Better Call Saul - Season Four Discussion & Digestion

And now the writers are giving the opinion that Walter White may still be alive during "Gene's" Omaha/Cinnabon adventures:

'Better Call Saul' Writers: Walter White May Still be Alive During Gene's Omaha Cinnabon Sequences

 

Nah, they're just woolgathering aloud on the Podcast. That's exactly how it read, too.

The huge objection is one teeny, tiny thing: Gene Takavic's age. He's been entrenched in Omaha for a good while.

I get the impression that Gene has been living in fear for years, from anybody in the past, e.g. an old client, an old drug dealer, and on the remote chance, Pinkman. That is to say, the potential of being exposed and/or someone doing him physical harm.

In short, they're putting us on.

 

Better Call Saul Q&A — Bob Odenkirk (Jimmy McGill)

 

Well, I did say "Walter White may be alive." Not that he definitely is.

"Gene"'s age in the Omaha segments is an interesting problem.

 

Yeah, I haven't caught any clues as to how long Gene has been in Omaha. He seems to have mastered his new job, but that might not take too long at all. He's still plenty paranoid, but that could linger for a long, long time. I think maybe they have purposefully not given us any of this information.

 

Right. What I wrote was directed toward the article, not you, personally.

But those guys, if I was them, I would be pulling people's legs, or spreading missinformation, as well. Just for kicks, even, as long as it didn't go too much off the reservation and cost ratings.

I bet Saul has been in Omaha anywhere from 5 to 8 years. When we last saw him in BB he had much more hair and looked a lot younger.

 

So did Bob Odenkirk...

 

This was awesome! Thanks for posting it!

 

Not that different, though. Gene looks beat the hell down, where they had to work some serious makeup magic on him.

 

Odenkirk (who is balding in real life) has said before he's not sure if "Saul/Jimmy" wears a rug, or if his character just went bald over time. He and Vince Gilligan chuckle quite a bit on this apparent ambiguity in the show.

 

Finally watched the first episode of season four yesterday and now I'm really excited to see what course this season is going to take - could become much darker than the previous episodes and I'm glad about it Jimmy's reaction to Howard's worries cracked me up

 

I think the funny will be arriving soon too. The first season 4 episode is pretty heavy, as it should have been. It's time for some humor to keep it more than just interesting. I'm really looking forward to Monday night.

 

After listening to the podcast, I think Odenkirk knows something about the Gene timeline that we don't. "I may have said too much..." With most things he talked about, he said he didn't know any more than the average fan & was just speculating. The idea that Walter White is still alive while Gene is in hiding is very interesting to say the least.

 

yeah, come to think of it, the gene-at-the-cinnabon could be taking place during the first year, when walter white's hiding out in new england.

 

All the things I've read say that all the Gene scenes we're seeing are post-Breaking Bad.

Edit: I now see that Gilligan and Gould said that the b&w could be from the time period just after both WW and Saul went into hiding. The problem with that is that we know what WW did during that less than a year before his death. It would be a huge mistake to make a connection anything beyond one show if they brought WW into the show.

 

They can probably fiddle with the timeline as they see fit, but the physical change between when we saw Saul about to go into hiding and Gene in the B&W footage suggests a far longer time period than one year.

 

I've found some people saying this proves that the Gene time-line can't take place any earlier than 2015:



Anyone want to guess why?

It's an interesting detail, but it doesn't really mean anything. I'm sure the producers did not have it mind and there is no reason they can't just ignore it. But it's fun that people find these things.

 

Because the Wild Berry Medley was not around until 2015.

 

Posted nutritional information wasn't a law until 12/14.

 

I could see them taking BCS into BB time if necessary. If they tried to say that WW lived past the last episode, it would be foolish.

 

We have a winner.

Didn't know this one, but I would say it counts as well.

 

So did I!

 

Here is Saul Goodman getting ready to go into hiding:


Here's Gene:


Doesn't look that much older to me.

 

Black and white tends to age things considerably just by the use of the medium.

 

I think people are mostly going by the hair (or lack thereof). However, in art as in life I think the hair is mostly a constructed facade and doesn’t really provide any clues either way.