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Given that BCS is a prequel, it's not always going to fit perfectly into the void prior to Breaking Bad. Big stuff like characters being alive obviously doesn't change (although I would love if halfway through the season they're just like gently caress it, Gus is dead) but I wouldn't be surprised if minor beats like Saul's handsy experiences get sanded away. Hell, in the episode he's introduced he's pretty cavalier about suggesting someone get whacked in prison, and I'm fully expecting the final season not to get him near that point.
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Apr 28, 2020 12:32
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Rather than the cartel stuff in general it's the Gus/superlab stuff in particular which feels extraneous. It really seems like a bad idea to bring Gus into the show, at least the way they did it. They establish him as being under the thumb of the big boys down Mexico way, which is the same state he was in at the beginning of Breaking Bad, so there's not much else he can do except be secretly disobedient. Like if they'd had a story about him falling back under the thumb of the cartel, or extricating himself from a different situation we didn't see, there might be a story there. You could probably wring something out of Gus establishing a network or getting in with Madrigal, something which might even require some legal consultation.
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May 1, 2020 05:19
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I was thinking not even necessarily illegal stuff, or at most questionably legal stuff. It would have to be a minor plot point; Kim helping Gus franchise Los Pollos Hermanos all over the southwest like she did the bank would be far too silly for my liking, but you could definitely write a plausible several episode arc guest starring Giarcarlo Esposito about stuff caught up in shipping, or workers failing a background check and their visas getting denied. I'd rather have had that than like three seasons of building a meth lab.
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May 1, 2020 07:06
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When I rewatched BB it felt like starting with the first episode of season 2 it became the show I had remembered. Season 1 is great, but the tone of it feels off. The supporting cast is painted a bit too broadly and it's wackier. For want of a better term it feels like the version of the show pitched to USA. There are odd scenes that are completely on-tone--basically everything involving the dealers in the basement in vintage BB--but on the whole it's not quite fully baked yet. Few show are, but it makes the scenes that nail the tone of later seasons stand out even more.
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May 6, 2020 08:00
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One thing I really love about BB and BCS is their tremendous use of act breaks (haven't seen an actual commercial between 'em since maybe 2012 though). It's one of both shows' signature stylistic elements and I'd be loath to trade them for, I dunno, forcing Krysten Ritter to do a topless scene before she chokes on her own vomit. Beyond that, AMC has been pretty free-wheeling with both episode lengths and, especially towards the end of BB, letting them drop the F-bomb. Violence and gore certainly hasn't been an issue.
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May 14, 2020 04:46
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Like most of the supporting cast, Skylar's character is subtly shifted and largely improved between seasons 1 and 2. I love how a lot of characters in season 2 see through Walt's schtick really easily--Mike tracks him down in an hour and Skylar--knows the something is up, just not what. Even Hank deduces that Walt's keeping secrets, though he thinks that it's an affair.
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May 26, 2020 06:49
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I don't know if I'd even call Walt lucky (any more than the average protagonist, anyway). There's a pretty solid pattern of Walt getting into deep poo poo, finding an escape route, and that escape route leading directly into deeper poo poo. Offing Gail leads directly to conflict with Gus, blowing up Gus leads to his business dealings becoming public, etc. The one big thing I'd change about BB is the ending, actually. Walt's last escape is through dying basically, but he's pretty resigned to death, so that's not really much of a loss for him. I would have given him a loss somewhere along the way, like he doesn't get the chance to see Holly one last time before he heads to the Nazi compound.
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May 29, 2020 07:40
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I haven't followed set spoilers or whatever, but I'd be surprised if there's more than 45 minutes' worth of Gene stuff/explicitly BB stuff combined, whether that's a whole episode or flashbacks peppered throughout. Jimmy is the only BB character who isn't in the the same place now as when Breaking Bad starts; the rest of the show is going to be his story. In a way Better Call Saul is the prequel to the show most people imagined that Better Call Saul would be when it was announced, and I don't see them going much beyond that besides a brief coda to resolve the Gene stuff.
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May 11, 2022 10:46
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oh jay posted:Paranoid Gus at Pollos was soooo boring. Toothbrushing the bathtub later in the episode would have communicated how on edge he was all on its own. On the one hand it's a little on the nose, on the other hand it's the only bit of interesting characterization they've given him in six seasons.
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May 14, 2022 14:31
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It really makes me wish BCS was just an alternate universe or even just about a character inspired by Saul Goodman instead of the actual character. The Jimmy/Kim stuff is so good, but the Gus/BB prequel element is total dead weight, and to a degree Mike by extension. Gus might have had some gravity if he were introduced like, this episode, but he's been frowning slightly for years at this point.
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May 14, 2022 16:08
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I don't think Howard's capable of it and he doesn't know enough about what Jimmy and Kim are planning to pull it off, but my first thought when the mustachioed judge showed up was that Howard had channeled Jimmy and hired a fake judge with a fake cast to throw a wrench into their plan.
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May 17, 2022 08:40
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Civilized Fishbot posted:It's kind of remarkable that they waited this long to make Jimmy unsympathetic. By this point in Breaking Bad, Walt was a monster. With BB, it was established from jump street that Walt had a way out that didn't involve cooking meth, but he was too proud to ask for help. That hangs over everything that happens in the show. Jimmy's made plenty of mistakes, but he's also never had the easy way out that Walt did. He (and Kim, really) have found a measure of success despite all kinds of roadblocks placed in their path. It's only now that they're going after Howard, who is less the cause of their roadblocks than a symptom, that their scheming starts to turn unforgivable. There's a passage from Les Miserables I think about sometimes about the difference between anger and outrage. Les Miserables posted:He recognized that he was not an innocent man unjustly punished. He admitted that he had committed a drastic and reprehensible deed. That he probably would not have been refused the loaf of bread, had he asked for it. That in any case it would have been better to wait, and rely on pity or work to obtain it. That it is not an utterly conclusive argument to say, ‘Can hunger be kept waiting?’ That in the first place it is very rare for anyone literally to die of hunger, and anyway, regrettably or not, human beings are so constituted that they are capable of suffering a great deal for a long time, morally and physically, without dying. That patience was necessary. That it would have been better even for those poor little children. That it was an act of madness for a miserable wretch such as he to take on the whole of society and to imagine that theft was a way out of poverty. That under any circumstances the gateway that led to criminality was a bad escape route from poverty. In short, he had done wrong. Sometime in Season 4, maybe, is when outrage started to turn to anger.
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May 18, 2022 00:29
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The role of Skyler is a bit underwritten, especially in the early seasons, but Anna Gunn knocks it out of the park and the crew does eventually step it up in writing her character. She is so drat good in seasons 4 and 5.
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May 19, 2022 04:05
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Zlodo posted:I think it's both to intimidate them and to get them fully implicated in criminal activities so calling the cops isn't really an option for them anymore. Someone said they could pass Howard's death as a suicide but that seems difficult without a gun in his hand You could just put the gun in his hand afterwards, he'd have a reasonable motive to come to Jimmy's place and kill himself as some sort of revenge. I don't know enough about guns to know if you can tell a shot was fired through a silencer, though, that seems like a red flag.
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May 24, 2022 13:03
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precision posted:i was on board with the whole hilarious and insane plan until this episode and now i'm like "yeah he's got a point, jesus guys" and now he dead ): I do like that Howard got the chance to really tell them off, and also that he died quickly. Howard's about as good of a guy it's possible to be while still being a lawyer.
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Jun 5, 2022 06:23
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