Better Call Saul delivers a crushing midseason finale
In “Plan And Execution,” it's all about the the long game and the life you choose
TV Reviews Better Call Saul
Better Call Saul has been all about the long game from its beginning.
What would make the ornery, funny, usually well-intentioned Jimmy McGill turn into the colorfully-attired, drug-cartel-connected Breaking Bad lawyer who advises his client that murder is the way out of a jam? It’s a mystery we’ve been watching unfold for the last five-and-a-half seasons. What, too, would make the smart, hard-working, respected, and well-liked Kim Wexler become a person who turns her back on so much of what she appears to stand for and risk everything she’s built to torment a former colleague she resents?
And then there’s Howard Hamlin, who has perhaps been a bigger mystery than any of us realized. Was Howard just the pompous, privileged asshole Jimmy and Kim made themselves believe he was? And what was his real opinion of Kim, who he had mentored and helped pay for her law degree during her employment at HHM, but who he had also treated harshly at times (two words: “doc review”)? “Plan And Execution” finally answers both of those questions and drops some surprising nuggets, painting the clearest picture yet of Howard.
During his visit to casa McGill, where he confronts his tormentors, we come to understand Howard is pompous and privileged (his dad was the first “H” in HHM, after all). But he’s also carrying the weight of running the law firm, keeping a whole company of people employed, and incurring debt and depression and the breakdown his marriage. He’s a jerk sometimes, but he isn’t just a jerk.
While trying to deal with what he figured were more shenanigans by Jimmy, Howard seemed to be ignorant of, or simply ignoring, Kim’s role. He blames only Jimmy when he tries to convince Cliff Main the coke in the locker room and the hooker being kicked out of his car are Jimmy’s mischief. Ditto when he attempts to account for the fake PI and the disappearing photos of Judge Casimiro accepting an envelope full of bribe money from Jimmy after the disastrous Sandpiper hearing.
But when he’s at the couple’s apartment, hurt from an attack so personal and thorough, and impelled by a tumbler of Macallan, Howard tells Kim and Jimmy what he thinks of both of them. “You two are soulless. Chuck knew it,” he tells Jimmy. “You were born that way.” (These words are not a fresh indictment.) “But you,” Howard addresses Kim. “One of the smartest and most promising human beings I’ve ever known. And this is the life you choose.”
Kim is finally getting the acknowledgement of what she’s capable of. She knows she was not underestimated by Howard. But now she also knows everything she and Jimmy have done erased all those sparkling sentiments he felt about her, not just her intelligence but her capacity as a human being. Howard tells her she “has a piece missing,” that she humiliated him not for money but for fun. Howard confirms he is something of a decent man, one who has struggled and overcome a variety of personal and professional challenges. And he assures his enemies that he will land on his feet, that he will be okay. But he won’t.
Because Lalo has also been playing a long game, stalking those who have wronged him and his family. After cleverly tricking Mike to steer security detail off Jimmy and Kim, Lalo slinks into their apartment. (It was left unlocked, apparently, after Jimmy let Howard in.) Kim and Jimmy are terrified, but Howard knows nothing. Lalo explains he’s just there to talk to his lawyers, while screwing the silencer on his gun. Kim urges Howard to turn around and leave, something Lalo certainly wouldn’t have allowed, but before anyone can do anything, Lalo aims his gun at Howard’s head and pulls the trigger.
(Kudos to writer and director Thomas Schnauz for an episode that beautifully unfolded the completion of Kim and Jimmy’s intricate plan against Howard, Lalo’s undercover sewer surveillance of Gus’ superlab and security detail, and Howard’s tragic end. I especially love the moment when Jimmy first spots Lalo in the apartment. The framing of the shot and Bob Odenkirk’s horrified look and how Jimmy’s first reaction is to grab Kim’s shoulders and pull her away from Lalo perfectly sets up the devastation that follows.)
This may be the most shocking, jarring Gilligan universe death since young Drew Sharp was murdered by “dead-eyed Opie” Todd in Breaking Bad. It leaves us with a midseason finale-worthy cliffhanger that, thankfully, will resolve when the series returns for its final six episodes in July.
Stray observations
- How many consequences are going to result from Kim’s decision not to tell Jimmy that Lalo is alive? Maybe if Jimmy had known, he might have locked the door after he let Howard in. It, at least, would have spared them the surprise entrance and might have given them time to do…something? Or, had he known, he might have been so freaked out that he would have insisted they leave their apartment, as he did after Lalo’s last visit. They might have found a safer haven, and Howard might have been spared. The broken trust, that she didn’t trust him to help them deal with the danger they’re in, is something that will have to haunt both of them and perhaps has a role in their futures individually and as a couple.
- Howard’s most devastating words to Kim, after telling her he once saw her as “one of the most promising human beings” he’d ever known: deeming her and Jimmy sociopaths and comparing them to Leopold and Loeb, who were saved from the death penalty by a lawyer.
- When Howard was reciting his list of personal trials to Kim and Jimmy, the couple was surprised to learn about his crumbling marriage. It struck me as one of the saddest moments of his confrontation. As viewers, we first learned about his relationship troubles during his therapy session in “Hit And Run.” But to Kim and Jimmy, the fact that he had a therapy session was just an opportunity to further their plot to mess with his professional life. They never considered his personal life.
- Howard’s soda can trick, or rather, Chuck’s soda can trick, was also a sad reminder of Chuck’s foibles, and what it must have been like to go through life so paranoid about other peoples’ intentions that he had to preemptively defuse all his cans of carbonated beverages.
- Now I want Mrs. Landry’s potato leek soup recipe.
493 Comments
I’ve said before that this season had me starting to really feel for Howard.
Yeah…I really feel bad for him now.
The character called Dark Vader by Jimmy in the first episode turned out to be a really sympathic not evil guy who doesn’t deserve his fate. Now that’s writing.
I never thought he was evil. Ever. He was just a PIC for a big law firm that had to make tough decisions at times. But at his core it was obvious he was a decent human being. It does seem like a good part of the BB/BCS audience wants to place people in buckets. Chuck wasn’t all bad. Howard wasn’t bad at all. The brilliance of the writing is that the writers and direction provide so much nuance and opportunity to evaluate but often what I read is a simple black and white evaluation.In any event, RIP Howard. You will be missed. It is interesting to think about how much of Chuck’s buyout was tied to Howard taking personal assets and after that who it was going to go. Now HHM has to dial with the loss of another senior partner and how that is going to be paid (perhaps they had officers life insurance or something like that)
The saddest thing about it is that they are almost definitely going to “disappear” his body somehow, or dump it someplace, and the narrative will be that he died in some sort of drug business and his reputation will be ruined in his death.
the narrative will be that he died in some sort of drug business
Well technically he was killed by the cartel.
They might make it look like a suicide, which people would probably believe based on his last few weeks. *sniff* This is me best-case-scenario-ing this thing.
🙁
He is going to be forever known as the lawyer who had a drug problem and killed himself thus ruining the name HHM. Now that is just cruel.
“ He is going to be forever known as the lawyer who had a drug problem and killed himself thus ruining the name HHM. Now that is just cruel.”I almost agreed with this then I remembered were talking about Lawyers.And yeah…there are a few typing like crazy on this thread.Talkin bout you too lol
Or after that complete humiliation he killed himself.
That’s what I was thinking too, and it’s a shame Howard’s name will be forever tarnished.
That is very likely! Are you one of the writers? lol
HHM is most certainly going under after this. Big H, Big M, and now Little H are gone. I’m sure there are other senior partners at a big firm like HHM, but change is definitely on the horizon with the last namesake out of the picture. They’ll likely change the name even if they do manage to keep the business afloat. Having a named partner die under dubious circumstances isn’t good for said business.
I, too, feel bad for people who are murdered, even more so by someone they don’t know and unrelated to any situation they are involved in.
Bleeding heart.
I was surprised that I actually teared up when Howard was killed. The more I saw about his life, the more I realized how skewed Jimmy and Kim’s view of him really was. He was never the villain they thought he was. But, as Bob Odenkirk says about Jimmy, his big flaw is that he can’t let things go. Neither can Kim.
This show is just so brilliant. All of this “oh, now I’m starting to feel sorry for Howard” stuff is legit, but… go back and rewatch from season one. Yes, he’s obnoxious. Yes, he’s vain, conceited, etc. In real life I would not want to work with him, or for him, or probably even sit near him. But the writing and acting on BCS lead us very subtly to see him through Saul’s, and through Kim’s, eyes. It’s in episodes from this season that we get most of the whole “Howard is human” facts, but… that was always there.(In promos for this season, what seems like decades ago, Patrick Fabian and the rest of the cast were talking about how good this season was going to be. There were some comments along the lines of “why is he included in this?”. Howard had seemed to be pretty peripheral. So there was a hint that he’d be important. Didn’t know how important….)
I would have no issue working with Howard. I’ve worked with people that were even more egotistical and cunning. Of course it never occurred to me to try and ruin their lives like Kim did.
It’s weird to me that this is people’s takeaway in season 6, that Howard’s not a bad guy. They laid this all out there in season 1, when it was revealed that it was not Howard who was keeping Jimmy down, but Chuck.We spent the first season thinking Howard was an entitled prick who dismissed Jimmy for his background and past, when in fact Howard was an entitled only-kind-prick who was trying to do his best by two people he respected. He cared for Chuck, and had enormous professional respect for him, and knew Jimmy was pretty much the only other person in the world who cared for Chuck and so was willing to Chuck’s dirty work so that relationship wouldn’t be destroyed. And he respected Jimmy’s work ethic and knew it would hurt Jimmy if he found out that Chuck wouldn’t let him advance. Howard was willing to let Jimmy think he was the bad guy in order to protect both of them.Then Howard was truly devastated by Chuck’s death (the depression he mentioned in this episode) and when he tried to bond with Jimmy, by offering to take blame that wasn’t his, Jimmy just piled it all on Howard. This right here was the climax of Better Call Saul. Howard was the moral center of the Jimmy side of the story, and these two cruelly humiliated him and got him killed, and he called them out on for just who they are: broken people, and identical to each other. Jimmy really is Saul Goodman now, all the goodwill earned by his caring for the impossible Chuck just completely tossed away. And the endlessly likable and resourceful Kim is just Saul now, too.The show has told the story it needed to tell, to get us from Jimmy to Saul. The rest is denouement.
Just this season???
I kind of suspected for a while that Howard was going to bite it at some point and maybe Lalo will be the one to do it. But in classic Breaking Bad writing fashion, even if you guess the outcome, you absolutely want to see how we get there and its still riveting. I do strongly feel Kim will be fine, killing two major characters is big for the show, 3 is going to be too many.
I always thought Kim would make it out alive, just wasn’t sure how. Now I think she might get vacuumed just to keep her safe.
A reunion with Jimmy in the flashforward would be nice—-but given this show, I’m not sure that type of ending is something the writers would go for.I’m thinking she either goes to jail or Mike disappears her. I’m pretty sure based on what we’ve seen and other peoples’ comments that she’s not going to die.
Honestly, do they deserve a happy reunion after this episode? They’re not not really a healthy couple anymore and while we all know Jimmy gets his karmic comeuppance, Kim definitely needs some to
That’s why I think one of the very real options is that she goes to jail (either for Jimmy or for something she gets caught doing/has done). Maybe we see in the future her getting released from jail.Or maybe with the Salamancas out of the picture, she could return safely.Probably not, especially given how the teaser is almost certainly meant to deceive, but one can wish.
I thought it would play out that Howard would get her disbarred and that would be her karmic comeuppance but there went that. I think her “disappeared” by the vacuum salesman guy is probably what’s going to happen to her as it would explain why Saul never mentions her in BB. Either way, she’s headed for some thing to happen to her as she’s in way too deep
Neither Kim or Lalo are around during BB. What if Kim kills Lalo, and is disappeared by Mike?
you mean disappeared like go to the vaccuum guy? Because i dont see why killing Lalo would be a bad thing, to Mike.
you mean disappeared like go to the vaccuum guy? Because i dont see why killing Lalo would be a bad thing, to Mike.
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Nah, I can’t help but think there’s no bittersweet ending anymore. As “Gene” I think Jimmy/Saul is working in the same mall that’s from the Kim flashback hoping that one day despite the “vacuuming” he thinks she’s had she’ll walk through the door when in reality, just like Lalo and Nacho, she’ll be dead and he just doesn’t know.
I think she’s going to jail. When Jimmy clears out his office at the end of the events of Breaking Bad (as shown in a flash-forward in Better Call Saul) he tells Francesca to be at a specific phone at a specific time, awaiting a phone call.There aren’t really any characters other than Kim who Jimmy cares about. And whoever Jimmy is talking to, it’s someone (a) he really needs to talk to; (b) he can’t talk to now; and (c) he knows a specific date in which he can communicate with them.
She’s definitely getting vacuumed. She noticed the repair buisness card in the vet’s little black book. She Even commented on it out loud.
Yeah I thought that through his Private Eye Howard was going to get mixed up in the Lalo situation. When the Private Eye turned out to be a fraud who then vanished I thought Howard would be saved from that fate. But then…
I made a comment before the episode that I thought it would be funny if Lalo killed Howard’s PI (stumbling upon him tailing Jimmy, assuming he works for Mike or Gus, and putting a bullet in him). How close I was, and yet, how wrong.
I always thought she’d survive because the bond the writers have built between her and Jimmy is so strong. I just don’t think the Saul of BB is a character who is weighted down by the death of someone he loves so much. Especially as recently as it will be when the time lines connect.
I also don’t think she’ll go to the vacuum man, that’s just a bit to easy for a show like this.
Prison? Taking a fall for Jimmy maybe. Then she tracks him down when she gets out in the Gene timeline. Cause that Gene fella has been conspicuous in his absence so far his season.
The fact she’s from Omaha and that’s where Saul is as Gene is surely not an accident.
She runs the Orange Julius across from the Cinnabon. Better yet, she’s the Cinnabon manager since Gene is the assistant manager.
But not Omaha, she is from Red Cloud, near the border with Kansas. It will be interesting to see if and how they intersect in the B&W future
Woah, yeah perhaps. Though it might just be one of those “they see each other and pretend not to notice” sad moments
This here is the reason I read the comments. I’m not a great dot-connector – that’s an awesome observation.
Because he’s hiding from,…..KIM?Odd take.
Hiding from Kim? No, he’s saying Gene is waiting for Kim
yeah and no more Robert Forster- they’d not waste that lineage by bringing in his son or some crap, I’d think.
The Saul we see in BB seems to have no one he cares about in his life. That does not square with having a self-sacrificing wife in the slammer. I do however agree with you that Saul also doesn’t seem to have experienced the death of a great love – but it does seem that there was a fairly final ending of some type.My guess is that Kim goes through things in the next half that put her life at risk and also turn her off Jimmy for good, if Howard’s murder didn’t already do that. They end up splitting pretty bitterly and she gets vacuumed up into a new life. My ideal hope for Kim is that she is settled under a new name with a husband and kids, doing good works to help gain some forgiveness, and the show ends with her seeing a photo of Gene in the paper after he comes to a sticky end.
Man you people come up with depressing theories. But I’m convinced it won’t be that awful
To me awful is she gets murdered by the cartel – which I don’t rule out on this show!
I dont think theyll have a reason to, whatever they want, she’ll go along with it.
I dont think theyll have a reason to, whatever they want, she’ll go along with it.
I just can’t see the writers going for another character getting vacuumed away again. Especially since Robert Forster is sadly no longer with us.
Jail is the one get out they haven’t used. Jimmy could easily pretend that he has no one he cares about, while still going to see her every week in the slammer. Knowing that’s she is safe there.
And she’s savvy enough to know that when he stops coming to visit it’s because he has to do a runner.
Call me romantic but I think the final scene will be Kim and Gene walking into the sun set as we go from B&W to color.
Is Kim and Gene walking off into the sunset even romantic though??? Jimmy may care about Kim but he’s been nothing but terrible for her, often being dishonest and repeatedly putting her life at risk. (If she never met Jimmy she’d be a successful attorney, maybe a little bored but safe and comfortable.) If she was serving time for Jimmy all through BB he would have been cheating on her with whomever left the thong in his house and then would have split town on her without a second thought. Plus, if they finally then ended up together post-Gene, she’d be spending the rest of her life dodging the cartel. Ultimately I do trust the writers of this show to come up with something ingenious, satisfying and true to the characters they’ve built as they’ve always managed it thus far. Part of what makes me think that Kim survives is that she’s smart enough and aware of human weakness enough to always have a savvy backup plan, and think on her feet when it fails. But I also don’t rule out them killing her off but giving her a “good death” – that’s how it certainly worked out for Nacho.
Totally agree on the trust in the writers sticking the landing.
Think they’ve known all along where it’s all going to end. The Gene timeline has always been there to give Jimmy/Saul/Gene a definitive ending. Good or bad. Bad being the cartel finding him, good being Kim finds him. Not saying they’ll be walking off into the sunset together probably something life he looks up from the counter and she’s there and says “Hi.. Gene”
Kim has enthusiastically embraced the dark side and is pushing Jimmy at this point.
I’m currently rewatching BB and Saul seems a little bitter for having lost someone, looking genuinely upset when WW and Skyler break up. But also, his “plenty of fish in the sea” quote and repeatedly harassment of Francesca make me think Kim will leave him in some given moment. And in BB he doesn’t really seem to be planning to become Gene at the beginning.
Nah. I don’t want a happy ending for Kim at this point. She needs a strong dose of comeuppance for what she did to Howard.
I don’t know, Kim dying wouldn’t be the worst thing at this point. Her changing identities would be so predictable
With things going as they are, Kim might be in need of a vacuum cleaner in the near future.
Yeah, for the last few seasons I’ve had it in my head that Kim doesn’t die and as a twist we find out she’s the defense attorney for Skylar White. Now, maybe we find out she’s sharing a jail cell with her.
killing two major characters is big for the show, 3 is going to be too many.Breaking Bad would like a word with you.As would Game of Thrones and the Sopranos.
Yeah, I figure she’ll be so traumatized by what happened to Howard that she decides to leave Jimmy entirely after failing to make him go legit.I also forgot that she knew Lalo was alive and Jimmy didn’t.
I actually think she’ll leave Jimmy in the end. I feel regardless of the things she’s done she’s only got one foot into whatever Jimmy landed in, whereas Jimmy himself has gone full underworld crime-bozo (even though Kim is far gone I can see her making a turn-around at one point). Given that Jimmy doesn’t mention Kim in BB it seems almost the same case as with Chuck where he just wants to forget that they exist. I could see some kind of scenario where she makes a choice in the end and removes herself whatever that ends up being.
Howard was so far removed the violent side of this show, I didn’t see his demise coming at all. But it’s got me thinking about that scene- How it can basically be screaming at you that he’s about to be killed, and it still feels surprising. A real triumph of writing, performance, and direction, especially in what they chose to show and what they chose to hold. Amazing stuff.
I don’t think she dies she’s just gonna leave him – if she did die I doubt Saul Goodman would still exist – Jimmy would be too broken down to continue that path. Just my theory.
As a side story to a tragedy, it’s possible. Also, no half measures.
Kim’s not fine. She’s become Saul Goodman just as much as Jimmy has.We knew that was coming for Jimmy, likable Jimmy who was the only one in the world to care for Chuck and put up with his shit (not even their mom loved Chuck), because it’s a prequel and we’d seen him in BB. But it’s pretty dark for Kim to end up there, too.
I’m currently rewatching BB and Saul seems a little bitter for having lost someone, looking genuinely upset when WW and Skyler break up. But also, his “plenty of fish in the sea” quote and repeatedly harassment of Francesca make me think Kim will leave him in some given moment. And in BB he doesn’t really seem to be planning to become Gene at the beginning.
DAMN! Now that is a fucking CLIFFHANGER.Poor Howard. He may have been a dick, but he didn’t deserve to be taken down like that, and that was before some lead was added to his cranium.I will say though, that scheme of Kim and Jimmys was top notch. The coordination was something to be seen. And the best part was that Howard actually managed to explain it reasonably to Clifford, in a way that had Cliff somewhat believing that seemingly crazy situation, but it didn’t matter, as he pointed out.Also, once again, bravo Rhea for the subtle reactions when Howard was slinging around his insults, and the look of pure fear when Lalo showed up.Just a great, great episode all around. They’re going to have to really bring it to top it for the real finale.
They left a lot of loose ends around. People who I don’t think had any idea how serious the con was, or even that they should be especially quiet about it. That actor’ll probably be telling everybody he knows about it.If Howard could find one of them, he might’ve been able to unspool the whole plot, but again, I’m not sure if anybody else would even want the real story to come out, even if they believed it, cause it’d just make everybody look stupid.Howard’s not gonna smoke anybody out now, of course, and it shouldn’t be hard to cover up his murder now. Just hide the body and the car, and everybody’ll believe he just drove out into the desert and ended things.
The big loose end is that Clifford is going to know Kim didn’t show up at the conference. Despite falling right into the trap, Howard was quick to correctly guess how they did it, and explained it to Clifford. And while Clifford was clearly skeptical, he’s going to get a big confirmation that something weird was going on with Kim that day.
We are definitely not done with Cliff playing a major role in this season.
Cliff also knows that Kim set up the lunch where he saw “Howard” throw the hooker out of his car. And he shares the country club with Kevin Wachtell, who saw Jimmy the day they planted the fake drugs on Howard.
That reminds me, I’m a little surprised that Howard didn’t ask Cliff what time the lunch was, because he has an alibi– he was in therapy and his therapist can confirm he was there the whole time.
Yeah but Cliff thinks Howard has a drug problem and since he’s delt with this with his son probably won’t bother to investigate. He’s been through this probably many times with his son so I don’t he’s going to bother with Howard. That’s just my prediction of how this plays out.
I’m not sure. I mean, I think your point is valid, but I also think this episode showed that Cliff wasn’t in total disbelief of Howard’s explanation– especially with the PI swap– and he might find out Kim didn’t make that meeting, and that might get the gears spinning in his own head.Or maybe it doesn’t, and the rest of the series is about what happens with Jimmy and Kim, how they get out from under Lalo and the cartel, what happens to Kim, etc., and Cliff doesn’t really play a part at all.
I think we already know they don’t “get out from under” the cartel (but maybe Lalo if he gets offed first).
I’m guessing you haven’t seen last night’s episode? Don’t want to spoil anything haha.
Normally that would be so. But since Kim blew off that meeting she had really wanted in Sante Fe, Cliff is going to give some thought to Howard’s claim of a con against him.
I loved how there was this tiny moment of Jimmy breaking form and trying to tell Howard he’ll recover from it in the ending scene (Jimmy never being able to hit people at their lowest), and the camera goes over to Kim’s face who we see just a little bit concerned that Jimmy’s reaction might implicate himself (that’s how I read it anyway). Jimmy looks like he still feels a bit bad for Howard, Kim just wants him out of the apartment lol.
Kim is awesome. She doesn’t GAF anymore about anybody other than Jimmy, and *maybe* her pro bono cases, although a case could be made that she’s doing it to dominate the justice system more than say, actual altruistic reasons.I truly believe that if she could, Kim would misdirect the blame to Liddy and send Lalo after her, lol.
I agree. Saul is bad, but there is still a little bit of decent Jimmy buried inside. Kim Wexler is full on wicked. She does not deserve any kind of happy ending.
To be fair, Jimmy has been burned by admitting guilt to his marks before
They’re going to have to really bring it to top it for the real finale. I think they will. Back during the last season of Breaking Bad, I remember wondering how and if they would tie up everything – would everyone get their comeuppance, would they even manage to address each character with a proper ending….And they just, you know. DID.
Ehhh, I still say Ozymandias was the absolute peak, and I don’t think the finale was as good as some of the legendarily great ones like The Shield. And also not as good as that aforementioned BB episode.
But Ozymandias is second to basically nothing in the TV episode world.
God that final scene made me scream holy fuck so loud I think my neighbors heard me. And now we have to wait 6 weeks to see what happens next!I do love how Lalo seeing the cockroach made him think of Jimmy.
Nah, July 11th new episodes.
oh my brain meant to type weeks and for some reason months came out. Thanks I corrected it.
Still will seem like 6 months!
Your brain was shattered like Howard’s.
OK 7 weeks.
He originally had months there.
Oh, ok.
7 weeks then?
I wouldn’t put it past them to be cruel and start with an all Gene episode.
Didn’t even pick up on the coachroach thing. What an awesome detail.
When Lalo was shooshing them after capping Howard, I believe it was him breaking the fourth wall and telling the audience to not freak out their neighbors as well.In keeping with the meta theme, I do love the irony of Howard calling them sociopaths one minute before meeting his end to an actual sociopath. It’s a reminder that at the end of the day, Jimmy, Kim and Howard, for all their machinations, are essentially just playing white collar gotchas on each other – they might as well as be Jim Halbert’s pranking Dwight compared to the real tangible violence going on around them via Mike, Gus, the cartel, etc. The real tangible violence that is the hallmark of Breaking Bad. It’s almost like the creators are trying to remind us- “you think them trying to get Howard fired matters in the long run? In a few years, Saul’s client is going to bomb a nursing home.”
I didn’t even catch that. I just thought Lalo was on to Jimmy from the get go but was taking care of other things first
Yeah, tricking the phone tap was clever, but it wasn’t to make Jimmy and Kim vulnerable.
That’s how I interpreted it, it was to make it so he could get to Saul/Kim
Haha, yes, I was wondering if I’d read that correctly, very good way to see what Lalo actually thinks of the lawyers they hire to keep them out of jail by providing them with slimy tricks to keep them in the street – and thus able to murder innocent people such as Howard. Then again, it’s “lawyers” who’ve created the laws that outline our (the world, yes, but, especially the US’) insanely crappy drug policy. Lawyers create our “good” laws and our “bad” laws too. Crappy drug policy – prohibition – creates job opportunities for criminals. Murderous criminals, who will do anything and everything to “stay free” for another day/week/month – time to erase their “problems”. I have dealt with lawyers in my time, and even the guys who repped me made me feel slimy. People suck. Ain’t saying they deserve to get shot in the head by a drug cartel’s craziest member, but…maybe that’s not for me to say, especially since I don’t know – and don’t want to know, frankly – how the sausage gets made. Because the people I see in Congress – nearly all, to a person – lawyers – give me the creeps. Both sides of the aisle. It’s a slimy business, lawyering. Jimmy isn’t alone in his corruption.
Yeah, I never thought this show could truly shock me as a prequel, but that did.
Yeah, I never thought this show could truly shock me as a prequel, but that did.
Lalo didn’t plan to go to Jimmy until he saw the cockroach. I think he was planning to stick to the laundry plan, saw the cockroach which reminded him of Jimmy and he changed his mind. Put him exactly in Mike’s blind spot. This is the best show of all time.
Nice catch!!
I did not put the cockroach thing together, but that is such a great catch! I forgot he called Jimmy that once.
Funny, the cockroach made me suspect Lalo was aware of the apparent bug that allowed Mike to hear him recording his report to Don Eladio, which was apparently a setup (that is, Lalo counted on Mike listening so he could use misdirection to get to Jimmy and Kim).
All I know is Tony Dalton better get a Netflix series of his own and I mean now.I didn’t think I could hate him any more than I did. Such a needlessly brutal man with so many examples of it this season alone but damn…..just fucking DAMN.
“And after all that, a happy ending…”
I repeatedly see comments arguing that Howard didn’t deserve to go out in any sort of BrBa fashion, but was still a privileged douchebag lawyer. As I think about it, I really believe he is a prisoner of the circumstances he was born into, and every decision he makes or “douchebag” persona he puts on has always been an attempt to just keep his head above water. You could now completely reanalyze his treatment of Kim in season 2 as him detecting her bullshit long before anyone else. He really is a tragic character, and that above quote from the teaser couldn’t be more implicit about Jimmy and Kim’s fate going into these final episodes.Thinking about it more, I’m starting to feel like Howard and Nacho are the true hearts of this show, whose actions increasingly fell out of their own control and into the hands of others. They were merely trying to navigate their way around chaos, and have been spared of any further pain. We have been wishing for certain characters to survive this whole time, but are also learning those that survive are merely entering an even darker world that we come to know in Breaking Bad.
I’ve been arguing for weeks that Howard isn’t that bad and people consistently call him a douchebag for reasons I can’t understand. He’s a little smarmy in his professional life but the way he interacts and treats people outside of work consistently paints the picture of a kind-hearted person. Just look at how he reacted when a new associate stumbled and spilled those soda cans. A true douchebag would have yelled, made some asshole comment, or scoffed and acted like it never happened and that person didn’t exist. Instead he helps him pick up the cans and tells the associate a personal story while making sure he knows his name.There’s other small moments like that in the series that people ignore because Howard was an asshole to Kim in S2. He’s not perfect but to act like he’s all terrible is so skewed of a view that I just don’t get it. Even now people preface their reaction to his death with “he may have been a dick” or something similar because they’ve so completely bought into the POV of morally corrupt protagonists. Guess that’s a credit to the show.
Yeah it seemed like Therapy was really working for him.
The revealed back in season one that he wasn’t an asshole, and it’s like some people forgot.
Yeah, they definitely seem to forget that Howard told Kim to persuade Jimmy to drop his pursuit of a lawyer position at HHM because Howard didn’t want Jimmy to be crushed when he learned it was Chuck who was blocking him from working there. There’s always been humanity underneath Howard’s pompousness.
His good side was revealed to the audience, but has it ever been revealed to Jimmy and Kim? Much of the time we witness Howard’s goodness, or that his cruelty towards Jimmy was largely Chuck-inspired, Jimmy and Kim are not around. So while we may perceive him as better than they think, they’ve had very few reasons to see that – and even those reasons can be read as driven by ulterior motives (if you’re Jimmy reading them, that is).None of this is meant to imply he deserved what he got – from J&K or Lalo – but it’s easy to see why J&K would think he deserved what they did to him.
But he also told Jimmy: ‘I always liked you.’ He talked him up to David and Main. He offered Jimmy a job and told him how much he admired him after Chuck’s death – which he felt bad for. He backed Jimmy on the scholarship thing too. They have seen his good side.The bigger question is: what’s he done to them that makes them think of him as being such a villain? Putting Kim in doc review, taking the fall for Chuck sabotaging Jimmy, and… that’s it.
Well said. I’ll accept this as his unofficial eulogy.
I don’t think Howard is was a bad person. The animosity Saul and Kim feel felt towards him didn’t come into existence from a vacuum. Even if the more vindictive decisions and treatment was ultimately from Chuck, Howard still played his part, he was a little too good at “pretending” to be the bad guy.
He was a lawyer – it makes sense that he would have a good game face even when he’s not 100% behind what he’s being told to do. But regardless, being a bit of an asshole now and then doesn’t necessarily make you a bad guy. Everyone has bad moments. Unless we have wildly different interpretations of what that means.But I think the bigger thing is people seem to ignore that Saul and Kim are the bad guys. Running scams, skirting with the law or outright breaking it, and ruining people’s lives for personal gain may make for fun TV but if these were real people, every insult Howard hurled their way in this episode would ring true. And the worst part is they self justify it and think they’re in the right.
Thing is, they tried to play by the rules. They worked hard to do honest work that would help real people who needed it. And they were punished for it. Maybe Howard would be perfectly comfortable throwing an old man out of his home for the sake of an indulgent, opulently designed bank branch, but Kim would rather help those in need.While she was initially horrified by Jimmy’s methods and mentality, she has learned the power of bending the rules. If the system doesn’t work, don’t play by its rules. Make your own. All her pro bono clients are worked on above board. For “minimum wage” as Cliff Main put it. That’s only “personal gain” in terms of wanting a personally fulfilling life, but she wasn’t seeking a for profit lifestyle, just a way to pay the salaries of colleagues to help her in her pro bono firm.In this scene, after discussing her dream of what she would do with the settlement money, it’s Jimmy who hesitates to act, worrying it might be something career ending, which he didn’t think Howard deserved. Kim rationalizes it as a setback. And if Howard didn’t have the bad luck of Lalo reemerging on D-Day, Kim would have been right.I’m not saying Kim and Jimmy’s methods aren’t underhanded, illegal, or frowned upon, just that they believe the ends justifies the means for the greater good, and that they have always had an adversarial relationship with Howard where they’ve always been on fundamentally different sides of many conflicts. In the Mesa Verde tug of war, Chuck and Howard were underhanded in how they prevented Kim from taking the client she worked hard to acquire in the first place. Kim left a dead end position at HHM because of Chuck’s sadistic pettiness, which was motivated by money that they already had plenty of. And then Howard forced Chuck to retire. Through all of that, neither Chuck, nor Howard cared about what was right or fair, they just wanted the cash cow. That does not necessarily mean Howard was a bad person, just not the good shining knight some have suggested he was.
Though remember that the last episode makes it perfectly clear that Kim has a perfect opportunity to do something which will help a lot of people and fulfill all the good intentions she claims to have without sticking it to Howard… which she turns her back on just to see the plan to destroy Howard go through. At that point, it’s no longer about the greater good. It’s about the grudge. It’s about spite. The ‘they’re just doing what they have to do’ defence stops working the moment when someone keeps doing it when they no longer have to.Howard’s no saint, true. But I feel like the flip side may be true, and that you are maybe attributing more noble intentions to Kim and Jimmy than are really warranted at this point. They might talk fine talk about the ends justifying the means and about how they’re doing what they do so they can help people who need it, but people who just have the best possible intentions and are only doing what’s necessary don’t gleefully start fucking the minute they get news that they’ve successfully destroyed someone’s life, even if that someone can be kind of a privileged jerk. The road to hell might be paved with good intentions, but Jimmy and Kim are way past the point where the good intentions mean much anymore.
That moment of Kim turning the car around at the end of the last episode was the most genuinely worried I’d felt for her yet. I have an academic friend who once said something like “Drama is about the moment when you choose, and that choice determines the rest of your life.” Kim turning the car around felt like that choice— she’s all the way in it now with Saul, and what the two of them do together and looking out for each other comes first— before the pro bono clients, before her career, before anything else. (That choice also determined the rest of Howard’s life, as it turns out.)
They didn’t destroy Howard’s life by making him unable to extend the length of the class action. They sincerely believed he could come back for this. You are right that Kim chose to humiliate Howard over maybe being able to take part in a law reform nonprofit, and that really shocked me. “We can help a lot of people,” was what Jimmy said, but yes, this was for fun. That doesn’t mean the good intentions are no longer there.
Again, I think you’re bending perhaps a little further backwards than you can or should to ascribe worthy motives to their actions here. They didn’t destroy Howard’s life by putting him a position where he couldn’t extend the class action; they destroyed his life by framing him as a paranoid drug addict who hires sex workers and completely destroying his credibility as a lawyer. All of which was personal. All of which was targeting Howard himself directly. And, let’s face it, none of which is going to help Howard in keeping his marriage together or his life together. You really think Howard’s marriage is going to be salvaged by everyone thinking he hires prostitutes? You really think his career is going to be helped by the fact that everyone now thinks he’s an irrational, paranoid drug addict?And, as Howard himself points out (and the scene is clearly framed to suggest he has a valid point), they did it for fun. They enjoyed doing it. They literally got off to it. They rationalise it to themselves by arguing that it’s for a good cause and that he can get back on his feet eventually, but it should be abundantly clear that that’s just self-serving bullshit at this point. That a man can eventually climb out of a hole you pushed him into doesn’t change the fact that you still pushed him into the hole in the first place, especially if you did it for a laugh.
Kim and Saul made Howard a disreputable figure to now and furture law partners, as someone with out-of-control cocaine habit. That’s a career ender in a highly conservative profession like law. Period.
What makes it interesting to me is that I sympathized with Jimmy quite a bit early on, in large part because of Chuck. Chuck is right that Jimmy has a con man’s instincts, but I think of a line from another beloved AV Club show: “What do we owe to each other?” Jimmy has taken care of Chuck during his (entirely psychosomatic) illness, going far above and beyond, and he did genuinely good work bringing the Sandpiper case to HHM. And yet Chuck not only continues to hold him down, but does so behind his back, using Howard as the fall guy. And then he continues to undermine Jimmy and Kim, only springing to life in the Mesa Verde case when it looks like they might go with Kim, and then entrapping Jimmy to manipulate him into disbarment. Chuck is a coward and a traitor to his family.It might have all been different if Chuck had been up-front with Jimmy when he first got his law degree— “Good luck, but I really don’t think the law is for you, I don’t think you have the professional ethics necessary to practice it, and I can’t help you find work.” Or, whatever wording, but just being honest with him. But then, Chuck isn’t even able to admit his own motivations until he melts down in “Chicanery,” perhaps because he’s so full of himself he can’t admit that he’s less high-minded about the Sanctity of the Law, and more high-minded about himself— and how dare his inferior little brother ever aspire to the same profession as him.Of course, it gets harder and harder to sympathize the further Saul and Kim push into outright criminal activity and destroy innocent lives, but I can’t help but wonder that fundamental question— “It could have all been different.” Maybe it could have, maybe it couldn’t have, but the biggest lesson Chuck taught Jimmy is that no matter how hard people like Jimmy work at being respectable and above-board, people like Chuck will never respect him and will always look down on him. So why work for the respect of people who will never give it to you, when you can just do things your own way and get results?
I just mentioned this below, but Chuck is also not quite the villain people make him out to be. He’s acted like a dick to be sure, but he has some pretty big motivation. Jimmy bankrupted their father’s business, indirectly causing his death. But because he had better people skills, Jimmy still got all the warmth and affection from the important people in Chuck’s life (his wife, their mother, their father) whereas Chuck, it seems, didn’t get so much – despite following all the rules, working hard and doing what he was supposed to do. That’s gotta mess a person up. I think all his high-mindedness and sanctimony surrounding the law, and even choosing that profession in the first place, was a reaction to that.
Jimmy bankrupted their father’s business, indirectly causing his death We don’t know that. That’s Chuck’s version of events. And we’re talking about Chuck’s overwhelming resentment of Jimmy here, so I’m not inclined to take it at face value. What we do know is that their father gave away money to con men passing through as well, so we already know Jimmy isn’t entirely at fault, and if anything I’d take those stories as a sign that his father was probably an overall poor businessman. But because he had better people skills, Jimmy still got all the warmth and affection from the important people in Chuck’s life (his wife, their mother, their father) whereas Chuck, it seems, didn’t get so much – despite following all the rules, working hard and doing what he was supposed to do. That’s gotta mess a person up.I don’t disagree. I just don’t think that justifies anything in how he acts toward Jimmy. To paraphrase a comment above, plenty of people deal with not being as well-liked as their brother without trying to destroy that brother’s life. (I mean, the idea we shouldn’t kill our brother out of jealousy is so old it’s in the fourth chapter of Genesis.) I think all his high-mindedness and sanctimony surrounding the law, and even choosing that profession in the first place, was a reaction to that. I think that’s very plausible, but I also think that Jimmy trying to follow in his footsteps reveals that for Chuck, it never was about The Law: It was about elevating himself so far above Jimmy in esteem and prestige that it wouldn’t matter if people liked him more. Jimmy becoming a lawyer directly threatened that. (And, I think, led to his “electromagnetic sensitivity”— something with which Jimmy went far above and beyond in caring for him, which makes Chuck’s duplicity and betrayal all the more galling.)In the end, as I mentioned above, I think it’s a question of what we owe each other, and for Jimmy being Chuck’s brother and going so far above and beyond to care for him, Chuck at least owed him honesty about working with him and whether he should even become a lawyer. Instead, he chose to hide behind a bunch of machinations and deceptions.
All good points, but a few threads I’d pick at:We don’t know that. That’s Chuck’s version of events. And we’re
talking about Chuck’s overwhelming resentment of Jimmy here, so I’m not
inclined to take it at face value.We know for sure that Papa McGill was incredibly naive one way or the other, that yes, he was a bad businessman, and that he gave money away to conmen, so that’s true. But Chuck’s version of events, to the best of my knowledge, has never been refuted by the text, and I think we’re meant to believe it. Chuck’s post-hoc resentment of Jimmy doesn’t explain his findings at the time, and from what we know of Jimmy’s character there’s no real reason to doubt this.I don’t disagree. I just don’t think that justifies anything in how he
acts toward Jimmy. To paraphrase a comment above, plenty of people deal
with not being as well-liked as their brother without trying to destroy
that brother’s life.Denying someone a job opportunity doesn’t equate to destroying that person’s life. Chuck acted at least partially out of resentment, I’m sure, but he also had some legit concerns about entrusting his firm, his reputation, and his legacy to a younger brother who’d been acting up his entire life up to that point. Chuck’s argument of ‘People don’t change!’ is overly harsh, but he’d be well within his rights to be wary of Jimmy after all he’d seen him do. Shitting through a person’s sunroof doesn’t exactly scream ‘associate at prestigious law firm’ material.something with which Jimmy went far above and beyond in caring for him,
which makes Chuck’s duplicity and betrayal all the more galling.)Let’s not forget, also, that Chuck also took care of Jimmy. He got him the mailroom job and stopped him from becoming a registered sex offender. Not quite the same thing, but still.I’m definitely not saying Chuck’s not a douche, he did act badly in not being honest with Jimmy and holding up his career. It’s just that, like with Howard, people paint him as an outright dick who toyed with Jimmy just because of elitism or something. I just think there’s some more complicated morality and psychology at work to just write off his actions that way, is all.
Point 1 – How explicit does a refutation have to be? The McGill paterfamilias is such a minor character I don’t expect we’ll get flashbacks to his books or anything like that. But we’ve already seen hard evidence that Jimmy isn’t solely responsible, and we know how resentful Chuck is of Jimmy, so I don’t think we’re supposed to take Chuck’s word about Jimmy at face value.Point 2 – I’m not just talking about denying the job opportunity, though again, it’s also a shithead thing for Chuck to do it so underhandedly. I’m also talking about everything since— only getting involved in Mesa Verde to punish Kim, trying to entrap and disbar Jimmy. That’s far above and beyond just “denying a job opportunity.” The latter in particular I think is about as evil a betrayal as one brother can commit to another, and I do think trying to get Jimmy disbarred does count as “trying to destroy his life.”Point 3 – I’m aware; and if Chuck wanted nothing to do with Jimmy after that, he should’ve said it. If Chuck thought Jimmy becoming a lawyer was a bad idea, he should’ve said it. If Chuck was never going to let Jimmy be a lawyer at HHM, he should’ve said it. Instead, Chuck cowardly hid behind Howard, and that kicked off all the other events we’ve seen in the war between the two brothers. I think none of this happens if Chuck is up-front with Jimmy from the start.Insofar as there is complex morality and psychology, I don’t think that justifies Chuck. I think his moral compass is broken; whatever moral values might have led to his stances on The Law have since curdled into resentment of Jimmy and of prizing his own status as The Better Son. And I’ve never much cared for psychological backstory as excuse— deal with your own shit instead of making it someone else’s problem.What I do think is interesting, psychologically, is that Chuck might be incapable of being honest with himself about his motivations; hence the transference of his resentment of Jimmy into his “illness.” And I think it’s interesting, too, how dishonest and underhanded Chuck was with Jimmy— for all he’s right about Jimmy having the heart of a con man, he’s plenty dishonest himself, and he can’t see the ways in which the two of them are similar.
Point 1 – agree to disagreePoint 2 – Chuck was ‘evil’ for trying to disbar Jimmy after Jimmy committed a felony and abused his position as a lawyer and Chuck’s brother? And for trying to prevent a client from leaving his firm? I can admit that the show frames Chuck as putting in a little extra effort to prevent Mesa Verde from leaving (and thus Jimmy/Kim ‘winning’). But even that is just business as usual, and given what Jimmy and Kim ended up doing with Mesa Verde once Kim had them as a client, I don’t think he was entirely wrong to do so.If Chuck wanted to destroy Jimmy’s life he could’ve let the police send him to jail and add him to the sex offender’s register. We can’t attribute all his actions to just ‘He hates Jimmy.’
Point 3 – There’s a contradiction in your views here. You’re simultaneously saying that psychological explanations are not an excuse – which I agree with – and yet you’re laying everything Jimmy did at Chuck’s feet.I could even make a justification for not telling Jimmy about the HHM job: ‘If I tell him the truth, he’s gonna backslide into slippin’ Jimmy again. But if I give him the job, I’m worried he’s gonna do something that harms the firm.’ Does it totally excuse it? No, not really.I do agree with your interpretations of Chuck’s possibly dishonest motivations, and his condition. And, again, I’m really not trying to say that everything he did was totally 100% justified and that he’s a saint. He could’ve done better by Jimmy, and vice-versa. But the way people frame it is very black and white: it’s like when someone is 51% in the wrong and the other party is 49% in the wrong, that 51% guy is labelled an evil cowardly traitorous piece of shit and the other guy is a victim of his machinations. Neither of them are in the right, but also neither of them are history’s greatest monster, that’s all I’m saying.
Point 2 – Yes, in a situation Chuck engineered from the get-go. And you’re ignoring Chuck’s motivations here. Of course it’s standard to try to keep your clients, but go back and watch that part of season 2: Chuck only becomes animated about keeping Mesa Verde when he finds out Kim is sharing office space with Jimmy. It’s all about punishing Jimmy and anyone who associates with him, for Chuck.I’m saying that things could have been different if Chuck had at the very least been honest with Jimmy. There’s no guarantee they would have, but they could have. Heck, forget supportive; Chuck could have just washed his hands entirely of Jimmy. Chuck neither wanted to help Jimmy nor wash his hands of him; he wanted to use everything in his power to hold Jimmy down into what he sees as his rightful place. Chuck wanted to put Jimmy in a position where he had no way to succeed, to fulfill his massive ego’s need to be the “good son.”
Point 2 – Yes, in a situation Chuck engineered from the get-go. And you’re ignoring Chuck’s motivations here.No, the felony I was referring to was Jimmy forging the Mesa Verde paperwork, which is what Chuck’s motivations for getting him disbarred are.Of course it’s standard to try to keep your clients, but go back and watch that part of season 2:I know what you’re referring to, I mentioned it in my post.I’m saying that things could have been different if Chuck had at the very least been honest with Jimmy.Sure, I get that. But I think we’re just gonna have to agree to disagree on the rest of it.
No, the felony I was referring to was Jimmy forging the Mesa Verde paperwork, which is what Chuck’s motivations for getting him disbarred are.Yeah, a series of events caused by Chuck deciding to fight for the account specifically to keep Kim from getting it. That doesn’t absolve Jimmy of responsibility for what he does, but there wouldn’t have even been the possibility to commit a felony if Chuck wasn’t so intent on punishing Jimmy and anyone who associates with him.More broadly and shifting gears a little: While I’ve said I can see how things could have been different for Jimmy, I’m less sure about how that would be the case for Chuck. Where does an ego like that come from? People who have brothers like Jimmy react in all sorts of different ways, and not necessarily like this— and that’s assuming the ego was some sort of defensive mechanism over not being liked and not just how he always was. And that ego is present in Chuck’s other dealings, and that’s his great tragedy, that it gets in the way of his other qualities and any good he might have done. The same ego that drives him to treat Jimmy like he does is also, for example, what led him to sue HHM and alienate Howard rather than face the reality of the situation.I don’t think there’s some inciting event or explanation for that ego; if it was solely about Jimmy, it wouldn’t extend to how he deals with other people. As much as Jimmy needed some guidance to stay on the straight and narrow, I think Chuck needed someone he respected who could get through to him and deflate that ego once in a while. I mean, it literally grew to the point of mental illness for him.(Also interesting, I thought, was the parallel of Chuck rejecting Jimmy to the courthouse rejecting Jimmy after they find out the story with Lalo this season. Much more justifiable in that case, but you can also see the same train of thought when Saul’s phone starts ringing off the hook: If the straight-and-narrow world is gonna reject me anyway, I might as well do business this way.)
Thing is, they tried to play by the rules. They worked hard to do honest work that would help real people who needed it. And they were punished for it.I disagree with this entirely. Jimmy worked hard to discover Sandpiper and his reward was a partner track opportunity at Davis & Main (and even as he was doing so, he was skirting the rules most lawyers follow). He didn’t get the job he wanted, at HHM, but that wasn’t due to his hard work, it was due to a brother who had held a grudge for decades. And plenty of people deal with missing out on their first choice job by taking advantage of the opportunities they do get vs descending into criminal behavior…As for Kim, she was punished because she chose to lie to Chuck and Howard and pretend like she was in on Jimmy’s plan to film and air a commercial behind the partners’ backs. She chose to hitch her wagon to Jimmy’s despite knowing his tendancies to not play by the rules and then chose not to let him drown on his own. And she was ultimately rewarded too – she got a good job at Schweikart & Cokely.With both of them, as you said, the issue is they weren’t fully satisfied with their jobs. But I think that would be true for most adults and again, most adults don’t descend into criminal behavior when their jobs aren’t perfectly satisfying.Their motivations are understandable but not remotely justified. In the Mesa Verde tug of war, Chuck and Howard were underhanded in how they prevented Kim from taking the client she worked hard to acquire in the first place. Kim left a dead end position at HHM because of Chuck’s sadistic pettiness, which was motivated by money that they already had plenty of.I really don’t think it was all Chuck’s pettiness or that they’re motivated by money – I think Kim lost Howard’s trust by putting her friend / boyfriend above the firm’s reputation. And Howard is clearly motivated by that above all else as his father started the firm and when he excises Chuck, he does so because Chuck threatens the firm. If all Howard cared about was money, he wouldn’t have reached into his own savings to pay off Chuck to go away when Chuck threatened the viability of HHM.
As for Kim, she was punished because she chose to lie to Chuck and Howard and pretend like she was in on Jimmy’s plan to film and air a commercial behind the partners’ backs. She chose to hitch her wagon to Jimmy’s despite knowing his tendancies to not play by the rules and then chose not to let him drown on his own. And she was ultimately rewarded too – she got a good job at Schweikart & Cokely. That’s not what happened, Kim was caught off guard that Jimmy didn’t have permission to make or air an ad, the only thing she could have said was that she didn’t think it was necessary to tell Chuck and Howard about the ad. When they dismiss her, Chuck asks, “What are you going to do?” Maybe Chuck had the final say to banish her to doc review, but this was an overreaction, as if Kim was ever tasked with reporting Jimmy’s plans and movements. She was being punished to hurt Jimmy. Because it, “reflects poorly on HHM.”She wasn’t rewarded for “hitching her wagon” to Jimmy, she was rewarded for being an impressive attorney that works hard. Rich was impressed by her personally.When Jimmy offers to give up his career so Chuck would stop punishing Kim, even though that was what Chuck really wanted, he couldn’t get past how a simple, verbal agreement between brothers could be considered extortion. So he (and Howard) double down on punishing her, refusing to relent even when she lands the mother of all side-sitting clients. For what? Nothing. Pride and grudges.
That’s not what happened, Kim was caught off guard that Jimmy didn’t have permission to make or air an ad, the only thing she could have said was that she didn’t think it was necessary to tell Chuck and Howard about the ad. When they dismiss her, Chuck asks, “What are you going to do?” Maybe Chuck had the final say to banish her to doc review, but this was an overreaction, as if Kim was ever tasked with reporting Jimmy’s plans and movements. She was being punished to hurt Jimmy. Because it, “reflects poorly on HHM.”She could have told the truth – that she knew about the ad but when she asked if Davis & Main OKed it, Jimmy lied to her and said they did. Howard’s direct question was if she knew about it and the way she answered indicated she did and agreed with Jimmy’s plan.And the ad did reflect poorly on HHM – Howard personally recommended Jimmy (after Kim asked him to) so anything Jimmy does to upset the partners at Davis & Main reflects back on Howard and HHM. And as a senior partner, it’s Howard’s responsibility to protect his firm’s brand and reputation. So I don’t believe it was an overreaction personally.She wasn’t rewarded for “hitching her wagon” to Jimmy, she was rewarded for being an impressive attorney that works hard. Rich was impressed by her personally.Never said she was rewarded for hitching her wagon to Jimmy. Meant exactly what you wrote. My point was just that despite having a short-term hiccup, her career was on an upward trajectory because her hard work was recognized and rewarded overall – even if Howard wasn’t rewarding it personally.When Jimmy offers to give up his career so Chuck would stop punishing Kim, even though that was what Chuck really wanted, he couldn’t get past how a simple, verbal agreement between brothers could be considered extortion. So he (and Howard) double down on punishing her, refusing to relent even when she lands the mother of all side-sitting clients. For what? Nothing. Pride and grudges.IMO, Howard wasn’t acting vindicitively towards Jimmy (as Chuck likely was) but was genuinely upset and had lost trust in Kim for putting him in a bad position for the reasons given above. I don’t think he ever double downs on his punishment – he simply doesn’t lift it when Kim thinks he should (when she brings in Mesa Verde). And, again IMO, that’s because Kim doesn’t address what he’s truly upset about – it was never about her ability as a lawyer or work ethic.That all being said, I do think Howard was unreasonable but I would also argue it cost him more than it cost Kim as he lost a rockstar employee and she had an offer from Schweikart before she even left HHM.So again, I overall don’t find any of Kim’s actions or even her long-standing grudge remotely justifiable. I find it quite childish.
When Jimmy offers to give up his career so Chuck would stop punishing
Kim, even though that was what Chuck really wanted, he couldn’t get past
how a simple, verbal agreement between brothers could be considered
extortion. So he (and Howard) double down on punishing her, refusing to relent even when she lands the mother of all side-sitting clients.To add to what AKA’s already said… this doesn’t at all comport with what’s in the text, and the clip you posted proves the opposite of your point. Neither of them ‘doubled-down’ on punishing her, they just didn’t forgive her immediately after landing Mesa Verde. There’s a scene with Chuck asking Howard if Kim’s ‘out of the doghouse yet’ and Howard says ‘We’ll see,’ and there’s another scene where Chuck tells Kim he’ll try to persuade Howard to let her out of doc review (she quits before this comes to anything). Even in the scene you posted, Chuck makes it abundantly clear that the decision was, and is, Howard’s.
Hey, that’s right. Perhaps I was being too charitable toward Howard. Chuck might still be lying, though. He seems to be more animated about Jimmy instead of Kim, while Howard was his at his typical smug levels. Howard’s final scene also suggests he respected Kim tremendously, which isn’t really consistent with punishing her to get to Jimmy, unless Howard didn’t think anything of her until after she left HHM.
And the “yet” (and Howard not refuting it) confirm that doc review was only intended to be a temporary disciplinary measure. It’s weird how many people here seem to think that it’s unconscionably evil for anyone’s boss to impose any sort of discipline on them for obvious bad behaviour at work…
Reached into his own savings to pay of Chuck when this episode implies he was (or this made him) heavily in debt…
But, we now know that Kim doesn’t actually give a shit about helping the downtrodden. If she did, she would have gone to the Ed Begley Jr. Foundation meeting and achieved all her goals. But she blew that just to fuck over Howard.
I disagree with that. She made a choice, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about the downtrodden. I suspect that she figures she can cleverly make up a plausible story and get a meeting rescheduled. It’s rarely an all or nothing proposition. Now with Howard dead, Cliff is going to have bigger fish to fry then worrying about the pro bono side of things.
No, she really does care. She spent 50 hours on that guy’s case to get him off a drug charge. That’s not just dedication, that’s belief. By executing the plan, she could have both. The foundation was just a meeting, it wasn’t a job offer or any guarantee. It might have led to something more, something big, but we’ll never know. The scam guarantees the Sandpiper clients get their settlement money and she gets to open a pro bono firm. Or at least, that’s what she thought.
Nah, you’re completely misinterpreting the show. Didn’t you watch the part where lil Kim stole the jewelry, then her mom cried crocodile tears to get her off while stealing it again herself, and giving it to Kim as a reward? Kim didn’t “learn the power of bending the rules” in this show, that was all instilled by her mom.For a while she tried to fight it, but when she gets angry and upset she slides back into what she was taught. And the more little tastes of it she’s gotten, the more she gets drawn in.Another thing you’ve ignored is how that she chose messing with Howard over her pro bono plans. Her purported reason for the Howard screw job was to force a quicker settlement so she could fund her pro bono work. Cliff Main gave her an alternate path to funding her pro bono work — that foundation she was supposed to meet with — and when it came down to a choice between meeting with the foundation or being there for a re-shoot on the Howard trap, she literally pulled a U-turn away from the foundation meeting to go screw over Howard. (And she didn’t even need to be there for the re-shoot, she played absolutely no role.) The writers are *screaming* at you that she’s not justified in her choices, but you’ve got your head in the sand.(I could be off base, but I predict she cuts a corner to help out a pro bono client who’s getting screwed, and she gets caught and burned.)
When the intern asks about the soda trick, and Howard says
Chuck was the greatest legal mind he ever knew, and the intern says he
hopes somebody says that about him some day, Howard says“Well, maybe there are more important things.”Howard was figureing things out. He might have turned out to be a good mentor.
They turned up the nice meter on him for this episode too
Howard is to Better Call Saul what Skylar was to Breaking Bad. (…and yes, i will die on this hill.)both got the “god, they’re such an annoying asshole!” treatment from fans, but both were simply playing the hands life dealt them in the best way possible. Skylar wasn’t “a bitch” (the most common epithet used to describe her) she was the wife of a teacher suffering from cancer and mother to a disabled son, who discovered that her husband had arrogantly placed them directly into the line of cartel fire without consulting her until it was too late. (and even after she discovered the truth about where all that money to pay the bills came from, she still did everything in her power to make sure they weren’t caught, including running the car wash and obliterating her relationship with her sister/brother-in-law.) neither Skylar nor Howard asked to be drawn into the criminal ABQ underworld but both wound up suffering greatly for it.
I disagree with this somewhat because BCS kind of made Howard look like an asshole early on. In BB, Skylar was pretty much reacting like a normal person would. Her husband has cancer and is disappearing and lying. The misogyny of the fans is what made her out to be the bad guy. I don’t think the show ever positioned her to be that in the way that BCS kind of did with Howard in the beginning.
For the record, I never liked the “Fuck Chuck” meme either, and maybe he needs some re-evaluation, too
I don’t think so. Chuck had reason to be angry with Jimmy as a kid and young adult for sure but the show goes to great lengths to show how much Jimmy has matured and grown since then. He works tirelessly in the mail room for HHM, gets an online degree in his spare time, and voluntarily takes care of Chuck and defends him when he has an illness that just about everyone else agrees is a mental issue.I think if Chuck had been supportive of Jimmy and spent more time mentoring him and steering him in the right direction vs actively working against him in the background, the events of this series may never have happened. To be clear – not saying Jimmy is blameless by any means. Plenty of people have been let down by family members without doing what Jimmy does. He’s responsible for his own actions. But I get and agree with why people dislike Chuck and why the show paints him as a villain.
I think the whole thing with Chuck is that he was kind of an asshole to Jimmy because he didn’t respect him and didn’t think he could be a good person. Jimmy, on the other hand, resented Chuck for feeling that way, which led him to act in ways that often made Chuck view Jimmy as not a good person. If Chuck had embraced Jimmy’s attempts to turn his life around, validated his work ethic and his drive to become a lawyer, it’s likely that Jimmy would have ended up at HHM and done alright for himself. But Chuck’s decision to tell Howard not to hire Jimmy left that door open for Slippin’ Jimmy to keep slippin’, essentially. Chuck wasn’t a bad guy, he had his reasons for judging Jimmy the way he did, some valid, some not.
I think his mannerisms just kinda make him come off as fake. That’s how I read him in the first few seasons, at least. Like he was someone who only cared about appearances. He started to feel more genuine this season, I was really sympathizing with him by the end :/
The thing you have to remember is that when they originally conceived of the show, Howard actually was going to be the villain, and Chuck was going to be Jimmy’s eccentric but supportive brother. Then, partway through season 1, they realized that the characters and the performances could be a lot more compelling if Chuck became Jimmy’s foil. You can really see this coin drop if you rewatch season 1 – Howard is much more of an asshole early on. So a fair bit of Howard’s writing since then has been designed to re-imagine what he was doing early on, to make it line up with who he ended up being.
Also, sidebar: S1 Nacho is very different from who Nacho ended up being.
I get the feeling everyone here missed that, including the folks responding to your comment.
I know, right?
I binged played Alien Isolation. Probably the scariest game I’ve ever played and this is coming from someone that owns 75% of the Resident and Silent Hill games. The sheer existential dread of being hunted captures a primal fear that will give you nightmares.Even that game’s fear factor pales in comparison to the last minute of this episode.The door opening.The candle flame whipping.The look on Jimmy’s face.The sheer horror, confusion and despair in one word: “How?”
I don’t understand why so many seem to view Howard as a dick. The main hinge of season 1 was learning that it was not Howard who stood in Jimmy’s way of getting a job at HHM – it was Chuck. Howard has expressed guilt many times for following Chuck’s lead on this, apologized to Jimmy, and tried to make things right by offering Jimmy a job. He put Kim in doc review for a few weeks. So what? He paid her law school loans and showed her kindness and compassion when she left HHM. What Kim said in the last episode is true – Howard is responsible for her career.In almost every other personal interaction he has, we see Howard trying to fix himself and become a better guy – whether it’s his therapy, his attempts to make his marriage right, his understanding of Jimmy’s anger after Chuck’s death and ability to brush off Jimmy’s bowling ball and prostitutes-at-lunch bullying, how personable he is with everyone who works under him (his valet, the guy at the club, the junior employees at HHM). He even tells Jimmy he admires how he sticks up for the little guy – i.e. when Jimmy vouched for the shoplifting student at the HHM scholarship meeting – and expresses a desire to do more of that himself.To me, Howard only has the appearance of a dick. He’s not perfect but almost all of the evidence points to Howard being a compassionate guy trying to make himself better – I know this review alludes to that, but I still feel it came off a little harsh to my boy Howard. Patrick Fabian’s the man and this whole cast is just ridiculous.Amazing, amazing episode.
I think it’s a slow-burn meta commentary on the people in the audiences’ lives that they think are entitled dicks because everything seems easy for them. There was a time when the maxim ‘don’t judge a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes’ applied universally. Then as class resentment settled in, it got cleaved in half to somehow mean, ‘don’t judge the oppressed until you feel you’ve ‘felt’ their pain, . . and eff the bourgeoisie.’Plenty of people villainized for their easy comfortable existence have plenty of trials and victories and test and laudable qualities you’d know if you looked.
Pretty yikes take. The lord in the manor has the problem of which horse to breed or which son to send to the priesthood. the serf in the hovel has the problem of what to eat. Everyone feels the same pains and anxiety from daily life, but their problems aren’t the same, and its not “class resentment” to point it out.
Yeah, or, “don’t judge a man etc.” was yet another tool the powerful used to convince everyone else not to resent them. And then we eventually figured out that just because your foot has a hangnail on it doesn’t mean it’s not still on my neck.
Nah. Your “eff the bourgeoisie” mindset is mostly just fuel for empty defiance (or, as the show masterfully portrays, malevolent intent). You implying that the concept of empathy is somehow a conspiracy to expand capitalist control is as flimsy as Kim’s reasoning for amorally and disproportionately fucking up an individual’s life.
The show thematically dismantled your revolutionary “let’s get ‘em” nonsense.
Probably the biggest surprise of this season has been Howard’s rehabilitation, as we see more of his personal life and appreciate how hard he tried to improve himself and do better. (Literally every character on the show should follow his lead and get into therapy.) Let’s not forget though, that Howard was trying to prolong the Sandpiper case in order to get himself and Cliff a bigger settlement, even though it meant that some of their elderly clients would die before they could enjoy any of the money. He obviously didn’t deserve the hell Kim and Jimmy put him through, much less to be murdered, but he had his share of moral weaknesses. He wasn’t a complete dick, but he also wasn’t not a dick.
But he was nice enough to personally wheel Mrs. Landry into their meeting with Schweikart!Kidding. Very fair point. He was definitely engaged in some squirrelly lawyer bullshit.
Garden variety lawyer skullduggery, but certainly not villainous.
Let’s not forget though, that Howard was trying to prolong the Sandpiper case in order to get himself and Cliff a bigger settlement, even though it meant that some of their elderly clients would die before they could enjoy any of the money.I don’t know that it’s quite that cut and dried, though… True, there was almost certainly some self-interest at play there, but it was also letting Sandpiper off the hook somewhat, right? Settling would’ve been best for the elderly clients, no doubt, but it wouldn’t have been such a punishment for Sandpiper’s intentional, criminal actions.EDIT: Excellent username, btw
Absolutely – from a sociopolitical point of view, Howard is the one on the right side of this. Companies like Sandpiper will only change their actions if the legal system can make them pay for their crimes fully. Howard is trying to actually punish Sandpiper (whatever his motivations), and Jimmy and Kim are trying to shortcircuit that to make some quick money themselves. Most of the residents will not die before the final settlement anyway, and the amount of money they’ll be getting probably won’t be lifechanging anyway – the huge sums Sandpiper is facing are because there are so many individual residents. [this is why Jimmy can handwave away the difference between the easy settlement and the full payout as not being worth much to the individual residents anyway – but it’s worth a lot to Sandpiper!]
I’m not certain that the correct take is that he is unnecessarily dragging on the Sandpiper case. My sense is they honestly feel Sandpiper should be paying more for what they have done. Of course there’s some motivated reasoning there, but I don’t think it’s anything dishonest or bad. I sense it’s more “reasonable people may differ” kind of a situation.
sorry it’s made textually explicit that he’s dragging the case unnecessarily, multiple times, in this episode and in several preceding. it’s been made more than clear that the clients want the settlement while theyre still alive and even cliff main is feeling his conscience re: dragging it out with howard. we had a whole extended scene with howard sweet talking that lady into accepting the case would take longer than most of the sandpiper residents have guaranteed to live. ‘reasonable people may differ’ on taking longer or taking the settlement in THEORY but in very practical terms the people it affects will not live to see the biggest possible settlement ie rendering it worthless to them to get the biggest possible vs anything at all. in this case if you are dragging it out longer like howard is it is absolutely all about them, the lawyers negotiating, getting the biggest payout, and it is understood that in order to do that they will be functionally ensuring several claimants never see their money.
I know this review alludes to that, but I still feel it came off a little harsh to my boy Howard.I would honestly be a little less charitable to this review. The whole thing reads like ‘Wow, maybe Howard wasn’t such a bad guy after all?’ as though him being a bad guy has ever been shown as the case. No disrespect to the reviewer, but it honestly troubles me how easily people can view others as ‘bad’ just because they’re told so – even when the people telling them are incredibly dubious themselves.
This. After it was reveled it was Chuck behind the sabotage at HHM, and even offer Jimmy a job there, all previous thoughts of Howard should’ve gone out the window. It did for me.
Howard comes off to me as a “nice guy.” He is charming and gentile to everyone but slowly builds up resentment when it isn’t paid back to him and that subtly blows over. Look at the repressed feelings of the coffee scene with his wife . He tries to be nice to Jimmy, to Kim to Chuck and it blows back on him. Notice the wheelchair scene , she didn’t want the chair but Howard felt he NEEDED to supply it like he felt he needed to give Jimmy a job or to buy out Chuck. He hurts himself to help others and just winds up patronizing to them .
Howard is the Skyler of this series, minus the misogyny. His actions are more reasonable than most people in his position would be.
Howard was the Skyler of the series is spot on for a lot of reasons, but the consensus seems to have reached “he’s actually a very good person” pretty unanimously by S6. Largely because unlike Skyler, he became (was revealed to be?) actually liable, rather than just mostly sympathetic.
Though I’d argue that he still came off as a huge dickhead in the first two seasons – punishing Kim for telling the Kettlemens what the wanted to hear or to retaliate against Jimmy was completely unreasonable, and frankly he owned Jimmy the truth about Chuck sabotaging his career, especially since either knew or had to suspect how much Jimmy was supporting Chuck.
Like many of the individuals that inhabit the BB/BCS world, I don’t think there’s necessary a clear divide between the good and bad guys as it were. Some people are sympathetic, others have sympathetic sides, though some are pretty darn evil I guess lol. As to Howard, I never thought he was the worst, though he did have some rough statements. With the Sandpiper case he’s obviously stretching it out for maximum possible pay-out, which is good for him but obviously less so for the elderly people he’s representing (if Jimmy had his way these people could actually make use of their money without having to wait for it for years). Even dumping the old lady in the wheelchair to further their case was just a bit gross. Also, at the ending he has very little qualms just downright trodding Jimmy in the dirt. He’s angry but he has his own way to transform that way into dismissing Jimmy as basically being born the way he’s become which I think he knows is unfair (or I at least think is on some level). So no, not prima A-grade asshole but he has his share of quirks.
At times on the show Howard has acted like a dick but no I wouldn’t say that at his core he is. My take was that Jimmy hated him because he couldn’t bring himself to hate his brother. So he channeled all that hate toward the somewhat smug and occasionally condescending Howard. Even when Howard was being genuine he would come across as condescending (especially if the main character and audience had already decided to dislike him). And yes, I agree that part of the brilliance of this show is having characters who are easy to dislike but are not inherently terrible people.
That’s the genius thing about this show: Howard is NOT a dick. Howard has done nothing to deserve what he got. He’s probably the most realistic character in the show: a normal guy who may come off as douchey at times, but certainly a standup chap. Kim and Jimmy’s takedown of him was pure pettiness and straight-up evil.I was starting to get scared we were going to find out that Howard had wronged Kim or her mother in the past, and that’s why Kim hated him so much. So happy they didn’t go that route.
I think it’s because in the beginning of the show Jimmy refers to him as Lord Vader. The show also is centered in the point of view of Jimmy and Kim so we’re given their view of Howard. But by the end of last season and this one it becomes more clear that Howard really isn’t the villain. He’s done so dickish things but nothing really bad. I also think it was hard to tell if he was being genuine at times or just putting up a front of being nice. We got to see that it’s real in the small interaction with his wife.
Well said. Howard was a dick. But he was a good dick. And certainly didn’t deserve this outcome. I believe this was the first of many straws that eventually leads Kim to leave Jimmy – seeing your mentor killed in cold blood in your dining room is a pretty big rude awakening.
Couldn’t had said it better. Howard probably was probably the most moral of all the characters on Breaking Bad. If anything, he should garner the most sympathy. He was caught in the middle of the McGill decay that ultimately led to his death. From Chuck’s attempt to sabotage Jimmy, to Jimmy’s unwarranted detest of Howard.First impressions are hard to shake. And in the first season, we all hated Howard. We all rooted for Jimmy and Howard was the one guy we all felt was in the way of Jimmy’s success. But as we learned, he took the heat for Chuck. And Howard was okay with looking like the bad guy to protect Chuck. And lets face it, Howard has the “80s high school bad guy” vibe going which made our hatred of him in the beginning easy. I’m sure Jimmy felt the same way. But as the show went on, you saw a Howard that was kind, compassionate, moral, and just a good ol fashioned do-gooder wrapped and nice suits, frosted tips, and spray tan.I really felt sorry for how Howard was being treated throughout the show after we found out who was behind Jimmy’s sabotage at HHM. He was the one the only reasonable character on BCS which ultimately led to his death.
God, this so much. I’m finally binging Saul now that the whole series on Netflix and I was immediately questioning Jimmy’s hatred of Howard. He’s been a cypher for other “more impirtant” characters from the beginning. When Jimmy didn’t like him he seemed like a dick. When Kim did like him he was a nice dude. When the S1 finale rolled around and we got Howard’s “You know Jimmy, I always liked you,” I believed him, and I’ve always believed him, and watching what Jimmy and Kim did to him this season was crushing me. This was an unnecessary haracyer assassination (followed by a real assassination) of a good man.
This may be the most shocking, jarring Gilligan universe death since young Drew Sharp was murdered by “dead-eyed Opie” Todd in Breaking Bad.
I have made the EXACT SAME SCREAM to Howard’s death as I did to Drew Sharp’s death back in Breaking Bad after that epic chemical train heist, in which my heart and brain felt like being torn right out of my mortal coil.Bra-fucking-vo.
Agree that was the most shocking death in the BB universe in quite some time – maybe the most shocking death period as unlike other deaths in the franchise, I really didn’t expect Howard to be murdered at any point in the series.I wish there wasn’t a wait for the final six episodes – really have no idea how this ends except for, I assume, Lalo meeting his end somehow.
Everyone knew Howard was going to die
Skylar’s boss’s death was abrupt, if not shocking.
He didn’t die though – they show him alive and in the hospital in S5.
Ok- i remember the accident as kinda shocking.
When Lalo started screwing the silencer on, I thought Howard might think it was still part of the con, maybe to scare him into keeping quiet about the whole thing.I was waiting for Howard to lay into Lalo for being too cartoonish or something.
When he did shoot Howard, it reminded me of when Samuel L Jackson casually shoots that guy on the couch(?) to get the other guy’s attention.
I also thought this. (and the cartoonish jab would have been a nice touch, haha)
I was sure that is how it would play out. But there was no way ‘cartoonish Lalo’ could know Howard would show.
Did anyone notice the callback to Chuck’s head injury in the copy shop when Howard’s head hit the end table in the exact same framed shot?
No, didn’t pick up on that. Good observation!
It also reminded me of Ted (running away from Saul’s goons, no less) tripping and hitting his head and breaking his neck in Breaking Bad.
Just to be clear, I don’t think Lalo is a cartoonish villain. At all.
Just that if Howard thought Jimmy had hired one of his misfit toys to play a hitman slowly screwing a silencer on his gun, it might seem so to him.
Agreed, he’s not cartoonish — it may seem that way sometimes with how quickly he’ll off somebody, but he only kills when there is a benefit or necessity to doing so. Howard was never leaving that apartment alive when Lalo showed up, and to be fair, he ended Howard in the quickest, most merciful way possible.
I think Howard’s first thought is that Lalo is there to kill Jimmy and Kim. It doesn’t cross his mind that the bullet is for him until the bullet, uh, crosses his mind.
It probably crossed his mind a bit sooner, when Lalo insists he’s only there to talk (with them alone)
1. Who gets that comfortable in a truck stop shower? Just leaning up against the walls and everything.2. HOLY SHIT.3. Also Kim and Saul having sex during the con was so gross. Ugh they are just so fucking gross to me now, especially Kim.
I bet you could relax in a truck stop shower if you spent a day in a New Mexico storm cellar.
I reckon.
I assume you mean storm drain?
Yes, but Kinja only lets you edit a post for 15 minutes and it took way longer than that for me to sober up and read your response.
Yeah, I think your standards for acceptably clean go down at that point.
I always say when I discuss this show or Breaking Bad, it’s better to understand the characters as best you can than it is to judge them. Saul and Kim have their reasons for doing this, just like Howard has his reasons for dragging the case out for years. I find it strange to be genuinely upset with them like, “That was humiliating and he won less money, how dare they!” Where’s the anger for, you know, Lalo murdering Howard?
Lalo wouldn’t have murdered him if Howard hadn’t gone to their apartment. Something he did because Kim and Jimmy messed with him. If none of that happens, Howard would still be alive. They dragged an innocent person, Howard, into their drug cartel mess and that’s on them.
They’re not as responsible for Howard’s death as Mike, Gus, and probably equally as responsible as Chuck. If we’re just going to chain together the whole of causality, blame Hector for killing Max. Blame Gus for trying to do business with the cartel in the first place.
It doesn’t call for his death by gang land execution but Howard messed with Jimmy’s and Kim’s lives, because “society” has dictated that lawyers are “important”, and all lawyers are self-important, so it’s “up to them” to keep PEOPLE “in line” with the law. Idolizing Chuck, believing that Chuck was some infallible man, that blinded Howard, who became the whip in Chuck’s hand, using Howard to torment Jimmy (and, by extension, Kim). Lawyers believe “the law”, and by extension themselves, are “indispensable” to society. Howard wasn’t any great guy. Didn’t “deserve” a bullet inthe head for it, but what’s “deserve” got to do with life?
Deranged take
That is a really weird take. Phew.
You’ve got that all wrong. Howard is a people pleaser, who tried to protect Jimmy from Chuck’s assholery (and Chuck from its repercussions) by putting himself out there as the bad guy.And wow that’s a damn lot of quotation marks my dude.
There is a point where causality becomes meaningless. Yeah, ultimately, all those people have a responsibility of some sort. But they are not very many degrees of separation from Kim/Saul’s actions and Howard’s death. The cause of Howard’s death is more on them then anybody except of course Lalo. But Lalo is a fixed entity of evil. Kim/Saul had the “agency” to control the situation from happening as it did.
If he’d left when he was asked to any of the multiple times, he’d be alive.
i don’t think that’s at all certain. i doubt Lalo would’ve sent a potential witness away
True, but that doesn’t change the fact that he wouldn’t have been there at all if not for their actions.
There is no way Lalo would have allowed Howard to leave when killing him is more convenient and serves a purpose in punishing and scaring them. He’s also a witness that some apparently terrifying man was with Kim and Jimmy, allowing him to possibly go and mention that to someone wouldn’t make any sense to a person like Lalo.
Doubtful. Lalo wouldn’t have just let him walk away. He was dead the moment Lalo walked into that apartment.
He had a right to air his beef to Kim/Saul after the con they played. Howard is not responsible for his demise in the slightest.
It’s really Mike’s fault. If he hadn’t used phone tapping technology from 1962 then Lalo wouldn’t have heard the obvious “this phone line is being tapped” clicks and he wouldn’t have gone to Saul’s place.
Well, I always say you can completely understand a character and still disapprove of their behavior, so it looks like you and I just always say different things. Everyone knows that “Saul and Kim have their reasons.” lol You’re not privy to some special information there. Having reasons doesn’t make your behavior automatically okay. You’re allowed to find it “genuinely strange” that they set out to destroy a man. I find it genuinely strange that you can’t conceive of someone disapproving of running a con on someone and basically trying to ruin their career, but potato potato. Like, it’s weird to me that you think attempting to ruin a person’s livelihood is NBD.The anger for Lalo? I think it goes without saying that I disapprove of cold blooded murder, but I’m not mad at Lalo the same way I’m not mad at a tiger who eats people. Tigers do tiger things, and murderous psychopaths do murderous psychopath things. The difference is that Lalo knows he’s committing crimes and doing bad things. He hasn’t spent 5 seasons trying to convince us and himself that he’s still a good and noble person, doing it for good and noble reasons. Lalo should be in jail or killed, and I’d be fine with either, happy?
I think being emotionally invested in the story is part of the fun.As for your question, Jimmy and Kim are the protagonists of the story, and they’re characters who we’ve rooted for during long stretches of this show. That makes it distressing when they behave in ways that are self-destructive or cruel. Lalo’s one of the show’s villains. He’s a colorful, sometimes playful villain, but we’ve never been given reason to think he’s anything other than a terrible person who is comfortable doing terrible things.
The brilliance of both BB and BCS is the process of how the protagonist becomes the antagonist. I’m just surprised BCS had 2 protagonists become antagonists; we always were led to believe it would be just Jimmy/Saul.
Indeed
If a person accidently allows a wild animal to kill someone, the wild animal is just being itself, Lalo and the wild animal are just killers.
Lalo is a schmuck and deserves a long slow painful death. But that’s obvious given who he is.Kim and Jimmy on the other hand are “normal” people who did not grow up in a violent cartel environment. That they take glee in Howard’s misery shows us what despicable people they’ve become. The argument that “they have their reasons” and “trying to understand their point of view” are just weak excuses to justify terrible behavior.Looking forward to both of them getting their comeuppance.
Yeah that Kim and Saul making out was gross, lol. In 6 seasons that somehow felt like one of the nastiest visual images, these 2 getting at it while a man’s life is being taken apart on a speaker phone. Something really crude about that that stood out amidst like seasons worth of gangsters hacking each other down at every chance.
Pretty much, and proves Howard was speaking truth when he said the reason Kim did it was because she “got off” on it. If only he knew how much getting off she was doing because of it.
Yeah, I got that too. The cartel has done many dastardly things in these 2 shows. But something about Kim and Saul doing the deed while hearing a man losing everything makes those 2 come across as particularly vile.
No kink-shaming!
lol Some kink-shaming! When the kink is harming others and involving people in your kink who did not consent to be involved.
Lalo seems like the kind of guy who could be comfortable pulling someone’s teeth out one-by-one with a pair of plyers lol I don’t think a truck stop shower is an issue for him
Three possible spinoffs:
—Kim Wexler: Attorney At Law (if she makes it out alive)—If not Kim then Saul’s guerilla film crew, the answer to X-File’s Lone Gunmen
—If Lalo makes it out alive, yada, yada
The showrunners have already said they’re ready to move on from “scenic Southwestern vistas ravaged by meth” (not an exact quote but close) and move on to something new.Which, thank God! I’ve been on the Breaking Bad train since literally day one. I like Better Call Saul as much or better, but I am so ready to be done with this universe. I kind of wish BCS had wrapped up in only five seasons. I’m sure the last six episodes will be a blast, but I don’t think it needed to be drawn out quite this long.
I don’t think I’d excise any full seasons, but I think some of the earlier seasons could’ve done with some trimming. BCS, especially in the middle seasons, felt to me at points like they wanted to get to a specific event at a specific time (generally the end of the season, although with “Chicanery” and Chuck’s meltdown it was the middle of the season), and if there isn’t enough for the characters to do before then, it can feel like the show is just having them spin its wheels so that the big moment can come when the writers want it to happen, rather than when it needs to happen for the sake of the story. (Contrast with Breaking Bad’s third season, where the writers wanted the Cousins to be the season-long villains before realizing, rightly, that these characters would never delay their revenge that long.)I actually did a piece on this about season 4 specifically, which I thought was the low point; there weren’t enough characters driving the main story with Chuck dead, Jimmy and Kim united, and the cartel at that point having no use for Jimmy, but they didn’t come up with more for the characters who were remaining as active players in the drama to do. (I didn’t mention it in the article, but one of the best comments to this effect I saw on this very website: “I’m on season four of a show called Better Call Saul about a criminal lawyer, and I just watched half a season of a guy named Jimmy McGill selling cell phones.”)https://www.the-solute.com/better-stall-saul/
I rewatched the first five seasons to get ready for the final, and I’m willing to agree with you that the first half of season 4 is the toughest stretch to get through. There is definitely a huge void felt after Chuck is gone, which isn’t really filled until Lalo joins the show towards the end of the season. It’s like the audience is made to feel like they’re meandering as much as Jimmy without his law license. The second half of the season is incredible, though, and the season 4 finale is possibly a top three episode in the whole series for me.
Definitely agreed that Lalo added a huge charge of energy to the show that it had been missing for most of the season.
I actually agree with this, and there were probably a lot of Breaking Bad fans that BCS lost in the early seasons because of that. (Season 2 especially).
Yeah I felt a few of the seasons were kind of aimless, like 2, 3 and 4 could’ve been combined. This and the last season have been very entertaining though.If they do any sort of spinoff or related show I think it should be somewhere entirely different, like Alaska or Europe (a Madrigal show about corporate corruption might be interesting)
Yeah I felt a few of the seasons were kind of aimless, like 2, 3 and 4 could’ve been combined. This and the last season have been very entertaining though.
Don’t forget the “Young Gus in Chile” prequel. That’s actually the one I wish they’d make, given the intriguing bits they’ve dropped over the two series.
Nah, the ‘Chicken Man’ is just a joke.
I’m not sure I get the ongoing affection for Kim. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a terrific character, and Seehorn is doing an absolutely fantastic job in the role. But she’s become kind of an unpleasant person to watch, and I’m not especially eager to see more or her character after this season, or to have her get a happy ending (which seems unlikely in any event).
That’s what we like about her – the change!
Seems like there’s zero chance Lalo makes it out alive, since we never see him in BB.
I wondering if that’s because he’s in jail? Remember Mike got Tuco thrown in jail and got him out of the way for awhile. Could Gus/Mike have engineered something that got him thrown in jail?Or if he had some kind of falling out with the Salamanca family maybe he’s just in hiding.
For what it’s worth Gus thinks he is dead during Breaking Bad. He tells Hector that Jessie killed his last relative.
Wasn’t Gus telling Hector how everyone was gone at the end of the 4th season of BB. Maybe he did not state or imply they all his family were dead, but I thought he did. Of course, he may just believe that
“—Kim Wexler: Attorney At Law (if she makes it out alive)“Kim Wexler: Jail Block Attorney
I’d to see them do the opposite of Lou Grant with Kim. Instead of going from a sit-com to a drams, go from a drama to a sit-com.
Its Always Sunny in Albuquerque
More like Kim Wexler: Attorney At Large lol
-Crooked Veterinarian
Howard figured Kim was in on it back when Jimmy briefly stole his car, because Cliff was meeting with her at the time.
Man, writers did no favors to Patrick Fabian. 5 minute, half expository, monolog while acting drunk. That had potential to be very cringey. But he pulled it off.
I wish he had never seen Lalo and just gotten it in the back of the head. I don’t want his last moments to be of fear after all that.
He wasn’t fearful. He insults Lalo by saying “he was in the middle of something” when lalo was trying to speak. Not knowing who Lalo was Howard made a fatal mistake.
Fabian fucking owned it.
Fabian gave an exit interview of sorts to Vanity Fair where he talks about it:Well, it’s a big scene, completely driven by Howard. It’s a giant cathartic monologue. It’s the whole, “I know who you are, and I’m going to let you know who I am.” And I think it’s also probably written to allow the audience to say some things to [Jimmy and Kim] that maybe they’ve been thinking. Why are you like this? What are you doing?I remember we did a bunch of takes, top to bottom. [Writer] Tom [Schnauz] really let me have a go at it. And the first couple of times out you’re finding your way, but there’s a run where you have it. And all of a sudden you finish and both Bob and Rhea look over and do that actor thing where their eyes just get a little big and they do a little head nod, and I can feel it too. Tom can see it too. He goes, “Great. Let’s go again.” And so from that point, there was a pocket that you get to work in, that is very, very good. Not to say there’s not a series of awful chewing-scenery takes. Because I’m sure those exist too, by the way.That’s why God created editors, right?Yes, exactly. There would be some where they would not look at me after the take and I’m like, “Geez, okay, got it.”The whole interview is worth a read:https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/05/patrick-fabian-howard-interview-better-call-saul
Fabian said much of that on Talking Saul as well
I enjoyed that read, thanks for posting this 🙂
Sure thing!
Thanks for sharing the article. I have to say it must have been a blast to get dressed up in those expensive blue pinstripe suits and those elegant shirt/tie combination.
Fabian is so good, and really has been for the whole run of the show (his run, I mean….). It was, in a way, hard to notice what a good actor he is, since the part can look, deceptively, like Generic Rich Asshole Lawyer. I’m glad he got that final speech, because, as much as we like watching Jimmy/Saul and Kim… yeah, they ARE kinda missing something. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they are sociopaths, but … it was good to hear someone, especially Howard, even if just for those moments, call it as he sees it.I’m not sure what will happen in the last half of this last season, but I am pretty sure it will surprise me. Okay. Not PRETTY sure. This episode’s gunshot surprised me AFTER I watched Lalo screwing on the silencer….
But one thing has been bothering me: why do his ties have squared-off ends!? I’ve never seen one like that…[I’m also not sure that such slick, shiny suits go with such roughly-homespun ties, but maybe it’s a New Mexico fashion thing…]
I have one knit tie and haven’t seen it or worn it in two decades, but yeah, it was squared off. Very weird.
When Saul handed to manila folder to Howard’s “PI,” I said, “I knew it.” Then I said it again. “I KNEW IT!” The magnifying glass on the post it board was about installing him. They dropped the hint with the photos of Saul picking up an unusually large sum of cash. Either Saul and Kim knew there were eyes on them and were counting on Howard suspecting a bribe, or the PI was on their payroll. It just makes more sense for the PI to be on the take.
I initially thought that since Howard was specifically shown drinking chamomile tea, a drink that does not have caffeine, and the vet specifically saying something about how the drug’s effects depend on how used to caffeine you are, maybe Howard would have a bad reaction to the drug. Whatever it did, I didn’t think he would die, maybe he would end up in the hospital, maybe he would shit his pants. Some people thought he would have a heart attack. But the more I thought about it, the more it felt that couldn’t be it. They wouldn’t do anything with that kind of risk. They didn’t want to hurt him physically. Like Howard said, it was for fun, but also a lot of money.
This didn’t really happen because of what they did. Their scheme was completely unrelated to Lalo. This was bad luck. A couple of teenage boys trying to scam Jimmy, inspiring Jimmy to recruit them to scam the Kettlemans the same way, only for them to run into Tuco. Nacho was the one who called Jimmy to represent Lalo when he was arrested. It was just a job and he executed it like any other. Some might say Jimmy had a choice about whether or not to be Lalo’s bagman, but did he really? The Gus/Mike/Lalo/Nacho situation boiled over, turning a career setback into a death sentence. Saul only lied to Lalo and Kim because of Mike. The brilliant schemers are just pawns.
Unfortunately, I think what happens next is going to be kept from us. The level of withholding won’t be as obnoxious as Westworld, but we’re going to be in the dark and Rhea Seehorn won’t be around for at least 30 minutes. I don’t want it to be true, but I fear the worst. Jimmy will not cooperate with Lalo if anything happens to Kim, so I have some hope.
I think the soda can thing is bullshit. Every can of soda is jostled thoroughly when transporting, and we’ve all probably had that moment when we were kids where a can just overflows. But the carbonation settles down after a minute. It doesn’t become permanently agitated. Think of “head” when pouring into a glass. It suds up when you pour it quickly, but you can just let it settle back down to the surface and pour the rest without it overflowing.
The soda can thing works, I’ve done it.
you can also rub your finger around the upper rim, setting up a resonance in the sides of the can. MoF, I’d say the rotation of the can on the table top sets up that resonance, moreso than the centrifugal force
If you let the can sit level for the same amount of time, that usually works too.
Technically, yes, it works. But not because of spinning. Shaken-up cans only explode in the first 30 seconds after being shaken. So it doesn’t matter what you do to buy that time, if you wait, it won’t explode.
Howard kept feeling his hand, where the drug was seeping through his skin.I wondered if he’d hold the old ladies hand, giving her a heart attack.Might’ve still gotten them the money.
Is that what happened? I thought it was some chemical that revealed the new photo underneath.
There were two sets of photos; you can see Jimmy running with two envelopes, although we don’t see the PI switch them in Howard’s office.And yeah, the photos were definitely laced with whatever chemical they got from Dr. Caldera; Jimmy’s still wearing gloves when he runs them out to the PI (even though they’re in the envelope, but presumably, just in case).
It was a drug they added.
This didn’t really happen because of what they did.Except if they hadn’t, Howard wouldn’t have been there, so it very much did happen because of what they did. Not their intention, of course, but they bear responsibility.
Responsibility implies negligence, like they were knowingly putting Howard in front of his gun. Lalo is in their apartment because of Gus and Mike. Lalo didn’t even enter the picture until Nacho caused Hector’s stroke and they suspected Gus of acting against the Salamancas’ interests with his massive secret project. Everything is about Gus, Jimmy and Kim don’t even know who he really is.
Indirect responsibility is a thing here. Did they knowingly put Howard in a position where he was going to get shot? Of course not, but I don’t think anyone’s seriously arguing that. But if Howard wasn’t there he wouldn’t have died, and he wouldn’t have been there if not as a direct consequence of their actions. They’re wholly responsible for the circumstances that led Howard to be in the place where he died; thus, they do hold some indirect responsibility for his death. Not necessarily enough that they’re legally culpable, but enough that they should rightfully have some sleepless nights over their actions.
Yeah, the point is that, dramatically speaking, Howard’s death is a result of Jimmy and Kim’s actions– not directly, but as part of a long causal chain of what they’ve been doing. That’s what make it a great dramatic moment, besides the shock: The consequences of what you have done are here sooner than you think and they are greater than you think.
Yes, people are getting caught up in the “indirect” responsibility thing with Howard’s execution, when Gilligan/the writers have sprinkled the idea of how when people “break bad”, they create “ripples” that extend out towards other people and affects them in ways that you cannot control, they put something in motion whose momentum quickly grows out of control/direction. It’s a theme of these two shows since then beginning. Howard may be the “most innocent” victim since Drew Sharp (the kid with the tarantula in the jar who was murdered by Meth Damon), but once the snowball began picking up speed & mass, these instances of “collateral damage” are inevitable.
Yep. And that’s true to life; the things you do do have that kind of effect beyond the immediate consequences, and you can’t control every consequence of the choices you make; you can only try to make the best choices you can. And when you choose to start going down a criminal road and dealing with violent people, then innocent people will get hurt or killed. (This is also in line with my understanding of karma, less a magical force than the way our actions reverberate and come back to our own lives: For example, if you deal in dishonesty and violence, you will sooner or later find yourself dealing with dishonest and violent people, and increasingly those being the only kind of people you deal with, as honest and peaceful people will want nothing to do with you as what you are about becomes clearer and clearer.)
In the English tort of negligence there is the concept of a “chain of causation” where fault is determined by whether the thing that happened was a foreseeable consequence of one’s actions. Even if other people have more responsibility for an event, if you contributed to it and it was a foreseeable result of your actions, then you share the blame. I assume there are similar concepts in US Law.In this sense, Kim has more culpability than Jimmy. First, they were absolutely expecting Howard to show up (in fact, they explicitly said that they were expecting him) so that was foreseeable.
Jimmy could not have foreseen that Lalo would show up (he thought Lalo was dead) and so his chain of causation surely ends there. Kim knew that Lalo was still at large and that their apartment was therefore dangerous, so her chain extends a little further. But she was told by Mike that she was being watched/protected, so I think her chain of causation is broken too.So I find them not liable in negligence!
When you get down to it, Lalo is responsible for Howard’s death, period. If we’re going to blame Kim and Jimmy for being the indirect cause, then we may as well include Gus, Mike, Nacho, Hector, and everyone else connected with the cartel. Kim and Jimmy may have created the circumstances that ultimately led to Howard’s sad fate, but him showing up at their place wasn’t part of their plan. They certainly didn’t expect Lalo to show up when he did. Howard didn’t die because of the scam, he died because Lalo shot him.Assigning fault based on indirect responsibility is a dangerous road. If you buy your parents an overseas vacation, and their plane crashes, are you culpable because you set them on the path that led to their death? You might feel that way, but it doesn’t make it true.
I agree with you in terms of the “Jimmy and Kim are the reason Howard was there” logic — that was just a coincidence. But I do think Jimmy’s willingness to be “a friend of the cartel,” and Kim’s willingness to stick with him regardless, do give them some moral culpability for Howard’s death. They invited gangsters into their lives, and that creates a risk someone around them is going to be shot. It could have just as easily been Cliff or Francesca or any random client, but they did knowingly create a risk of violence happening around them. They’ve been low-key rolling the dice every day since Jimmy started fudging the rules for a cartel client, and Howard just happened to be around them the day they rolled snake eyes.
Yeah, I think they are responsible in the sense that Jimmy and especially Kim know they are mixed up with dangerous people, and by dragging Howard further into their shit they put him at risk in a general way, regardless that they couldn’t foresee the specific chain of events that led to his death.
This is absolutely right, and in particular I think the last sentence 100% nails it.
If we’re going to blame Kim and Jimmy for being the indirect cause, then we may as well include Gus, Mike, Nacho, Hector, and everyone else connected with the cartel.Leaving aside the fact that Kim and Jimmy’s actions directly lead to Howard being at the place where he ended up being murdered, people keep saying “if we’re gonna blame Kim and Jimmy, we might as well blame Gus, Mike and everyone else!”Which isn’t actually a rebuttal at all, because… yeah, of course we can, to a degree. That’s the whole thing about indirect responsibility; your actions affect others whether you’re aware of them or not in ways that you might not anticipate. The whole point is that all these people do shitty things, and the shitty things they do lead to ripples that in turn have effects on the people around them, even innocent people they’re not aware of and don’t necessarily intend to hurt.
“we may as well include Gus, Mike, Nacho, Hector, and everyone else connected with the cartel.” – well yes. I have no problem blaming drug cartel members engaging in a cartel war for the innocent people who get killed as a result of that war. I don’t know why anybody wouldn’t?Gus attempted to murder someone he knew was a psychopath. He failed to murder the psychopath, and succeeded only in pissing him off. Now the psychopath is running around mudering people in a convoluted attempt to get revenge. ABSOLUTELY Gus bears responsibility for this!Failing to assign fault based on indirect responsibility is a dangerous road. If you fire a gun and the ricochet hits and kills someone, you can’t just blame the bullet, or claim you didn’t directly try to murder them – you’re still responsible.
The law of unintended consequences was a pervasive part of BB, where the players, particularly Walt, never intended for some of the deaths and tragedies to unfold, but if he was not involved in a criminal enterprise, they never would have happened. The same law of unintended consequences rears its head here.
But Kim knew Lalo was still alive and that Mike was tailing her. She also knew that Howard would come over to confront them. And again, he wouldn’t have come over if they hadn’t pulled that whole stunt. They definitely both bear responsibility for Howards death. It never would have happened if they hadn’t been screwing with him.
Jimmy and Kim are effectively radioactive and they know it (well, Kim does). So they do bear responsibility when they insist on getting close to somebody who then gets cancer.
Kim did 3 things that led to Howard’s death. 2 were coincidental but one was her fault. 1) She hatched this scheme and pushed Jimmy every step of the way 2) she insisted that the plan had to go off that exact day and blew off her meeting and 3) she did not tell Jimmy that Lalo was alive. Even if the first 2 are coincidental, those combined with the third means she is going to be living with an insane amount of guilt imo (assuming she’s living which I believe she will be)
There’s a fourth thing Kim did that links her to Howard’s death. When Saul was at a crossroads vis-a-vis his relationship with Lalo, he consulted with Kim, asking her if he should be a “friend of the cartel” or not? Kim reframed the choice: should Saul be a friend of the cartel or be a “rat.” I viewed that exchange as Kim actually encouraging Saul to step into the “friend” role. No one likes a “rat”, certainly not Kim. I’m not sure that Saul really did have a choice given Lalo’s personality and the nature of the cartel, but Kim was pretty clear about what she wanted Saul to do. That choice solidified their relationship with Lalo.
Great call!
Eh…if you do something nice for someone and they get in a car wreck on the way over to thank you, are you responsible?
Indirect responsibility is still a factor, but this is perhaps bordering a little on disingenuous. I think it’s fairly safe to say that there’s a bit of a moral difference between, say, planning a surprise birthday party for someone which inadvertently leads to them having a car accident on the way there, versus intentionally attempting to sabotage someone’s life in a way that leads to them getting shot when they confront you about the many ways you sabotaged their life. There may be some kind of indirect responsibility in both cases, but the latter has an element of intentional maliciousness which increases the likelihood of unpleasant unintended consequences clearly not present in the former. Howard would almost certainly have not gone there to angrily confront Jimmy and Kim if their manipulations had centered around getting him a surprise puppy.
But their plan didn’t involve either of them being at their apartment, at least as far as I saw. Howard came there of his own volition, same as the person coming over to thank you. He wouldn’t have been there if he wasn’t mad at them, but they didn’t draw him there either. The con was one of many factors that brought him there — he might not have gotten up a head of steam if he hadn’t gone drinking; he could have come at a different time; they might not have been homeHad Howard got some of the drug on his client’s hand and she had a heart attack, then that would absolutely be on them — they knowingly gave him the drug on his hand, fully aware that he’d be gladhandling a bunch of people.As a general BB/BCS theme of ripple effects, like how shifting a sleeping Jane leads to an airplane disaster, sure, connections are meant to be drawn. But assigning blame because “X wouldn’t have happened if not for someone doing Y” is too simplistic. That happens every moment of every day to everyone, regardless of intentions.
That’s why it’s indirect responsibility; no one’s saying they planned for this specific outcome, but it nevertheless occurred as a result of actions they were directly responsible for. (And the drug causing a heart attack in a third party would be something they were directly responsible for, because they were the ones directly responsible for the drug being in that room, even if they weren’t.)And yes, it happens every moment of every day to everyone, regardless of intention. That’s the whole point; to be careful in what you do and the reasons you’re doing it, because the outcomes might not be what you expect. And the more reckless your actions and the more malicious your motives, the worse the outcomes may be be. Okay, if you throw someone a party they might end up in a car that crashes on the way there. But while, yes, you be indirectly responsible for setting up the circumstances that led to them being at that intersection, unless you also sent a reckless driver at them (or were the reckless driver) objectively there’s no reasonable way you can be also held responsible for the actual collision. You might feel differently on an emotional level, but on an object level the collision itself isn’t your fault. Inviting someone to a party might increase their chances of getting into an accident but no more so that being on the road in general, and if nothing else you can at least comfort yourself that your intentions were good. You tried to do a nice thing, it backfired horribly. Indirect responsibility only goes so far, I agree. But if you maliciously sabotage someone’s life, there’s a higher chance they’ll come to confront you about it. If you willingly, even eagerly, get into bed with drug cartels, there’s a higher chance that someone with a grudge, a gun and a willingness to use it might end up at your door. And if you do both at the same time, there’s a higher chance that the two will unfortunately intersect with awful consequences. You might not intend for that to happen, but that doesn’t mean you have no responsibility whatsoever; wittingly or not, you still helped put the pieces in place.
They were expecting Howard to show up. They knew it was him before they went to the door.
I went back and watched it again. Yeah, it does appear they knew who was knocking. But that leaves me wondering: how did they know? Why then? Why any time, really? If their plan was for him to come to their apartment — why?
I am not sure if it was their plan, but I believe it was either their expectation that that would happen, or a likely probability. All good cons have to be able to deal with as many possible outcomes as possible.
So, Jimmy/Kim did two separate and essentially independent sets of actions:1. Getting involved with the cartel, which, as others have noted, meant that anyone near them was being put at risk* of getting involved in cartel violence.2. Fucking around with Howard.
Consider an alternate scenario in which they still get involved with the cartel (#1), but instead of fucking around with Howard (#2), they make friends with Howard and invite him over for pizza. One night Howard happens to drop by, and Lalo happens to show up right then and murders Howard.In both cases, Howard’s death was because they got involved with the cartel, not because of how they had acted toward Howard. They do bear some moral responsibility for his death, but it’s entirely because of the cartel situation, not because of the Howard situation. What they did to Howard didn’t have any impact on the chances of him getting killed by Lalo. (It might have had an impact on him getting killed for other reasons, e.g. they’re basically gaslighting him and so that might increase the chances that he does something risky or suicidal. But that still has no effect on the Lalo situation.)
*Increased and nonconsensual risk; obviously anyone living in ABQ in this show is at some risk of cartel-related violence.
But the fact remains that Howard only was in the apartment in the first place because of what Jimmy and Kim did. Sure, we can spit-ball any number of alternate scenarios for how he might or might not have entered the apartment to get shot, but the fact remains that in the reality we’re given, Howard was only at the apartment because of Jimmy and Kim’s actions. They bear some responsibility for him being at that place at that time.The moral responsibility for his death stems from their actions with the cartel, absolutely, but both share in some indirect responsibility for what happened. Without their actions in the cartel, Lalo wouldn’t be there; without their actions towards Howard, Howard wouldn’t be there.
It sounds like the ultimate argument here is that because J&K were involved with the cartel, getting involved with anyone in any way puts those people at risk from the cartel.
I mean, yes, but their actions towards Howard are also responsible for getting him in that room at that point. Getting involved with the cartel increases the general risk to the people around Jimmy and Kim, true, but they’re not just going to target everyone who may have at some point interacted with them for no reason either. Had Howard not been there, Lalo wouldn’t have hunted him down just because they knew him.
Yup.
“Eh…if you do something nice for someone and they get in a car wreck on the way over to thank you, are you responsible?”Replace “do something nice for someone” with “are a friend of the cartel” and “get in a car wreck” with “murdered by the cartel in your house.” See if this logic still holds.
Now you’re arguing that Jimmy is responsible for Howard because he was in bed with the cartel, and I’d agree that he is. That’s different than being responsible because of their con.
Jimmy is directly responsible for everybody Lalo murders.He knowingly helped Lalo lie about his identity to the court.I’m just a TV lawyer (in that everything I know about lawyering is from my TV), but it’s a crime for a lawyer to knowingly help Lalo commit perjury, and Lalo never would’ve made (or skipped) bail without that crime, so everything Lalo does from then on is a result of that crime.
Jimmy knew exactly who Lalo was, but he still lied to get him out.
What else was he going to do? Refuse Lalo’s business? Rat on him? Neither one wouldve ended well for Jimmy.
Unfortunately, I think what happens next is going to be kept from us. The level of withholding won’t be as obnoxious as Westworld, but we’re going to be in the darkIt does often feel like it is like the show gets off on being withholding.
We’ll certainly have to at least wait through a seemingly unconnected, abstractly shot cold open with an obscure but familiar 70s song playing over it before finding out what happens next.Then it’s a question of whether it jumps to some Gene scenes before coming back to the apartment.
The soda can trick I was taught was to tap the top of the can a few times before opening. It works—but only because you’re giving the soda time to settle down. The tapping does nothing!
Jimmy even tested the doggie doc’s potion himself, I think in part to make sure it wouldn’t cause Howard permanent harm. And the question about it showing up on a drug test was to help ensure they wouldn’t get caught, but also to make sure Howard didn’t suffer repercussions for “using.”
1. That may have been the best long con I’ve ever seen. (If there are any other shows with similar schemes on this level, I’d love to hear ‘em)
2. Lalo, in the Breaking Bad universe, has got to have climbed up the ranks as the best villain from either series, right? He’s even got Gus shook
3. The soda can trick was pretty neat, and a reminder that Chuck, too, was a fascinating guy with interesting little tidbits to offer that are now lost.
Definitely the most well plotted one I’ve seen. Most rely on cheesy flashbacks and fake outs ‘But what you didn’t know, was this!’ where they’re tricking not only the mark in universe but the audience as well – which just falls flat and empty.
Here every bit of their scheme happens, or is hinted at, in front of us which is what makes it impact so well. The biggest ‘twist’ is the PI… but that’s the very first post it note on their corkboard.
100% chance that Jimmy used to shake up Chuck’s soda cans!
Yep, I think that’s the message we’re supposed to gather from this. It’s been easy to think of Jimmy as kind of heroically taking doing stuck-up people like Howard and (especially) Chuck. But this is an episode that really suggests that the heart of these tendencies is that, well, Jimmy’s not a good person. And yeah, I think the really Chuck sort of absent-mindedly spun his soda cans is because, long before he met Howard, he had a brother who routinely did dickish things. Howard learns that lesson too late.
Jimmy did gaslight Chuck for a good while, then just let him die (or did he start the fire? It’s been a while).
the fire started accidentally, but after Chuck relapsed
Chuck killed himself by kicking over a lantern on top of a bunch of paper in the house, after setting it up so it looked like an accident. Jimmy at that point had written off Chuck, telling him that Chuck would die alone. And without Jimmy, Chuck’s anxiety about electricity grew intolerable, with him tearing his house apart looking for a source and finally taking his life.
One might say that Chuck, quite literally, gas-lit himself… *Puts on shades*
Yes- nothing was simple between those two.
I don’t remember the gaslighting (unless you mean the Mesa Verde document tampering), so you’ll have to refresh my memory, but I think “let him die” is extremely unfair— Chuck tore his house apart and then committed suicide, so not only did Jimmy not do it himself, but how was he supposed to stop that?
Ok- I haven’t watched the early seasons since they aired. But Chuck’s death was quite shocking to me.Jimmy and Chuck went after each other up to the end, and Jimmy was…conflicted, shall we say …over his death.
Most definitely!
Lalo is, as Nacho so eloquently stated in his farewell speech, a psycho sack of sit like the rest of Familia Salamanca. But unlike his Tio and his cousins, he hides it behind a facade of affability and charm. Even though you know he’s a murderous bastard, you can’t say he’s not a likeable guy. And you can’t help but admire his tenacity.
Indeed. And those traits distract from the fact that he’s smarter than I’ve given him credit for. The way he misdirected Mike’s crew, as they pulled security off ‘low priority’ details like Jimmy and Kim completely threw me. He’s playing a chess with Gus, and making moves I don’t expect.
Lalo is a perfect foil for Gus, which is why Gus is so spooked. The chess analogy is perfect. Lalo is always thinking three moves ahead, but is also capable of adapting to the situation.I’m pretty sure the showdown is going to be in the lab. Lalo has the location now and is just waiting for his chance to get in. Also, Gilligan telegraphed Gus’ wheelgun too many times for it not to come into play. Chekhov would crawl out of his grave and slap him about the head and shoulders if it didn’t.
The episode where Lalo seduces and then breaks into Verner’s widows house was the one that convinced me of #2. The sheer tension of that scene when she comes back in while he was hiding was crazy. Knowing that he definitely would kill her if he was discovered after being so affable and borderline romantic showed us that he had a different gear of malice than Gus.
Was there an intentional foreshadow of the screwing on of the silencer, with the soda can trick?
Ah! (That’s good…)
Have to agree with your second point. Lalo is the best villain, hands down.
Best joke of the episode: seeing a cockroach in the sewer made Lalo want to go see his lawyers. Of course Howard was the one who got squished.
LOL at this episode being titled “Plan and Execution”
They’ve been having fun with the double-meaning titles this season, for sure. (Last week’s “Axe and Grind” describing both Saul and Kim’s axe to grind with Howard as well as Lalo’s actual use of an axe.)
They’ve done ‘gimmicky’ titles a couple of times– this season (so far, anyway) they’ve all been “___ And ___”, the first season were all one-word titles that end in O (except for one that I think they couldn’t use because it was trademarked). If they can work on multiple levels, so much the better.
My favorite example of multi meaning titles will always be Face Off in Breaking Bad. Metaphorical and literal.
Just like the movie!
Yes, the first season episode Alpine Shepherd Boy was supposed to be called Jello.
Sound Guy is in athletic clothes because he played the “Frisbee Dude” that Saul is posing with in the second set of photos. I loved how the showrunners kept just enough of the details from the audience that you couldn’t see the whole con until it spooled out in the conference room.
Howard was never truly a dick, though. Sure, he was pompous and a bit overbearing, but he literally let Jimmy assume for, what, years(?) that he was the one holding up his advancement at HHM, not Chuck. That alone qualifies him as a friggin’ saint, misguided though it may have been.
The way Schweikart turned the screws after Howard’s meltdown in the mediation was pure lawyer deviltry.The law and justice are different things.
I love Rich’s character. He seems like a decent man and a ruthless lawyer.
Why is this review copied verbatim on this shitty wordpress site?:https://heromag.net/better-call-saul-recap-season-6-episode-7
That review is dated May 24 and this came out the night of May 23– I guess someone is just ripping off this site for their own blog?
I believe the answer is chicanery.
There’s surprisingly little discussion here about the post EP credit stinger: A black and white shot with Jimmy in voiceover saying “And after all that….a happy ending?”
Did people just turn off the TV immediately after Gilligan and Gould’s name went on the screen?
Don’t know. I asked a friend of mine and he had missed it. Me? I couldn’t move.
I did. I never watch the teasers because I find I enjoy the episode more if I go in blind.
Curse you two! I just went back and watched the ending like 3 times to make sure I didn’t miss it! You two are soulless!
We’re not joking.
Video unavailable in my country.Maybe it’s an AMC thing? Y’all watched it on AMC right? It’s Netflix over here.
Ah, yes, only AMC here. Our Netflix only just got the last season as this one was starting.If you search “better call saul july 11″ you’ll almost certainly find one you can view.
I watched it on Amazon Prime and let the episode play all the way through the credits and company logos until it ended and went back to the menu. The b&w stinger was not included there. (USA here)
That’s a bummer. I watched live on AMC (via YouTube TV). As you may have seen since, it wasn’t particularly insightful, just hints of Gene and a quote that was mildly reassuring after what had just happened.
Yeah, and I mean, I got to see it anyway because it got linked here, so it’s not like not seeing it as part of the stream was a big deal. (Not that the teaser itself is much of anything. If I’d never seen it, I wouldn’t have been missing anything.)
Oh, but it may be a big deal. It’s in black and white, right? That means it’s in Nebraska, post-Breaking Bad. The voice is Jimmy’s/Saul’s. He has to be speaking to Kim, who got to Nebraska, via the Vacuum Cleaner store, before Saul. Kim originally came from Nebraska and Saul went to Nebraska because that’s where Kim is.
It’s in black and white, right? That means it’s in Nebraska,It’s Jimmy and Kim’s apartment. In Albuquerque. The one they were in where Lalo shot Howard.
AMC.com episode doesn’t have it.
Too little to go off of, as is typical of the BB/BCS crew’s teasers. I know its poised as a question, but do you really think they’d tell us there’s a happy ending coming? Now maybe after two shows worth of showing nothing in the teasers, it would be the perfect time to do it, but I’m not reading much into it.
I’m also not reading too much into it, but you’d think it would get a passing mention like any other season teaser.
It’s possible the screener for the review didn’t have the teaser. It’s not uncommon for screeners to leave out teasers
Good point. It was placed as though it was part of the credits but it may have just been a standard teaser.
His inflection sounds like a statement to me, not a question: “A happy ending.” (The subtitles in the AMC upload support this as well.)
Though if it is a statement, I’m not sure why they would give it away now.
On re-listening, I agree. But we don’t know the context, who he’s speaking to, whether it’s about him or someone else. For all we know it’s a comment to the vet as Jimmy’s buying his black book.
I took it as we won’t have any more cold blooded murders!
I wouldn’t mind one specific one still. Lalo is excellent but he has to go.
It’s odd, it sounded like a question last night, but watching that video now, it doesn’t.
Can we talk about how Jimmy and Kim had no qualms about burning the elderly clients and Main as collateral? They’ll land on their feet, as it was put, but they did screw a lot of people other than Howard along the way here.
Not really.They get less money but they get the money now and it’s still a lot of money. And we saw already in an earlier episode they would’ve liked the money now rather than later, it was Howard who talked them out of it so HHM could get a bigger profit.
That’s how I read that too. HMM drawing the trial out for many years for maximum payout whereas Jimmy would’ve been able to give them their sum some time past.
I didn’t expect that for Howard. The moment he ran up the HHM stairs, already aware of his many problems this season, I thought it would be him taking his own life but for those six seasons of his control freak prickish exterior being pealed away only to be shot as part of Lalo cleaning witnesses was out of nowhere. But his fate works so well regarding Kim and Saul, who both turned down so many opportunities to both step away from the path they were on regarding Lalo and the cartel as well as not destroying the only thing Howard had left in his life, that his death really does prove his point in a way no life-long vendetta ever could.Kim and Saul are just monsters who are so caught up in their own aura they don’t see anything else anymore.
What speaks most to me about the quality of writing of Better Call Saul is how Howard’s death is foreshadowed. In hindsight, his scene with the clumsy intern was Howard’s farewell. Kind of a touching moment amid the stress of the approaching meeting. You fully expect him to be a dick to the guy, but he ended up being a gentleman and class act. After the episode, it occurred to me, this was a great way to have one final word on who the guy was before the story motors forth and he’s dispatched. Foreshadowing works best when you only really notice it in hindsight. This was the opposite of the final episodes of Ozark, where you could see Ruth’s demise coming from a pair of binoculars on the moon.
RIP to Howard. So smart, he put all the pieces of Slippin’ Jimmy’s con together in no time. He had it down cold. To the point I almost thought he had Cliff convinced to keep fighting through the deposition debacle.It’s easy to dislike characters like Howard Hamlin on tv shows. That pomposity trope is an easy mark. But Howard was written with some sympathy too and played well by Fabian. I didn’t see it coming until Lalo pulled out his gun. Then it was clearly over for Howard.
I think he actually convinced Cliff, or at least had him suspect Howard was right, but like he pointed out, it didn’t really matter, no one else would believe them.
Agree. I think Cliff actually bought it too when I think about it.
Ed Begley Jr. is doing some really fun stuff as Cliff. Smart lawyer, nice guy, WAY over his head with everything he encounters having to do with HHM or Jimmy.
Hmmm, now THAT would be a spinoff that most people wouldn’t guess—one involving Cliff.
It’s a nice subversion of the old “allegedly intelligent person point-blank refuses to explanation that actually does kind of make sense if you think about it”. Cliff’s a smart guy. He knows this is all very weird, he knows Jimmy’s not someone to trust, he knows Howard has until recently seemed smart and in control. I don’t think he “buys it” in the sense of being convinced by Howard’s story, but I think he doesn’t rule out that it might be true either.I mean, the guy’s a lawyer. You don’t get far as a lawyer if you’re not willing to suspend your assumptions and consider all the different versions of a story…
Yeah, and he’s a good lawyer to boot. He kinda buys it, kinda doesn’t, but immediately identifies it doesn’t matter either way. Whether Howard is 100% right or Howard is a confused/lying cokehead, they’ve lost their chance to press their advantage and the best move is to take the deal.Then he lawyers Howard into coming around by pointing out that if Howard blocks the best course of action then he’s bound by his fiduciary duty to share all the concerning Howard stuff he’s witnessed with their clients. A threat, but a perfectly justified and justifiable one.Howard recognizes that Cliff has him beat, which cools him off enough to realize that Cliff’s analysis of the situation is exactly right and the only/best move is to take the settlement. Very well written, watching two competent professionals immediately react, appropriately, to an outlandish situation. A hallmark of all the BB shows, and while it’s not quite as exciting as when a drug kingpin or a hitman or a crooked lawyer does it, it’s fun that they can illustrate it across so many different professions.
“I didn’t see it coming until Lalo pulled out his gun. Then it was clearly over for Howard.”Gun or no gun, Lalo couldn’t let him leave. It was over for Howard as soon as Lalo entered the room.
As soon as we got the Lalo reveal I knew Howard’s fate was sealed, but didn’t make it any less effective or impactful.Absolute masterclass in acting from Patrick Fabian (who’s name I just had to google) as Kim and Jimmy’s plan slowly reveals itself in front of him, and in the confrontation scene in their apartment. A+ performance.
“Midseason finale”: what a stupid, stupid term….
At least this show likes to give its actors magnum opus scenes before offing them. I’m still optimistic Kim survives but if she doesn’t I’m sure Rhea Seehorn will at least get some excellent Emmy fodder.
I guess this is a controversial opinion but I never ever saw Howard as a bad guy. I think he was just one of those people with a lot of power and privileged who didn’t really think about what that meant or how to affects others. But he seemed more capable and willing to learn about his behaviors than most people on this show. Like that scene where Kim tells him off for telling Jimmy about his brother committing suicide. I think Howard realized that was wrong of him to do once she told him off about it but he wasn’t really saying it to be malicious. He did need to unload the guilt, he just should have done it with someone else.
Now Chuck was a horrible person. Any morality he had was to feel superior and he was totally elitist and I feel like he was emotionally abusive towards Jimmy.
Definitely don’t think it’s controversial to view Howard as a bad guy – or it shouldn’t be, at least, ‘cause he wasn’t.I’m a little more sympathetic to Chuck, though. Not that he wasn’t also a dick at several points, but I see him as more of a tragic figure. He’s a guy who followed all the rules and worked hard and did everything he was supposed to do, but it never earned him any warmth or love in his life. Whereas Jimmy, despite bending/breaking the rules constantly and needing to be bailed out by Chuck, was always able to endear people to him – even when he exploited that. Chuck’s relationship with his wife was frosty but Jimmy got her to loosen up, something Chuck couldn’t do. Jimmy bankrupted their father’s business and possibly caused their father’s death; he went out to get sandwiches when their mother was on her deathbed while Chuck waited dutifully. But the last thing their mother said before she died was ‘Jimmy.’ Whether Chuck was acting out of spite, or out of a genuine belief that it was his job to punish/correct Jimmy’s behavior is ambiguous – it’s probably both – but I do feel sorry for him as well.
Whenever I read reviews they always imply that Howard is the bad guy so it feels like I am watching a different show.
I think that is a fair assessment of Chuck but in my family my parents played favorites but it sort of bonded us against them, I am not sure why that was our response but it was. So when I see Chuck’s behavior towards Jimmy it just really upsets me. But remember feeling some sympathy for Chuck when I realized he graduated high school at 14. Those people who aren’t socialized properly and then forced into an faux adult environment like college can have social issues.
Whenever I read reviews they always imply that Howard is the bad guy so it feels like I am watching a different show. Yeah, same. It’s really weird.
I think that is a fair assessment of Chuck but in my family my parents played favorites but it sort of bonded us against themFair enough, sounds like you and your siblings handled it the right way! I will say I think it’s a slightly different dynamic with Jimmy and Chuck – I don’t think their parents were intentionally (or even unintentionally) playing favorites so much as people just naturally gravitated towards Jimmy, and that maybe Chuck’s personality wasn’t conducive to emotional intimacy, if that makes sense.But remember feeling some sympathy for Chuck when I realized he graduated high school at 14. That’s interesting, I didn’t even remember that aspect to Chuck’s backstory but yeah, definitely adds to it.
Similarly, since I’ve been discussing the issue myself, I am someone with an older brother, whose behavior crossed over into manipulative, controlling, and domineering on a few occasions— including a couple of things that attempted to seriously undermine me— so that’s part of the reason I can sympathize with Jimmy. I know what it’s like to have someone you look up to, someone who has a certain responsibility to you, not only let you down but actively sabotage you. I managed to get through it without getting involved in the criminal underworld, but as both I and someone else have said elsewhere, it also makes it easy for me to see how this could have all been different if Chuck had been supportive, or at the very least honest, with Jimmy.
Holy fuck this episode was pretty much perfect. I love how it started out so funny and just gradually got more and more horrifying and shocking, like juxtaposing the thrill of pulling off a plan like this to actually seeing the consequences… That must be what they called it “plan and execution” lol
Perhaps we can all agree that the REAL villain of this story is the film student guy. What a douche.
No, the real villain of the story was the friends we made along the way.
The real villain was inside us all along!Because he’s a rapist, you see.
Wow.Howard was a somewhat comical pompous ass, but he was essentially a decent guy. He really didn’t deserve any of this.
Better Call Saul has always played with the dichotomy and balance of Talk (Lawyer stuff) and Action (Cartel stuff). It started as mostly Talk. Sprinkles of Action. As the show went on, it became a pretty even split. Yesterday’s episode had Action kill Talk. Action’s words before the credits ran:
“Let’s talk.”
My expectations for the series finale have grown with each successive episode and I would be shocked if that episode doesn’t stick the landing with aplomb.
I’m so shocked and sad for Howard.
Need I say “Spoiler?”So I watched this in its second airing – after Talking Saul. And goddamnit if I didn’t let the big secret shock ending get spoiled for me.See, the problem is: AMC … You never know when one of these airings is going to start after its first release. So, I turned it on Talking Saul with a minute to go… and I literally plugged my ears and went “la la la la hummm” so I couldn’t hear what Chris Hardwicke was saying. It was working until I lip-read and could tell he was saying “That’s all the time we have for tonight!” The credits started rolling. I unplugged my ears, ready for the shows to switch, and wouldn’t you know it… the last fucking thing that SOB says before Talking Saul goes black is him pointing at Patrick Fabian and saying “I’m really sorry you died.”I know. I should have been MORE careful … but seriously. The spoiler was in the last two spoken English words before cut-to-black and the episode begins?! I’m not mad at Hardwicke or Talking Saul. I get it… I even like the format ok. I’m just cursing my rotten luck. Not even “Goodnight everybody!” or “See you in July!” … It was “Sorry you died.” Ugh. Fml.At least by the end, the ep was so good that I wasn’t watching the clock. In a weird way there was more suspense with Howard – bad drug reaction? Suicide? Tumble down the stairs?At least if two of the four particular-to-this-show regulars die – this season – by having their brains blown out, it gives me some relief that it won’t happen to Kim. At least in that way. The brains-blown-out way. Pistol to the right temple/brains blown out the left side way. I guess if she dies from a frontal head-shot, or a left-right head-shot… then that would break the pattern. So I guess those are still on the table. But unlikely. Fucking Talking Saul. Sheesh.
In the future I’d recommend hitting the mute button and fast forwarding past the ending of Talking Saul.Also wow I had no idea they were still doing Talking post shows.
I know. It was totally my doofusness.They do “Talking…” with Saul and Walking Deads – I think – only on premiers and finales. It was on hiatus for a while due to pandemic and Hardwicke’s threat of being cancelled. I think he legitimately dodged the bullet there – like it was an angry break-up with his ex, but that was the extent of it. ^ 2 “I Thinks” ^ so I’m no expert. Just gossiping.
It’s so not necessary either.The thing I love about both “Breaking Bad” and “BCS” is that much of the time no dialogue is needed. They think I’ll understand what’s happening and who does that anymore with tv network tv audiences?It’s not “Walking Dead” where nothing made a bit of sense after season 2
Lmao jesus. Sorry to hear
This is why you watch on demand
I’m Central Time Zone, so BCS starts at 8pm here with an immediate replay at 9pm. I think Talking follows those two runs at 10p. With a 3rd airing after. But I know this ep was extended length and threw the timing off a bit.. Dang. Super sorry you got spoiled (But at least you’re a good sport about it, lol)
Why do people think Vince Gilligan has some sort of “brains blown out” quota?
This is (part of the) reason why I just buy the season on Amazon. No other bullshit getting in the way.
I hate all these shows that are SO INSECURE about you watching the NEXT episode that they INSIST on including a 5 minute preview of the NEXT EPISODE at the end of the CURRENT episode… While I’m watching the show because I DON’T want to know what’s going to happen next!
Yeah, I need to remember to stay off Twitter before I’ve seen the new episode, because I saw a post by Bob Odenkirk of him and Patrick Fabian and praising the work he did on the show, and I closed it before I read the whole thing, but it was still enough to make me think Howard would probably die.At least my wife didn’t see it so her shocked reaction to the suddenness of it all gave me some of the intended effect.
I don’t know. To me, this death is a reminder of Box Cutter, where someone right on the verge of causing trouble for the protagonists is killed in a way that surprising in its brutality, but also works as kind of a favor to those main characters.
What is with the B&W “Happy Ending” voice over scene tacked on at the end? That was their ABQ apartment, not Omaha. This show does not give true spoilers and I don’t for a minute believe there will be a happy ending.
I thought about the possibility that Howard might get caught up in the Lalo/Jimmy/Kim mess, but last we knew, Lalo was overseas. So I dismissed it. The current year, according to Howards license plate, is 2005. Somehow, we go from Kim and Jimmy just seeing Howard shot, to Jimmy still being afraid Lalo is alive 2-3 years later in BB when Walt and Jesse “kidnapped” him. I have no guess. The most obvious is that Mike shows up to save Kim and Jimmy but Lalo gets away again. That seems a bit to clean for the BCS/BB universe.
The last few minutes were pretty great, but I’m not sure what it took to get there was worth it. Once Nacho died I felt like the show was just spinning its wheels to get to this point. It was definitely a long con, but it wasn’t that interesting. And I still don’t have an answer to why Kim was so insistent on taking down Howard. (At this point it doesn’t seem like they’re going to give one.) The cartel story line was interesting, but it got bogged down the last couple of episodes too. I dunno. Until the ending, this season mostly felt like a waste of episodes (a waste of potential). I can’t help but compare it to the ending of Breaking Bad and it’s coming up woefully short. I hope things get better come July.
Making Howard seem irrational (and possibly drugged) at the mediation session was intended to prompt a quick settlement. His embarrasment was icing on the cake for Kim.
Don’t rush the process.
It was left unlocked, apparently, after Jimmy let Howard in.Obviously it was a cool moment, so maybe that makes it worth it, but at this point, this must be Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul’s 1000th instance of things in which a character has absolutely no control over needing to go just right even when they’d have no reason to think that they would. What if Jimmy had locked the door behind Howard, or Howard didn’t show up? Lalo is just waiting outside forever?This isn’t on the level of the one-two-three punch that ended Breaking Bad (Walt needs the car he’s trying to steal to have the keys still inside them, and they do/Skyler’s house is surrounded by security, but Walt somehow gets in unexplained/Walt would have no idea that he’ll get to park in the right place for his gun to kill the Nazis, but it all works out), but there’s definitely a pattern of narrative contrivance that basically dares you not to question it.
I think the ones you talk about in the BB finale are hand-waved to a reasonably satisfying degree. For Skylar, it’s explained that Walt’s called in a bunch of fake tips/false sightings to distract the police before he sees her. For the machine gun, there’s a moment where the Nazi tells him to park a certain way and he kind of turns the car and shrugs. The keys thing doesn’t have an explanation, but its framed as a sort of deal-with-the-devil moment, plus it’s such a well-worn trope at this point that it kind of didn’t bother me (Americans can explain this to me: Do you all just… constantly leave your keys in the sun visor like that?).A bigger one, for me, is Hank and Leaves of Grass – not the discovery itself, nor Walt’s mistake, but the fact that a present from Gale only appeared that season was kinda lame.But the biggest one was last episode of BCS. Mighty convenient that Jimmy just happens to run into the judge at the liquor store.
Yeah, I didn’t mention that one. I also didn’t remember they even tried to explain the Breaking Bad ones, so what do I know. Maybe I should rewatch the ending.
EDIT: I just read some insanely detailed wiki of the final episode. You were right about those details that I missed. HOWEVER, I forgot all about how he avoided getting shot immediately by goading them into bringing out Jesse to he could see that he was their slave, not their partner. I mean…okay? It seems pretty fortunate that he apparently was sure he knew exactly what to say to convince them to go to that trouble instead of them saying “fuck off” and just shooting him immediately.
Assume this was meant to be a reply to me?That is true about the bring-out-Jesse moment – while I can juuuuuust about buy Jack doing that it definitely felt a little forced and inorganic.
However – I’d say that’s not as important WRT to the shooting plan so much as it’s important in giving Walt a moment where he saves Jesse, and for all that follows. If they really were just gonna shoot him, I think he could’ve just grabbed the car keys, hit the deck and popped the trunk. Or else spun some other lie: ‘Look, the recipe’s just in the trunk of my car…’
Yeah, a reply to you and what I was talking about earlier. And good point about what he might have done otherwise.
I’m thinking the judge makes frequent stops there. Apparently it’s close to the courthouse.
Except that he’s a retired judge who lives in Santa Fe and who will be working out of HHM’s offices when he comes to Albuquerque.So yeah, ridiculous coincidence.
It’s at least plausible that he was in town for another case. Also, it only an hour drive between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Unlikely, but not exactly ridiculous. There’s a lot of stuff in the series that is much less plausible than running into a retired judge at a liqour store.
The judge came from out of town l, he’s from Sante fe
Yes, but it’s only an hour drive between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Jimmy was commuting when he briefly worked for Clifford there. It’s not implausible the Judge would spend time in both cities, especially working as a mediator.
(Americans can explain this to me: Do you all just… constantly leave your keys in the sun visor like that?)As an American, I can confirm that I’ve literally never done that, never seen it done, and never met anyone who’s done it; that said, I’ve lived in urban Los Angeles my entire life, and it’s entirely possible that it’s something that’s common in rural areas (no one’s going to steal my car when I’m parked in the middle of nowhere) or other states. Even then, I still don’t know why you’d do it instead of just putting them in your pocket.
Yeah, that tracks. I can’t recall any more specific examples but I’m positive I’ve seen that trope used in urban-set scenes as well. Assume it’s just one of those things that someone in Hollywood once heard about someone doing one time, and now makes it seem far more commonplace than it is. Like you said, there’s literally no reason to do it unless you’re trying to hand over your car for someone else to use. Possibly a lovable fugitive in need of a getaway vehicle.
The cinematic example that comes to mind is Terminator 2, which actually does make sense; police vehicles are much less likely to be stolen than civilian vehicles (because cops have guns and are likely to be nearby), and especially a big van like that one could end up being driven by any of the cops who are in the area, so if one of them has the keys in his pocket, then to move the vehicle you have to figure out who has the keys and go find them.But for some random civilian vehicle, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, because the odds of someone else needing to abruptly drive the vehicle are generally very low.
(Americans can explain this to me: Do you all just… constantly leave your keys in the sun visor like that?)I grew up in the Midwest, and that’s what my parents did when I was a kid.I knew lots of other people who kept them under the floormat or in the ashtray.Then again, we never bothered to lock our door unless we were leaving for a couple days or something.
We had seen the present from Gale going as far back as Season 4. Walt was seen reading it multiple times. Then Hank sees it in episode 5 x 07.
It’s not in Season 4. First appearance is when Walt fishes it out of a box in Season 5a. A few episodes before Hank finds it, but the same season. You might be thinking of Gale’s notes that Hank and Walt read together, which contains a Walt Whitman poem.
Re the sun-visor, I think a lot of people leave their keys there. But not so many that it wasn’t extremely lucky that Walt picked a car that had the keys in it.
Some validity here, but consider that there’s no reality where Lalo just made a beeline from his manhole to the interior of Jim & Kim’s apartment. The fact that he’s been living in a sewer speaks to how patient he’s willing to be to exact his revenge.The time that elapses between a roach turning his thoughts towards Jimmy (a really fun callback to Lalo calling Jimmy a cockroach last season, by the way) and him walking through the door, implies that he’s been camped out for a bit — no doubt casing the place for Fring’s security and figuring out his best way in. I’m sure he was also willing to camp there until Jimmy came out, if that seemed like the best option to him. However, seeing a disheveled and somewhat tipsy man walking up to Jim & Kim’s without intervention confirmed what he’d probably already gathered (that there wasn’t security posted there) and gave him the perfect opportunity to follow behind. He may have even listened at the door to assess the situation before he entered it.Did he know the door would be left unlocked? Not for certain. But how often do you lock the door behind a guest, especially when you don’t want them there very long?
I guess. Like I said above, it was certainly effective, but you would think even someone like Lalo would go somewhat out of his way to avoid committing a murder of someone he doesn’t know in front of two people, and whatever mess that could lead to. I’ve only planned so many break-ins personally, but I feel like there’s a world where he waits for the guy to leave, then knocks, forces his way in and it’s the same result for him, minus now having a body to clean up (I wonder if the actor who played Howard had to come back 4 months later to lie on the floor with an open head wound. Hopefully not.)
I don’t see a standard apartment door lock is a big deal for Lalo. We’ve seen that breaking and entering is second nature to him.
Jimmy probably just didn’t double lock it, plus the chain, like Kim did, cause he thinks Lalo’s dead. If the door latch locks automatically, he probably went with that, like a lot of people (like me) do, but you can defeat those with a credit card.They made it seem almost supernatural, with the candle flickering, like a dark presence had entered the room in a horror movie.It flickered for Howard too, which makes sense, and lets you know the door opened again. It added to the dread, but looses a little of the darkness of it.
Yeah, like I said it was an effective moment, which ultimately takes precedent over being the logic police. I just feel like both shows get extremely close to this line pretty frequently, or just let the audience fill in the gaps to mixed effect. I remember Vince Galligan was asked how Walt poisoned Jesse’s girlfriend’s kid, and he gave a long detailed answer involving Walt putting the poison into a juice box, then having sneaking into the kid’s school and putting the juice box in his lunch. None of which we saw, but I can’t say it didn’t work for me anyway. The thing where Jesse later finds a crushed cigarette in his coat, and that’s what makes him suddenly realize what Walt did? Less convincing.
Him being pickpocketed by Huell’s what led him to realize what Walt did. Anyway I have the opposite reactions. The Jesse realization was something I bought and was into, while the Brock poisoning was something I kept expecting them to elaborate on.
It flickered for Howard, but the flame blew out when Lalo entered. I liked that touch.
I assumed if the door had been locked Lalo would’ve knocked or picked the lock or just broke in? It just so happened the way it worked out, worked better cinematically lol
Howard was the character I like best ,he was not a bad person .
One thing I didn’t get is how did Jimmy and Kim switch the photos out for the fake ones? Was there a mole in the HHM office or something?
Saul had his PI (the same guy who gave them to Howard) swap them out.
After he gave them to Howard?
I think the plan was always to have the PI meet with Howard right before the mediation started, so Howard would see the photos then leave for mediation with the PI still there, and the PI would then swap the photos and dip.
Yes.
I literally JUST finished watching this (at work, hey, it’s lunch time sort of). I think I kept my cool at that last scene, but I must have gasped because someone asked if I was okay.Jeez… yet another way this show works to surprise even though… nearly nothing should be a surprise! I know Howard’s not in Breaking Bad. I know Lalo is alive. (And I know the title of the episode is Plan and Execution…) I don’t know how it works for Kim to die – and of course I hope she shows up at Cinnabon at the end. As someone on here mentioned recently, it doesn’t seem like Saul could be quite… Saul if Kim has been killed just before the events of Breaking Bad. But holy moly, now I’m really worried.
You missed a thing or two.First: Howard appeared to have one or two chances to leave. (Rewatch the scene.) Lalo simply said that he wanted to talk to his lawyers. If Howard had just left right then and there, had been capable of understanding the situation, he probably could have left without dying.The true tragedy here is that Jimmy and Kim trolled and rolled him so hard that he simultaneously both broke and felt like he was in a position of power by virtue of righteousness and that he was safe. It was 100% clear that Howard assumed that Lalo was just another one of Jimmy’s lowlife criminal clients or one of Kim‘s pro bono clients. And that was exactly how Lalo was playing it.Howard had the chance to leave, but he just couldn’t stop himself.Ultimately it was Jimmy and Kim’s actions that drove Howard to the point of ending up staying in their home until he squandered his one or two chances to leave before Lalo pulled out the gun and silencer. Howard could have left with his life if Jimmy and Kim had never executed their Machiavellian plan.Now Jimmy and Kim will forever live with Howard’s death being 100% their shared fault for driving Howard to the breaking point, driving him to confront them and being too angry, broken and inebriated to read the room. They didn’t want Howard to die. That’s not how they roll. However, it was completely their collective fault that he died in such a tragic manner.
Speaking of how they roll, I was glad to see Jimmy and Kim having “We did it!“ sex immediately after their plan succeeded. The combination of the thrill and the success of their plan working out perfectly resulting in amazing sex is exactly right for those two. (Isn’t that the first time we saw them have sex in the series? They always otherwise seem like they have an idyllic and mild, low-key husband and wife kind of relationship whenever we see them at their home.Speaking of rolling, how about that master class with the kid director now in school teaching students how to make a cohesive narrative through the art forms of photography and videography within the episode? That was delightful to have as a lesson for viewers who want to get into the business or are simply interested in the making of movies or shows. It was like a miniature Vince Gilligan “Master Class” embedded within the episode. Mildly meta. Delightfully written, explained, and executed perfectly.
Uhh, the film school kid was just being the usual grumpy asshole he always is for comic relief, but I love it when Gilligan fans over read scenes, and imagine shit that isn’t there.
TIL that Jessie Ennis (junior Davis & Main attorney Erin) is the daughter of John Ennis (the actor who impersonated the judge, and an old Mr Show cast member).
She’s also the psycho assistant in Mythic Quest. She’s great.
John Ennis recently played a gangster on the Will Arnett Netflix improv “celebrity guest helps solve a murder mystery” show, Murderville, and he was very funny in that. Highly recommend that show, by the way.
I did know that— being a huge Mr. Show fan and having seen Jessie Ennis a bit here and on Mythic Quest— so I just wanted to highlight how funny Odenkirk and John Ennis’ scenes are together; I would expect nothing less, but it’s still been a delightful highlight of these last two episodes, some necessary levity amidst the darkness and violence.
For all the hype and so many episodes on this Jimmy’s plan was an embarrassing failure. What was even the point except to get to this moment in the plot?
The point was to force HHM to quickly settle the Sandpiper class action and get Jimmy his payday now instead of a year or two down the road. In that regard, it was a resounding success. Of course, getting Howard killed wasn’t part of the plan.
Failure? I think you need start a rewatch while show is on hiatus. Pause as often as necessary.
also worth noting a nice sequence shot during most of the outside shooting scene (from Jimmy and the camera guy exiting to the cast pose); with a series of shots in rotation after (there are probably other in the show that I don’t catch but for some reason I got this one)
Brilliant finale! Not since Gus fell apart in the hall of the nursing home… Have to say as soon as there was a knock at the door, I suspected it was Lalo. Note the candle flicker – foreshadowing horrid events. Then when it was Howard I knew then he would be killed by Lalo. The candle flickers again and Lalo enters, Howard’s fate is sealed. Chilling. Brilliant writing, direction and acting. Can’t wait for July!
I am confused as to why Lalo would seek Jimmy out, and really even why he went there in season 5. Jimmy did not steal from him and is hardly in bed with Gus. They have not even met yet. The only “hole” in his original story, if I remember, that caused Lalo to drop in on Jimmy and Kim was he left out Mike’s help. But for Lalo it seems like Kim diffused that situation and really Jimmy is nothing to him that I see other than his lawyer who got his bail. So why he would barge in their and then kill Howard, while shocking and riveting, just to me does not add up as I cannot see why Lalo would want Jimmy so badly that he would go in there all threatening with the silencer gun and then kill Howard.
The only thing I can think of is that Jimmy and Kim are the only potential weak point in this whole web, a place he can potentially go for information instead of just killing or being killed immediately.
OP is right. Saul and Kim know fuck all about Gus and his whole operation, and Saul hasnt wronged Lalo or the cartel in anyway whatsoever. What does he need from them so bad that he shows up and starts killing visitors in their apartment? It’s big on shock, but makes absolutely zero sense 😕
You’re absolutely 💯 on this. After I got over the shock, I thought about it and felt the same. I can only guess that Lalo assumes that Saul is in deeper with Gus than he actually is bc of all the Gus security he has (which of course Saul is totally oblivious to). That and Lalo associates Saul with Nacho (didn’t Nacho refer Saul to Lalo?). Lalo likely wants to order Saul to do something to further his plans…guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Been a while since a show did make me did a double take to end a show.I don’t think Kim is going to die like I thought. But it’s gonna be a grueling, final episodes to end this show.
The ample allusions to Chuck in this episode really frame Kim and Jimmy’s actions towards Howard aptly. The destruction they wreak – tearing down a man so wholly and completely over personal and professional slights – has the same unanticipated consequence: it costs their target his life. Watching Howard flounder to Cliff so desperately about Jimmy’s conspiracy only makes Howard seem more unhinged, and is so reminiscent of Chuck – ranting and raving and yet also knowing the insidious truth of the matter.“You’ll land on your feet,” Jimmy/Saul quips discompassionately. But Chuck killed himself, and now Howard’s been shot by the monster who helped make Saul infamous. So too late do Kim and Jimmy realize that the full consequences of their manufactured chaos are not – nor are they ever – under their control.
The Thing that raised my eyebrow was, how could the P.I. have gotten shots at the park that morning and not seen the fakery at play? The switched photos revealing he was in on it blew my mind! Consider this insane detail: Boom Mic guy (who you don’t need for still photography) was there to add to the appearance of shooting behind bushes!
Howard’s PI was in on it – he really worked for Jimmy and Kim.
I think that was made pretty clear in the episode before this one. It was just how did Jimmy and Kim pull the ole switcheroo.
I get that Howard’s death was supposed to be
payback for Jimmy and Kim’s shenanigans. Except it wasn’t. Lalo had no idea
about or interest in their scheme and his killing Howard was not related to it
at all. Lalo still would have wacked Howard even if Jimmy and Howard were best
buds and Howard was just visiting for dinner.I never thought I would say this about BCS but
this was lazy writing. Almost as bad as Dexter’s death just for the sake of it
where Harrison had to do a 180 degrees in the last 5 minutes to deliver it.
There are more examples of bad writing. How
did Lalo get a gun in Germany? He didn’t bring it with him on a plane and he
knew no criminals in Germany to get it from.
And it was a stretch to bet everything on
Howard throwing a tantrum immediately upon seeing the judge. He didn’t want to
check the picture to make sure it’s him? He is that uniquely looking guy? Check
it later and use it against Rich? He had “one and a half to two years” to use
it. That’s how a real unstable junkie would act but Howard is not one in
reality.
And why did Kim come back from the scheduled
interview anyway since she didn’t help with the photo op at all? It’s not like
they didn’t already know the fake judge had to stand behind Jimmy for the
envelope to be visible – they had already shot it before, just without the
sling. And why was the sling such a deal breaker anyway if nobody other than
Howard got to see the pic and Howard didn’t care to examine it too much?
And what was the impact of Kim not telling
Jimmy about Lalo being alive? Would he not have grabbed her by the shoulders when he entered?
Nowhere near Breaking Bad, not even in the
same league. Like later Tarantino movies, BCS has recently been more about
showing off technical prowess and using shocks for shocks but they have lost
the mojo.
I agree. Im sick of fans groveling over every little minutia and camera angle. Throwing around words like “masterclass”.
Breaking Bad had its plot-advancing moments, too. Walt just happened to get in a car that had the keys in it in New Hampshire. Apparently no one noticed it was gone for a few days because he made it all the way back to New Mexico with no one catching him. And a whole series of unlikely events happened in the finale. First, that he was able build that machine gun contraption. It is about as likely as undetectable drug they gave Howard. Next, that the Nazis would take the keys away from him and put them on the table in plain sight instead of in someone’s pocket. Then he talks Jack out of killing him on the spot by asking for Jesse and Jack agrees. And very luckily, he is able to grab the keys without anyone seeing him so he can shoot up the whole compound without killing Jesse and himself. And how, by the way, did he slip Lydia that Stevia packet with ricin? That was never shown. This is not a criticism Breaking Bad. I loved the finale. I’m just pointing out that good storytelling often involves a series of events that could charitably called extremely lucky.
I see what you mean but I wouldn’t agree, I
see material differences. Firstly, all the things you’re listing are from one
episode, the last one. That’s when a little unlikely help from the universe I
will gladly forgive in order to see delivered a finale for the ages. At that
point the story had been told, finished, there was little plot left “to advance”.Secondly, they were still not desperate
crutches without which the story wouldn’t work. The car keys scene didn’t have
to be there at all, they could have just shown Walt driving, his car theft
being off-screen. There are many ways to steal a car, eg at a gas station
where people often leave keys inside when they go in to pay. The scene wasn’t
essential, just cool, I support that. And it didn’t make anyone act like a
fool.
And I don’t know about the US – all you have
to do is notice your car’s been stolen, report it, and the next thing you know the police
catch the thief every time, even across state lines? I envy you 🙂
Walt built the swiveling gadget for the gun,
what’s unlikely about that? It’s a guy who built a freaking car battery in the
desert!
Thirdly, I think you’re misremembering some
things. Jack brought in Jesse because Walt played him, saying Jack owed him and
he partnered with Jesse. That enraged Jack because “the rat” Jesse was his
slave, not “fifty fifty partner”. Completely believable and a genius move on Walt’s part.
And they did show how he poisoned Lydia, it
was during their meeting with Todd in the café. There was a long shot from
above into the tea cup suggesting it, and Walt even described it explicitly in
his final phone call to Lydia.
So no, I don’t think this compares to Howard’s
death which was completely out of the blue, unearned and undeserved.
RE: the Stevia packet, Walt was in the diner already before Todd and Lydia arrive. You can see him sitting at the counter behind them if you look closely at the scene. I’m guessing Walt put the ricin-Stevia at the table, knowing she always sat at the same table, and always took the same packet.
Jimmy had to have known Howard was in therapy, he took Howard’s car while he was at his therapist’s.
The point is, he didn’t care why he might be in therapy. It was just a convient place to steal his car to Jimmy.
Jimmy knew Howard was in therapy going back to Season 4 when he ran into Howard in the courthouse bathroom. Howard was clearly ill and revealed he hadn’t been sleeping much since Chuck died. Jimmy recommended a psychiatrist and Howard said he’s already been seeing one two times a week. What Jimmy and Kim did NOT know until his final scene, however, was that Howard and his wife had been having troubles and that he’d been sleeping in the guest house.
That final scene….wow – I had a feeling this was the end for H.Ward
The thing that haunts me about this show is a question that we’ll never get to see answered. What if Jimmy had been mentored by Chuck and Howard when he got his law degree? He was on the straight and narrow when he worked at HHM, and he took no short-cuts to getting his degree. There were no slips. I know the joke is that he got a ‘correspondence course’ degree from a foreign university, but the thing is that was probably Jimmy’s only real option. His life was such a mess before he got there that the place he went to law school might literally have been his only option.
I think it’s entirely plausible that under Chuck and Howard, Jimmy would’ve remained Charlie Hustle. Because that nickname has a double-meaning to it; this was Howard’s way of recognizing that he saw some of Charles M. McGill in James “Charlie Hustle” McGill.
The way it played out, Howard didn’t stand up to Chuck. And Chuck put effort into destroying his brother. Jimmy made his own choices, and some of those choices are horrific. But if we think about it in karmic terms, Howard had a small hand in his own fate. It’s the interplay of all of these choices, and the horrific choices Jimmy made, that led to that room.
Again, I’m not absolving Jimmy or Kim of what they did. They made their own horrific choices to bring things there. I am saying that as someone who can watch this story unfold from the outside, I’ll always believe that Jimmy would’ve stayed on the straight and narrow had his brother, and Howard, helped him stay there.
The thing that haunts me about this show is a question that we’ll never get to see answered. What if Jimmy had been mentored by Chuck and Howard when he got his law degree?I think it’s very likely that he could have become a productive lawyer and stayed on the straight and narrow. So much of Jimmy becoming Saul comes from the resentment he (rightfully) feels at HHM and the Establishment for not letting him forget where he came from.Had Chuck accepted his brother, so much would have been different.
Your comment reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in the show, when Jimmy comes to defense for the high school girl that has shoplifting on her record. That girl has moved on from that mistake and has very likely grown up as a better person, but the system will never let her forget what she did and she’s likely bound to just relapse if there’s no point.
Your comment reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in the show, when Jimmy comes to defense for the high school girl that has shoplifting on her record. That girl has moved on from that mistake and has very likely grown up as a better person, but the system will never let her forget what she did and she’s likely bound to just relapse if there’s no point.Good catch – that’s one of the scenes I was thinking of!That scene reveals so much about Jimmy’s character. He thinks the deck is permanently stacked against him, that no matter what he does he can’t rise above his background.And why does Jimmy feel that way? Because it’s true. And because Chuck made it that way. Chuck will always see him as Slipping Jimmy, and will always punish him for it.Had Chuck mentored Jimmy, had Chuck even let Howard treat him the way Howard intended, then it seems pretty clear Jimmy would have become a productive member of the bar. But Chuck made a different choice, and Saul Goodman is the inevitable result of Chuck’s actions.
That’s the part that gets me here. For whatever Chuck is right about Jimmy, I think he either has a responsibility to either steer him in the right direction or to wash his hands of him entirely— especially after all the time and effort Jimmy took to help him through his illness. He did neither: He used all his power and resources to try to hold Jimmy down to keep him in a position that would confirm Chuck’s opinion of him and confirm his opinion of himself as The Good Son.
Absolutely. That’s the real tragedy of the first three seasons.
Howard was a little bit like the Job of this show. No matter what befell him, he rebounded with a fairly upbeat demeanor. Howard and Jimmy were always on a collision course. Jimmy was the blood brother who let down Chuck, while Howard idolized Chuck the way you would an older brother — a perfect stand in replacement for Jimmy. Howard never could understand how someone could have a brother like Chuck and turn your back on him. It’s been well-outlined in other comments here, but Howard was never a bad guy; he was merely an obstacle to Jimmy and Kim. (This differentiates him significantly from the obstacle role Gus played in BB.) Knowing that Jimmy is a free (and living) man in BB, I can only wonder how Howard’s death will be concealed or spun. Final note: a bit disappointed in Mike for not sniffing out that something was wrong about Lalo’s threat.
“Final note: a bit disappointed in Mike for not sniffing out that something was wrong about Lalo’s threat.”
Yeah, Mike and Gus both kind of vacillate between superhuman intuition and being complete dolts as the plot requires it.
For someone who was treated as basically the second main character in the early seasons of Better Call Saul, Mike has really taken a back seat in this final season. It doesn’t help that they’ve never really developed his daughter-in-law as a major character either, even though she’s been around from the beginning as well.
My question concerns the black and white postscript after Howard’s death. I presume it takes place in Saul’s Omaha, NE residence. You hear Saul’s voice. He says, “After all that . . . a happy ending.” No-one, on any site, has commented on this. My interpretation – Kim was relocated to her home state, Nebraska, via the Vacuum Cleaner store. Saul himself relocated to Neb. to be with Kim. They’re together. And, after all that, they’re fine.Your interpretation?
It was Kim and Jimmy’s apartment in Albuquerque.
I can’t believe Peter Gould actually admitted in an interview that they were stealing from themselves from the train robbery episode in BB. How do people still say this is better than BB when it’s just a copy? And Lalo coulda waited a few minutes more until Howard left. Wait that wouldn’t work because mid-season finale.
Why would lalo kill Howard? He’s crazy, but so far it hasnt seemed like he’d kill someone for no reason. Howard didnt know anything, lalo couldve just told him to leave.
Why would lalo kill Howard? He’s crazy, but so far it hasnt seemed like he’d kill someone for no reason. Howard didnt know anything, lalo couldve just told him to leave.
Lalo’s killing Howard only makes sense if he was there to kill Kim and Jimmy. He wasnt expecting anyone else there, so he’s like “ok, this guy’s seen me, I have to kill him, too.” But if he’s really there just to talk to them, why would he have to kill Howard? he doesnt know Howard and Howard knows nothing about him, he couldve just let him leave. Lalo has no problem wiht killing but it doesnt seem like he does it for no reason.
The Breaking Bad scene with Saul on his knees at gunpoint with Walt and Jesse had the names Nacho and Lalo as a bit of a throwaway but if we take it as canon, Saul is clearly terrified of Lalo. Seeing as he insisted he and Kim fled their apartment when he thought Lalo was a threat I’m now thinking he has somehow persuaded Kim to get out of town for her safety. Kim might have stood up to Lalo in that amazing scene at the end of S5 but both her and Jimmy looked appalled and terrified. Their scam of Howard WAS for fun, but things are deadly serious now. Maybe she realises she is out of her depth.
A better fate for Fabian than he got in The Last Exorcism.(If you’re a fan of his work here and haven’t seen it, check him out in The Last Exorcism. It’s fantastic and he’s crazy good in it.)
Really interesting how Howard’s death mirrors Chuck’s own, complete with the
mental breakdown targeted at Jimmy beforehand and the candle motif
during his actual death.
All the named partners of HHM are dead now. What might this suggest for the rest of the series?