Better Call Saul - Season Four Discussion & Digestion

Don't usually reply to my own posts . . . . just occurred to me how similar this is to the off-hours life of Jesse Pinkman, particularly after Jane's death. Probably a lot more similarities between these two if you care to look closer.

 

I didn't read anything into it other than she really enjoyed saying 'no' to Mesa Verde - she's busted her ass for them for months and months and never said no - other than that very terse phone call a couple of weeks ago. I think she's finding in general she likes saying 'no' - I don't think she's ever done it much. We've always seen her working her tail off and accepting basically any assignment - to the point of passing out at the wheel. Remember her slaving away down in the "cornfield" and her shower routing at Wexler McGill?

 

I don't know...they usually don't waste a scene and we've already had the bored at work scene. she showed up to sauls new office smoking outside maybe dreaming something up....maybe doing the easy is boring and she wants to try something? who know ? shes an enigma

 

Well, if she wants to try something different, here I am!

 

As a litigator for 35 years, I don’t agree with you. I have met many prosecutors and Judgrs
like the ones Kim ran into, in Kansas and Missouri where I mostly practice, but also in many other states. They are not dumb or scared of tactics and motions. Instead they are burned out, overloaded for too long, impatient and somewhat lazy. They have huge caseloads with large backlogs. They don’t want much inconvenience or bother.

You are from New York City. That is apparently a much different legal environment than Albuquerque or my town, Kansas City. I found the depiction of the Judge and prosecutor to be totally realistic and credible.

I think that many Judges in Kansas City would find the influx of lots of letters to be funny. But I could see some especially backlogged and impatient Judges in Kansas City acting as the Judge acted in this episode.

The prosecutors here would not be scared or overly impressed with the motions presented by the associates. But they would probably run a quick cost-benefit analysis in their head: “I need to bust up the newest meth gang, and work on the case of the seventeen year old who shot a fifty five year old businessman to death at a traffic stop for waiting too long to pull out when the light turned green. I don’t have enough staff to handle those cases. Why should I jack around with this joke of a case and spend two hours responding to these jokes of motions? I am tired of all of this nonsense.”

That would be very possible in Kansas City today. I find the episode to be legally true to what happens every day in Middle America.

 

The letters were supposed to be from the residents of that town, so it wasn’t a problem that they all came from that post office. It’s not like they were supposed to be from all over the country or even the state.

 

I too have perceived a relative lack of realism in the show’s treatment of lawyers this season. And I have also felt that the show, until now, has not really adequately explained why Kim disengaged intellectually from her solo practice work in Mesa Verde and turned so sharply to pro bono criminal work.

But Monday’s episode made me see Kim’s arc more clearly, and it’s quite realistic. She is the classic Type A personality that disproportionately populates the legal profession — Bert to Jimmy’s Ernie. We can see how uptight she seems in the flashback scene when she clerks with HHM. In the middle of that road can lie a sense of emptiness. Kim left big firm practice because of it. But then she found that solo practice doesn’t address it, either. It’s not surprising that a traumatic event like a car accident might awaken that realization. She tried to fix things by going to Schweikart, cashing in, and diving into public defense.

Only now, it seems, does Kim’s emptiness appear to be filled—by mail fraud and obstruction of justice. In hindsight, that shouldn’t be surprising. Kim has always been the tightly wound person who plays and succeeds by the rules, but who still chafes at them — sneaking cigarettes in the HHM garage and hanging out with Jimmy, who is basically plankton in the law firm ecosystem. Her first taste of fraud as Giselle was like a character’s first taste of meth in “Breaking Bad” —a sudden release from the life’s mundaneness. She has now experienced that same rush again and she will not so easily go back.

The show is presenting all of this very subtly. I don’t think its realism has left. I think we are about to get a cold dose of it very soon, when Kim learns what happens to lawyers who commit fraud. She will find that a life of crime fills her inner emptiness no better than the other remedies she’s sought, and that it will ruin her career and relationships besides. Forget the romantic notion of Kim being like Blofeld in “Thunderball”—the barely seen silent partner who’s calling the shots. Her fall is necessary for Jimmy fully to become Saul. The awareness and subsequent denial of his complicity will steel him further, as Chuck’s death has, and he will become free of an attachment that would otherwise slow his descent.

 

I like your theory. We will see if the show’s creative team shares it!

I have seen many attorneys who liked the income and lifestyle of being an attorney but basically hated the work itself. Sadly I have seen some of them become alcoholics or neglect their cases and get disbarred. As an attorney you really need to like the day to day work itself to sustain your career for a long time. Many attorneys do not. There are Bar Association programs in my area to help the attorneys who are struggling with being in the profession. I find Kim’s inner conflicts with work to be quite realistic.

 

Right. That's why I actually wrote, in what you quoted, that the origin of the letters isn't a big deal.

 

I think this show is the appropriate level of "realistic" as it pertains to the law (or other areas for that matter).

How many people here have been in court or behind the scenes as criminal cases are undertaken from both sides? No show has the time to display all the mundane aspects of such a case behind the scenes. 10 episodes per season, 45-50 minutes per episode (when they're "extended"). So in the last episode, they realistically have maybe five to ten minutes to play the entire Huell case thing out. They have to establish what Jimmy and Kim are doing, and then establish how the judge and the DA handle it. Frankly, they could have gone much lazier and just had the DA be a 100% lazy burn-out and not even do the due diligence of making some calls to look into the letter-writing campaign. Would such a "research" undertaking take longer in real time? Of course. But as Hot Ptah said, the idea here isn't that the DA is s***ting their pants in fear. It is indeed a cost-benefit situation, and a balancing of resources. I thought it was a nice touch that the DA *did* appear to be skeptical of the letters at first. She probably remained so. But it would have been the opposite of interesting and punchy to devote another 20 minutes of screen time to the DA going back and forth with the office about whether they should put the resources into pursuing the case.

In the scheme of *FICTIONAL* TV shows, this show is about the last show that should be taken to task for lack of realism. On the spectrum of "realism", this show isn't like a live feed on CourtTV (which isn't even "CourtTV" anymore of course), but it isn't "Matlock" either. I'm not doing the "get over it, it's just TV" argument either. But this show (and for the most part "Breaking Bad" as well) offers/offered layers of subtle realism that most shows never have.

Of course any writers on any TV show have to write the characters and situation so that what they want to happen actually happens. It all always goes down more quickly and distinctly than in "real life." But the touches still have plenty of realism to them.

 

I can assure you that this syndrome is not limited to the practice of law. Many people in many fields hate the work and many of their colleagues but love love love payday.

Payday is the only thing I miss following my 34 year career.

 

Say, @GregM, are you still watching? You had great insight into this show.

 

Me too, but can't wait for the return of The Walking Dead.....

 

She has an adrenal addiction to semi-dangerous situations where she breaks the rules. This is where she "comes to life" everything else is a bore. She also likes the challenge of being a public defender. The corporate work pays well but its sucking the life out of her.

 

Jimmy has his DNA on a bunch of those letters.

 

Who is it?

 

The actress or the character? I remember the chick. She didn't look familiar, as I was checking out all of those people for familiar faces. I'll peep that again.

 

I have had the impression that those over the age of about 30 that are still hammering away in the DA's office are a bit less skilled than their private practice colleagues because, otherwise, they would have been recruited and hired away. I thought that this was suggested by the contrast between the polished and deliberate Kim and the slightly disheveled and rushed DA.

 

Some prosecutors and DAs go into private practice on the defense side after a time, and make more money. Others are driven to stay on the prosecuting side because they believe in it, and think that going over to the defense side would be betraying humanity.

 

The thing is, with law or other highly regulated professions, if you lose motivation and start screwing up because you are just there for a payday, you do not get demoted or sent to an undesirable branch office. What happens to you in law is that you get disbarred, thrown out of the profession, and lose your ability to make a living at all in law, and retreat in shame and disgrace.

 

Isn't it a betrayal againt humanity?

Kidding!

I know that our justice system in the USA is fairly right, and mostly just, but always blind (often to its detriment), yet I couldn't imagine being a defense attorney for child molesters, serial killers, and typists.

It reminds me of that old George Carlin bit where he says something like, "We have 33 rights in the US, 12 rights in Sweden, 27 in Germany, 8 in Portugal, and 39 in England. Somebody's f*****ng wrong!"

 

What in the heck did typists ever do to you?

 

Obviously you have no idea what base skullduggery these people get up to after dark. It's repulsive.

There must be a special place in Hell for these reprobates. Hopefully it's no where near the residence that ol' Lucifer has set aside for me.

 

It hasn't been mentioned, maybe it was obvious to those of you with better memories than mine, what that strange looking object was that Kim digs out of the back of her desk drawer, when she is sat alone in her office contemplating things, after the Mesa Verde meeting. It was the bottle top from the mega expensive, $50/shot, bottle of tequila that Jimmy and Kim con the mark in the restaurant bar into paying for in S2 Ep1. The waiter gives it to Kim to keep and she puts it in her handbag.

I went back and rewatched the con scene, and it was only now, after having recently rewatched BB, that I realised that the mark was 'KEN WINS' from BB, whose car Walter sets alight. (I was a late comer to BCS and wasn't part of these threads back then but see now that others spotted Ken straight away.)

But Ken wasn't the only call-back in that scene. The bottle of tequila itself is the very same brand of (fictional) tequila that Gus Fring presents as a gift to Don Eladio in that fateful scene in S4 of BB.


(^^I hope the image worked)

Could the bottle top be a foreshadowing of Kim's doom?

I still think Kim is doomed, despite the quite compelling theory that she remains a silent partner throughout BB. I just don't think that the writers would expect us to believe in that. I mean, a happy ending seems unlikely to me anyway.

I see a cracked fragility in Kim, glimpses of a deep and faraway sadness wanting of explanation because we know so little of her background. I wonder if a terrible fall from grace, prison perhaps, might not lead her, like Chuck, to suicide.

Yours,
Cheerful

 

Sometimes I see them hanging out the street corners asking for money. They say its for food, but you know as soon as you're gone they're just going to spend it on ribbons.