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Ein cooler Typ posted:this is my favorite show currently airing I love it I hope we get a very slow montage of Mike reading the script and narrating what he's doing.
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Aug 5, 2018 11:48
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Thankfully it's on Netflix here. It's actually one of the reasons I have Netflix, to be honest.
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Aug 11, 2018 19:20
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Entropic posted:It's become almost comical how little the Jimmy plotline and the Cartel plotline have to do with each other. My guess is that they're gonna start getting closer and closer the moment Jimmy leans more and more on criminal activities for his livelihood.
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Aug 23, 2018 07:51
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Kim rewriting the letter is a bizarre interpretation of that scene, unless I missed something? Especially because I cannot see Kim not acknowledging Jimmy's career past the mail room and not trying to give him some peace if she did something like that. The letter *felt* like Chuck, in that it was EXTREMELY patronizing and also probably hadn't been edited in years and years. I don't doubt he was being sincere, but I think that's also part of the problem? While Chuck was right in identifying Jimmy's dark side, his behavior has always been feeding it. Granted, Jimmy/Saul is responsible for his own choices, but I don't buy the whole "Chuck was right all along" angle of some people in this thread. It's hard to tell where Jimmy's life could have ended if Chuck was more supportive and tried to find another way to steer him away from his cons and illegal activities. The time where Chuck should have noticed that his method wasn't working was long past, at which point he should have either hard  ed or tried something else. But Chuck couldn't bear to think he could be wrong about something and benefited from his unhealthy relationship with Jimmy for years and years.This show has some really well-written characters.
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Aug 24, 2018 09:17
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Regarding Gus, I think it's important to note that the world is full of criminals who amass insane amounts of wealth but can't enjoy them because of the high-profile they've built through criminality. I remember reading of 'ndrangheta bosses that were disgustingly rich and ended up living in *tunnels*. Expecting these people to act like rational actors is a pretty huge mistake. And in Gus' case, I think it's pretty obvious that he's lost a lot of his personal ambitions and enjoyment of life once Max died. Not really surprising he doesn't care all that much about enjoying his wealth.
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Aug 26, 2018 05:56
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SeANMcBAY posted:That was a good episode. Pretty tense all around. Curious where they’re going with throwing in a scene that takes place during Breaking Bad seemingly out of nowhere. It's a thematic bookend. The episode starts with the unceremonious end of Saul Goodman's career and ends with Jimmy McGill first starts conceiving this new career in the first place. Being reminded of how it ended also makes some scenes, like the one where Jimmy decides to go to therapy, much more painful, because you can see how close yet again Jimmy was to getting a more adjusted, better life.
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Sep 4, 2018 09:42
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I didn't think about the fact that Howard not dumping things on Jimmy was probably the result of his chat with Kim, but that's actually a really good observation and a really good touch on part of the writers. It was really heartbreaking to see Howard in those conditions.
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Sep 4, 2018 11:05
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crazysim posted:Maybe he rolled the POS system's clock back. Imagine the people who complain about Mike scenes if that scene from Saul was long enough to show him fiddling with the receipt machine.
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Sep 8, 2018 17:20
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Milo and POTUS posted:Is this really from dexter? I wish I could tell you otherwise. I really wish.
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Sep 10, 2018 21:11
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I know most people credit Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul's success to Vince Gilligan, but there's also a full writing room, and he's co-showrunner with Peter Gould on BCS. This is not really related to Kai or German prostitutes, just something that I thought was worth keeping in mind, especially considering how much these shows appear to benefit from ignoring the auteur structure.
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Sep 11, 2018 20:28
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Gus impotently waving his dick at a dying Hector by monologuing was a scene I really enjoyed personally. I get why people are complaining, but it didn't bother me at all. I mean, in Breaking Bad, Gus literally turned into Terminator, anyway, so I don't think this is tonally inconsistent or too unsubtle.
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Sep 15, 2018 07:19
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boop the snoot posted:I think Jonathan Banks is too old for this poo poo. CGI Jonathan Banks isn't, and we both know having a CGI double is an old PI trick.
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Oct 4, 2018 13:22
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That's a great write-up, though I do feel it ignores that Jimmy *did* get an unexpected chance and decided, already, in season 2, entirely on its own, that he didn't want to be part of that world either. So, as much as Jimmy sees himself in that girl, he's also refusing to acknowledge the dark parts of himself that Chuck, for all his snobbishness, actually saw. Of course, at that point the question is whether Jimmy was preordained to be that kind of person or if his upbringing and circumstances made them loom larger over him, and as always in these cases the answer is "a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B".
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Oct 9, 2018 11:20
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Alan Smithee posted:the film student goons and howard hamlin was the crossover i didnt know was necessary We need a spin-off investigating why the film students weren't helping Saul during Breaking Bad.
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Oct 9, 2018 11:44
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Considering how things were presented in the last episode, I can't see anything "happening" to Kim other than, you know, her just deciding to call it quits with Jimmy because there's no Jimmy left in him.
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Oct 22, 2018 23:16
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I feel like Better Call Saul earned enough goodwill from me that I'm willing to give this a shot, even though it does feel weird to go back to Jesse, of all things, with a movie.
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Nov 7, 2018 21:40
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All lines are ad-libbed by Peter Gould, Vince Gilligan and the other scriptwriters before they write the scripts.
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Nov 16, 2018 17:01
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I mean, Jimmy is bad in a way that is a lot more common IRL IMO and has a lot of charm to himself that Walter White never had (Walter becomes threatening and therefore commanding and to some people *cool* when he's "Heisenberg"* but he's never charming, dude's just got bad social intelligence and social skills). So, no, it isn't common to dislike Jimmy more than Walter, but I can also get why one could, specifically because his flaws are much more mundane while Walter White's tragedy feels almost Shakespearian in proportions. You can sort of see a lot of Jimmy in some of your colleagues who are *probably* not gonna get into contact with career criminals or drug cartels but do have the same sleaziness about them. I will add that sexual sleaziness is something that has been used as a way to remark on when Jimmy's "falling to the dark side" in the series a few times, so if you're particularly sensitive to it due to past experiences (and I'm really sorry if you've been on the receiving side of stuff like that  ), it's much, much harder to fall for his charm. I'm the kind of person who wants to see terrible people in fiction atone for their sins and redeem themselves in spite of it all, and I still go back to thinking about how he slept with a woman pretending to be Kevin Costner, and how hosed up that is. Yes, it was a reference to something he said in Breaking Bad, but back then Saul Goodman was more of a caricature and you couldn't ever trust whether what he was saying was real or just a story he came up on the spot to sell to his clients.On the other hand, as people have mentioned before, Jimmy's fall isn't just due to a big decision and the simplicity of following it through til the end (Walter White deciding that no, he doesn't want the handout from his former friends and going full-blown meth cook, which eventually escalates to being a drug kingpin and leads to all of the decisions he makes to protect this position**) but due to a series of starts and stops he had while trying to become a better person. So many times he was *close* but either due to internal failings or external pressures, failed to meet his goals. Until he finally abandoned them. But it took a while for him to let go of his objective to become a better person, and it's hard not to sympathize with him when you see how messed up his familial relationships are. That's why, I think, you see a lot more "gently caress Chuck". Chuck doesn't deserve as much hate as he gets, but he *is* one of the external pressures on Jimmy that leads to his moral fall, and that is why fans of Jimmy really, really can't stand him. They see him as responsible and they aren't... completely wrong. But they are *partly* wrong, as Jimmy's biggest enemy, throughout the series, has always been himself. That's my take on it, anyway. * A lot of the "badass" moments from Walter White are actually just moments where he's trying to hide his inadequacy and impotency but fans didn't exactly catch that ** I'm oversimplifying for the sake of the post, I know that the relationship he had with Jesse also was very important to his development as a character, etc. etc.
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Nov 10, 2019 11:25
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I think I've made roughly this post before, but Chuck was absolutely right about Jimmy self-sabotaging, but he also had a black and white view conception of reality that stopped him from being able to see the efforts Jimmy was making *and* constantly pushed his buttons in a way that ultimately just sped Jimmy's transition into Saul. It's absolutely Jimmy's fault that he couldn't just... settle into his cushy job at a big firm because he *had* to do things his way, but it's absolutely Chuck's fault that he couldn't just handle things with Jimmy like an adult when he didn't want him hired at HHM, and the loss of trust that occurred when Jimmy finally discovered it. It was just a very, very dysfunctional relationship, which ultimately doesn't excuse Jimmy's personal failings but certainly compounded them.
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Nov 10, 2019 21:56
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Pepe Silvia Browne posted:It's very funny to see "I am the one who knocks" become the definitive Badass Walt line when that's arguably him at his most pathetic. It's a really cool line, to be fair. But yeah, that conversation with Skyler was so obviously Walt trying to re-establish his perceived masculine dominance and they laid it on *real* thick and... it still became a meme. Oh well, happens all the time, no biggie. I will say, however, that Walt managing to pull off things by the skin of his teeth when his enemies, who are way more experienced than him in the drug and crime business, constantly end up dead on his path *is* kind of badass. Like, dude's an absolute scumbag motivated by pride, but he did pretty well all things considered and could have gotten away with things if he hadn't gotten complacent and high off his own greatness.
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Nov 11, 2019 15:57
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Agent Escalus posted:I think the change of mind Vince had over leaving Jesse's fate open-ended also means that none of the BCS exclusive cast are going to have any loose ends. Seems like a bit of a leap to me. I always got the impression that El Camino was more of an extended coda to Breaking Bad because Jesse didn't get a lot of screen time during the last season, even though the character was essentially the co-protagonist of the series by season 2.
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Nov 12, 2019 12:09
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Rupert Buttermilk posted:Having a huge meth lab underneath a laundromat is the kind of thing that is really like 'how the hell would they have done that?!' Gonna be honest, that's never been a question, even on the back of my mind, that I pondered while watching Breaking Bad. Gus is such an exaggerated, larger than life character, that it just felt to me like of course everything surrounding his operation had to be larger than life too. Down to his death scene, Gus is just... a little *more* than a realistic person. Stylized in some way. I do think the plot with the whole lab building was pretty good, but I have to admit I'm surprised that there hasn't been a payoff to the double-track the show's been running on so far. Like Mike and Jimmy live in separate worlds that sometimes intertwine and it feels like we're supposed to eventually see them collide fully, like the story is teasing that and our knowledge of Breaking Bad is too, but the tracks just feel more and more separate each season. I'm still hopeful, but there was a lot of frustration around that and the Mike story in this thread, IIRC.
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Nov 16, 2019 15:33
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massive spider posted:What I'm curious about is that in BB Saul knows about Gus (albeit as a guy known by a guy) so that must mean Mikes brought him in on a Gus job at least once. He also didn't know that Mike was actually working for Gus all along, so presumably at some point Saul becomes convinced that Mike's working for him too. Will be interesting to see how it all unfolds.
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Nov 20, 2019 19:16
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This is literally the first time I hear of people being confused by the pilot.
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Feb 15, 2020 12:48
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:why did saul throw the bowling balls onto Howard's car? Why specifically bowling balls, was there symbolism there or was this just a big "gently caress you howard" thing There's an entire scene where he chooses the right item to throw at Howard's car based on weight and how easy it is to throw at the start of the episode. If there's any more symbolism, it's lost on me, but in the fiction of the show, he chose that item because it was the best for the job out of all of the ones he tried.
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Mar 19, 2020 10:02
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Ego-bot posted:It seems like Howard is only offering the job to Jimmy to assuage his guilty conscience over what happened to Chuck and Jimmy resents being used like this. You can argue that, or argue that Howard has done a lot of soul-searching and that, while some it had extremely *tacky* result (a Namaste license plate? seriously?), he genuinely seems to want to make amends and handle HHM differently than before. And it's worth reminding that a lot of Howard's guilt over Chuck's death was also due to Jimmy never coming clean about what *he* did to make Chuck feel lovely (not that either of them bear the responsibility for the action of another person, it's kind of obvious that Chuck, while obviously depressed, *also* did it as a power move), so if we have to be honest, the reaction from Jimmy isn't totally justified. But also, this is Jimmy we're talking about, and him having a childish reaction at a point in time where he sees the possibility of a legitimate career resurfacing and is interrogated over his name change by Howard seems about right. Peanut Butler posted:I didn't read much symbolism into it at first but now that I think on it- for decades (p much until video games), bowling was the social center of working-class communites. My parents played in work leagues from the late 70s until ~10 years ago when they increasingly didn't wanna risk injury from repeated and regular play- This is a good point. As a non-American, the connection between the working class and bowling is something that totally flew over my head.
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Mar 19, 2020 15:40
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"This person is forced to transition AS A PUNISHMENT" is a horrible idea for a story and I'm glad it didn't happen.
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Mar 26, 2020 18:28
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I mean, this show hasn't *really* been operating that way for quite a while. There are too many narrative choices that wouldn't make sense for people who aren't even aware that this is a Breaking Bad prequel, but we also live in an age where Breaking Bad is pretty easy to access on streaming and where the narrative links can be googled away, so I don't necessarily think they made a bad choice in embracing that. I mean, a lot of the stuff they set out to do at the start with Better Call Saul ended up panning out differently, like, wasn't there talk of the show being more comedic than Breaking Bad and less serious? That *clearly* isn't how it turned out, eh.
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Mar 29, 2020 16:17
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Nail Rat posted:So the show basically took 4.5 seasons to finally become one show. Yeah and it loving rocked.
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Apr 7, 2020 19:40
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Nep-Nep posted:Nah Mike survives but Jimmy dies in the desert, the rest of the series including Saul in BB is Howard wearing an elaborate costume + makeup and using a voice changer, this explains the seeming disparities in their characters. Jimmy wouldn't accept the job... so I decided to accept it in his stead.
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Apr 12, 2020 20:55
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Wait, how is *that* character moment the time you choose to rag on Gus for being a terminator? Especially when the dude died in Breaking Bad while adjusting his tie again because he was basically supernaturally competent at that point???? While that moment in Better Call Saul serves to indicate that Gus isn't yet at the point where he can *actually* control things as well as he wants, and thus takes it out on one of his employees? I'm real confused.
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Apr 14, 2020 19:36
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precision posted:It's not that it's inscrutable, it's just completely ridiculous. Like Lalo's jumping, only not as good. What is even your argument at this point.
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Apr 14, 2020 20:06
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I mean, Vaas was the only fun thing about the narrative in Far Cry 3, and would probably fit with the other weird Salamanca characters. But I prefer Nacho, given he's an actual human being with depth.
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Apr 23, 2020 18:19
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To this day some believe you can still hear it echoing in the tunnels of Albuquerque... Mike's voice....
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Apr 24, 2020 20:21
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I don't buy Kim being around in BB given how we saw Saul acting with women in his first few appearances, to be honest, but at this point, I'd probably trust Gilligan and Gould to make it work reasonably well.
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Apr 28, 2020 07:35
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Data Graham posted:I do find it pretty funny how 5+ seasons of BCS has been so obsessively crafted around the singular goal of making the bag-on-head "Who sent you, was it Lalo? Or Ignacio?" scene make sense. To the exclusion of basically every other thing about Saul Goodman I don't think so? In fact, Lalo didn't become a thing until recently and Gilligan has said in interviews that he didn't want to pursue that specific plot thread until Gould pushed for it. I think other people have sufficiently conveyed how the aspects of Jimmy that have been explored throughout the seasons will ultimately lead to Saul. I don't think it's gonna fit perfectly neatly, but I do think you can see how someone goes from this person to the person in Breaking Bad. And I guess I can sort of see Jimmy trying to hide his continued relationship Kim by acting like a sleazeball, although it seems a tiny bit of a stretch to me. Either way, I trust this writing team to do the best for the show, even if it doesn't necessarily does the best job bridging the gap, and all in all, the first thing takes precedence over the latter.
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Apr 28, 2020 15:09
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I agree that I never was curious about how the superlab was built but they somehow managed to wring out a great story out of that. The disconnect of the two plots has been *greatly* reduced now too, and has never been a huge problem for me, so I personally disagree. Season 1 was good but I feel like the show really found its footing once it could allow itself to be a more complex narrative about its characters.
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Apr 30, 2020 20:01
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Mercury Hat posted:I can't describe the feeling of only knowing about Walt's "I am the one who knocks" speech from cultural osmosis and people putting it on T-shirts like it's some cool badass thing and then seeing it in the context of the show where it's Walt basically having a tantrum at his wife. I totally get it, but look, certain sentences and phrases are just that good that they're almost better without context. Like the whole "I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me" quote that actually is literally about a guy burning from the videogame Fallout: New Vegas, or how a Redditor in AITA heard her boyfriend utter the stupendous phrase "That is what happens when you trap a phoenix in a cage: it self-immolates" to defend his OJ Simpson truther beliefs. But yes, I do wonder why people saw that specific scene as badass, lol.
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May 28, 2020 20:09
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lurker2006 posted:I'm gonna need you to unpack this one. Well, this is off-topic, but the short version is lady asks Reddit if she's the rear end in a top hat for being mad that her boyfriend didn't dedicate the book she helped proofread and edit to her but to OJ Simpson, who he believes wasn't actually responsible for the murder of his ex-wife. Redditors pushed to know who he thought actually did it and it turned out something like "Hillary Clinton working for the Manson Family and convincing the LAPD to frame OJ Simpson". When asked if he also thought that OJ Simpson didn't commit the robbery, he answered with that amazing phrase. Anyway, I really should rewatch Breaking Bad one of these days, it's an amazing show and Walt is a fantastically realistic dickhead in the way he functions psychologically (if not in his magical chemistry competency and luck).
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May 29, 2020 06:31
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Yeah, you're right that I over-simplified and Walt isn't just lucky, I guess I got too invested into reinforcing the case that he's bad at being a criminal (which he kinda is, due to his own personal flaws). I don't know that I'd change much about the ending if any, Walt basically gains a glimmer of self-awareness and based on that tries to unfuck things but can only do so much, and then dies in pain. I thought it was very well executed and I just love the final shot with El Paso playing.
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May 29, 2020 07:52
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