***Official "Space Blanket" for Better Call Saul*** (1 Viewer)

[Raider Nation]

"O 64, as in 'Oh, to be 64 again' ...."

 

[Officer Pete Malloy]

What did he say? "Kitty cat notebooks for everybody"

 

[cstu]

What did he say? "Kitty cat notebooks for everybody"

 

[cstu]

Not sure where the rest of the series goes after this, but these 10 episodes are as good as any I've seen.

 

[cstu]

FTR, Chuck was right about Jimmy

No.

He got a job in the mailroom to impress his brother, he went to law school to impress his brother, he tried to be good to impress his brother. When he realized that his brother doesn't respect him, he decides that he is done trying to impress people and prove that he is good and when he went to Chicago he realized that he had more fun being a con man anyways. He turned into Saul not because of a stupid ring or Marco, he turned into Saul because he realized he will never be good in Chucks eyes and he decided that he was done trying to impress him.

Jimmy could have been good if he had his brother's respect, but without it there was nothing stopping him from a criminal life.

Think of it in terms of a scale...if he's 45% good and 55% bad then without the 20% good from his brother he's going to break bad.

 

[cstu]

I'm reading people online calling this lazy writing...seriously, stick to The Walking Dead if you think that.

 

[Fariq]

I'm reading people online calling this lazy writing...seriously, stick to The Walking Dead if you think that.

I bet they also wrote dopey things like Bob Odenkirk doesn't carry the show.

 

[Raider Nation]

I'm reading people online calling this lazy writing...seriously, stick to The Walking Dead if you think that.

I bet they also wrote dopey things like Bob Odenkirk doesn't carry the show.

Try this next time. It's more subtle.

 

[kupcho1]

Sorry for the delay, Tanner.

There's a moment early in "Marco" where Jimmy and Kim walk past the dented trash can in the HHM parking garage — a reminder of so many of Jimmy's early frustrations with his brother's law firm — and he assures her that he's at peace with what he learned about Chuck. It seems, just then, that the "Better Call Saul" creative team — most of them (like co-creator Peter Gould, who wrote and directed the finale) veterans of "Breaking Bad," a show largely defined by the patient way it moved through its arcs — will be playing a particularly long game in getting us from Jimmy McGill to Saul Goodman. Chuck's betrayal was a brutal blow, but maybe it wouldn't be the one that knocked Jimmy over the edge.In the very next scene, though, Jimmy has a meltdown while calling out another bingo game at the senior center. As he flees Albuquerque for the friendly confines of Cicero and lets his old pal Marco talk him into running one last scam, and then another, and another... and another, it becomes clear that Saul Goodman is coming — even if he won't be called that at first — and Gould and company are just making sure they don't skip over any steps in that transformation, just as they didn't for that chemistry teacher who wound up employing Saul.

Though we had seen glimpses of Slippin' Jimmy in action, an episode largely comprised of his greatest hits — with Mike, Kim, Chuck and Howard left on the sidelines back in Albuquerque — felt like exactly what we needed before Jimmy's big declaration to Mike to end the season. The season to this point had done such a thorough and convincing job of presenting Jimmy as a good guy who had managed to rise above his worst impulses — a recovering addict who had managed to resist temptation far more often than even he might have expected — that we didn't need to just hear about the thrills of the Slippin' Jimmy days. We needed to see it for ourselves.

And boy, did we see it.

The Cicero scenes get to play things both slow and fast, first giving us the entirety of the hustle with the Kennedy half-dollar, then giving us the rest of the week's worth of scams as a giddy, kaleidoscopic montage, scored with jazz sounding straight out of the Rat Pack era, so that we can appreciate how much fun Jimmy and Marco are having, and also how good they are at this. Jimmy has found the law much more satisfying than Marco finds standpipe work, but this is the quite obviously the true calling for both of them.

After a decade of being a good guy, Jimmy needed more than just Chuck's betrayal and harsh words to knock him off the wagon. He had to go on an epic bender back among his old haunts, to really soak in that life, so that even when the dream scenario of a large Santa Fe firm offering him a partnership track job presents itself, he won't take it. Without the trip to Cicero, I think Jimmy takes that job because he feels he's earned it, and to prove Chuck wrong for so smugly dismissing him. With it, and with Marco's ring on his pinky, giving in to all his most selfish criminal impulses becomes the easier way to go.

That's the ring Saul will wear throughout "Breaking Bad," and you can perhaps look at it like the Precious from "The Lord of the Rings," corrupting Jimmy and possessing him with the spirit of Marco. (As he peels out of the courthouse parking lot, he starts humming — just as Marco did while waiting for Jimmy to arrive in the alley for their final scam — the classic opening riff of Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water," before the song itself comes on the soundtrack.) Or you can simply look at it as a reminder of who Jimmy/Saul wants to be, and how much he has to resist the temptation to do the right thing when it could cost him money. Ex-smokers are sometimes counseled to wear rubber bands around their wrists and snap them whenever they're tempted to smoke; this is like an addict wearing one to remind them why they'd be stupid to quit.

There's still a very long road between here and where Saul and Mike are when we meet them in "Breaking Bad," and I look forward to watching this show take us along all those steps (like the name change, whenever that comes), especially if it's done with all the craft and emotion that was so abundant throughout this debut season. But it feels like "Better Call Saul" is going to have to be a fundamentally different show in its second season. Not only does Jimmy no longer have aspirations of respectability, which could make it harder to work in the likes of Howard and Kim (even as it should lead to greater prominence for Nacho, who wound up appearing in only four of this season's episodes), but the emotional arc of the series would seem to be very different. Season 1 was about a man realizing that the universe didn't want him to be good; once he makes the decision to break bad, it either becomes a matter of degree going forward (much like with Mr. White, only with a less horrifying endpoint), or some other inner conflict has to take its place.

Whatever it is, I look forward to it. I came into this series with some trepidation — wondering if we needed a "Breaking Bad" spin-off at all, and whether Saul was a compelling enough character to carry one — but these 10 episodes swiftly convinced me that a very different, but entertaining and powerful in its own right, show could exist in this universe, and that Saul was far more complicated and interesting than he'd ever had the chance to show as Walter White's consiglieri. This was a fabulous debut season, in many ways better — or at least more consistent — than the first year of "Breaking Bad," because the creative team has worked together for so long and weren't interrupted by a guild strike this time. Of course, "Breaking Bad" didn't start turning into an all-time classic until its second and third seasons, and "Saul" has a long way before it achieves those heights. But this first year was far better than I think even the most optimistic Saul fanboy had a right to expect. To borrow the kind of pop culture analogy the show's hero loves to make, this could have been "AfterM*A*S*H," when for the moment it feels like it could be on its way to being "Frasier."

Some other thoughts:

* I'll be talking to Peter Gould tomorrow to discuss the season (look for that in the early-mid afternoon), but I did already email him one question about the finale: was there a specific film or filmmaker he used as a model for the montage of Jimmy and Marco's cons? Though the look and sound of them was very early '60s, he said the actual model was the '30s montages of Slavko Vorkapich.

* Gould and Vince Gilligan also noted that while many of this season's title sequences were randomly assigned to their episodes, the last two were deliberately chosen to reflect the tone of those episodes. Last week as a Saul Goodman matchbook in a urinal; tonight, it was a Saul coffee mug falling to the floor, shattering, and spilling its contents everywhere. That about sums up what our hero has gone through emotionally over the last couple of weeks, even though it's really Jimmy McGill who shatters into many pieces; Saul Goodman is how he reassembles himself.

* The mark runs off with the wallet when it seems like Marco is dead, which brings us back to our discussion about the potential pitfalls of that scam. I leave it to someone who understands grifting more than I do to defend this particular hustle, but it just seems like more trouble than it's worth to risk a thousand bucks in the hope of making a few additional hundred.

* Mike's explanation for why he didn't just walk off with the money he stole from the Kettlemans speaks not only to the difference between the two men going forward, but to the reason why Jimmy, and later other people, will want to employ Mike Ehrmantraut. He, like so many of TV's most memorable criminals, has a code.

* AMC tends to allow its showrunners one F-bomb per season, which gets bleeped on air but often restored on DVD and other home video formats. Here, it's Jimmy apologizing to Howard for having called him a "pigf--ker."

* When I have time to revisit this season, I really want to focus on all the Howard scenes, knowing what we do now that he's basically a nice guy who was reluctantly doing Chuck's dirty work. The moment where Howard realizes how much Jimmy has done for Chuck over the last year was really nicely played by Patrick Fabian, and ditto on Odenkirk reacting to Howard's mention of the "Charlie Hustle" nickname. Once upon a time, he probably assumed this was a condescending reference to his former life, and while that may have been a part of it, it's clear now that the major idea was sincere praise of Jimmy's tenacity. As we see at several points in this episode, including Chuck coaching Ernesto (whom Jimmy knows well enough to know he prefers to be called Ernie) through the grocery list, Howard is a nice guy who sometimes comes across as a jerk, while Chuck is a jerk who thinks he's a nice guy.

* We learn that Jimmy has been in Albquerque for 10 years, which raises the question of whether Bob Odenkirk is more believable playing 16 years younger than when he first appeared on "Breaking Bad," or pretending to be Kevin Costner for an impressionable waitress.

* "Breaking Bad" in-joke: one of the many B-words Jimmy tries out for the bingo crowd is Belize.

If you need someone to tell you that he modeled the montage on Vorkapich, then maybe critical review just isn't for you.

 

[chet]

Costner

 

[chet]

Costner

BB S03E11 Abiquiu

 

[Capella]

That was one of the better first seasons of tv that I've seen. Up there with Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Behind the Sopranos IMO

 

[Capella]

Costner

BB S03E11 Abiquiu

God. Geniuses.

 

[Leeroy Jenkins]

Sep thought this was possibly better than season 1 of breaking bad?

 

[Papa Georgio]

Loved the finale. The whole season had a very nice balance of BB references and in a subtle enough way that they were relying on all that to "carry" the show. I also think someone could watch this without having seen BB and enjoy it.

I loved seeing the moments that leads to him embracing being Slippin' Jimmy. He fought so hard for his brother to not see him in that way but he realized nothing he ever did would change that.

 

[comfortably numb]

Costner

BB S03E11 Abiquiu

God. Geniuses.

I just felt like this episode had many nuggets like this but didn't remember them.

That is awesome.

What was the last line he said at the end of the montage?

I can't recall it right now but could have sworn that was something he said to Jesse/Walt

 

[BustedKnuckles]

Loved the finale. The whole season had a very nice balance of BB references and in a subtle enough way that they were relying on all that to "carry" the show. I also think someone could watch this without having seen BB and enjoy it.

I loved seeing the moments that leads to him embracing being Slippin' Jimmy. He fought so hard for his brother to not see him in that way but he realized nothing he ever did would change that.

yup....the finale scene talking to Mike about never giving money away and driving off smiling sets up next season perfectly....its gonna be epic watching him embrace his true self in the lawyer capacity

 

[Tiger Fan]

Costner

BB S03E11 Abiquiu

God. Geniuses.

Can't believe Sep missed this

 

[Jaysus]

Saul Costner

 

[Steed]

I love the series and loved the season, but was a little underwhelmed by the finale.

I suppose it's a lot easier to manufacture finale fireworks in a show like BB.

Probably true.FTR, Chuck was right about Jimmy

Ftr, Marco was right about chuck

 

[kentric]

I loved how they gave us the background of Jimmy's arrest at the Bingo Breakdown. Also the touch at the funeral where Jimmy shows the other guy outside his ring and the guy talks about it being worth some money to hock it. All those little things like bumming a cigarette add to the flavor of the time and the environment that Jimmy lived in. I also thought that the scam montage was gold.

Was a very good episode but as I'm not a subtle person, I thought they could have worked his turnover to Saul a little better. Jimmy had gone through the crisis brought on by his brother's betrayal and had already resigned himself to going back to Albuquerque. The job waiting for him was above and beyond what he envisioned himself having going back to Alb. I felt like something more cataclysmic was necessary for the ending.

 

[dhockster]

I have seen random episodes of BB, but really never saw any that really involved Saul.

I had watched the last several episodes of BCS and caught up on the whole season yesterday with the marathon. Really love this show, and while I know I am missing references to BB, this show definitely stands on its own.

I loved Mike's little monologue in "Pimento" about knowing good criminals and bad cops. We can do bad things and still be a good person, or we can do good things and still be a bad person, individual things we do don't necessarily define us.

 

[Chase Stuart]

So all but one episode ended in "o", and the one that didn't was supposed to be titled "Jello" but then they changed it? Seems kind of odd too me. I didn't think they'd keep up the -o shtick the whole season, but now that they did, the Alpine Shepherd Boy episode sticks out.

 

[Jaysus]

I loved how they gave us the background of Jimmy's arrest at the Bingo Breakdown. Also the touch at the funeral where Jimmy shows the other guy outside his ring and the guy talks about it being worth some money to hock it.

The ring: link

 

[Bob Magaw]

I loved how they gave us the background of Jimmy's arrest at the Bingo Breakdown. Also the touch at the funeral where Jimmy shows the other guy outside his ring and the guy talks about it being worth some money to hock it. All those little things like bumming a cigarette add to the flavor of the time and the environment that Jimmy lived in. I also thought that the scam montage was gold.

Was a very good episode but as I'm not a subtle person, I thought they could have worked his turnover to Saul a little better. Jimmy had gone through the crisis brought on by his brother's betrayal and had already resigned himself to going back to Albuquerque. The job waiting for him was above and beyond what he envisioned himself having going back to Alb. I felt like something more cataclysmic was necessary for the ending.

Can you keep a secret? Because I really shouldn't be telling you this.

The montage was one of the best I've ever seen, a tour-de-force.

 

[leave a whisper]

if Chuck would have just opened the door when Jimmy was outside talking to Ernie ......... mabye Jimmy would have listened if Chuck would have given a heartfelt apology (both men had a week to reflect)

 

[Zow]

It's absolutely amazing how well written this show is. The subtlety in the references to BB is absolutely flawless and, in contrast to BB, where BB was so great with the "holy #### what just happened"" moments, Saul is brilliant at developing a story without anything really crazy happening (heck, even Marco's death wasn't much of a shocker). Rivals Mad Men in that aspect.

So incredibly difficult to compare season one of Breaking Bad to season one of Saul. BB reminds me of a Lamborghini in that it moved fast and blew your face back whereas Saul is the ultra-sleek Bentley Continental that just cruises so smoothly and wows you at every little detail.

 

[Zow]

if Chuck would have just opened the door when Jimmy was outside talking to Ernie ......... mabye Jimmy would have listened if Chuck would have given a heartfelt apology (both men had a week to reflect)

That's exactly how I took this scene.

 

[cstu]

Loved the finale. The whole season had a very nice balance of BB references and in a subtle enough way that they were relying on all that to "carry" the show. I also think someone could watch this without having seen BB and enjoy it.

I loved seeing the moments that leads to him embracing being Slippin' Jimmy. He fought so hard for his brother to not see him in that way but he realized nothing he ever did would change that.

At first I was confused as the decision to leave the court, but it clicked that he suddenly realized that if he took the job and did well he would still never earn his brother's respect. Going to Chicago reminded him that he loved (and was great at) the criminal life and that being a honest lawyer isn't what he enjoyed.

 

[Ned Ryerson]

If I had one quibble, it was the very last scene. I understood Jimmy's enjoyment of his time in Cicero. That said he came home to live the legit life. He had a golden opportunity presented to him allowing him to play with the big boys, which he had been working towards for years. He could succeed on this level to prove his worth to Chuck, or as a big middle finger to Chuck showing that he could swim in the same pond with the big boys without his help. He got dressed up in his best suit and everything, and then, without even taking the meeting, he just walks away to be Saul?

It just rang a bit false to me. It kind of reminded me when Anakin killed the young Paduan in SW III, almost completely out of the blue. Everyone knows what the destination is, so we may have to take some shortcuts to get to where we want to go.

I really loved the first season, but I feel as if they had a few more episodes, maybe they could have shown him "breaking bad", as it were, a bit more convincingly.

 

[Officer Pete Malloy]

Did you guys catch this? SO BRILLIANT

 

[Gr00vus]

"If you build it, I will come cum."



Also: Belize.

 

[Wingnut]

Did you guys catch this? SO BRILLIANT

Even crazier is Jimmy is parked next to a white caddy! #LWYRUP

 

[comfortably numb]

If I had one quibble, it was the very last scene. I understood Jimmy's enjoyment of his time in Cicero. That said he came home to live the legit life. He had a golden opportunity presented to him allowing him to play with the big boys, which he had been working towards for years. He could succeed on this level to prove his worth to Chuck, or as a big middle finger to Chuck showing that he could swim in the same pond with the big boys without his help. He got dressed up in his best suit and everything, and then, without even taking the meeting, he just walks away to be Saul?

It just rang a bit false to me. It kind of reminded me when Anakin killed the young Paduan in SW III, almost completely out of the blue. Everyone knows what the destination is, so we may have to take some shortcuts to get to where we want to go.

I really loved the first season, but I feel as if they had a few more episodes, maybe they could have shown him "breaking bad", as it were, a bit more convincingly.

I think that is why he suddenly backed out.

It Doned on him that he would never succeed on any level to prove his worth to chuck.

 

[snogger]

Costner

BB S03E11 Abiquiu

God. Geniuses.

 

[snogger]

If I had one quibble, it was the very last scene. I understood Jimmy's enjoyment of his time in Cicero. That said he came home to live the legit life. He had a golden opportunity presented to him allowing him to play with the big boys, which he had been working towards for years. He could succeed on this level to prove his worth to Chuck, or as a big middle finger to Chuck showing that he could swim in the same pond with the big boys without his help. He got dressed up in his best suit and everything, and then, without even taking the meeting, he just walks away to be Saul?

It just rang a bit false to me. It kind of reminded me when Anakin killed the young Paduan in SW III, almost completely out of the blue. Everyone knows what the destination is, so we may have to take some shortcuts to get to where we want to go.

I really loved the first season, but I feel as if they had a few more episodes, maybe they could have shown him "breaking bad", as it were, a bit more convincingly.

I think that is why he suddenly backed out.

It Doned on him that he would never succeed on any level to prove his worth to chuck.

 

[Officer Pete Malloy]

If I had one quibble, it was the very last scene. I understood Jimmy's enjoyment of his time in Cicero. That said he came home to live the legit life. He had a golden opportunity presented to him allowing him to play with the big boys, which he had been working towards for years. He could succeed on this level to prove his worth to Chuck, or as a big middle finger to Chuck showing that he could swim in the same pond with the big boys without his help. He got dressed up in his best suit and everything, and then, without even taking the meeting, he just walks away to be Saul?

It just rang a bit false to me. It kind of reminded me when Anakin killed the young Paduan in SW III, almost completely out of the blue. Everyone knows what the destination is, so we may have to take some shortcuts to get to where we want to go.

I really loved the first season, but I feel as if they had a few more episodes, maybe they could have shown him "breaking bad", as it were, a bit more convincingly.

I think that is why he suddenly backed out.

It Doned on him that he would never succeed on any level to prove his worth to chuck.

That was absolutely a big part of it.

 

[kentric]

I loved how they gave us the background of Jimmy's arrest at the Bingo Breakdown. Also the touch at the funeral where Jimmy shows the other guy outside his ring and the guy talks about it being worth some money to hock it. All those little things like bumming a cigarette add to the flavor of the time and the environment that Jimmy lived in. I also thought that the scam montage was gold.

Was a very good episode but as I'm not a subtle person, I thought they could have worked his turnover to Saul a little better. Jimmy had gone through the crisis brought on by his brother's betrayal and had already resigned himself to going back to Albuquerque. The job waiting for him was above and beyond what he envisioned himself having going back to Alb. I felt like something more cataclysmic was necessary for the ending.

Can you keep a secret? Because I really shouldn't be telling you this.

The montage was one of the best I've ever seen, a tour-de-force.

Your secret is safe with me.

 

[Bob Magaw]

I loved how they gave us the background of Jimmy's arrest at the Bingo Breakdown. Also the touch at the funeral where Jimmy shows the other guy outside his ring and the guy talks about it being worth some money to hock it. All those little things like bumming a cigarette add to the flavor of the time and the environment that Jimmy lived in. I also thought that the scam montage was gold.

Was a very good episode but as I'm not a subtle person, I thought they could have worked his turnover to Saul a little better. Jimmy had gone through the crisis brought on by his brother's betrayal and had already resigned himself to going back to Albuquerque. The job waiting for him was above and beyond what he envisioned himself having going back to Alb. I felt like something more cataclysmic was necessary for the ending.

Can you keep a secret? Because I really shouldn't be telling you this.

The montage was one of the best I've ever seen, a tour-de-force.

Your secret is safe with me.

I know how to get some easy money, all we have to do is put up some "tarrif fees" to get access to a fortune that the Nigerian royal family can't right now, because they are in exile... They looted $400 million, conservatively estimated.

 

[Ned Ryerson]

If I had one quibble, it was the very last scene. I understood Jimmy's enjoyment of his time in Cicero. That said he came home to live the legit life. He had a golden opportunity presented to him allowing him to play with the big boys, which he had been working towards for years. He could succeed on this level to prove his worth to Chuck, or as a big middle finger to Chuck showing that he could swim in the same pond with the big boys without his help. He got dressed up in his best suit and everything, and then, without even taking the meeting, he just walks away to be Saul?

It just rang a bit false to me. It kind of reminded me when Anakin killed the young Paduan in SW III, almost completely out of the blue. Everyone knows what the destination is, so we may have to take some shortcuts to get to where we want to go.

I really loved the first season, but I feel as if they had a few more episodes, maybe they could have shown him "breaking bad", as it were, a bit more convincingly.

I think that is why he suddenly backed out.

It Doned on him that he would never succeed on any level to prove his worth to chuck.

Ok, then who cares about Chuck? Take the job and pull in legit big bucks, which is what you were trying to do all along.

Is the argument that the ONLY reason he tried to walk the straight and narrow to prove himself to his brother, and once he realized that it was never going to happen, in a split second, he chose the path of the morally bankrupt man his brother always presumed he was?

 

[Officer Pete Malloy]

If I had one quibble, it was the very last scene. I understood Jimmy's enjoyment of his time in Cicero. That said he came home to live the legit life. He had a golden opportunity presented to him allowing him to play with the big boys, which he had been working towards for years. He could succeed on this level to prove his worth to Chuck, or as a big middle finger to Chuck showing that he could swim in the same pond with the big boys without his help. He got dressed up in his best suit and everything, and then, without even taking the meeting, he just walks away to be Saul?

It just rang a bit false to me. It kind of reminded me when Anakin killed the young Paduan in SW III, almost completely out of the blue. Everyone knows what the destination is, so we may have to take some shortcuts to get to where we want to go.

I really loved the first season, but I feel as if they had a few more episodes, maybe they could have shown him "breaking bad", as it were, a bit more convincingly.

I think that is why he suddenly backed out.

It Doned on him that he would never succeed on any level to prove his worth to chuck.

Ok, then who cares about Chuck? Take the job and pull in legit big bucks, which is what you were trying to do all along.

Is the argument that the ONLY reason he tried to walk the straight and narrow to prove himself to his brother, and once he realized that it was never going to happen, in a split second, he chose the path of the morally bankrupt man his brother always presumed he was?

Jimmy

 

[snogger]

If I had one quibble, it was the very last scene. I understood Jimmy's enjoyment of his time in Cicero. That said he came home to live the legit life. He had a golden opportunity presented to him allowing him to play with the big boys, which he had been working towards for years. He could succeed on this level to prove his worth to Chuck, or as a big middle finger to Chuck showing that he could swim in the same pond with the big boys without his help. He got dressed up in his best suit and everything, and then, without even taking the meeting, he just walks away to be Saul?

It just rang a bit false to me. It kind of reminded me when Anakin killed the young Paduan in SW III, almost completely out of the blue. Everyone knows what the destination is, so we may have to take some shortcuts to get to where we want to go.

I really loved the first season, but I feel as if they had a few more episodes, maybe they could have shown him "breaking bad", as it were, a bit more convincingly.

I think that is why he suddenly backed out.

It Doned on him that he would never succeed on any level to prove his worth to chuck.

Ok, then who cares about Chuck? Take the job and pull in legit big bucks, which is what you were trying to do all along.

Is the argument that the ONLY reason he tried to walk the straight and narrow to prove himself to his brother, and once he realized that it was never going to happen, in a split second, he chose the path of the morally bankrupt man his brother always presumed he was?

Jimmy

Once his brother bailed him out of a legal mess, he made a decision he didn't want to disappoint his brother any more.. It is the reason he choose to go work in the mail room, instead of stay running scams.

But once he realized that no matter what he did his brother would never see him as anything but a Jimmy, and the fact that if he hadn't been fighting to win his brothers approval he would already have $800k, he decided he would no longer do things based on his conscience or for his brothers approval..

 

[Gr00vus]

If I had one quibble, it was the very last scene. I understood Jimmy's enjoyment of his time in Cicero. That said he came home to live the legit life. He had a golden opportunity presented to him allowing him to play with the big boys, which he had been working towards for years. He could succeed on this level to prove his worth to Chuck, or as a big middle finger to Chuck showing that he could swim in the same pond with the big boys without his help. He got dressed up in his best suit and everything, and then, without even taking the meeting, he just walks away to be Saul?

It just rang a bit false to me. It kind of reminded me when Anakin killed the young Paduan in SW III, almost completely out of the blue. Everyone knows what the destination is, so we may have to take some shortcuts to get to where we want to go.

I really loved the first season, but I feel as if they had a few more episodes, maybe they could have shown him "breaking bad", as it were, a bit more convincingly.

I think that is why he suddenly backed out.

It Doned on him that he would never succeed on any level to prove his worth to chuck.

Ok, then who cares about Chuck? Take the job and pull in legit big bucks, which is what you were trying to do all along.

Is the argument that the ONLY reason he tried to walk the straight and narrow to prove himself to his brother, and once he realized that it was never going to happen, in a split second, he chose the path of the morally bankrupt man his brother always presumed he was?

I think for his brother and people like Kim he tried to be legit. But he's finally admitted to himself he's great at being a scammer, that's what he really enjoys, and it's possible he could make more money more easily as a sleazy lawyer/con artist. For the sake of storytelling it probably could have been a bit more convincing of a turn had they had an extra 15 minutes and an additional final straw scene, but I think they've earned this conclusion over the course of the season regardless.

 

[Ned Ryerson]

If I had one quibble, it was the very last scene. I understood Jimmy's enjoyment of his time in Cicero. That said he came home to live the legit life. He had a golden opportunity presented to him allowing him to play with the big boys, which he had been working towards for years. He could succeed on this level to prove his worth to Chuck, or as a big middle finger to Chuck showing that he could swim in the same pond with the big boys without his help. He got dressed up in his best suit and everything, and then, without even taking the meeting, he just walks away to be Saul?

It just rang a bit false to me. It kind of reminded me when Anakin killed the young Paduan in SW III, almost completely out of the blue. Everyone knows what the destination is, so we may have to take some shortcuts to get to where we want to go.

I really loved the first season, but I feel as if they had a few more episodes, maybe they could have shown him "breaking bad", as it were, a bit more convincingly.

I think that is why he suddenly backed out.

It Doned on him that he would never succeed on any level to prove his worth to chuck.

Ok, then who cares about Chuck? Take the job and pull in legit big bucks, which is what you were trying to do all along.

Is the argument that the ONLY reason he tried to walk the straight and narrow to prove himself to his brother, and once he realized that it was never going to happen, in a split second, he chose the path of the morally bankrupt man his brother always presumed he was?

Jimmy

Once his brother bailed him out of a legal mess, he made a decision he didn't want to disappoint his brother any more.. It is the reason he choose to go work in the mail room, instead of stay running scams.

But once he realized that no matter what he did his brother would never see him as anything but a Slipping Jimmy, and the fact that if he hadn't been fighting to win his brothers approval he would already have $800k, he decided he would no longer do things based on his conscience or for his brothers approval..

Fixed

 

[Raider Nation]

Sorry for the delay, Tanner.

There's a moment early in "Marco" where Jimmy and Kim walk past the dented trash can in the HHM parking garage — a reminder of so many of Jimmy's early frustrations with his brother's law firm — and he assures her that he's at peace with what he learned about Chuck. It seems, just then, that the "Better Call Saul" creative team — most of them (like co-creator Peter Gould, who wrote and directed the finale) veterans of "Breaking Bad," a show largely defined by the patient way it moved through its arcs — will be playing a particularly long game in getting us from Jimmy McGill to Saul Goodman. Chuck's betrayal was a brutal blow, but maybe it wouldn't be the one that knocked Jimmy over the edge.In the very next scene, though, Jimmy has a meltdown while calling out another bingo game at the senior center. As he flees Albuquerque for the friendly confines of Cicero and lets his old pal Marco talk him into running one last scam, and then another, and another... and another, it becomes clear that Saul Goodman is coming — even if he won't be called that at first — and Gould and company are just making sure they don't skip over any steps in that transformation, just as they didn't for that chemistry teacher who wound up employing Saul.

Though we had seen glimpses of Slippin' Jimmy in action, an episode largely comprised of his greatest hits — with Mike, Kim, Chuck and Howard left on the sidelines back in Albuquerque — felt like exactly what we needed before Jimmy's big declaration to Mike to end the season. The season to this point had done such a thorough and convincing job of presenting Jimmy as a good guy who had managed to rise above his worst impulses — a recovering addict who had managed to resist temptation far more often than even he might have expected — that we didn't need to just hear about the thrills of the Slippin' Jimmy days. We needed to see it for ourselves.

And boy, did we see it.

The Cicero scenes get to play things both slow and fast, first giving us the entirety of the hustle with the Kennedy half-dollar, then giving us the rest of the week's worth of scams as a giddy, kaleidoscopic montage, scored with jazz sounding straight out of the Rat Pack era, so that we can appreciate how much fun Jimmy and Marco are having, and also how good they are at this. Jimmy has found the law much more satisfying than Marco finds standpipe work, but this is the quite obviously the true calling for both of them.

After a decade of being a good guy, Jimmy needed more than just Chuck's betrayal and harsh words to knock him off the wagon. He had to go on an epic bender back among his old haunts, to really soak in that life, so that even when the dream scenario of a large Santa Fe firm offering him a partnership track job presents itself, he won't take it. Without the trip to Cicero, I think Jimmy takes that job because he feels he's earned it, and to prove Chuck wrong for so smugly dismissing him. With it, and with Marco's ring on his pinky, giving in to all his most selfish criminal impulses becomes the easier way to go.

That's the ring Saul will wear throughout "Breaking Bad," and you can perhaps look at it like the Precious from "The Lord of the Rings," corrupting Jimmy and possessing him with the spirit of Marco. (As he peels out of the courthouse parking lot, he starts humming — just as Marco did while waiting for Jimmy to arrive in the alley for their final scam — the classic opening riff of Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water," before the song itself comes on the soundtrack.) Or you can simply look at it as a reminder of who Jimmy/Saul wants to be, and how much he has to resist the temptation to do the right thing when it could cost him money. Ex-smokers are sometimes counseled to wear rubber bands around their wrists and snap them whenever they're tempted to smoke; this is like an addict wearing one to remind them why they'd be stupid to quit.

There's still a very long road between here and where Saul and Mike are when we meet them in "Breaking Bad," and I look forward to watching this show take us along all those steps (like the name change, whenever that comes), especially if it's done with all the craft and emotion that was so abundant throughout this debut season. But it feels like "Better Call Saul" is going to have to be a fundamentally different show in its second season. Not only does Jimmy no longer have aspirations of respectability, which could make it harder to work in the likes of Howard and Kim (even as it should lead to greater prominence for Nacho, who wound up appearing in only four of this season's episodes), but the emotional arc of the series would seem to be very different. Season 1 was about a man realizing that the universe didn't want him to be good; once he makes the decision to break bad, it either becomes a matter of degree going forward (much like with Mr. White, only with a less horrifying endpoint), or some other inner conflict has to take its place.

Whatever it is, I look forward to it. I came into this series with some trepidation — wondering if we needed a "Breaking Bad" spin-off at all, and whether Saul was a compelling enough character to carry one — but these 10 episodes swiftly convinced me that a very different, but entertaining and powerful in its own right, show could exist in this universe, and that Saul was far more complicated and interesting than he'd ever had the chance to show as Walter White's consiglieri. This was a fabulous debut season, in many ways better — or at least more consistent — than the first year of "Breaking Bad," because the creative team has worked together for so long and weren't interrupted by a guild strike this time. Of course, "Breaking Bad" didn't start turning into an all-time classic until its second and third seasons, and "Saul" has a long way before it achieves those heights. But this first year was far better than I think even the most optimistic Saul fanboy had a right to expect. To borrow the kind of pop culture analogy the show's hero loves to make, this could have been "AfterM*A*S*H," when for the moment it feels like it could be on its way to being "Frasier."

Some other thoughts:

* I'll be talking to Peter Gould tomorrow to discuss the season (look for that in the early-mid afternoon), but I did already email him one question about the finale: was there a specific film or filmmaker he used as a model for the montage of Jimmy and Marco's cons? Though the look and sound of them was very early '60s, he said the actual model was the '30s montages of Slavko Vorkapich.

* Gould and Vince Gilligan also noted that while many of this season's title sequences were randomly assigned to their episodes, the last two were deliberately chosen to reflect the tone of those episodes. Last week as a Saul Goodman matchbook in a urinal; tonight, it was a Saul coffee mug falling to the floor, shattering, and spilling its contents everywhere. That about sums up what our hero has gone through emotionally over the last couple of weeks, even though it's really Jimmy McGill who shatters into many pieces; Saul Goodman is how he reassembles himself.

* The mark runs off with the wallet when it seems like Marco is dead, which brings us back to our discussion about the potential pitfalls of that scam. I leave it to someone who understands grifting more than I do to defend this particular hustle, but it just seems like more trouble than it's worth to risk a thousand bucks in the hope of making a few additional hundred.

* Mike's explanation for why he didn't just walk off with the money he stole from the Kettlemans speaks not only to the difference between the two men going forward, but to the reason why Jimmy, and later other people, will want to employ Mike Ehrmantraut. He, like so many of TV's most memorable criminals, has a code.

* AMC tends to allow its showrunners one F-bomb per season, which gets bleeped on air but often restored on DVD and other home video formats. Here, it's Jimmy apologizing to Howard for having called him a "pigf--ker."

* When I have time to revisit this season, I really want to focus on all the Howard scenes, knowing what we do now that he's basically a nice guy who was reluctantly doing Chuck's dirty work. The moment where Howard realizes how much Jimmy has done for Chuck over the last year was really nicely played by Patrick Fabian, and ditto on Odenkirk reacting to Howard's mention of the "Charlie Hustle" nickname. Once upon a time, he probably assumed this was a condescending reference to his former life, and while that may have been a part of it, it's clear now that the major idea was sincere praise of Jimmy's tenacity. As we see at several points in this episode, including Chuck coaching Ernesto (whom Jimmy knows well enough to know he prefers to be called Ernie) through the grocery list, Howard is a nice guy who sometimes comes across as a jerk, while Chuck is a jerk who thinks he's a nice guy.

* We learn that Jimmy has been in Albquerque for 10 years, which raises the question of whether Bob Odenkirk is more believable playing 16 years younger than when he first appeared on "Breaking Bad," or pretending to be Kevin Costner for an impressionable waitress.

* "Breaking Bad" in-joke: one of the many B-words Jimmy tries out for the bingo crowd is Belize.

If you need someone to tell you that he modeled the montage on Vorkapich, then maybe critical review just isn't for you.

Yeah, I've been reading Seppy since he posted his reviews on the newsgroups in the NYPD Blue days. I kept hoping for a mention of Vorkapich. Yesterday was my lucky day.

 

[comfortably numb]

anyone else feel like Jimmy driving away was like Jesse driving away?

 

[Thorn]

If I had one quibble, it was the very last scene. I understood Jimmy's enjoyment of his time in Cicero. That said he came home to live the legit life. He had a golden opportunity presented to him allowing him to play with the big boys, which he had been working towards for years. He could succeed on this level to prove his worth to Chuck, or as a big middle finger to Chuck showing that he could swim in the same pond with the big boys without his help. He got dressed up in his best suit and everything, and then, without even taking the meeting, he just walks away to be Saul?

It just rang a bit false to me. It kind of reminded me when Anakin killed the young Paduan in SW III, almost completely out of the blue. Everyone knows what the destination is, so we may have to take some shortcuts to get to where we want to go.

I really loved the first season, but I feel as if they had a few more episodes, maybe they could have shown him "breaking bad", as it were, a bit more convincingly.

I think that is why he suddenly backed out.

It Doned on him that he would never succeed on any level to prove his worth to chuck.

Ok, then who cares about Chuck? Take the job and pull in legit big bucks, which is what you were trying to do all along.

Is the argument that the ONLY reason he tried to walk the straight and narrow to prove himself to his brother, and once he realized that it was never going to happen, in a split second, he chose the path of the morally bankrupt man his brother always presumed he was?

I took it as a realization that going out like Marco did would be more true to himself than selling his soul to become part of a club made up of people like Howard and Chuck.

 

[Officer Pete Malloy]

If I had one quibble, it was the very last scene. I understood Jimmy's enjoyment of his time in Cicero. That said he came home to live the legit life. He had a golden opportunity presented to him allowing him to play with the big boys, which he had been working towards for years. He could succeed on this level to prove his worth to Chuck, or as a big middle finger to Chuck showing that he could swim in the same pond with the big boys without his help. He got dressed up in his best suit and everything, and then, without even taking the meeting, he just walks away to be Saul?

It just rang a bit false to me. It kind of reminded me when Anakin killed the young Paduan in SW III, almost completely out of the blue. Everyone knows what the destination is, so we may have to take some shortcuts to get to where we want to go.

I really loved the first season, but I feel as if they had a few more episodes, maybe they could have shown him "breaking bad", as it were, a bit more convincingly.

I think that is why he suddenly backed out.

It Doned on him that he would never succeed on any level to prove his worth to chuck.

Ok, then who cares about Chuck? Take the job and pull in legit big bucks, which is what you were trying to do all along.

Is the argument that the ONLY reason he tried to walk the straight and narrow to prove himself to his brother, and once he realized that it was never going to happen, in a split second, he chose the path of the morally bankrupt man his brother always presumed he was?

I took it as a realization that going out like Marco did would be more true to himself than selling his soul to become part of a club made up of people like Howard and Chuck.

Another good point.

 

[Quez]

He must not start working at Cinnebon until next season.

 

[Zow]

If I had one quibble, it was the very last scene. I understood Jimmy's enjoyment of his time in Cicero. That said he came home to live the legit life. He had a golden opportunity presented to him allowing him to play with the big boys, which he had been working towards for years. He could succeed on this level to prove his worth to Chuck, or as a big middle finger to Chuck showing that he could swim in the same pond with the big boys without his help. He got dressed up in his best suit and everything, and then, without even taking the meeting, he just walks away to be Saul?

It just rang a bit false to me. It kind of reminded me when Anakin killed the young Paduan in SW III, almost completely out of the blue. Everyone knows what the destination is, so we may have to take some shortcuts to get to where we want to go.

I really loved the first season, but I feel as if they had a few more episodes, maybe they could have shown him "breaking bad", as it were, a bit more convincingly.

I think that is why he suddenly backed out.

It Doned on him that he would never succeed on any level to prove his worth to chuck.

Ok, then who cares about Chuck? Take the job and pull in legit big bucks, which is what you were trying to do all along.

Is the argument that the ONLY reason he tried to walk the straight and narrow to prove himself to his brother, and once he realized that it was never going to happen, in a split second, he chose the path of the morally bankrupt man his brother always presumed he was?

I took it as a realization that going out like Marco did would be more true to himself than selling his soul to become part of a club made up of people like Howard and Chuck.

Another good point.

Who is he selling his soul too? He'd be joining a major firm that's not his brother's as the fruits of his hard, honest, and good work. It's not like he's being played, tricked, or has to give in to anyone or anything.