Better Call Saul - Season 2 discussion

Since they didn't actually say, though, I wouldn't really expect them to stick to that date if the story calls for something else. It's more evidence of the production.

 

Gene seems like a pretty beaten down version of Jimmy/Saul. Remember he wouldn't even push the lever to get out of the garbage room. I don't think he's hiding his personality so much as defeated. I def agree he's been there for a while.

 

True, but that spoils all of the fun.

My theory is that they've already filmed all of the Cinnabon scenes, including the ending, and they already have the end of the show in the can.

 

I guess the 1959 date comes from documents that are shown in some episode. The series began airing in 2008, that's probably why Vince has that date in his head.

 

That timeline sets everything in "Breaking Bad" in 2009-2011, but then says in the timeline inconsistencies section below, that if "Breaking Bad" started in 2008, and ended in 2010, it would make sense on the calendar.

 

I very much doubt that. They don't plan things that far ahead. When they filmed those scenes of Walt eating at that diner, at the beginning of Season 5, and picking up a car full of guns, Gilligan had no idea where he had been or what was going to happen next!

 

I don't think they're going to go back to Cinnabon and film every year for five minutes of scenes. The series will probably end with someone tracking "Gene" to Omaha and either taking him into custody or killing him. That would be the logical culmination of Better Call Saul.

Bookmark this post and we'll see in five years.

 

It seems illogical that they would set the series in the future, meaning, if it begins airing in 2008, why would they set the show in 2009? Makes no sense. Can you be specific about the document you're referring to that notes 1959? I don't remember it.

 

I agree. BB seemed to be very much an ongoing evolution of the stories, not a pre-planned epic. E.G. Jesse was going to be killed off in S1 until they saw how great the chemistry was between Bryan and Aaron; Tuco's exit earlier than planned and that dying kid's wish to see the Schwarzes again (what a shame that kid wasn't around to see his wish fulfilled and catch the end of the show), etc.

 

Again -- they do not have the endgame of the show planned out at all. They make the show up as they go. It's not a big deal to return to a location, TV shows do it all the time. (It's not really in Nebraska.)

Oh, no, I don't remember it, that's just what I see looking at the Breaking Bad Wiki and other places. It must be a birth certificate or something. Maybe someone in the props department put 1959 because they were filming that episode in 2009.

This is probably where someone should go "Psst... it really doesn't matter."

 

Great posts, you guys!

Who here is forgetting Domingo Molina, though? AKA, Krazy-8? Somewhere in the shuffle between Tuco, up the ladder to Gus, it was implied that Tuco filled Krazy-8's void. I can't recall if Pinkman or Skinny Pete said it. And Krazy-8 was most definitely dealing Meth, because Jesse was supplying him with Chili-P. I would imagine Krazy-8 wasn't pushing up money to Gus, though, otherwise the cops would have been on to Gus, as Krazy-8 was a police informant.

The irony is that Walt kills Krazy-8, inadvertently taking Krazy-8 off of Gus' trail, only for Walt to kill Gus later.

All this to say, do we get a visit from Krazy-8 on BCS, or is he too far out of the loop? Does Tuco filling Krazy-8's void - Tuco being actually related to the cartel - give Gus an inside reprieve from being sniffed out? There's some relation here. Krazy-8 and Nacho? One's father owns an upholstery shop, while the other a furniture store. Both work for their fathers.

 

I could see Gene being taken into custody, but not killed. There's nobody alive to even care about Jimmy/Saul/Gene anymore. They are all dead, including the cartel players in Mexico.

 

This is all wonderful detective work, but it presupposes that someone actually sat down and thought all this through, and then actually paid attention to every last detail to maintain the validity of the time line. I'd put those odds at about a million to one.

In the opening scene of "The Big Lebowski", George Bush is on TV delivering his "This aggression will not stand" speech (8/6/90) and the narrator (The Stranger) tells us that the story takes place "back in the early 90s, just about the time of our conflict with Saddam and the I-raquis"(The Gulf War, 8/2/90 - 2/28/91), and The Dude writes a 69 cent check dated 9/11/91. So the Bush speech could have been a playback of an earlier speech, The Stranger has a loose interpretation of "just about", The Dude is so out of it that he doesn't know the year, or needs to write a massively postdated check for 69 cents or ...

No one in the creative team gave this more than ten minutes of thought, so there is no "correct" answer as to the date, or even the year, the opening scene is set in.

 

The video shown in court on the first episode of BCS had a late 2001 time stamp. So starting in 2002 makes sense. But I wonder if the timeline is going to be lol BB, where one year can take up many seasons.

 

I am not so sure about that. I think that the team on "Better Call Saul" could be aware of dates, especially as they know that fans will be thinking of it in terms of "Breaking Bad." There is a great attention to detail on "Better Call Saul."

 

I'm not thinking that they have the dates mapped out to include the employee schedule in Cinnabon, but I do think there is a rough idea on how the show is going to get to its already written conclusion.

 

I've always loved that scene for the lighting and atmospherics. However, I'm not sure that it was designed to signal that 'trouble is brewing'. It's been used in S1 a number of times and I just think it was lit that way for a noir artistic effect, like so many other shots with artistic compositions.

 

I get the apparent 'inefficiency' of filming '5 min scenes' every series, but in reality, how inefficient is it really? Just slap on some facial hair and costume and run a B&W filter over the footage - not that onerous.

I would agree that Gilligan has the series mapped out in broad strokes, but I doubt he has done so in intricate detail. Remember, the trajectory of Jimmy's journey has already been altered after S1 ended. The writing team do react to changes on the ground. Sometimes a character comes along that works better then expected, so they keep them around for longer which leads to new story avenues. This very thing happened throughout S1.

And as things change, the flashforward scenes may need to change, so it would be better to not pre-shoot them years in advance, but to adapt them each season (with self consistency) to the changing narrative. It also means that they have the flexibility to devote a lot more time than just 5 mins to the flashforward scenes as the series progresses.

 

I really liked episode 2--Mike as "fixer" is always fun to watch.

I totally got sucked in by Jimmy, thinking that his pie video for the cops was a funny and crafty move, and then got snapped out of the trance by Kim, who cautions that preparing false evidence is a big no-no criminally and professionally.

 

It was a sad moment...until then they were able to talk about everything.
I guess it really was the beginning of the end of their relationship.

>>>

 

That was a fascinating show Monday, maybe more so than any other in the series. Jimmy's a bad lawyer. For all his dumpster-diving and business development acumen, his dominant defect is that he's lazy. Rather than take the time and effort to develop his skills, he acts instinctively - "Slippin' Jimmy" - and cuts corners. A good lawyer like Chuck or Hamlin would have gotten the putative pie-sitter out of trouble in no time. They might never have had to talk with the police. But Jimmy didn't know how to do that, and so he took the easy way out.

This is going to show up in his relationship with Kim. It's not simply that she's ethical, and he's not. It's that she's investing in a career, working hard and developing the skills to do things the right way ... and he's falsifying evidence. She's doing things the hard way, he's taking the easy way out, and she must realize it's fundamentally unfair. It will also show up in his relationship with Mike. At bottom, Jimmy seeks approbation - or, alternatively, its flip side, which is not to be threatened or hurt. Mike is going to continue to show Jimmy both the carrot and the stick (to borrow his phrase), and that is going to play right into Jimmy's dominant defect. Jimmy will do stuff for Mike that he's not supposed to do, because it's the easiest way out. Through that, he will also seek from Mike the relationship he wants with Chuck but can't have.

 

I get what you're saying and I do agree that Jimmy's lazy and easily bored by procedure, but in this case to say that he took the easy way out seems not quite right. The easy way out would not have been to concoct a credibility stretching story, convince his client to shoot a video, come up with a 'screen play', buy a costume and who knows how many pies for multiple takes. edit the video, backdate the timestamps, etc. Seems like a harder way to go rather than an easy way out. He's not lazy when it comes to scams, which is his natural default.

 

Two things were at play here. First, he hadn't invested in the professional development that would have shown him the right play here, which is to put the putative pie-sitter into lockdown and let the police move onto something else. Second, and more critically, Jimmy didn't have the intestinal fortitude to sell that to Mike or his client. He didn't want Mike to be mad at him, and he didn't want to suffer the transaction costs of selling his stupid client on the plan. (Neither did Mike, which was why he hired Jimmy.)

Think of it this way - how WOULD Chuck or Hamlin have solved that problem? Just as well if not better, and certainly not the same way.

 

Nacho asked Mike "How did you find me?", and Mike just gave him a contemptuous sneer. IIRC, Mike already knew who Nacho was and that he was working for Tuco.

 

But he does have the ability and the professional development to be able to tease apart a sophisticated case such as Sandpiper. So the question isn't so much about his lack of professional ability, but rather his innate preference for shortcuts and scams. It's an intellectual tension between right and wrong.