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

Ghost Rider said:
I'm gonna need to re-watch that scene with Gus and the wine again, as I feel like the intent of it went over my head. :lol:  
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The wine is symbolic of blood

blood for blood as the Salamancas say

Gus can’t relax and truly enjoy himself because he consumed by his need for revenge.  Revenge is the only thing that he thinks will satisfy him.

the iron oxide in the wine is a mild callback to Mike’s Half Measures speech when he said o& the crime scene that there was so much blood, you could taste the metal.

 
offdee said:
Anybody else planning on re-watching Breaking Bad from start to finish after the BCS finale?

[enter prequel roast here]
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jerry jones said:
Yeah….starting at season two when Saul shows up 
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My kids are finally old enough that we're re-watching Breaking Bad with them. We're on season 3. I watched it 9-10 years ago (I binged the first few seasons before watching weekly) and all I remember are the big parts, so it's been pretty cool watching it again with BCS in mind. (For example, after Skyler tells Walt she f'd Ted, Walt complains about that to Saul, who says, "I caught my second wife screwing my stepdad!" I was like "wait what.")

What's more difficult, for me, is mixing up the timelines. We're at the point in BB where the twins wanted to kill Walt but they stop when they find out Walt is working for Gus, so Gus meets with Don Juan to hash things out. I was thinking of that while watching BCS last night, and I kept reminding myself that they were different points in the timeline. So that part can be confusing.

 
offdee said:
That makes sense, I guess, but seemed like an awfully big scene for that minor moment that was not really needed.   

I don't know, I"ll just say it, this episode was a letdown. I know any episode compared to last week would feel like that, but the whole time I was waiting for something "big" to happen and then it was just over.

The coolest part was at the end of the intro segment when he said the line about "one day you'll wake up..." which he says in BB.  (and I suppose the flipping of his combover was pretty great too)
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The big “explosion” this week was Kim’s behavior at Howard’s funeral 

she used the knowledge that Howard was having major marriage problems to basically shiv his wife.  The implication of what she did was to place all of the guilt of Howard’s suicide on Cheryl and made it her “Cross to bear.”  
 

It was devastating mental jujitsu and maybe the last straw for Jimmy and Kim.  

Kim probably got a dopamine rush in the moment over gaslighting Cheryl like that, but was probably completely disgusted with herself and maybe even terrified of what she was capable of with Jimmy enabling her.

That was a soul crushing scene with a ton of emotional and psychological fireworks.   

the more I think about this episode the more perfect it becomes, the clearer its themes and messages are and the more beautiful and poetic its interactions are. 
 

 
Ghost Rider said:
Not sure I agree, but it's an interesting take for sure!  :thumbup:   :thumbup:

I do think Kim's conscience finally kicked in.  While she definitely broke bad, I think there were limits to how far she'd go, and murder was never one of them. Ruining Howard's life with a scam? She's good with that.  Seeing him murdered and then being part of the cartel covering up? That is a bridge too far.  It is somewhat similar to Jesse Pinkman, who was good with cooking meth and a lot of what came with it, but when it came to murder, it was something he couldn't deal with (see: his reaction to having to kill Gale, and then his immediate reaction to killing someone when they were escaping Eladio's compound after Gus poisoned them all).  It's what separates the bad guys from the really bad guys.  Saul is much worse than Kim ever was (we know this already based on what we've seen in BB). 
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a millionaire lawyer having a small career setback in exchange for her being able to help so many people seems like a solid rationalization and it was a piece of her motivation. The other side of it was that she loved the dopamine rush of getting one over on somebody.   It drove to to bad things which she came to regret.   Jimmy was only enabling her and not reeling her back in.  

 
AAABatteries said:
Agree - my only comment goes along with the discussion from last week.  Half or more of this episode felt like a slow burn or filler.  Nacho's Dad, Howard's memorial service and this scene with the wine guy are not building to something like the last few episodes of BB.  It's high quality television but unless they still have some big things in store for these last 4 episodes I'm still firmly in the BB > BCS camp.  And if that sounds like I'm crapping on BCS then I'm not - it's just different.  The style is more character development than action and that's probably harder to pull off.
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The  Mike, Gus and funeral scenes put a cap on their arcs.

Mike and Gus chose a life of revenge.  It is what drives them, but it is empty and they live in prisons of their own making.

The shot of Mr Varga and Mike where it looks like Mike is in a cage and Mr Varga is free is such a brilliant shot.

 
Runkle said:
Instead of flying the actor all over the world to shoot pictures for his memorial service, the props guy just made posters out of the actor's instragram feed. 
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Cool idea and use of available resources,, but no way would they need to fly him all over the world.  Can easily manipulate pictures with different backgrounds, aging effects, etc.

 
Brock Middlebrook said:
The big “explosion” this week was Kim’s behavior at Howard’s funeral 

she used the knowledge that Howard was having major marriage problems to basically shiv his wife.  The implication of what she did was to place all of the guilt of Howard’s suicide on Cheryl and made it her “Cross to bear.”  
 

It was devastating mental jujitsu and maybe the last straw for Jimmy and Kim.  

Kim probably got a dopamine rush in the moment over gaslighting Cheryl like that, but was probably completely disgusted with herself and maybe even terrified of what she was capable of with Jimmy enabling her.
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So the wife realized because their marriage was bad and didn't want to be home, he had to stay at the office late and "entertain/numb" himself?

 
Sorry to interrupt but my wife and I are on Season 3 and I've got a question. 

Spoiler alert:  Mike is setting up to kill Hector with a sniper rifle but is stopped by someone who we later find out to be Gus. Mike rightfully suspects there's a tracking device on his car causing him to dismantle it. The question is, what causes Gus to start tracking Mike's movements? 

 
Uruk-Hai said:
I love you, my friend, but I disagree. That scene was freaking brutal to watch. If that's the end of that character - and I'm not sure it is - then I think it was a fine sendoff. 
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It was very well acted. I’m talking about the story line. Underwhelming to me. 

 
Captain Cranks said:
Sorry to interrupt but my wife and I are on Season 3 and I've got a question. 

Spoiler alert:  Mike is setting up to kill Hector with a sniper rifle but is stopped by someone who we later find out to be Gus. Mike rightfully suspects there's a tracking device on his car causing him to dismantle it. The question is, what causes Gus to start tracking Mike's movements? 
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i'll have to go back and refresh my memory, but I believe there is a prior episode (or within that episode but earlier) that implies someone is tracking Mike before this scene.

Edit: found this:

As shown in Breaking Bad and the early Season 4 episodes of Better Call Saul, Gus Fring has a habit of having people who pique his interest or who represent a threat followed by his people. When he noticed that someone (in this case Mike Ehrmentraut) was parked near his restaurant and was watching him, he tasked several people to place a GPS tracking unit in Mike’s car and also to follow him.

That led him to Mike following Hector Salamanca and even to the ambush that Mike was going to engage in when he followed Salamanca out to the desert. He intervened when it was clear that Mike was attempting to snipe Hector and that’s how their erstwhile partnership begins.
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I do remember the part where Mike was watching Gus, or the restaurant at least. So Gus found out while tracking Mike. Now I will go back and watch these sequences again, because was it obvious back then that Mike and Gus had such a relationship as they do in BCS? I don't remember that.

 
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Pigskin Fanatic said:
i'll have to go back and refresh my memory, but I believe there is a prior episode (or within that episode but earlier) that implies someone is tracking Mike before this scene.

Edit: found this:

I do remember the part where Mike was watching Gus, or the restaurant at least. So Gus found out while tracking Mike. Now I will go back and watch these sequences again, because was it obvious back then that Mike and Gus had such a relationship as they do in BCS? I don't remember that.
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Good point.  I don't remember them knowing each other early on in BB either but I could be getting all the timelines and shows mixed up.   Maybe they had some falling out in between BCS and BB?  Gus did give a Mike a weird look before closing the door and Mike clearly isn't happy with how they handled Nacho.  

Even if it is a plot hole, they've done such a great job aligning everything else 'll give them mulligan.  Amazing feat for a prequel with so many moving parts.  

 
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Gatorman said:
The beauty of this show is the performances of the actors. Everyone of them got their "emmy" moment in this episode, except for those who died in the last few episodes.

Gus - gets a confrontation with Eladio that sets up their next confrontation by the pool, and then gets the "take a breath" moment at the bar where you see there is little joy in the life he has chosen.

Mike - gets his moral compass screwed with by another father who has lost his son.

Kim and Jimmy come to a head with another emmy consideration performance by Rhea.
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You forgot about Lyle.  Can't wait to see how they wrap up his character.

 
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Runkle said:
Instead of flying the actor all over the world to shoot pictures for his memorial service, the props guy just made posters out of the actor's instragram feed. 
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I suspected that when watching and told the wife that. Patrick is always smiling near some beach on social media, a good follow.

 
Punxsutawney Phil said:
Don Eladio has been great at adding  comedic relief at tense times.  That bell ching ching ching ching... 🤣
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He’s honestly one of my favorites. The scenes he’s in are always money. Some of the best encounters in both BCS and BB involve him. He seems laid back but you know from BB that he’s always one step away from ordering your murder and you never know when. 

 
AAABatteries said:
We’ve maybe talked about this but if you could pick one character to do another spinoff which would you pick?

I think Lalo or possibly Gus in South America.  Not sure Mike’s cop days in Philly would be that great although I love the character.
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A Lalo spinoff would be great. 

 
TV don’t get much better than that - just wow.

Right down to Mike drinking a PBR watching a baseball game after the Gus wine scene.

Already sad there are only a few episodes left.

 
Brock Middlebrook said:
The big “explosion” this week was Kim’s behavior at Howard’s funeral 

she used the knowledge that Howard was having major marriage problems to basically shiv his wife.  The implication of what she did was to place all of the guilt of Howard’s suicide on Cheryl and made it her “Cross to bear.”  
 

It was devastating mental jujitsu and maybe the last straw for Jimmy and Kim.  

Kim probably got a dopamine rush in the moment over gaslighting Cheryl like that, but was probably completely disgusted with herself and maybe even terrified of what she was capable of with Jimmy enabling her.

That was a soul crushing scene with a ton of emotional and psychological fireworks.   

the more I think about this episode the more perfect it becomes, the clearer its themes and messages are and the more beautiful and poetic its interactions are. 
 
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You get it. Amazing episode. Absolutely heart breaking. And the moment where Jimmy actually becomes Saul. When he changed his name to Saul he was not the Saul we saw in breaking bad...it was just a name change. Losing Kim turned him into Saul. 
 

now we know. 

 
Brock Middlebrook said:
Yes and because they were so distant, she had no idea….the “you would know” part was just devastating because he was her husband and she would have no idea.  
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That may have been the most vile thing Kim's ever done.

They are all trapped. Gus, Mike, Jimmy, Kim - all are caught in cages of their own making. Kim's trying to run away from it. The others aren't that brave (or cowardly, I guess, depending on how you look at it.

 
Count me in for a prequel/sequel series (or a "El Camino"-style movie) called "Can You Be Tough?" that explores the rise to car wash prominence of a young Bogdan Wolynetz from his meager beginnings in Romania, and then switches to him plotting his revenge on Skylar White once he realizes she scammed the car wash from him.   :popcorn:

 
Uruk-Hai said:
That may have been the most vile thing Kim's ever done.

They are all trapped. Gus, Mike, Jimmy, Kim - all are caught in cages of their own making. Kim's trying to run away from it. The others aren't that brave (or cowardly, I guess, depending on how you look at it.
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IMO there's just no way that's officially the last we see of Kim.   There wasn't enough closure there on such an important character.

 
offdee said:
IMO there's just no way that's officially the last we see of Kim.   There wasn't enough closure there on such an important character.
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I agree. The switch from Kim leaving to him being Saul in the next scene was way more abrupt than what I was expecting, though having seen the execution it makes total sense. But the whole "Kim went home to Nebraska and she ends up running into Gene" theory is looking a lot more plausible.

By the way, I'm not sure exactly what to make of this, but the final scene in this episode puts lie to Kim's contention that she and Jimmy are bad for each other. It may be true that he's bad for her, but his immediate descent into Saul-ness after she leaves demonstrates how she was the one thing keeping "Jimmy" alive

 
ignatiusjreilly said:
I agree. The switch from Kim leaving to him being Saul in the next scene was way more abrupt than what I was expecting, though having seen the execution it makes total sense. But the whole "Kim went home to Nebraska and she ends up running into Gene" theory is looking a lot more plausible.

By the way, I'm not sure exactly what to make of this, but the final scene in this episode puts lie to Kim's contention that she and Jimmy are bad for each other. It may be true that he's bad for her, but his immediate descent into Saul-ness after she leaves demonstrates how she was the one thing keeping "Jimmy" alive
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Did you see way at the end of the episode the "scene" for next week's episode?   Basically just a black and white still shot of the inside of an empty store with voices shouting random stuff.  What's that all about?

 
offdee said:
Did you see way at the end of the episode the "scene" for next week's episode?   Basically just a black and white still shot of the inside of an empty store with voices shouting random stuff.  What's that all about?
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It's definitely in the Gene timeline.  Most likely in the mall he works at.  I'm assuming it was Gene finally letting the Gene persona go and going back to being Saul.  

 
offdee said:
Did you see way at the end of the episode the "scene" for next week's episode?   Basically just a black and white still shot of the inside of an empty store with voices shouting random stuff.  What's that all about?
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I remember back in the days of shows like 24 and Lost there was this trend where shows would spoil way too much during the "scenes from next week" clips. I think it was a function of the networks being more concerned with drawing in new listeners than with keeping the longtime viewers unspoiled. At some point the showrunners reasserted control over the process, and we ended up with stuff like Mad Men, which would string together a bunch of two-second clips in a way that offered zero info. BCS is very much in that tradition.

Scoresman said:
It's definitely in the Gene timeline.  Most likely in the mall he works at.  I'm assuming it was Gene finally letting the Gene persona go and going back to being Saul.  
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I do agree we're heading toward Gene becoming Saul again, which was foreshadowed when he etched the initials "SG" on the wall back in S2. I wonder if he will re-encounter Kim and have to choose between being Jimmy or Saul

 
Scoresman said:
:lmao:

Someone on reddit calculated that it would've taken Hector and the twins 1 hour and 40 minutes to transcribe his accusation against Gus.  And then it was dismissed by Eladio in 2 seconds. 

That's almost 2 hours of 

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P ... ding!
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Not quite.  The chart is below from the BB DEA scene with Hank.

ABCD12
EFGH34
IJKLMN
OPQRST
UVWXYZ
567890

Still annoying as hell but a bit quicker than running through the entire alphabet in search of one letter at a time.  Not sure how the dude on Reddit calculated it but still funny that someone would.

 
TheAristocrat said:
Not quite.  The chart is below from the BB DEA scene with Hank.

ABCD12
EFGH34
IJKLMN
OPQRST
UVWXYZ
567890

Still annoying as hell but a bit quicker than running through the entire alphabet in search of one letter at a time.  Not sure how the dude on Reddit calculated it but still funny that someone would.
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Lol, right.  One of the twins would just run finger along a chart like this and when he’s on the right letter he dings.  Wouldn’t take that long. 

 
TheAristocrat said:
Not quite.  The chart is below from the BB DEA scene with Hank.

ABCD12
EFGH34
IJKLMN
OPQRST
UVWXYZ
567890

Still annoying as hell but a bit quicker than running through the entire alphabet in search of one letter at a time.  Not sure how the dude on Reddit calculated it but still funny that someone would.
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You think halfway through they were thinking about taking an axe to him?

 
Scoresman said:
:lmao:

Someone on reddit calculated that it would've taken Hector and the twins 1 hour and 40 minutes to transcribe his accusation against Gus.  And then it was dismissed by Eladio in 2 seconds. 

That's almost 2 hours of 

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P ... ding!
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Who the F--- would take the time to figure that out?  Do they have absolutely nothing else to do in life?

 
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