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***Official "Space Blanket" for Better Call Saul*** (2 Viewers)

shader said:
At first I thought the "breaking bad" segment was way too fast. All of a sudden he passed up big bucks just to go "hustle"?

But the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. The whole episode he was losing his interest in legitimate law. From the bingo speech to his binges in Chicago, he just has had it.

Now after all the disappointment I think he can't fathom pushing papers as a new lawyer in Santa Fe.

Personally I'm a little surprised with the turn the series took over the past two episodes. Before these two episodes, I thought the fall to Saul Goodman was going to take place over the course of 3-4 seasons.

But now he's basically there. Slippin Jimmy had no real morals, from what we could tell, he is a con man. So once he decides to revert back, he's just doing what he's already done, just with a law degree and to a presumably larger degree.

I guess the point is that there now isn't a lot of character development left. In a very realistic way they flipped a likable guy to slippin jimmy in two episodes. He's a name change and a little experience away from being the Saul Goodman we already knew.
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I'm not certain next season kicks in with Saul. Kim still has a hold on him in some way that might make him struggle with the transition a bit longer. There doesn't seem to be any Kim in the Breaking Bad era, so the end of that relationship is in the offing, and I'm guessing that however that ends becomes the trigger for the creation of Saul Goodman. Maybe it just resolves immediately with her abandoning him for backing out of the new gig. :shrug:

 
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Gr00vus said:
shader said:
At first I thought the "breaking bad" segment was way too fast. All of a sudden he passed up big bucks just to go "hustle"?

But the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. The whole episode he was losing his interest in legitimate law. From the bingo speech to his binges in Chicago, he just has had it.

Now after all the disappointment I think he can't fathom pushing papers as a new lawyer in Santa Fe.

Personally I'm a little surprised with the turn the series took over the past two episodes. Before these two episodes, I thought the fall to Saul Goodman was going to take place over the course of 3-4 seasons.

But now he's basically there. Slippin Jimmy had no real morals, from what we could tell, he is a con man. So once he decides to revert back, he's just doing what he's already done, just with a law degree and to a presumably larger degree.

I guess the point is that there now isn't a lot of character development left. In a very realistic way they flipped a likable guy to slippin jimmy in two episodes. He's a name change and a little experience away from being the Saul Goodman we already knew.
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I'm not certain next season kicks in with Saul. Kim still has a hold on him in some way that might make him struggle with the transition a bit longer. There doesn't seem to be any Kim in the Breaking Bad era, so the end of that relationship is in the offing, and I'm guessing that however that ends becomes the trigger for the creation of Saul Goodman. Maybe it just resolves immediately with her abandoning him for backing out of the new gig. :shrug:
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I think this is it. He made a point of saying something to the extent of "I can't imagine what you went through to make this happen for me".

 
shuke said:
kupcho1 said:
Raider Nation said:
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.
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:oldunsure:
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If you need someone to tell you that he modeled the montage on Vorkapich, then maybe critical review just isn't for you.
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If you need to copy and paste "Vorakapich" in order to be condescending about Vorkapich, then maybe condescension just isn't for you.
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Nice edit of a one line post.

:thumbup:

 
shuke said:
Notorious T.R.E. said:
Ned Ryerson said:
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.
Click to expand...
Agree with this. Was expecting something "big" to break him bad, but instead he just has a case of the #### its.
Click to expand...
There was. It just happened to occur in the episode before the finale.
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That's how it works in these modern prestige TV dramas. The penultimate episode is the blockbuster.

 
Tiger Fan said:
Gr00vus said:
shader said:
At first I thought the "breaking bad" segment was way too fast. All of a sudden he passed up big bucks just to go "hustle"?

But the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. The whole episode he was losing his interest in legitimate law. From the bingo speech to his binges in Chicago, he just has had it.

Now after all the disappointment I think he can't fathom pushing papers as a new lawyer in Santa Fe.

Personally I'm a little surprised with the turn the series took over the past two episodes. Before these two episodes, I thought the fall to Saul Goodman was going to take place over the course of 3-4 seasons.

But now he's basically there. Slippin Jimmy had no real morals, from what we could tell, he is a con man. So once he decides to revert back, he's just doing what he's already done, just with a law degree and to a presumably larger degree.

I guess the point is that there now isn't a lot of character development left. In a very realistic way they flipped a likable guy to slippin jimmy in two episodes. He's a name change and a little experience away from being the Saul Goodman we already knew.
Click to expand...
I'm not certain next season kicks in with Saul. Kim still has a hold on him in some way that might make him struggle with the transition a bit longer. There doesn't seem to be any Kim in the Breaking Bad era, so the end of that relationship is in the offing, and I'm guessing that however that ends becomes the trigger for the creation of Saul Goodman. Maybe it just resolves immediately with her abandoning him for backing out of the new gig. :shrug:
Click to expand...
I think this is it. He made a point of saying something to the extent of "I can't imagine what you went through to make this happen for me".
Click to expand...
On the flip side, not taking a job in Santa Fe means he can stay closer to Kim.

 
cstu said:
Notorious T.R.E. said:
Ned Ryerson said:
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.
Click to expand...
Agree with this. Was expecting something "big" to break him bad, but instead he just has a case of the #### its.
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It was big deal that the guy he admired his whole life who he spent 10 years trying to impress and the last year catering to his every whim utterly destroyed any sense of worth he had developed for himself.
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:goodposting:

Not to mention 10 years of walking the straight and narrow and for what? Doing wills for blue-hairs at $140 a pop or whatever? Calling bingo to drum-up business? Renting office space in the back of a nail salon?

 
Ned Ryerson said:
comfortably numb said:
Ned Ryerson said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
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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?
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If he takes the job, he's going to have to work long miserable hours for years like a drone and then eventually get crowned with a partnership....as "Saul" he can have fun at his job, and start making big money right away...
 
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I think a Jimmy move to Santa Fe would have about as well for him as Hank's move to El Paso did for him. Jimmy would forever be the guy who didn't fit in and he'd be the target of some condescension. It was clear to Jimmy that this wasn't the life for him.

For me, personally, it's like the scene from BrBa where Walt drinks a lot of wine and his pride gets the better of him...at first I was like WTF, and upon reflection, I realized that the scene was exactly who Walt was...his pride drove him to make some dumb choices...

This is exactly who Jimmy is, he's not making the choice you or I would make...

 
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Plenty of people decide to go solo or avoid a big law firm on purpose.

Jimmy wanted to be a lawyer solely to gain the respect of his brother in an effort to repay him. He wanted to work side by side him at HHM for their relationship. Due to admiration and craving that recognition from him. Otherwise, he doesn't care to be a lawyer or work in a firm.

Jimmy cares about money and fun. Slipping Jimmy with a law degree could be dangerous. It also could be lucrative. Jimmy figures he can make more money being slipping Jimmy with a law degree than being on track for partnership at some firm. He still has his 20k. He still will get his 20%. He still has the practice he started to build. And because Chuck denied him the opportunity to be at the firm years ago, Jimmy has lived like ####. He's seen things. He's met people. And now he can utilize those connection along with his new and old skills and shove it all up Chuck's ###.

 
The Ref said:
Saul/Nacho/Mike are really going to yuck it up next year. Can't wait
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Yep, saul knows both and nacho and Mike now sort of know each other, but saul is not aware they know each other yet. Will be interesting to see how they all get together.

 
Jimmy spent most of this season doing good things and then getting boned out of the reward.

Slipping Jimmy is tired of getting boned.

Slipping Jimmy got another taste of what it's like to be the guy doing the boning instead

So what would you have him do, spend the next ten years of his life working this case, with a decent chance, given his background, that he'll just wind up getting boned again?

No thanks

 
FlapJacks said:
I think a Jimmy move to Santa Fe would have about as well for him as Hank's move to El Paso did for him. Jimmy would forever be the guy who didn't fit in and he'd be the target of some condescension. It was clear to Jimmy that this wasn't the life for him.

For me, personally, it's like the scene from BrBa where Walt drinks a lot of wine and his pride gets the better of him...at first I was like WTF, and upon reflection, I realized that the scene was exactly who Walt was...his pride drove him to make some dumb choices...

This is exactly who Jimmy is, he's not making the choice you or I would make...
Click to expand...
Walt quote to Sklyer in the last ep

"I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really -- I was alive."

this made me think of why Jimmy is never gonna pass up on a dirty 800k again

 
Really liked this show, and it's season long development, but that last episode was more than just a little disappointing.

Not sure what I was looking for, but it just didn't meet expectations.

 
On The Rocks said:
Really liked this show, and it's season long development, but that last episode was more than just a little disappointing.

Not sure what I was looking for, but it just didn't meet expectations.
Click to expand...
I initially felt this way because I was expecting/anticipating a BANG for the reason he becomes Saul.

Upon further thought, this episode was just another chapter of a well told story line.

 
comfortably numb said:
On The Rocks said:
Really liked this show, and it's season long development, but that last episode was more than just a little disappointing.

Not sure what I was looking for, but it just didn't meet expectations.
Click to expand...
I initially felt this way because I was expecting/anticipating a BANG for the reason he becomes Saul.

Upon further thought, this episode was just another chapter of a well told story line.
Click to expand...
:goodposting:

 
Rewatched the finale and imho it was brilliant. It really pulls together the pieces of who Jimmy/Saul is...

The little touch as he's walking through the parking lot practicing his greeting is a nice touch. He's looking at a future of playing kiss ### and just not being in his element and not being able to relate to his co workers. That little snip says it all.

Also, in hi monologue, there's a Georgia OKeefe reference....wasn't that one of Jane's favorite artists?

Brilliant season and brilliant finale. I though Odenkirk pulled it off marvelously

For those not as wowed, don't worry, as next season you'll get your drugs and guns...

 
I watched the first episode and just haven't had time to see the rest. All recorded. You saying it's worth it? I was a Breaking Bad junkie...Only read this last page.

 
FlapJacks said:
Also, in hi monologue, there's a Georgia OKeefe reference....wasn't that one of Jane's favorite artists?
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O'Keeffe spent a good portion of her life in New Mexico painting landscapes of the area. Her home/studio is a national landmark and her museum is in Santa Fe. Not sure if it was a nod to Jane from BB, considering most people in the area probably have a knowledge of and appreciation for O'Keeffe's work.

 
FlapJacks said:
Rewatched the finale and imho it was brilliant. It really pulls together the pieces of who Jimmy/Saul is...

The little touch as he's walking through the parking lot practicing his greeting is a nice touch. He's looking at a future of playing kiss ### and just not being in his element and not being able to relate to his co workers. That little snip says it all.

Also, in hi monologue, there's a Georgia OKeefe reference....wasn't that one of Jane's favorite artists?

Brilliant season and brilliant finale. I though Odenkirk pulled it off marvelously

For those not as wowed, don't worry, as next season you'll get your drugs and guns...
Click to expand...
Yea, but Marco carried the episode.

 
I thought the finale was similar to the season finale of BB Season 1: good, but a tad underwhelming, especially when compared to the previous episode. "This...is not meth."

Overall, fantastic Season 1, and I can't wait for the next. :thumbup: :thumbup:

 
jamny said:
FlapJacks said:
Also, in hi monologue, there's a Georgia OKeefe reference....wasn't that one of Jane's favorite artists?
Click to expand...
O'Keeffe spent a good portion of her life in New Mexico painting landscapes of the area. Her home/studio is a national landmark and her museum is in Santa Fe. Not sure if it was a nod to Jane from BB, considering most people in the area probably have a knowledge of and appreciation for O'Keeffe's work.
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You mean ######s.

 
kutta said:
Greco said:
Is this thing any good?
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It's OK. If you think Gilligan is the greatest writer ever and can do no wrong you will love it. If you go in with a completely open mind just looking for a good TV show, you'll probably think it's OK.
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Do you realize what "OK" means in TV Land? OK is average. OK is decent. OK is alright. OK is turn it on if there's nothing else on. Other than Justified and The Americans I can't think of another show that was on during the same time that I'd say was on its level. Yet there were hundreds of shows going. Most of which I'd rather pick at a scab than watch. That means its better than OK.

 
Christo said:
kutta said:
Greco said:
Is this thing any good?
Click to expand...
It's OK. If you think Gilligan is the greatest writer ever and can do no wrong you will love it. If you go in with a completely open mind just looking for a good TV show, you'll probably think it's OK.
Click to expand...
Do you realize what "OK" means in TV Land? OK is average. OK is decent. OK is alright. OK is turn it on if there's nothing else on. Other than Justified and The Americans I can't think of another show that was on during the same time that I'd say was on its level. Yet there were hundreds of shows going. Most of which I'd rather pick at a scab than watch. That means its better than OK.
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you tell`em Christo !!!!

 
I've been avoiding this thread until I got caught up. I have to say - the "You're not a real lawyer" scene was about as powerful as any television I've seen in recent memory. Really impressive dramatic acting by 2 guys that were previously known for comedy.

 
JaxBill said:
Not only is Slippin Jimmy showing his true colors so is Chuck. Marco, who hasn't seen Chuck in years, calls him a condescending dooshbag. Then we see Chuck treating Ernesto like a condescending dooshbag.
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What, he just wanted his Fuji Apples. And who can blame him. They are delish.

 
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