kim, Chuck, Howard, his Sandpiper constituents, Marco. A long trail.
It definitely stopped him in his tracks.
I think it was Jimmy’s genuine respect or affection for older folks that snapped him out of his murderous desperation. He’s many things, but not a murderer. (I don’t even think he was going to murder the cancer victim, I think he was only shooting for a knock out.)
It’s also a sad echo of his motto as an elder law specialist: “A Lawyer You Can Trust.” And it echoes the scene at the end of season 3 when he’s pretending to be an uncaring asshole to fix things with Sandpiper and Mrs. Landry: the old folks “accidentally” overhear Erin from Davis & Main telling him “These people trusted you!” and him sneering contemptuously. I could see why that might be a kick in the pants, for Gene to be reminded that he’s become the asshole he was previously just pretending to be.
Completely Random and odd since we never see or really hear a thing about her but YES Chuck and Jimmy had to have come from a home of two very bizarre parents 🙂 great insight
The monochrome world of the post-Breaking Bad timeline gives me similar feelings to the new reality at the end of Twin Peaks: The Return. A haunting lonely wasteland that the audience shouldn’t really have access to. We have strayed beyond the frame of the stage into the place at which stories die.
That laptop reflection in the glasses was really something.
I am both envious of and happy for future binge-watchers of this show who will be able to watch these last b&w episodes with no commercials. I didn’t know the show’s title until just now, (good title btw) but it could easily have been “Breaking Bad part 2″ because Gene really, for a second there, both considered using that phone cord and, earlier, bashing that guy’s head in with the heavy pet-ashes urn (note how they subtly showed how heavy it was). The suspense was nuts. And that bit of color reflected his glasses… fucking nice. This last batch feels like one epic length, very engrossing movie.
They’ve done the reflection thing before all the way back in the first episode when he first rewatches his old ads.
No way. Even in b&w?
True, though the combination of the b/w present (in the show, anyway) and the color reflection of the past worked really really well. Worlds colliding.
As an experiment, I told my parents to start watching Better Call Saul first, but now I think I need to have them stop after Lalo dies, watch Breaking Bad and El Camino, and then finish the last six episodes of BCS.
I feel like watching BCS first would spoil a lot of the reveals in Breaking Bad around the relationship between Gus and the cartel and the meth lab. In the original series, all of these strokes are painted one at a time, gradually revealing a mysterious underworld that turns out to be the backdrop for an epic decades-long revenge story. But if you watch BCS first, all of these pieces are just laid out on the board with the assumption that the viewer already knows how they all fit together. It probably works just as well, with added suspense provided by not knowing that Lalo has to fail in his quest to expose the lab, but I don’t know if BrBa is as exciting in that scenario.
I mean, yeah – it could flop. But that’s how experiments go.Also, I feel like they would have bailed on Breaking Bad because it’s pretty grim (they didn’t like that Kevin Costner show because everyone was so mean) and Better Call Saul was a kinder, tragi-comic intro to the world.So far, they’re hanging in there hoping that Jimmy gets his act together. They actually said this.
For sure it’s the intended way, but there’s merit in recommending Saul to people who don’t get along with Breaking Bad at first.Breaking Bad’s early stuff is very grim, loud, and honestly kind of edgy before it gets into the really well crafted underworld stuff.Whereas Better Call Saul only dabbles with a little of that at first (with Tuco in episode 2) before getting into some really great character writing with Jimmy, Kim, and Chuck.So it’s easier for people who’re put off by Breaking Bad’s early stuff to get into Saul I think.And at the end of the day, any increase in ways to access something well written/crafted is normally a good thing.
I tried to get my mom to watch Breaking Bad with me. She hit her limit as soon as the bathtub in Jesse’s house exploded with bits of Emilio all over the floor.
Nor would BCS be as potent if you stopped near the end, watched ~50 hours of a different show, then returned to this final stretch.
Nice parental experiment. But you’re forgetting that Lalo dies during the final six episodes. ‘S6 E8 Point & Shoot’
i’ve been re-watching breaking bad alongside saul (since the timeline caught up a few weeks ago) and the added context and re-framing of events really adds to…everything. love that we’ve developed a bb machete order already.
It’s so rare that sequels, spin-offs, etc. not only seamlessly integrate their stories with the originals, but actually improve upon them with extra color and detail that makes logical sense (rather than feeling like fan service).
My dad is doing the same thing. My advice for him was to slow down the binge towards the end of Breaking Bad for the sake of his stress levels because those last 3-4 episodes are rough.
You think those are rough, try the last few episodes of Person of Interest.
Yes, these last few episodes are the prologue for Breaking Bad.
I mean epilogue.
That would be an interesting way to watch it as it make it seem like the focus of the two shows is Saul and not Walter White. In the same way if you watch the Star Wars prequels straight through to RotJ, it would be much more about Annakin/Darth Vader than Luke
I did exactly that. Really works.
Yep! Yep! Yep… the last three mainly b&w episodes read as just one really big, dope epilouge. Fuck the commercials. They really ruin the pacing. (Even skipping them breaks the immersion).
Kim busted out crying on the airport shuttle… cut to: Soccer themed VW ad = fart noise.
The only redeeming quality of that ad was the brief appearance of Brett Goldstein as a Roy Kent-like guy who’s just there for the mints.
watchseriesstream.com
We watch on Amazon Prime and no commercials
I’ve been getting a definite Hitchcock vibe from the Omaha episodes. The B&W really makes the contrast pop, and also serves as a metaphor for how empty the lives of Jimmy, Kim and even Francesca are in the wake of Jimmy’s scheming. And I loved the color reflection in Gene’s glasses.The whole time Gene was creeping up on the cancer man (Kevin Sussman from Big Bang), I was saying “Don’t do it” over and over. Not just because it’s wrong to kill people, but also because of his choice of weapon—the man’s beloved pet’s ashes. That’s just not cool!I loved the scene with Marion. Carol Burnett NAILED it! She wasn’t intimidated by Gene or the infamous Saul Goodman. She just looked him dead in the eye with defiance and push the button on her Life-Alert like she was pulling a trigger.
What set Marion on to Gene was that, for someone who had claimed to have no knowledge of Albuquerque and never been there, this Cinnabon manager suddenly seemed to have an awful lot of knowledge both of ABQ and the law. He was blithely and all-too-eagerly reassuring her “Oh, don’t worry, Nebraska doesn’t have bondsmen like Albuquerque, you can just go in and pay his bail in cash and he’ll just walk straight out.” What? That seemed awfully suspicious. That’s why she looked him up on Ask Jeeves. She had already been noticing suspicious goings-on in the garage with Gene, Jeff and Buddy, and Gene being really quick just to walk out on her for more of the same when he was supposedly there to chat with her. The light dawned. “There never was a Nippy, was there?”
So true. Marion is no fool. I’m also guessing Jeff is going to be having some long, long conversations with law enforcement before he gets out of jail. And I have no doubt he’s also going to get immunity, or at least a reduced sentence in return for ratting out Jimmy/Saul/Gene.
You can watch live on the AMC+ app with no commercials (by live I mean clicking the episode when it appears at 9pm, not doing the actual live TV option)
In the UK we get it on Netflix so no ads. I think we get it a day later but that doesn’t bother me.
Who watches with commercials? I just start 25 minutes later and FF through them. If anyone is still hoping Jimmy/Saul/Gene gets away after last night I don’t understand that all. He is a bad human being capable of anything at this point. he needs to be in jail or worse.
We signed up for AMC+ after dropping cable a few weeks ago, and they air BCS without commercials.
VPN+Netflix+Eastern European country. No commercials.
“… a reminder that there is nothing the writers of this universe love more than the characters being hoisted by their own petards.”And it’s also worth reminding that it was Slippin’ Jimmy himself whose fast talking big mouth actually tipped off Marion even to suspect his own past Albuquerque connection once he let slip the ready availability of bail bond services there that were not necessary in a place like Omaha. As the review points out in both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, time and again the characters constantly paint themselves into corners which the writers have said they thrived on figuring out close escapes.
The tragedy, of course, is when the characters ultimately find they can no longer see any way out of the fateful holes they’ve dug themselves into. As the two people whose lives were most ruined in each story, Kim and Jesse meeting in passing at such a particular juncture is especially poignant. And as this review section pointed out many seasons ago, as prominent as Jimmy/Saul has always been right from the show’s title itself, it’s really Rhea Seehorn’s outstanding performance that has made Kim the vital central figure.
A very good point overall, but one little quibble:As the two people whose lives were most ruined in each story, Kim and Jesse meeting in passing at such a particular juncture is especially poignant.Howard Hamlin might take issue with that, were he able to.
Point well taken. Not to dismiss Howard as tangential, but Kim and Jesse were obviously most directly associated and complicit with the respective lead protagonists.
Howard is to BCS what the inverse of Mike was to BB. Mike’s death and disappearance is what basically ruined the Walt and Jesse relationship for good, and Howard’s had a very similar effect on Jimmy/Kim.
Much like the final breaking bad episodes, it’s remarkable how bold this show is with absolutely destroying any shred of goodness left in the protagonist. The series completely changes breaking bad for the better. I never would have thought the lovable wacky lawyer had such dark pits in his soul. Anchoring the final episodes as an extended BB/BCS epilogue was a masterful decision.
Saul was way more influential in BB that we ever knew, and the original show is better for it in retrospect. That alone is a clear awesome payoff for any prequel. I dont even care how it all wraps up next week, in terms off specifics. Just excited.
Yeah, it really has been like a different show the past few episodes, which I think works, but when I remember a few episodes ago, we were dealing with taking out Lalo, all things Gus, etc., I do feel like I’m watching El Camino Lite in a way.Not exactly complaining, but the back half of this season has been a massive pivot (that I think works, for the record).
Same. It has become a different show post Lalo vs. Gus. The last B&W episodes haven’t been very thrilling. But they aren’t bad either. We knew the show would end in a strange, kinda unknown territory. Im viewing these final four Gene episodes as one big, slow burn epilouge.
I think everyone knows that they messed up but everyone’s reluctant to say it
It’s a really smart creative move. People still liked the character and were rooting for him but the episode was a reminder that he’s not actually a good, likable character and deserves the kind of fate he seems to be headed to. People always rooted for Walt (and Tony Soprano) no matter what they did and both shows made it obvious by the end that they are not people who you should root for. It makes the end in a way easier to do because we longer are sympathetic to the character
I still don’t. I think it’s implausible.
Well I’m glad my prediction of Kim not having died of cancer didn’t pan out (it was a Vince episode and he has form of extreme darkness) but didn’t see it being that phonecall is what starts her attempt at some form of absolution or restitution, although I guess it could’ve been driven by finally having enough of Florida Man making whatever the hell those noises were.With Marion I don’t know how I feel about it being her who finds him out, maybe a little bit too distracting given it’s the special guest star, but that scene where Jimmy clearly considers just murdering her was scary as hell.Still, best moment had to be Jeff just gunning it straight into the back of a nearby car for absolutely no reason.
Jeff just gunning it straight into the back of a nearby car for absolutely no reason.I thought Jeff did that on purpose to bail Gene out.I may be misremembering, but they didn’t steal from the other guys’ houses. Right? That way they had no idea how their identities got stolen. That was the genius part.
So if Gene hadn’t taken those watches like a fucking idiot, Jeff had every reason to believe it was worth a traffic ticket to get Saul out of the house. Aside from a broken window, which the cops might’ve thought he drunkenly did himself if the guy even noticed, there would’ve been zero evidence of a crime, and the guy probably would’ve just gone to bed.
He could’ve been more subtle though. He didn’t have to ram it like that.
I thought Jeff just panicked. But, yeah, Gene was much sloppier on this job, between the B&E, the actual theft, and just hanging out having a whiskey at the guy’s house. To the point where I started to consider that he was planning to get caught for some reason.
Subconscious self-sabotage, possibly. The kind of behaviour Saul Goodman would have berated a client over.
Watched Talking Saul for the first time ever last night. Bob was a guest, (along with Rhea, Vince, & Gould) he confirmed that Gene did indeed sabotage himself bc he’s basically just a bored thrill junkie at this point. Chris H. asked: “Bob, what’s Jimmy’s biggest flaw?”
Self-sabotage is pretty much the story of Jimmy’s life. Throughout the show, he has had countless opportunities to take a different path and has chosen not to.
And speaking of sloppy, maybe when you call the mother of your criminal associate— whom she knows got into legal trouble in the city that you had to flee and assume another identity— to tell her he’s been arrested, don’t act like you, ostensibly a Cinnabon manager, have a thorough understanding of the difference between Albuquerque and Omaha criminal law.
I agree that this is just self-destruction at this point. Gene / Saul is so confident and relaxed on the phone to Jeff and Marion, getting to do this just for one more day, even if it tears his “ordinary” life down, feels worth it to him at this point. And hey, maybe he’ll get away with it!
Yep, Yep! Yep! Yep!! YEP!
He wasn’t Gene in those scenes. He had slipped into pure, uncut Saul at that point.
I don’t feel like he was un-cut Saul, he was something else, a whole new shade of Jimmy. There’s an anger and malevolence to him now that there wasn’t there before. Notice in his phone call to Kim he was kind of a dick- Saul was never that kind of a dick. Saul would never think about violence. He’s hurt and he’s pissed and he hates what his life comes to and it’s coming out in Gene. He’s like Walt in a way in that his resentment towards what his life has become mixed with an out of control ego makes his actions a way of acting it all out.
This is correct – Gene is Jimmy’s version of Walt, right down to the look.
Or don’t even worry about tipping your “thorough understanding of the difference between Albuquerque and Omaha criminal law” – just don’t reveal that you’re familiar with Albuquerque *at all* just after a woman cites it as where her son got into trouble.
There’s also how confident he was in Buddy not being involved. How would he know for sure?
Planning to get caught… yup, the Self sabotage theory was confirmed by Bob Odenkirk himself afterwards on Talking Saul. According to Bob, Jimmy is bored AF in Omaha and he only thrives when under pressure, taking big risks, and flaunting the authorities with his “overly complicated crimes”. Basically he needed to botch himself in order to raise the stakes against himself to feel alive. Jeff being a fucking idiot driver certainly helped too! Lol
Gene wasn’t thinking clearly at all. You’d think he’d appeal to basic human greed with Marion and offer her money we knows he has to try and get her to clam up. Or point out that she’d be risking her own son who’s entangled in criminality with Gene. Nope, he just goes straight to the old phone cord around the neck gambit.
Gene was definitely sloppy in this episode – his drinking, his phone call with Marion – but I saw a comment on Reddit that made me reconsider why he decided to steal those watches: unlike the other robberies with the tape on the doors and no physical items actually being stolen, Gene smashed a window to get into this house. So he might have decided to grab a few watches, just so the cops would find evidence of a break-in robbery, which would have kept their true intentions (identification theft) under wraps.
Jeff isn’t smart enough to do much more “on purpose” than go to the bathroom.
You’re misremembering and misinterpreting. Jeff clearly freaked out and panicked, not a planned crash. There was no genius part of this plan, just Saul acting out & pushing the limits. No items where previously stolen other than personal info photos. Not trying to being a smartypants here. I’ve also been confused and misinterpreting alot of these recent Omaha Gene scenes at times.
No items where previously stolen other than personal info photos. This is the genius part of the plan I was talking about.The marks woke up with all their money/valuables untouched, so they had no idea they’d been conned, which is the perfect con.Jeffy didn’t know why the cops were really in front of the house, and he had no reason to think he’d be implicated in a robbery (cause there wasn’t supposed to be a robbery), so distracting the cops with a fender bender’s not a bad tradeoff to get Gene out.Saul’s demeanor on the phone implied he knew why Jeffy did what he did, IMO.
You’re misinterpreting it man. Go read a couple other reviews on some other sites. Same consensus. Or watch the episode again with a clearer understanding. If you still can’t realize Jeff was practically pissing himself before the wreck, and was super worried and scared after being arrested, then I dunno what to tell you man. He just freaked & crashed out for comic relief and plot advancement purposes.
I don’t care what consensus is, I would wager literally anything that what the writers had in mind was “Jeff comes up with a plan to distract the cops,” not “Jeff freaks out and crashes his car for no reason.”
Jeff also knows that if Saul is caught in the house, he could be implicated in their previous crimes (which Saul explicitly threatened to do). This wasn’t Jeff panicking, this was a diversion. I didn’t think there was any other way to read it. I also noticed that in the phone call to Kim, Saul is STILL unsure about Lalo being dead after all these years.
No, Jeff just freaked out. A cab sitting on a residential street after hours isn’t something that would draw a cop’s attention. He could have simply driven off normally and they’d have thought nothing of it.
I saw it as, the moment Saul called her in the sprinkler office, all the trauma she had compartmentalized around Lalo and Howard came back all at once. After Howard’s death, Jimmy and Kim each rationalized their earlier behavior differently, with Jimmy coming to view their actions as necessary and justified (creating Saul), and Kim viewing them as evil (creating Florida-Kim). I think she was better at forgetting, provided she was in a new locale with no ties to her past life. On an average day I don’t think she thought that much about Howard.And then Saul calls, and she realizes she’ll never be free of the past. But really, we see here that both of their attempts at rebirth failed, and that they were both always dead inside after Howard died. They just take different steps to get themselves caught after the phone conversation.
She was a husk of herself in FL. I think the breakdown on the shuttle shows just how much she’s bottled up the last six years.
Kim dying of lung cancer would truely be a corny 90’s style karmic revelation. Definitely glad you were wrong.*PS. I was wrong too… I predicted that the department store manager would bust Gene’s big mall caper.
You say that but that’s why I thought it was plausible given Vince and co are very big into karmic justice, which is very visible across the franchise.The show is extremely light on people whose fates are truly tragically innocent (Howard for example).
You may still get your Kim karmic retribution yet. I’m predicting that both die or get fuckd bad next week.
Wounder if the thing now will be whether their relationship is so far gone that Kim takes her own fall or passes much of the punishment on to Jimmy if they ever see a courtroom over what happened to Howard.
Saul ends up reunited with the old yellow Suzuki, we know that. Perhaps Kim is forced by the Feds to make contact with Jimmy in order to locate him…
i think she says she told them all of jimmys involvement in her letter to the D.A. Her story really wouldnt make sense without it unless she chose to take the blame for everything, even the shit he did.
Kim got fucked bad this week
Well unless saul kills her, it seems like anybody with a reason to kill kim is out of the picture. She could go to jail but even that seems iffy.
Jeff’s crash was so hilarious I literally lol’d. Like come on really?!! Dude you’re a cab driver and those cops are obviously not interested in you. I get it, you’re not a master criminal and you are freaking out about if the cops have been called on you bc of Gene’s burglary (maybe you two should be texting one another, while doing this)… but to lose control of your own vehicle from a dead stop and crash into the first parked car? Bruh.
It had a Big Lebowski vibe…
“looks like a homeless person slept here, then moved on…..Hey, they left the Credence tapes….’
Jimmy called her bluff in that phone call. I also think she sees what happened to Jimmy after they split up and saw a small reflection of how she turned out after the death of Howard.
Jeff crashing like that was reminiscent of Ted Beneke’s unfortunate accident.
After several years of worrying if Kim survives, there was a little while there, where I was thinking maybe it would have been better if she hadn’t. I wonder whether the life she is leading is a guilt-ridden, self sabotaging form of purgatory. Maybe the confession, with or without prosecution, is the redemption she needs to move on to a better life.
I hope so. Not just because I like Kim, but personally I think a better way to make amends is to genuinely get back to the work of helping people in some way— that’s what she was passionate about when she was practicing law— rather than living in essentially a self-imposed exile.
I thought Kim in the courthouse was interesting. She sees the “new” Kim helping a client with his tie, prepping him for his hearing and appearing to care about the client just like Kim would.The feeling I got was “life goes on, nobody is irreplaceable.”
My favorite Charles de Gaulle quote: “The graveyards are filled with indispensable men”
Kim’s moment watching the young female lawyer prepping the old vagrant-looking guy in the courthouse hall signals that she knows that that avenue is closed to her now.
Even though she’s not been convicted of anything, that confession poisoned any chance at a return to practicing law.
I feel like her affidavit would probably be a big obstacle to any bar association admitting her, but nonetheless, she can probably find some way to help people with her work instead of just hiding out writing copy for a sprinkler company or whatever it is.
A legal aid outfit would love to have her. She can’t represent clients and actually practice law in court, but she can lend her knowledge to the young lawyers. She can also do research and prepare briefs. That kind of work could eventually lead to admission to the bar by showing that she’s doing the work. It’s a long road to travel for a possible maybe, but it’s out there.
I’m not sure a legal aid society would like someone who manipulated the law and her profession to humiliate another lawyer, but now feels guilty that the Mexican meth cartel she was indirectly allied with killed that lawyer.Gotta have standards, even with Legal Aid.
True. But then again, they probably wouldn’t have to pay her much and her name wouldn’t be on any of the paperwork going to the courthouse. It would be a very behind-the-scenes kind of work.
I didn’t think I needed to spell out all the nuances, but, sure: somewhere down the road she could serve in some law-process-related capacity helping people in legal jeopardy. But she won’t be a lawyer. That affidavit seals it – but the implication of her “bar card doesn’t have an expiration date” line is that she has been disciplined in some such manner that she is no longer a member of the bar, but that she retained and is now using her bar-membership card illicitly to see Jimmy.But, more importantly really, when Kim sees that mild doppleganger in the courthouse, her face screams ‘regret and acceptance’, not ‘realization and recharged inspiration’.
somewhere down the road she could serve in some law-process-related capacity helping people in legal jeopardy. Indeed, in the finale we see her walk into the Legal Aid office to do exactly that.
well she gave up her license voluntarily-if she hadnt confessed, couldnt she have gotten it back?
To riff on your take, Kim hasn’t really survived in her Florida form. She’s already dead inside. Coming back to ABQ and trying to make things right is bringing herself back to life – even if that life is behind bars.
As she pointed out to Cheryl, there’s no physical evidence of a crime thanks to Mike and his cleaning squad. Lalo—who actually killed Howard—as well as Gus and Mike—who knew where Howard and Lalo are buried—are all dead. The DA may prosecute for the fraud, but it’s unlikely.As for the “my ex-husband, if he’s alive” comment, That was not out of a desire to protect Jimmy. It’s self preservation. Knowing the whereabouts of a fugitive would make her an accessory.
As she pointed out to Cheryl, there’s no physical evidence of a crime thanks to Mike and his cleaning squad. Lalo—who actually killed Howard—as well as Gus and Mike—who knew where Howard and Lalo are buried—are all dead. The DA may prosecute for the fraud, but it’s unlikely.When you put it like that, this is as cruel as Kim’s implying Cheryl was a bad wife for missing all the signs of Howard’s problems at the Wake. Kim is basically saying, “Mea culpa, we did this terrible thing to Howard but we’ll probably get off with nothing more than a guilty conscious.” And there is still no true closure because nobody knows where Howard’s final resting place is. Not sure that was Kim’s intent but it could be taken that way.
Perhaps cruel, but at least this time it’s the truth
I think the confession to the DA and the mea culpa to Cheryl were as much about Kim easing her conscience by facing the music as it was to console the grieving widow.
Yes, when Cheryl asked her “why”, I was half expecting Kim to bluntly admit to it being down to guilty conscience.
yeah, as usual its really about kim
It’s interesting; I don’t think the intent was cruel here, but there is nevertheless an clearly self-serving element to it all. She only decides to do it after Gene calls her on it, which can basically make it a case of “I’ll show him!”, and intentionally or not she has essentially made sure to do so at a point where no one is alive or available to confirm her story, meaning she’s unlikely to face any serious punitive response for what she did. It can be read as more her trying to make herself feel better / show her ex than about making restitution.
Agreed. Does she really need to tell all of that to Cheryl? Knowing that Howard committed suicide might be much easier to take than him being killed accidentally by a member of a drug cartel because two of Howard’s peers were scheming to ruin his career
i think she said it because she meant it like, “dont get your hopes up of finding a body.”
Jail is the fucking worst. She shouldve just accepted what happened and moved on.
We don’t know for sure yet that she survives. We just know she’s currently alive… next weeks teaser shows Jimmy’s old Suzuki IN COLOR. Kim may still be in danger next week.
After the way the pieces moved around this episode I think we are headed toward a Jimmy-Kim legal showdown in the finale. Jimmy is going to get caught and put on trial in ABQ and the prosecutors are going to use Kim and her affidavit to show just how long “Saul” was cozy with the cartels.
Yeah, I was thinking that too. Even if the DA had enough evidence to prosecute Kim, they’d gladly give her immunity for her testimony against Saul Goodman.
I won’t say never and I’m could be wrong, but to be honest, I can’t really see this. Better Call Saul seems to be ending on a quieter, more melancholic and small-scale fashion than Breaking Bad did, which went full operatic-Shakespearean tragedy, so Kim and Jimmy having a big dramatic showdown in court seems a little too… loud. Especially since, well, it’s not like the prosecution doesn’t almost certainly have plenty of evidence to send Jimmy up the river already, a largely unprovable confession from his ex-wife which ultimately boils down to he-said-she-said doesn’t seem like it would add much. I can see Jimmy finding out about the confession and that having a crucial impact on what happens, admittedly, but I doubt there’ll be any kind of courtroom showdown between the two.
Wound up being a little of column A and a little of column B
What’s going on here? It has to be a nod to Jesse. Right?
Is that all though? Seems like I’m missing a joke or something.And Jesse seemed like he had a new Brooklyn accent or something. It’s been forever, but is that how he talked in BB?
That had my mind racing – surely a deliberate ploy, before the reveal that its ABQ.
Wait, what ploy? It’s just Alaska Airlines
I legit thought she was flying there to escape for a second, but then I realized I’m watching a better show than that.
He was so hammy in that scene. It’s like he’s been playing parody versions of Jesse for so many years post BB that he doesn’t know how to dial the character back. I don’t remember Jesse saying “yo” twice in every sentence.I feel like the writers wrote his lines and then they told Paul to “Jesse them up”
i started re-watching the series and that would have been season 2 jesse, who pretty much said yo that much.
Aaron Paul got much better as he grew into the role and Jesse’s character deepened. He did the tormented soul stuff really well, once he was dealing with weighty problems like Jane’s death and Gale’s murder and eventually becoming enslaved. I thought his performance was fine in El Camino. But he seems unable to unpeel the onion and put the layers back on. It doesn’t help that he’s now about 20 years too old for the role. I think this week’s flashback was meant to take place a year or two before Breaking Bad, because he was trying to find a lawyer for Emilio and not Badger (which led into the original Better Call Saul episode).
oh yeah wasn’t shitting on the performance, but at that point in the character’s arc he was saying yo that much haha.i’ve really re-evaluated paul’s performance this re-watch. he’s fantastic, and they ask him to do so much and be so real while absolutely wearing the world’s dumbest outfits. but to your point, yeah this does seem like it was even earlier and he would have been saying yo just as much, if not more!
He played it like he was tweaking, so I’m good with it.
Deleted for redundancy!
yeah i agree it’s earlier, i was conflating the timing of last week’s episode with his appearance in this one.
Yeah my bad, totally missed that you guys already discussed the timeline!
No, that was a pre-season one Jesse. Emilio is still alive.
I watched the first three episodes of Season One this week and I don’t think I heard a single “yo”
Early Breaking Bad Jesse was very much a “yo this is whack, I’m Joey Tribbiani trying to convince Chandler I can audition for a 19 year old when I’m 30″ kind of character.And this is a Jesse that’s even earlier than that Jesse we see at the start of Breaking Bad.So I think it’s pretty in character, it can still come off a bit silly though (though to be fair I’m sure there really are people who talk like that).
I was originally placing this Jesse scene AFTER the scenes of Walt, Jesse & Saul from last week, and it didn’t make any sense because Jesse was still on good terms with Emilio here and didn’t seem to take Saul seriously. Then I realized, OH, this is earlier in Saul’s new life as the Saul we come to know in BB.
Yeah, I think there was lots of improvisation going on, and I thought the scene went on too long.They were too in love with Jesse to edit him. I get that though.
It was awful watching him try very hard to be jesse. He said the right things , he tried very hard to get as many Jesse-isms as he could, but nothing about Aaron Paul is part of who he was back then. I genuinely cringed for him. I’m kinda angry they made him do this. I know he’d do anything they ever want from him for life , but I’m sure he is done with Jesse for 10 lives
Yea it’s how he talked. But you’re still on to something here. I noticed that too.
Yes, he talked like that in BB. I think he sounded much more in-character in this episode.
This show has everything: Dial-up internet. The bastard substitution of a condiment. The worst domestic intercourse on TV this side of April and Cutler in Eastbound & Down. MTV’s Dan Cortese.
That is…everything.
Yep. Yepp. Yup! Yep. Yeaup!
I’ve been saying “Yep” in bed for years. Totally normal!
My (14 yo) son and I were watching the episode, and I turned to him and said, “For the record, do not say ‘yep’ during sex.”
I wonder how Saul was in the sack.
Don’t forget Sydney Applebaum.
Rhea Seehorn’s portrayals of Florida Kim and ABQ Kim are incredible
here, and her breakdown during a shuttle to the airport may be the most
moving bit of acting in the show’s history.Right before Kim broke down, it occurred to me she looked a lot like Flo, from the Progressive Insurance ad, which kinda ruined the scene for me.
OK, but the wig they are using for Kim is perfection. I would never have clocked it if I hadn’t known better before seeing it. It may be the best most realistic TV wig I’ve ever seen.
I’m so stupid I dint realize it was Kim until the opening ended. Lol
The trick was not making it perfect. That’s the problem with TV wigs—they are all helmets of hair with no imperfections. And they are always so fluffy.
Better than the Americans?!!Actually yeah, poor example.
Good call on The Americans as Kerri Russell looked hot in every wig!
Even Martha knew Philip was wearing a wig. Second-rate Soviet wigmaking technology.
I like that they lampshaded that with the suggestion the Phillip was embarrassed to be balding. He even kept the damn thing on during sex.
In Soviet Russia, wig wear you!
lol
No one notices that rhea has a hard time producing tears. I don’t remember the episode where she first cries but there were no tears . Monday on the bus she cries like she hysterical but there are no tears until almost when it’s over that they cut back to her and you see one tear.
I thought the A last week should have been an A-, given that much of it was treading the same ground as the episode before (scam, montage etc). But if anything, this episode was an A+.
A little bit too early on the “The Tide is High” chorus there, Gene. Not moving on yet!
I loved the tiny gag of Gene/Jimmy/Saul/The Shadow jumping the gun on the chorus a few lines too early.
Something I just realized after finishing this episode: Jimmy is always at his most vengeful when people attempt to hold themselves accountable. Note how his true rage at Howard started when Howard confessed that he felt responsible for Chuck’s death. When Kim comes in to sign the divorce settlement, his performance of stone-cold indifference—“Well, have a nice life, Kim!”—is because she’s actually trying (somewhat) to take responsibility for what they’ve done. Jimmy’s actually not too bothered when people try to hold him accountable, with the exception of Chuck. He’ll still do everything in his power to weasel out of the consequences, but he generally doesn’t take it too personally. But when people try to answer for their own bad actions, that’s when Jimmy feels truly, personally attacked. That is the only kind of choice that makes him feel genuinely morally implicated because he knows it’s the one thing he’ll never voluntarily do himself. It’s even worse if Jimmy can tell himself the other person’s choice is actually just an act of self-serving hypocrisy—as when Buddy refuses to rob a man battling cancer after having robbed so many others, or when Kim resigns as a member of the bar association and turns down the Sandpiper money, but doesn’t actually turn herself in. (It’s the mark of how complex the BCS/BB ethical matrix is that the writers actually allow those kinds of actions to be both self-serving and genuinely driven by conscience at the same time.) I think the reason for this is because of a feeling that started creeping up on me while watching “Nippy”: it doesn’t matter how sweet and kindhearted Jimmy can be at an interpersonal level, his addiction to pulling off these kinds of schemes reveals the con artist’s basically malevolent orientation toward the universe. What I mean is that, in order to do this over and over again, you have to believe, deep down in your soul, that a person’s willingness to trust you isn’t just a reason, but a justification for lying to them, stealing from them, and taking things that aren’t yours to take. If somebody trusts you, it means they deserve to be hurt by you. Remember the flashback scene where a young Jimmy watches his father get conned and then starts stealing from the register that very day? That looked an awful lot like the birth of a lifelong contempt for the world, and the thing about contempt is that it has nothing to do with affection or attachment. Contempt is about an absence of respect, not an absence of liking—you can like people just fine and still have no respect for them, or conversely, absolutely despise someone and still have a basic respect for them. (Recall what Jimmy says to Cliff Main after he manages to scam his way into getting fired and still keeping his severance: “For what it’s worth, Cliff, I think you’re a decent guy.” Cliff: “Yeah, well, for what’s it’s worth, Jimmy, I think you’re an asshole.”) What makes Jimmy’s contempt for the world different from Chuck’s is that Chuck’s vengeance and pettiness is activated when people don’t defer to him (he’s a lot like Walt that way), whereas Jimmy’s is activated by its opposite, when people act in good faith and assume he is as well. So it makes sense that Jimmy is so infuriated by other people’s attempts to take responsibility for themselves, especially if he considers them to be just as compromised as he is. To admit that you’ve done wrong, or that there are lines you won’t cross is to agree that there are ethical and moral standards that go beyond interpersonal kindness, and that adherence to those standards might require some kind of sacrifice. When you’re willing to cross a line and the other person isn’t, who looks like the asshole?
Nice observations.
really enjoy this take.
Very long; did read. Worth it.
Can someone please tell me what Omaha Saul is “wanted” for? He wasn’t laundering Walt’s money, and his cartel connections are all dead (erasing any link to him). What is the “crime” he is being hunted for?
Well-put.Jimmy doesn’t like people getting physically hurt: the second episode of BCS has him risk himself with Tuco to save the skater bois even though there was no benefit to him for doing so. But everything else is on the table, even if he is initially uncomfortable with it: Francesa tricking Hank into thinking Marie was in the hospital (he doesn’t look happy with the idea, even if he spearheaded it), or hesitating a couple of times with the plan to trick Howard but letting Kim goad him on. He might not like hurting people and wants to show it’s not personal, hence wanting to clarify to Cliff that he’s a nice guy, but he can always rationalize that they’ll get over it (Howard), or deserve it deep down (cancer guy), or that they’d do the same thing to him (most of the marks he rips off in Omaha).I think it’s that last part that explains his worldview: Jimmy approaches the world thinking they’ll do it to him first. Maybe that’s why Marion telling him that she trusted him seemed to rattle him. She had no game and no agenda, so he can’t rationalize away hurting her.
Apply to a.v. club my dude. This comment could be a featured article and is way better than anything they have up right now.
It’s Donna Bowman level quality.
This take is far too good for this site.
Damn, that’s good.
I just wrote a long reply, Kimberly, riffing on your fascinating take here on Jimmy’s motivations. But my whole reply got accidentally erased when I double-checked the spelling of “malevolent.”Anyway, I think you’re RIGHT. For example, I never understood Jimmy’s rationale for the bowling ball thing and the prostitutes being sent to the table where Howard and Cliff were eating. Those two actions of Jimmy’s seemed unnecessarily cruel and pointless. But given your insights into Jimmy’s anger at people who want to own up to their actions – or, at least the actions they’re aware of or are willing to atone for – it does begin to make sense.
Jimmy/saul/gene is a performer at heart. His schemes are purposely, yet needlessly theatric.. he wants an audience. He acts out when he doesn’t feel rewarded for his stunts.
Oops, I previously credited the AV author with this fantastic comment in my reply before.Sorry, DancerInTheSnark. It’s your brilliant revelation I’m complimenting!!
Great,cogent points 👏👏👏
Great take!
Deep cut and well-written.
You have to be a cynical, cold-hearted person to be a con man and this episode peeled it all back and showed what really lies beneath his cons.
Won’t say much about the rest of your analysis, which is interesting for sure (and which I agree with to a large degree, to be clear). I will just say the thing you identified about Jimmy is, in my opinion, a basic aspect of human nature gamely teased out by this show. People can really come to resent just seeing people who are doing “the right thing” more than they are. It’s why people get so annoyed at vegans and vegetarians, at people who run marathons, at people who do charity, whatever. Relatedly, it’s why Cracker Barrel is even in “controversy” right now. We’re all the heroes in our own story, and it bothers us to see people doing things that we perceive as “more moral” than what we do, so the instinct is to lash out at them.
Brilliant analysis.
> Jimmy’s [pettiness] is activated by its opposite, when people act in good faith and assume he is as wellAnother example: Jimmy’s job interview at the copier place. He tore a strip off of them for being duped by his smooth talking.
Great take. Another example: he becomes livid at the copy machine sales managers for falling for his pitch during his interview and actually offering him a job. That level of stupidity can only mean that they deserve to have their Hummel stolen.
What I mean is that, in order to do this over and over again, you have to believe, deep down in your soul, that a person’s willingness to trust you isn’t just a reason, but a justification for lying to them, stealing from them, and taking things that aren’t yours to take. If somebody trusts you, it means they deserve to be hurt by you.Bingo. And don’t forget that BCS has told as this as explicitly as drama can. While looking for an interim job during his law suspension, Jimmy talks the managers at the photocopier business into hiring him on the spot. His reaction is not to accept the offer and pat himself on the back for charming them – rather, it’s instantaneous and venomous contempt. No background check, even?He’s so incensed that he returns to the business the very next night to rob them of their collectible tchotchkes – immediately victimizing them as punishment for their perceived naïveté.
That was very insightful. He plays people for suckers then hates them for not knowing they’re being conned. It’s the oldest excuse in the book. That people are complicit in their own victimization of the crime perpetrated on them.
Sounds like a certain orange ex-president
Fantastic insight. I have not read anyone else who has put their finger on this the way you have.
TLDR!!!
Wow, nice one
Brilliant.The only thing I’d add is that it was Kim who wanted to destroy Howard, for fun (her motivation was hinted at in the origin story with her mother). Jimmy was shocked things were going too far but could not be seen to wimp out. She is therefore indirectly responsible for HH’s murder (‘wrong time wrong place’). Her tears on the bus are either crococile ones or the writers are just flip-flopping their characters moral position in a slack way that often lesser writers are apt to do.
Excellent analysis! What I mean is that, in order to do this over and over again, you have to believe, deep down in your soul, that a person’s willingness to trust you isn’t just a reason, but a justification for lying to them, stealing from them, and taking things that aren’t yours to take. If somebody trusts you, it means they deserve to be hurt by you.This hit the nail on the head, I think. This is Jimmy’s main motivation.
Excellent anaysis; very insightful.
This is something the AV Club of 10 years ago would put out, and I mean that as a compliment. It’s infinitely better than the scene-by-scene recaps that they try to pass off as reviews these days.
Extremely excellent takes on Saul/Gene/Jimmy’s stances toward the world, especially after what he did in the finale that totally flipped what I expected from him.
This is an insightful and well written post. Have you considered writing your own reviews? I know several shows that AV Club reviews for which you’d be better suited than the current authors.
Might be coincidence, but I thought it was a nice touch that Gene was sat in one of those spinning recliners in his house, just like Kim’s partner in Florida. Mirroring the mundanity of their ‘new’ lives (before Gene went back to the con, obviously).
Hottest on-screen love scene ever?“Yep Yep Yep Yep”Sexy.BTW, Kim looked hawt as a brunette.Also if you ever needed proof that NOBODY looks good on webcams—-watched the Talking Saul postshow, and the normally gorgeous Rhea Seehorn looked really odd, lol.
“Yep Yep Yep” — just like Kevin Watchtell in all those old Mesa Verde commercials Saul cut together and parodied to get class-action participants and to blackmail him. “Yep! Let our family help you find your freedom.”
Holy shit, what a weird callback. Nice one.
Rhea looks like a 1940s goddess in B&W
The out of sync audio didn’t help either
Angles & lighting
where do y’all/can I watch ‘Talking Saul’? Google Search shows a series whose last episode was in 2017… 🥲
Well, if you were going by the ipad Hardwick was using last night, it was actually “Talking Dead”, lol.It was on right after the episode on AMC, which with monday’s long episode was roughly 10:25 ET.
Jimmy may be a no-good lying con man, but at least he doesn’t say “Yep” over and over during sex.
We don’t know this as fact. Kim & Jimmy never had any sex scenes beyond some cuddling and kissing. 🍆🍑
He just doesn’t seem like the type.
Yea. Jimmy seems more like a simple,“ah ah ah Ah Ahhha!!”, Kinda guy.
You’re forgetting the Sandpiper meeting.
Pretty sure they were mid-coitus during the Howard meltdown with Sandpiper conference call
Weren’t they just disrobing each other and passionately kissing? Then a quick cut away? No active intercourse yet?Btw: Im in no way asking you to do something crazy like, create a Kimmy and Jimmy humping Gif. But if you could perhaps link to one…. it’d aide my, uh, research.
He can even convince women, at least drunk ones, that he’s Kevin Costner.
Symbolism of the lyrics aside, biggest laugh of the episode for me was Gene doing that thing we’ve all done, belting into the chorus of a song, before faltering on realising it’s gone back into the verse, mumbling along to the lyrics you don’t really remember, until the chorus comes back around… “The TIDE IS HIGH, BUT I’M HOLDING ON…!”
Surely you must be mistaken. I’ve never done it.
That cracked me up.
ROXANNE!
Must have been a treat for Aaron Paul that they essentially gave him a whole monologue.That scene’s final shot of Kim running into the rain says so much of what world she’s trying to leave behind, and what Jesse somewhat obliviously has no idea he’s about to enter.
I watched a bit of Talking Saul afterwards (not really worth it, but) and Seehorn pointed out that if that conversation— or even Kim’s reply to Jesse asking if Saul was any good— had gone even slightly differently, the arc of Breaking Bad may not have happened.
This really hammers into place why the scene was awful!
There’s also the suggestion that if Kim had remained a lawyer, Jesse might have brought Badger to HER instead, since he has the same sort of story about how she was a miracle worker on Combo’s case that he had in BB about Saul getting Emilio off.
Rhea spoke specifically about this on Talking Saul.
I love how this is the only time (that I can recall, at least) that it’s raining in either BB or BCS.
Who knew the entire Breaking Bad universe was really just an extended LifeAlert commercial? They’ve really upped their ad game.It still bugs me that Hamlin’s widow was completely cold and indifferent and divorcing Howard when we saw them together but is apparently still a deeply bereaved widow. I’m sure there are ways to handwave this, but why show her so pointedly checked out of his life then?
I don’t know if she’s still deeply bereaved. As we know Howard was definitely trying to work on his marriage with counseling but his wife I think was ready to just call it quits. Howard getting killed though would still devastate her. Kim showing up clearly brought back a lot of grief. I don’t think she was sitting around the last six years grieving but Kim showing up opened old wounds.
Seriously. Imagine leaving someone because they’re apparently mismanaging their life (I forget when/why they split, but it seemed a symptom of Kim and Jimmy’s campaign), being always a little confused how that person became so erratic as to kill themselves amidst a coke bender, then receiving the sudden bombshell that it was an absolute fabrication. You can be completely over the relationship but still get utterly wrecked by such a revelation.
i think they were having problems before kim and jimmy started on him, but it didnt help, certaintly.
Yes, Howard’s widow even had a big rock wedding ring on…I don’t think that was the one she had with Howard, was it? She’d definitely moved on in some way.
I didn’t notice. But everything she thought she knew about Howard came into question when he died. I mean, she was absolutely right to be skeptical. But then you figure, six years go by and she probably just tried to come to terms with it, only to find out it was a complete lie.
But wasn’t she still living in their house? It was a strange choice to not have the new spouse around. I took the wedding ring to be hers and Howard’s because no other sign of the new beau was to be found, I think.
I didn’t recognize that it was exactly the same house, but I would find it a bit odd that she was still wearing the wedding ring six years later, especially if she was divorcing him anyway AND his name was mud. But, its all possible, for sure. I may be reading too much into it. They probably would have establish she was remarried somehow.
Check it out.. Right down to the lampshades and table decorations. There is just no way.
Some of this seems, if not exactly wrong per say, then perhaps a little… nitpicky. Most of this seems like it can be basically explained as a bit of artistic license to reiterate that Kim is essentially returning to the scene of the crime after many years away and confronting her unresolved past. Howard’s house still the same and Emily is a bit trapped in the past because symbolically there’s unfinished business here that needs to be settled before everyone can move on. In reality, would Howard’s wife have redecorated since her (ex) husband died? Probably. But she doesn’t exist in reality, she’s a character in a noir, so her life is going to be at least a little governed by symbolism and the artistic point the creators are trying to make. (Also, where is it said that Emily no longer loved her husband? It’s quite possible for two people to still care deeply, even still love each other, and feel like they’re no longer be able to be married to each other. Heck, there’s a prominent example of just that in this very series.)
I think Hippity does point out a good point, as do you — its a bit nickpicky for me to assume that just because its six years later that she’s not let him go, even if they were separated. It was the ring that made me think she’d remarried, but thats me reading into things, most likely.
The problem is just that the writers used Cheryl Hamlin as whatever device they needed at the time, leaving a jarring continuity problem for viewers. When they wanted to humanize Howard they made it clear that at home he doted on a wife that they took pains to show didn’t love him anymore. But then when they needed her to be the recipient of Kim’s painful confession, they slotted her back in as a grieving wife. They chose to keep her house untouched, they chose to show the wedding ring. It didn’t add up, a rare slip for this show that shows such a devotion to detail.
It’s like if Gene was outed because Jesse Pinkman strolled into Cinnabon for a snack. Is it possible? Yes. Would the writers have to explain to viewers why Jesse Pinkman ended up there? Also yes.
Again, you’re not exactly wrong, but I think the key difference here is a matter of scale. Jesse’s a major character whose part of the story has already been resolved so, yeah, people probably would call foul if they opened it up again in order to reinsert him into the story in such a contrived way if they didn’t take pains to explain how it happened, because people are a lot more invested in his part of the story. Howard’s wife is a minor character being used to make a symbolic point about Kim’s guilt and the possibility (or lack thereof) of redemption for her. Outside of this discussion, do people really care as much about whether Howard’s house still looks the same years later than if Jesse suddenly shows up again? Or is there a greater chance they might be more willing to shrug it off in order to go along with the broader point the episode’s making about how the past never quite lets us go? That’s presumably the calculation the writers were making for why we didn’t get a whole load of exposition for why Howard’s house looks the same and his ex is wearing a wedding ring. I think there’s less need for the producers to explain why Howard’s house looks the same partly because it’s making a symbolic point and partly because I suspect, well, less people give as much of a damn, to be entirely honest. At some point, it comes down to a choice between the needs of the story and the need to get the details unimpeachable.
C’mon, this is clearly the production not finding useful to waste money on a second set for two very brief scenes.And where is it written that rich people have to change furniture every six years, anyway? It’s just expensive furniture she likes. Conversely, not changing furniture says nothing of one’s attachment to a late husband. It’s not like she’s keeping his portrait in the living room. As far as we know, she chose that decor and he hated it. No reason to assume one way or the other. There are much clearer indicators of “character never got over the death of their spouse” than “their house still looks the same after a few years”.
But she appears to still be wearing his ring and living in their house, decorated exactly as it was six years later. That is entirely inconsistent with how she’d been pictured up until now.
Why would she move or redecorate?
Someone on another board mentioned this, and I think there are a couple of reasons:1) She DID marry him and presumably love him at one point2) She strikes me as the type of person who would be very concerned about how a husband committing suicide would reflect on her, in the circles they travel in. Only a handful of people probably really knew that their marriage was a sham.It can be a combination of both. You can be self-centered and grieving at the same time.
For six years, Cheryl’s likely believed that the breakdown of their marriage contributed to what she thought was Howard’s suicide. Along with grief, perhaps she’s carried a lot of guilt over “driving him to suicide.”
How would she think living in their house wearing their wedding ring six years later would reflect on her?
Just because their marriage was on the rocks doesn’t mean she doesn’t think what happened to him was horrible.
Because there’s a difference between divorcing someone and burying them. And she didn’t even get the chance to do that. You can dislike someone and not want anything to do with them on a personal/intimate level and still feel grief when they die. Especially when you had previously been married to them.
OK but would you live in the house you shared six years later and not change a single piece of furniture or decoration?
You can dislike someone and not want anything to do with them on a personal/intimate level and still feel grief when they die.Plus, we don’t know that Cheryl ever disliked Howard. We know she was cold towards him as a husband and likely thinking of getting a divorce, but that could still result in a close friendship between them after Howard would recover from the blow of losing the wife he still clearly loved. We haven’t seen anything pointing towards Cheryl not standing Howard as a person. The only interaction we witnessed was matter-of-fact and distant, but not hostile. He could have still been very dear to her heart. Just not as a husband.
I don’t think there’s anything inconsistent with having a failing marriage and being devastated when your husband seemingly has a breakdown and commits suicide, then being devastated again when you learn he was the victim of a cruel prank that ended up getting him murdered.
yeah not to harp on the OP but i do think it’s funny when people consider the messiness of human feelings to be a plot hole. although it does sometimes feel like that in real life too!
She probably regrets her coldness to Howard, which was pretty extreme. And Kim made her also regret it because she thinks she may have missed the signs of his addiction. When two people have a life together, it doesn’t all go away when the relationship ends. People can feel bad when an ex-spouse or even an ex-boyfriend/girlfriend dies.
She was also wearing what looked like a wedding band, too.
It’s very easy to be checked out of a relationship but still have enough feelings for the person that if they were to suddenly die and be besmearched in such a way that you question your whole relationship with them that you are upset over their death.
It’s kind of weird that there’s so much confusion over this when we have an obvious parallel with Kim, who is clearly disgusted by what Jimmy has become but still cares deeply about him
You can probably find a lot in my comment history discussing my father on a nostalgic level, but there are things I don’t necessarily like to air because, even though it was part of him, they’re not parts I want even random folks on the internet to think of when it comes to him, but they’re there.My mother’s relationship with my father was never the greatest. A lot of times when I talked with her, it was her genuinely complaining about how petty and hurtful he could be. Having grown up with him and been on the receiving end of the then-socially-acceptable bullying (and Asian dad discipline) many a time, I sympathized. I know part of her wanted to leave him but didn’t not because she thought he would do something to her but because she didn’t think he’d ever recover from it. I continually told her that I’d understood if she did.
But when we realized he was gone, we were both destroyed. I had to hold her on the plane as she sobbed “he’s not coming back!” into my arms. Yes, he spanked me. Yes, he would yell at me. Yes, he probably helped engrain a fear of the mailbox that I took ages to get over. But he also got me into computers and taught me to think like an engineer. He’s the one who taught me moral and ethical dilemmas as well as how to have a strong moral compass. One of my favorite memories ever was us duetting Norwegian Wood in The Beatles Rock Band because he had a mellifluous tone to his voice I can barely keep up with. I remember the in-jokes we had growing up and the times we just hung out together. I remember the movies we watched together, including things like Crazy Rich Asians.Yes, my dad could be a petty, abusive dick. But for whatever stunted emotional growth he had, I also knew he genuinely loved me and my family as much as he could, and so did my mother. And as much of a dick as he could be, I think my family miss him, and all of him, and if someone were to tell me that he did not in fact die the way we thought he did and have some way to demonstrate, you bet your ass we would be living his death over again. So no, regardless of how the marriage was in the end, I think this was perfectly realistic behavior.
The Hamlins were both very much about keeping up appearances.Her life really was shattered when they ruined Howard.I wonder if there were different insurance payouts for murder vs suicide, and if there’s a time limit on getting it changed.
I think you can have grown apart from someone and still have some level of love and respect for them. She wasn’t in love with him anymore, and probably thought he was a shitty husband, but she still thought he was a decent guy who didn’t deserve to have everything he ever worked for destroyed as a joke. I don’t think she’s still “deeply bereaved” in general. She has surely moved on with her life. But she’s still gonna be pissed and sad all over again when basically having a conversation with his sort-of killer.
She still lives in their house, and not one piece of furniture or decoration has changed in the kitchen. No, she hasn’t moved on, and it’s been six years.
Why wouldn’t she still live in HER house? And why would she redecorate if she liked it the way it was?
Marriages are complicated things, my dude. You can love someone deeply and still need to cut them out of your life.
Howard was a brilliant and complex character, and I have no difficulty believing that this woman could both need to separate her life from his, and yet be utterly devastated at his loss (especially in a manner so incompatible with her knowledge of him).
I totally agree; she seemed to appear here only as a plot device. People are replying that “of course she might be devastated” but it’s not that she’s upset, it’s that after appearing to give up on their marriage here she is, several years later, still living in their house, not one piece of furniture has been changed, she’s still apparently wearing their wedding ring. What? This makes no sense, given how they’d been using her in the series. It would ring true (no pun intended) if the ring signified that she’d remarried; it wouldn’t be that surprising that her new husband had moved in with her, although it would be more likely they’d find a new place. But as is it feels like laziness on the writers’ part.
Right – I’m more questioning the narrative purpose of her being that checked out. It initially seemed to serve just as a window into Howard’s hidden misery, but we were left totally in the dark about why exactly she felt that way. So to bring her back now being much more invested in Howard without ever establishing why she was out and how she really felt draws an awful lot of attention to this character who was nearly a background character.And yeah, she could care more than she let on, but I also know plenty of divorced people who would not care, either. It can go either way. She by all appearances had fully moved on with her life and Howard wasn’t ready to let go.
one word – GUILT.This is subtly hinted at during Howard’s wake at HHM with the placement of the glasses before Kim ties up the loose end.Everyone is drinking a glass of water except Cheryl, who appears to have been drinking out of a coffee mug. She rejected Howard’s coffee-peace gesture from a few episodes earlier. The glasses at the wake represent where they are standing during the conversation when Cheryl grills Jimmy and Kim and she is left feeling responsible for Howard’s supposed spiral and demise. This in turn pays off again with Kim’s arc in Waterworks. Kim knows exactly what she did and to me it was a brilliant layer to add.
Have you ever been married? They may have been separated, and possibly even heading toward divorce, but they were likely married for a long time and have wonderful memories together. Even if she wasn’t in love with him any more, she felt massively guilty for not knowing about the coke addiction. Her finding out that story wasn’t true in that scene was really well acted, in my opinion. It didn’t play to me as despair… it was pretty visceral anger mixed with sadness and regret.She and Howard might not have been headed toward reconciliation, but he was the most important person in her life for many, many years, and his reputation was sullied for no reason.
So where in the timeline of Jesse showing up are we? I guess it’s when Badger got arrested and before the grave stunt. He kept mentioning that his friend wanted to hire Saul and I honestly can’t remember how exactly it all went down on BB.
It’s before he starts working with Walter. He’s still Cap’n Cook.
Oh wow ok. I didn’t realize BCS was on his radar before BB started.
According to the Breaking Bad Wiki, he’s supposed to be 19 years old when he bums that cigarette from Kim, four years before he goes into business with Walt.
Walt went on the ride along with Hank to bust Cap’n Cook’s lab in the first BB episode. Walt saw Jesse escape in his Monte Carlo, THE CAPN, and he realized Jesse was Cap’n Cook.Unfortunately, THE CAPN meets its demise during the shootout between Hank and Tuco in Grilled.https://breakingbad.fandom.com/wiki/Jesse_Pinkman
The friend he was talking about was Emilio, who is seen walking into Saul’s office just as Kim leaves. This is the friend that ends up dead in the RV in the BB pilot, and is later dissolved by Jesse in his bathtub.
Someone noticed on twitter that when Gene is going through the guy’s financials, he had 747 thousand, which is the amount Walt once calculated he needed.
I read this online as well. I think it was a beautiful and subtle touch. It almost underlined that two men with cancer still were at the mercy of fate, regardless of whether they had the money or not to fight the cancer.
I’m pretty sure it was $737,000…google seems to confirm this.
It was indeed $737,000, even to the point that the episode where he does that calculation (ep 2.01 of BB) is named “Seven Thirty-Seven”.
As a brunette, Kim looked like Kirstin Dunst. Her boyfriend looked a bit like Jesse Plemons. So I had some Fargo Season 2 vibes from their scene.
Maybe Todd actually escaped ABQ and relocated to Florida. Jesse didn’t strangle him to death after all.
“Fat Matt Damon” — The AVClub
Some of the shots of the desolate roads gave me the Chris Rock season of Fargo vibes.And the cops arguing reminded me of Keye and Peele arguing while Billy Bob was murdering a whole building.I think there were even more that I can’t remember right now.
That dejected look on the cops’ faces as they realized they had to abandon their food to actually do their jobs was very funny.
It gave me full on Tarantino vibes
I thought she had a Kristen Wigg in Ghostbusters look going on.
I was very much getting Elizabeth from the Americans.
Gene breaking in to the cancer patient’s house made me have to pause the show from the anxiety. but him not bailing on the plan when the other guy bailed, and smashing the window seemed so far out of character. That’s a risk that Gene, Jimmy, or Saul wouldn’t have taken. But maybe that’s the point.And neopolitan was the correct answer. Not vanilla or strawberry. But maybe Neopolitan is too urban for that part of Florida.Anyone else want another full episode of Kim’s mundane existence? The cut away from her lunch conversation with her friends mid-sentence was *chef’s kiss*
The only time I yelled at the tv was then. “Neapolitan!”
Same!
I don’t think it’s out of character, I think it’s a sign of just how little Jimmy / Saul / Gene has left.I mean Gene has escaped the law but is he really living free? He works a deadend job with no friends, family, or significant other. Maybe he was holding out hope for a reconciliation with Kim or to find a way back to doing some form of what he enjoyed doing. Whatever it was, seems clear he lost that hope after the call with Kim and decided to just live whatever time he had as Saul again.
Yeah agreed, I think subconsciously he hates himself just as much as Kim did consciously, and I don’t think he thinks he deserves to stay free. Otherwise I don’t think the Gene/Saul/Jimmy we know would have acted so rashly. I wonder how he’ll respond if he finds out Kim actually did what he said and turned herself in?
Or, he knows that he’s gotten away with everything and now that he’s reasserted himself as a great con man, got too cocky. He also might have done it as a way of showing up the other two members of the gang because they were scared and nervous about robbing the cancer guy so Gene did a bit of a flex to show how much better he is than the others
He works a deadend job with no friends, family, or significant other.He could’ve continued to embrace his bromance with the security guards, even after the heist had been completed. It was quite a heartwarming little routine he had going, despite the nefarious ulterior motives.
I do wonder if he kept the routine going for a few weeks after to avoid suspicion.
The breakdown he had during the burglary makes for a good excuse to end the meetings. The Jim O’Heir character probably assumes that Gene felt too weird about crying in front of him to go back.
This kind of taps into something I’ve been thinking about regarding the show; that for all that Gene and Kim’s lives are treated by the characters themselves as a kind of hell on earth, or a purgatorial realm of punishment for their sins, looked at with a modicum of objectivity they’re… really not that bad. Not perfect, by any means, but not that bad. Okay, no one dreams of becoming manager of a Cinnabons as a kid, and the “living life as a fugitive constantly looking over his shoulder” part isn’t a positive, admittedly. But hey, it’s steady work, Gene’s the boss, providing free baked goods is a quick and easy way of making friends, and it beats the alternative. Sure, Kim’s probably justified in hoping for more satisfying sex than the “Yep!” guy seems to be providing, but she’s also got a pretty decent job, and the people she works and socialises with, if perhaps not the most exciting people ever put on the planet Earth, seem nice and friendly enough. They might not be living their dream lives, but their lives overall still aren’t as awful as they seem to think (especially considering the awful consequences and actual literal body counts their attempts at living their dream lives resulted in), and the hellish view they seem to have of them kind of says more about them than the life itself.
This is something I’ve been sort of mulling over as well. Saul seems more actively miserable in his exile than Kim, who looks like she has just completely severed herself from her past life and utterly smothered her emotions. You kind of get the sense that she would have kept it up with little stress for another 35 years if Saul hadn’t called her. Of course, Saul is actually on the run and he’s a fugitive from the law, which isn’t the case for Kim.I think there’s a bit of a meta element to the portrayal of their post-Breaking Bad lives, where we, as the audience, see those lives as miserable purgatories because we’re watching TV and we want to see cool, interesting stories, not normal people doing normal jobs and living normal lives. In Saul’s case, it’s basically a reflection of what the character wants — he doesn’t want a calm, normal, fulfilling life. He wants to be In The Game. We’ve seen him blow up every chance he’s had to Go Straight. He’s never happier than when he’s scamming people.
We know Kim didn’t want that kind of suburban life either. She embraced it as a punishment. It’s perhaps a bit elitist on Gilligan’s part, but the key difference is that if there’s nothing wrong with living the life Florida Kim lives (which doesn’t even necessarily involve the absurd degree of comformity she endures; for starters, I’m pretty sure she could find herself a more stimulating boyfriend), that’s not who Kim is, it’s a fictional, scripted life. People who built that kind of life organically (i.e. most people) can be pretty happy. But this is not the case, this is Kim constantly aware day after day she’s living a false life she forced onto herself, which is the most unhealthy thing she could do. She kind of revels in the misery of her everyday dullness, instead of just ignoring it and focusing on the positives like everyone does. She can’t find any positive because every single moment of her new life screams at her who she was and what she lost.
But both Jimmy and Kim saw much better lives for themselves than they wound up, something better than mundane lives working mundane jobs. Kim spent most of her life working hard and playing by all the rules to become a very successful lawyer. Jimmy wanted to prove to his brothers and others that he was more than a conman but somebody who was good and worthy of respect. All of that is gone.
They are both bad people.
Kind of like the ending of The Shield in that regard.
isnt there a flash forward where he becomes super rich? Doesnt that spoil whats gonna happen to him?
That is set during the Breaking Bad era. He was super rich. They also show the feds taking all of his possessions after his ties to Walter White are discovered in another flash-forward.Even if he is still technically rich (he seems to have enough saved up to relocate again so probably has a few hundred thousand at minimum), having money and no one to hang out with isn’t exactly great either.
decided to just live whatever time he had as Saul again.I see this take a lot, but I don’t really understand it. Saul Goodman was never a common house burglar. In fact, not even Slippin’ Jimmy was that kind of basic criminal. This descent into petty crime is entirely new territory for the character, even if it speaks to the same morality and needs. But a major component of Saul Goodman’s inner life was feeling superior to those dumb criminals he defended. Gene Takovic didn’t slip back into Saul Goodman, he just became one of Saul Goodman’s clients.
How about a full animated series in the style of Family Guy: Florida Kim
You can’t know what kind of ice cream to get unless you know what kind of cake it is.I enjoyed how it seemed like ABQ Kim was on the phone with the manufacturer of the irrigation fittings. FLA Kim only existed for the in-person contacts.
But maybe Neopolitan is too urbanGreat, now we’re dog-whistling ice cream flavors
Unclutch those pearl, sweetie – it was a joke. I mean, you must’ve shit your pants when the episode opened with two white people discussing the merits of mayonnaise. Basically the whitest of white things. I hope that while you were in a pique of rage about the Amazing Race and Jigsaw puzzle scene you didn’t miss the lunch conversation about “how you don’t hear about crack anymore.”Kim’s life now is a gauzy dream of white bread un-wokeness. Nary a virtue signal in sight!
Yeah, I’m the one having an intense emotional reaction to a joke…
killshot.
Wow. Well played. You do the “offended dipshit” bit convincingly well. Happy to discover you weren’t serious.
You do the “offended dipshit” bit convincingly well.And you unironically slip into it like a second skin!
No, I was doing the “I can’t believe this dipshit is real” part. We can’t both be Costello.
Jeez
I’m sorry this is happening to you. Are you OK?
Here sweetheart, let me get you out of the greys.Does that feel good?
Neapolitan is too cosmopolitan
The Floridians probably wouldn’t eat it because they’d think it’s named after a French guy.
How is Neopolitan urban?? I ate it as a little kid in Kentucky in the 1960’s.
“but him not bailing on the plan when the other guy bailed, and smashing the window seemed so far out of character. That’s a risk that Gene, Jimmy, or Saul wouldn’t have taken. But maybe that’s the point.”Yes, I would argue that’s exactly the point. It’s out of character because he’s never fallen this low before. It’s the equivalent of a drug addict hitting rock bottom. It’s textbook self-destruction.
*Tuna Salad not Potato Salad
Miracle Whip is a poor substitute in both. Duke’s is the shiznit!
Come on, if this episode wasn’t an A+ then nothing will be.
I don’t think they give out A+ as a mark. Their highest is A from what I understand.
I’m pretty sure there have been A+ episodes in the past.Though if Ozymandias didn’t get an A+, I’m not sure what would have.
It was a long-standing joke on the AV Club, way back in it’s heydays about not being able to give episodes an A+ to the point the writers would joke about it. I think Emily (who went by Todd back then) managed to sneak one through or tried before it getting cut out.
Maybe they are saving it in case the finale really sticks the landing.
Florida Kim = Ja’mie from Summer Heights High
love that we had all these theories for why saul freaked out on the phone last week but, of course, it was just saul putting his foot in his mouth and hating himself for it.
I thought the Florida stuff was a little heavy-handed, but I guess the show has gone broad before. I also wanted to see a little bit more Kim in Florida Kim. Rhea did great by playing it as barely fitting in rather than obviously miserable, but she also wasn’t recognizable as Kim, at all. I don’t know that Kim needed to abandon her personality completely, but it must have been a choice because I’m certain Rhea could have played it with some more Kim if she wanted to.
I think it’s clear Kim wanted to escape herself
Would’ve loved some more FL Kim. Like twice more. Also. Why the new hair color? She’s didn’t need or have to go into complete hiding and change appearance or names. I guess it’s symbolic her just not being her true self?
It was most likely a part of the whole reinvention she did by quitting the law and moving to Florida.
Yea that’s what I mean. It’s for dramatic reasons. She needs to look and behave dramatically different.
She didn’t like what she saw in the mirror. At least this way she can pretend to herself that she’s seeing someone else.
Yep…yep yep
Its gets a little annoying to see certain places constantly portrayed in media as nothing but dumb rubes who dont know what Miracle Whip is. Its 2010 in the show for chrissakes. They made it seem like 1982.Titusville is part of a medium sized metro area that is full of scientists and engineers who work at the Space Coast.
True, but I’m guessing Florida Man isn’t one of those guys. He’s basically a good-natured bum, which is apparently Kim’s type. I don’t find it at all implausible that a man-child who’s never had to shop for himself, other than beer and snacks, wouldn’t know the difference between salad dressing and mayonnaise.I really liked how Rhea Seehorn actually had her big jar of Duke’s on hand for the interview. It was definitely a shout out to her Mid-Atlantic roots! Duke’s is THE mayo in Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. It pairs well with Mount Olive pickles in potato salad.Also of note on the condiment front, mayonnaise must have been a topic of discussion in the writers’ room for quite sometime. Jimmy made a reference to Hellman’s/Blue Ribbon in the infamous “Squat Cobbler” scene.
And remember season 5 of Breaking Bad, when Walt put the bug in Hank’s office? At one point, Mike is eavesdropping and he gets treated to a long, inane conversation between Hank and Steve Gomez about the difference between Miracle Whip and real mayo.
I’d forgotten about that one! Mayonnaise and Miracle Whip, which is not mayonnaise, do seem to take up a lot of their thoughts on these shows.As for me, I prefer mayo over Miracle Whip. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with salad dressing, it’s just a different condiment that I find a little too sweet for stuff like savory dishes.
I wanted to remark how everyone was talking about the people and how moronic and dead they were etc. no one there was using anything like a new phone or any updated tech. All the women looked horrible and their conversation was enough to stick needles in your eyes. Yes it’s boring , but not that boring anywhere. That’s your lives guys. We dress better , maybe live better , but that was completely over the top and if anyone actually lived like that it was somewhere in -980 . Not today
My husband noted that the biggest difference in Kim wasn’t her appearance, but her lack of confidence. As smart as she is, as good an attorney as she was – hell, even as good a criminal as she was – all of that is gone, along with the cojones that drove the Kim Wexler we’ve known. All that’s left is the name.
Interesting, I’ll have to think about that more. But it would make sense that she’s basically afraid to act of her own volition anymore, having made so many disastrously poor decisions.
I think this is right. She couldn’t form an opinion about anything. Not the mayo, not the ice cream, not the Amazing Race. It wasn’t a bad life in the sense she had a decent job, etc, but she erased her whole personality.
I thought her personality change was jarring and clumsy. You can take a new life and job but you’re still yourself. It felt like everyone (writers director etc) botched this part of the show. The writers got carried away in their Florida-woman stereotypes. “Wait I know! And she’ll only make sandwiches with white bread!” “Yeah and she’ll be obsessed with The Price is Right! And she’ll put up a‘Hang in there!’ posters with a kitten on it, and say things like ‘Somebody’s got a case of the Mondays’!”
Because I have never rewatched Breaking Bad and don’t remember how morally terrible Saul was, it’s been quite the character whiplash this latter part of the season to have gone from Jimmy to Saul to Saul as Gene. This episode, he was at his most despicable I’ve seen in this show. So it makes sense that Gene would still have the behavior and habits of a man he was for seven years; a man who he became after the double trauma of he responsible for a murder of an innocent, and, to him, his beloved wife leaving him. But because we don’t see the Saul years in depth on this show, whike we have seen Jimmy for six years, I did feel that Jimmy changed too quickly, even though the show justified it and has made these episodes very good.Maybe just me, but I thought the mark’s snoring sounded like the beginning note of the Jaws theme, before the shark attacks. A cheeky portent of how Jimmy was in trouble and about to get caught.And maybe Marion was named after another fictional Marion (this time from a classic film) who is also the downfall of a guy with a major split personality.Yes, I, too, would get angry if there wasn’t enough fish in my fish taco.Give Rhea Seehorn the Emmy. The mostly static shot of her on the bus was world-class. (So was everything in Florida, with Gilligan reminding me of the Coen brothers.)
Jimmy became Saul. Saul pretended to be Gene. Gene only ever existed as a fiction, a mask Saul was wearing to lay low. And it was an itchy costume that was bound to come off eventually.
I think Saul became Gene for a while personally. The way he acts out of fear in the few flashforwards shown before this season does not resemble Saul. And I think it’s a bit telling that the picture chosen to represent this season is Gene, in black-and-white, putting on a flashy red jacket.
Jeff recognizing and confronting Gene at the mall is what snapped him out of his scared, boring life as Gene, and brought him back to being the truly nefarious asshole, Saul Goodman, in arguably a worse form than we’ve ever seen him.
I don’t think Gene is Saul but a whole new type character. Gene is far angrier, more malevolent and prone to violence than Saul ever was. He’s acting out of anger and hurt for what he feels Kim did to him and what his life has become. Saul would have talked his way out of it, Gene thinks about doing violent things
gene is the worst parts of both sides of him.
“He’s acting out of anger and hurt for what he feels Kim did to him and what his life has become. It’s less that and more reactive defensiveness, paranoia, and lashing out over fear of getting caught. He’s basically been reduced to a cornered, desperate animal with few options to escape into freedom. I don’t think he remember or cared about Kim until Francesca reminded him about her.
All that is true but there’s an edge to him, especially dealing with Buddy and Jeff that Saul never had. I feel like in almost all of the circumstances he finds himself in, Saul would have been able to talk himself out of trouble while Gene almost resorts to violence.
Well he did try and talk Marion out of it, but she’s more perceptive than the typical losers and dopes he deals with and wasn’t buying it, which drove him to being really angry, desperate, and therefore violent.
I agree that Jimmy changed too quickly — and I think the same could be said of Kim.
It feels like we could have used 2-3 more episodes that show the change in both characters before going to black-and-white land. I never really believed that Saul was going to kill a person, so those beats didn’t 100% work for me.
Yeah, an extra few episodes might have been better. I know the writers originally planned for Jimmy to turn into Saul in that first season, but they liked and were having too much fun with Jimmy and Kim. Without the endpoint of the character in Breaking Bad, and if the show hadn’t existed at all, this story would probably be far different and still just as great.
Saul’s very first scene in BB is him telling Jesse to kill Badger. Sure, he wouldn’t have been the one to do the killing himself, but he’s set up plenty of people to be killed in his dealings with Mike and Walt over the years.
Yep!
Maybe it was just from watching the show in a really bright living room…but is Kim putting together a completely tan puzzle? I thought maybe it was just washed out on my TV, but did she create a cover life so bland she puts together solid color puzzles?
I noticed that as well.
I thought maybe she was doing it face down. Perhaps she’s done so many that she doesn’t even need the pictures anymore.
Carol Burnett absolutely killing it at nearly 90 years old.
Prolly her last production credit. Not to be grim, but I had no idea She was already that old
I think she has a few more shows in her. She’s a very active 89-year-old.
Good on her! I can’t imagine many 90 yo ladies having the wear withal to still be able to work on a friggin film set of all places. My Gramm lived till 94 in her own home. But she couldn’t leave her house for more that a few hours in her last 5 years. Too exhausting for her.
Between her and Shirley Maclaine on Only Murders in the Building, this is a big summer for actresses in their late 80s.
And she looks great!
While the acting and writing continues to be sublime, am I the only one who finds this back half disjointed and not exactly… satisfying? Like, it doesn’t feel like a conclusion to the show we spent the last 5.5 seasons with, but a completely different one that almost has completely different characters in it?
Well, it literally does have completely new characters. And much of the final episodes have devoted a lot of time to things like low-stakes scams that aren’t, in and of themselves, all that interesting.
No, I’m feeling the same way. I understand that Kim is running from what she did, but she is not even the same character in those Florida scenes. I don’t think much is accomplished with the B&W scenes. We don’t learn anything new about the characters, and if anything we lose what would have been more information if we’d spent time with Saul after Kim’s exit.
I haven’t watched this, but I’m reading these recaps and the show sounds very silly. Just convoluted nonsense.
That whole beginning with Kim’s life in Florida was maybe the most depressing thing I’ve seen in this show 🙁 I just kept flashing back to how passionate and articulate she’s been throughout the show… Never did I think watching someone fail to decide on an ice cream flavour would be so excruciating lmao. I hope that she finds some peace at least. I’m relieved that at least one of the main characters managed to stop acting so terribly even if it was devastating.
One thing that intrigued me was the diploma that said Saul Goodman, not James McGill. He didn’t change his name legally, he just did a DBA for Saul Goodman. Did I miss something there?
I noticed that too. I just assumed he requested a new one?
According to the (fictional) University of American Samoa’s (real) Facebook page, Saul Goodman “donated” $5,000 to the school and received an honorary diploma.https://www.facebook.com/UniversityOfAmericanSamoa/Go Land Crabs!
Thanks, don’t remember seeing that at all.Go Land Crabs!
Marion finding out about Saul on AskJeeves is a lovely little touch that made me chuckle.
Someone her age would probably use Jeeves over Google.
Yep but a lazier show would say something like “I googled you” or “I looked you up on the computer”
I’ve never heard of it . I’m wayyyy older than anyone here. How come I don’t know?
“Why does everyone in this town use AltaVista? Is it 1997?”
“Ask Jeeves told me” is a great line, but in my mind “I asked Jeeves” would have been slightly better.
At least I finally found my go-to for Sexy Times:”Yep……yep…….yep….”
I guess it’s time to start my one week free trial and binge the season so I can watch the finale in real time. So long and thanks for all the spoilers!
The first few episodes of the season aren’t available (anymore) on AMC+ or (yet) on Netflix.
Watching Kim break down all the pent up emotions of six years was about the hardest thing to watch. I was legitimately yelling someone comfort her damn it!
I want to keep the timeline straight. Gene mentions “six years,” so he’s saying it’s been six years since Howard’s murder, yes? Or is it six years since the 2004 divorce? So how many years removed from the main BB action are we at this point?My main quibble has been that Saul seemed to have built an empire for himself in a comparatively very short period of time, Sandpiper and illicit money notwithstanding. It still seems like it would have taken him 15 years to get to where he was.But the real reason I want to figure out what year it is is because Marion was still using dial-up, which isn’t unheard of or anything for the elderly, but if it’s 2010 or beyond, we’re in a world with readily available broadband and iPhones galore. Even the iPad was announced in early 2010.This show nails so many details, but little stuff like that – seems like we’re trying to keep it 2005 even if it’s 2010 or later.
I wonder now if the years on the dog-urn were the timeline for the whole show.
The iPhone was launched in 2007. In 2010, plenty of folks were still on their land lines.
Yeah, the degree of his wealth was surprising to me. That house was insane.
that kinda confused me, it was in color, so it had to be the past, right?
In 2014, 69% of Nebraska seniors have Internet at home; 59% have broadband at home. I assume that means 10% were still using dialup in 2014.https://broadband.nebraska.gov/documents/older-nebraskans-report.pdf
(Edit: I originally read the data as current before seeing the source at the bottom, saying it was collected in 2014)
Nice stats. Thanks!
I certainly don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility, but I think it was more of an excuse for Vince Gilligan to be able to write, “Saul grabs the telephone cord and wraps it around his hands, ready to choke Marion.”
Oh, for sure. But they also just got the laptop. They might not have had time to set up broadband, or afford the monthly fee.
I think it was more of an excuse for Vince Gilligan to be able to write, “Saul grabs the telephone cord and wraps it around his hands, ready to choke Marion.”Broadband still uses cord. You don’t need to go Wi-Fi. In fact, it’s better if you don’t.
Gene mentions “six years,” so he’s saying it’s been six years since Howard’s murder, yes? Or is it six years since the 2004 divorce?I don’t think very much time happened between those two events, considering Kim made the decision to leave after Howard’s memorial service at HHM. So six years from that period of time, roughly (which makes sense, since many of the details have confirmed we’re in late 2010).
Another slip up in the timeline comes in this episode when Marion says she searches Ask Jeeves. Ask Jeeves dropped the “Jeeves” in 2006, while black and white scenes are after BB, which was supposed to take us to 2008 or 2009, right?
The timeline is a little muddy if you don’t do a little homework, so lemme pour some water on that.The big plan with Howard from the beginning of the season until his death took place in 2004 between May 23rd and June 24th.The divorce papers have a filing number with 2004 on it, and the time it would take for Jimmy to completely overhaul his office would be at least a month.The scene we see after Kim returns to packing her things takes place in 2005, judging by the registration sticker on his license plate.Breaking Bad begins September 7th, 2008 on Walter White’s 50th birthday.In March 2010, Jimmy retrieves his shoebox of diamonds from behind his Constitution wallpaper and money in the ceiling, and tells Francesca to wait for his call at 3 PM on November 12th.
Walter and Jimmy go into hiding in March 2010.For six months, Walter lives in rural New Hampshire, and Jimmy becomes Gene Takovic in Omaha.Walter White dies on his 52nd birthday, September 7th 2010.Jimmy learns of Walter’s death in the newspaper and is so distracted, his French toast gets cold.Jimmy gets recognized by Jeff.The mall scam occurs across several weeks in September and October.Jimmy calls Francesca at a pay phone at 3 PM New Mexico time on his 50th birthday, November 12th, 2010.
Excellent. Thanks a lot!
Is there a more certain 2023 Emmy prediction than Carol Burnett, Best Guest Actress in a Drama?
She’s really great in this. Her character is written well and I love that she’s an integral part of Gene’s (possible) downfall. I mean that it’s not stunt casting or place holding: Marion is necessary to the story, and Burnett just nails the part.
You can pick and choose your roles when you’re a living legend. Even minor characters get a thorough treatment in Gilligan and Gould scripts, so it’s not a surprise she tracked them down and wanted to be in her favorite show. To their credit, they created a great character that she ran with. Well done all.
Completely disagree! She had no place in the series at all. She didn’t need to be the one to call the cops . There were so many really good ways they could have done that. Instead they went with. Celebraty guest and lazy Writing
Something about the way this season is ending feels a bit unsatisfying. Can’t put my finger on it as the writers really have checked a lot of the boxes of what I wanted to see or expected to happen, but it’s kind of like the sum of the parts aren’t quite adding up.I think it may be that it didn’t feel satisfying to see Jimmy / Saul become as despicable as he is in Breaking Bad off-screen. You can put two and two together from how he’s been characterized and the impact Kim leaving him may have, but it still feels like something was missed in the story.The actual episodes are great and scenes like Kim breaking down on the tram are amazing. I just don’t think they’re nailing the ending quite to the degree that Breaking Bad did. But I have no idea how this show will actually end so will hold judgment until next week.
I wish there had been some post-Kim, pre-Walt Saul stuff. You know, what everyone kind of expected the show to be. I’m happy with how it turned out ultimately, and this season didn’t really need to be longer, I just felt like some more time with him truly being Saul would have smoothed the transition. A longer gap also would have made Kim’s return that much sweeter.
But do we need to see that, really? The sequence post-Kim’s departure tells us everything we need to know, added to what we knew from Breaking Bad.
well i think it was 6 years for them, not long for the audience, yeah
It may be because with the Gus/Lalo stuff concluded, and Jimmy and Kim finished and separated, and we’ve cought back up to the timeline, the show is more or less over. Think of the Gene material as an extended epilogue.
Maybe because you, like most people, were expecting something bad and dramatic to happen to Kim, or some kind of Jim and Kim confrontation/reunion when its looking like that won’t happen, while it’s looking like Jim is finally going to get caught. In other words, it’s pretty anti-climatic/dramatic compared to BB where almost everyone from the main cast dies.
I never said those were my expectations (they were not). In fact, I said in my OP that most of what I expected has happened. And I thought the Kim stuff in this episode was terrific.
That doesn’t change my point that especially compared to BB, its turning out to be anti-climatic/dramatic.
Maybe I misread your post – it sounded like you were criticizing me for having expectations and judging show based on them. And was just saying that I don’t really know that I had expectations other than the ending would wrap up the show nicely. I agree it feels a bit anti-climatic compared to Breaking Bad. It feels a bit like if Breaking Bad had extended Walt’s time in New Hampshire to be four episodes long. There’s a lot of time being spent with brand-new characters like Jeff and Marion and if the story is just how Gene eventually screws up and gets caught, seems like they could have done it more succinctly.But they could tie it all together nicely next week. And even if not, it’s still really good TV.
Yep. I’m ready for this to be over and hope that a rewatch of earlier seasons will bring back some of my affection.It’s hard to end a series. Very few can do it and last night was a grind for me to get through.Even the Kim crying thing had me looking at my watch. It didn’t move me at all.
I agree with you. The time jump to get to the Saul we know from BB was a let down for me. To invest in 6 seasons of a show about how Jimmy became Saul and for it to essentially happen off screen was disappointing. I really enjoyed the show on its own merits, but it is ultimately a failure as a prequel to BB because I don’t believe that BB Saul and BCS Saul are the same character. In this episode I don’t believe that Florida Kim is the same character as ABQ Kim. Everything in the black and white timeline feels anticlimactic to me.
Are we watching the same show? Although I agree the post-Lalo episodes feel like an anticlimatic epilogue (still one episode left before properly having an opinion of the whole thing); I hardly disagree on the “they turned Jimmy into Saul off-screen”. Jimmy has been slowly turning into Saul during all these seasons, and it has been great. That’s part of the point of the whole show, people. It has happened over the turn of many little significant moments. I’d point out one of the biggest and best ones (imho), which is when Jimmy gets hic license back through the Chuck speech and deceives even Kim in that super sad moment when there’s a dissonance between the two, with Kim thinking Jimmy’s speech was genuine and Jimmy suddenly becomes proud of fooling everyone (thinking Kim was in the con with him). The cherry on top being how after priding of his relationship to Chuck he casually mentions he will practice with a different name.
Just wanted to circle back here and say that I think the finale episode was fantastic. While I agree with you that Jimmy was of course changing gradually into Saul over the course of the show, I think the final episode actually addresses my main issue in a very satisfying way. It is precisely the point that BB Saul and B&W Saul (or Gene) are not the same character as BCS Jimmy, but that he is lurking under the surface even if we don’t see it. Another poster pointed out that Jimmy always reacted most angrily to others that showed any remorse, but when it’s Kim that does it it taps into a part of him that seemed gone and brought Jimmy back (which he just flat out says in case we didn’t get it). Did the final episode require all 4 episodes of the epilogue? It actually might have now that I reflect on the finale.
I’m not anticipating “Saul Gone” being a masterpiece of the series after the last half of season 6. As far as I’m concerned, they took a very good series with some wonderful writing and acting , and when they got to the end , they forgot what works so well with BCS and decided to hit us over the head like we’re little children who needed to have new characters come in to Rev and distract us . Marion finding him out? Please , did anyone not know this? Gene going from terrified to evil in the time it takes for a phone call? Deciding to go on a new scam with 2 idiots ? Instead of taking another vacuum ? I get Kim’s contrition , but no amount of guilt would put her in that house in that life. Just not being a lawyer and still loving Jimmy was punishing enough. And Kim was well known in the legal profession and was obviously linked heavily to both Jimmy and Howard. So when it all came out and Howard disappeared and Saul , wouldn’t you think they naturally would have found Kim? She used her real name.and I don’t care that it was Carol burnett. What made that worse , was that it’s the end of 2 amazing series. Why bring a new person in. And if you’re going to, does she have to be the 2nd Lucy and tug her ear? Really ? Took me right out of the universe I’ve been for over a decade. Saul gone alright
In what universe is our Kim bonking that dullard of a man?Honestly at times it’s like American television writers can’t seem to grasp that the majority of people are living a life that falls somewhere between the cliche of a progressive lawyer and your average Trump supporting suburban mum.Sure she left Jimmy behind and wanted to live a quieter life but that doesn’t mean having to become a shell of her former self.I’m sorry but that whole Kim story arc just didn’t ring true for mine.
My guess is she wants nothing to do with commitment at this point.
I agree. For me it rang true that she’d taken on a McJob in Florida, but they went too far and turned her into a mocking cliche, both at home and work. Her job might change but her total personality wouldn’t. Felt like the writers got carried away here, to the detriment of the show.
That scene with Kim and Jesse was completely unnecessary and the one moment in the episode I absolutely hated.
I don’t really understand why all the Gene arc is in black and white but damn if the scene of the colored BCS ads reflected in Gene’s glasses didn’t look awesome
I assume it’s because he believes his life as Gene is dull and grey after the technicolour worlds of Jimmy McGill and Saul Goodman. That certainly applies to Kim in Florida.
I’m calling it. Gene Takovic (formerly Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman, played by Bob Odenkirk) will call the vacuum repair shop (Ed Galbraith, played by the late Robert Forster) who will be digitally reconstructed and will relocate Gene with ANOTHER name and a new sequel series. I’ll take a wild guess. Leo Kazanian. That will be his new (fourth) name. And he will somehow win Kim back.
I think he will call Ed, will require double to relocate him. Gene runs home to get his cash and box of diamonds, barely evading police. When he gets to the meet point we see Ed’s van, which drives off just as Gene walks up. He turns around and sees the cop cars headed his way.
I would be okay with that scenario.
– “Waterworks” on a Monopoly Board is two spaces before “Go to Jail” and there is one episode left..so- Kim is basically a broken women in Florida, so paralyzed she cannot even pick a favorite ice cream flavor or mayo knowing her decisions were so wrong in life. The confident person we saw is gone.- Saul/Gene really picked the wrong way to talk to Kim in the two post “Jimmy” scene. Acting like the arrogant scammer to Kim after all that time was just wrong, and he knew it in retrospect.I think Gene wanted to get caught unconsciously. Him wandering around the cancer guy’s house having a drink screamed that for me. He is just as broken as Kim, but in a different way. He tool is tired of running but will not admit it to himself.
Good catch on the Monopoly reference. That gives the episode title tree meanings—Kim’s breakdown on the shuttle, her life working at the sprinkler company, and now Monopoly!
Definitely some great performances in this episode -everyone had a chance to shine. Saul’s phone call with Kim was interesting, with Saul getting more and more self-righteous and Kim getting more… I don’t know, self-loathing. I loved Kim’s crying jag, loved Jesse’s friendly little conversation with her in the rain (that seemed improvised and I wonder if it was). Howard’s wife’s scene was tragic and wonderfully written and acted. Jeff and Gene’s phone had some very subtle threats from both characters. And speaking of threats, Marion’s decision to press her life-alert button with Gene just looming over her… Man. She had absolutely no reason to think he wasn’t going to garrotte her then and there.
Wonderful episode, and yeah, I still have NO idea how things will end..
It was interesting to see Jesse return with the person he later dissolves. Maybe if Saul wasn’t such a good lawyer, the bathtub adventure might never have occurred.
There’s a very obvious symmetry to post-breakup Kim and Jimmy. Both of them- Florida Kim and Cinnabon Gene- are living grey mudane existences doing medial work. Their lives used to be exciting and both were talented in highly skilled jobs but those lives are over. Kim has made some sort of peace with her life and seems content to continue on. Jimmy as Gene cannot live that kind of life and falls back into bad habits, self-destructive habits. Like before, his bad habits can’t but drag her down with him
Well except that Jim is only doing it to hide from the law. If he weren’t a wanted fugitive, he would’ve been living it up as himself somewhere more exciting.
I don’t think that’s going to happen this time. I think Kim will refuse to support Jimmy. I’ve given up on a tearful, happy reunion after that phone call. The most likely scenario now is she gets immunity and testifies against him in federal court. He goes to prison for fraud and money laundering. It’s also a fair bet Jeff and Buddy turn on him in return for lighter sentences. Marion gets whatever reward money there is, then gets a new scooter and high-speed Internet.
I could definitely see an ending in which Kim has to testify against Jimmy. It’ll make what is essentially a tragic story even more tragic
I loved the Jesse scene, and I’ve heard some criticism that Aaron Paul feels like he’s playing a parody of Pinkman with these cameos, but I think he’s slipped back into the role with ease.
Saul’s coldness towards Kim when signing the divorce papers was really interesting. Still putting on an act, or is he completely gone? He’s holding it off, making her wait, (thinking about it?) for a long time, and bouncing a ball that’s something I think we’ve seen him do before, but I can’t remember.If crying on the shuttle is the last we see of Kim, if this is where we leave her in her life, I actually think that feels appropriate. And for what it’s worth, Miracle Whip isn’t that bad.
He bounced the ball during season 4 when he was at CC Mobile, which is interesting as that was something he did in between periods where he became “Saul” when selling phones in the evenings.
My take is that Kim leaving Jimmy is what completed his transition into the callous, downright hurtful Saul Goodman. He was bitter that she left him and wanted her to see that he moved on and doesn’t give a fuck about her anymore. It was brutal to see.
Aaron Paul’s voice just sounds off – like he is recovering from a bad cough or something. I don’t think his acting is bad.
I liked the Godfather visual reference as Kim leaves Saul’s office.
What was the reference?
Black and White Brunette Kim is just…..so brutal and sad. Proving the fact that Florida is not a place where people really want to go. It’s a place they end up.
That is not a fact. Just a broad generalization and a weak one at that.
nah, its pretty accurate. Maybe not to you if youre in florida and touchy about it.
No it’s not
yeah, it is, youre proof. It seems like.
can you block people on here? I feel like your responses are just going to get more stupid.
I am not touchy about it at all. I wish people would stay away but sadly our population growth proves the original comment to be completely foolish. People come down for a lot of reasons. Weather, low taxes, and the governor lets them do whatever they please.I think the #’s speak for themselves. I just wish our growth would moderate a little.
Florida is he’ll itself. It’s true. She’s suffered enough
“It’s time to sing!”
And did she EVER!!
I don’t think Jeff panicked, I think he came up with a plan to distract the police so Saul could exit the house.Very few people will read this, because my comments only show up in greys, as I have expressed unrelated opinions that do not mesh with this site’s prevailing gender politics.
Watching Kim’s telling Saul to turn himself in made me realize
something…..Saul might actually be
better off in the long run if he went to the cops. Even with Jesse’s recorded
confession (did they ever confirm if the cops found it or if it was destroyed by
the Nazis? And since Jesse is on the run anyway and gave that information in a
rogue investigation, can that even be used as any actual formal evidence to
close out the case?) there have got to be holes in the Heisenberg investigation
that Saul could fill in- how Walter met Gus, how involved Skyler actually was,
who else was in the empire, and anything Mike told him offscreen that Jesse wouldn’t
have known and couldn’t have confessed. He could point them in Jesse’s
direction assuming he remembered the Alaska line in Confessions. I could see
him using this for a reduced sentence, especially since the most heinous of
Walter’s and Jesse’s actions (bombing the nursing home, the jail house murders,
Drew Sharpe, Gale) Saul had little to no knowledge of. And when he gets out, he
could easily be an Jordan Belmont-style speaker with the street cred of being
the only surviving member of the Heisenberg empire
The issue here being that Saul/Jimmy was their attorney, and can’t ETHICALLY (per the Rules) disclose this information as it’s protected by attorney-client privilege. I mean, I guess the punishment for it is a referral to the Disciplinary Board and likely disbarment, which doesn’t appear to be a huge concern all things considered. The attorney-client privilege survives death.Of course, we’re not considering the crime-fraud exception to privilege, but that’s a whole different conversation.
The episode was great. One minor gripe with the ending: I assumed Marion was going to discover Saul via the laptop once that was introduced (and we had the shot of her perspective seeing Gene enter the garage at an odd hour which implied she thought something may be off) but the speed of the leap from his slip up on the phone, when he said “it’s not like Albuquerque at all,” to her searching Ask Jeeves for “con man Albuquerque,” seems like a stretch without more context. I could’ve seen her calling Buddy as she thought it was puzzling that Jeff was potentially involved with something and not him then finding more out that way that lead to her searching. And why would Saul have been known as a “con man”? A fugitive based on criminal conspiracy, money laundering, or whatever charges he was on the run from, sure. For something that many of us saw coming and liked, it just came together kind of fast and rather implausibly from this show. Another more minor gripe: we hear his actual commercial vs. the American Greed show or something which doesn’t make as much sense (not that it’s impossible it wouldn’t have been loaded on YouTube or his old website but seems unlikely that someone else did or that he wouldn’t have taken it down).
my theory is that she didn’t go searching for “con man Albuquerque” straight up after the call. she probably tried a dozen search terms before that one popped Gene/Jimmy/Saul up.
Probably but that’s what she said she did, which is my issue as this show is never sloppy. I almost wonder if she did actually call Buddy but they cut it for length.
…as this show is never sloppy..
this! this was what I and a fellow die-hard BB/BCS fan friend were saying about this episode. they deviated from their perfect stellar record here, sigh🥲.
I hope they don’t break my heart in the finale.
I’m definitely beginning to think that real true bb and bcs purists are the ones who see these episodes as deeply flawed and at least for me, ruining BCS from being what it was.
That didn’t bother me. She was already questioning him in her mind well before that due to him fumbling the question about Nippy, the way he dissed her when he came over to re-engage with Jeff, seeing him out her window late at night manhandling Buddy’s dog, and his very insincere “never been to Albuquerque” in another conversation. She is s sharp lady with her antennae up and had an hour to poke around. She also may be throwing how easy it was in his face, when it was in fact a bit harder than that to find, just as a dig.
As others have argued, I think her becoming very suspicious about Gene makes perfect sense given the phone call and her earlier doubts, and using her computer to do research is a natural response in the situation she’s in. (And it was of course heavily foreshadowed in the earlier episode with the cat videos.) She may not have thought that Buddy would give her a straight answer, and been afraid that he would tip off Gene if her suspicions were correct.
A search for “con man Albuquerque” is then natural: if Gene is not who he says he is, then the way he’s wormed his way into her confidence makes him a con man. That it should pop up Saul is perhaps a bigger stretch, since he’d mainly be notorious as a mob lawyer involved with Heisenberg’s meth operation. But in the aftermath of Walt’s exposure, you can imagine an article digging into Saul’s/Jimmy’s past, perhaps with a headline going something like Con Man, Ambulance Chaser, Meth Dealer: The Many Faces of Heisenberg’s Henchman.
He’s still in my heart, but I kind of think Jimmy needs to go to prison. Better Cell Saul.
The funny thing is Kim’s life in Florida isn’t even that bad. Stable employment*, decent amount of seemingly-nice friends, a fairly active social life and even Mr. Yep seemed like an OK dude. All things we’ve learned you can’t for granted as we navigate this post-COVID world*Especially since this was in 2010 when we were just starting to climb out of the Recession and decent employment for anyone, especially non-STEM/business/IT/Engineering/etc. graduates (I’m guessing Mr. lOt’S oF rUnNiG oN tHiS sHoW here isn’t a computer whiz or supply chain analyst) was hard to come by.Honestly, that’s the one extremely minor complaint I have about these scenes. Anyone of age remembers that between 2009-2011, the biggest small talk after the weather was complaining about the economy. This show makes a point of showing painstaking details by having Gene and Mr. Security Guard talk about actual football games from back then, yet not one word about someone’s kid having to move back in or not being able to find work?
Kim not just doing a jigsaw puzzle, but an jigsaw puzzle that doesn’t even have a picture on it, it’s just SOLID WHITE. Fascinating detail on how Kim is trying to do something, anything to challenge her when no one and nothing around her challenges her in the slightest.
Maybe it’s just me, but holy hell that was a brutally depressing (and brilliant) episode of television. Ugh, so freaking bleak.
why do i hate kim so much when technically shes doing the right thing?
Because we loved seeing her and Jimmy do their thing…it was fun and creative. Now she is the voice of reason and Saul/Gene doesn’t want that and neither do the fans!
does anyone think saul really couldve strangled the old lady, or was he just trying to scare her? I kind of think its the latter-hes fucked up but hes not a killer.
Maybe it was neither and he only ever meant to tie her up, but yeah it did look very threatening
i’m assuming in panic mode gene completely forgot to use the leverage he has on jeff and apply it to marion given the lengths she’s has gone to help her wayward son.got some mike vibes when gene was sitting in his living room drinking alone and waiting for jeff to call.
idk what to think for the finale. it seems fitting that saul finally runs out of luck and answers for for his crimes, but if he manages to be the only one to get away i wouldn’t hate that either.
So much good stuff in this episode, and two truly awful choices. 1) Cheryl who was basically ignoring Howard and had clearly fallen out of love with him is still living in their house and still apparently wearing their wedding ring all these years later? She seems to exist only as a plot device; the version of her who exists here makes no sense. And 2) the decision to not just have Kim live the life of a small-office drone — totally fine choice — but to make her a caricature of one. I think the writers’ room got too carried away with the ways in which they could mock these people — “She’ll debate whether to use Miracle Whip!” — and lost Kim somewhere. Nobody changes into a different person like this. Kim would still be Kim, and we saw hints of it in the diligence with which she approached the editing of her catalog descriptions. But her interactions with her beau and with her coworkers were mocking and unbelievable. Really a sour note for me.
I just wanted to illustrate what I see as irritating laziness on the writers’ part. They used Cheryl to show the problems in Howard’s life and build sympathy for him — Jimmy was determined to bring down a guy who at home was desperate to please a wife who had lost interest in their marriage. But six or more years after his death she’s still living in their home, decor completely unchanged? What? Seems like they needed two different plot devices and figured they could explain the disconnect as “well, people are complicated.”
I decorated my entire house myself. Literally everything in it is something I wanted, picked out, and bought. My ex didn’t care about furniture or art or decor. I didn’t change anything when he moved out. Why would I? It’s still my stuff.
You think Howard Hamlin, the best-dressed and most type-A person on the show, had no part in any of the decor choices in his home?
Was Kim’a puzzle flat white or grey? She’s
Anyone else catch the piña coloda song callback during the BBQ at the beginning of the episode?
Entirely petty of me but I just wanted to sit in a room and watch all the weird “Kim must be in trouble” commentariat from the prior phone call scene react to the entirely straightforward “Gene freaks out because Jimmy is a petulant shit” reveal.