Better Call Saul - Season Four Discussion & Digestion

I thought the ending scene was incredible -- Jimmy still in the courthouse gloating how he duped the board and how one of those "a@#holes was even crying!"

Jimmy, man, you just indirectly called the only woman who could possibly love you and stand by you an a@#hole!

 

Eh, just ignore it. There are some things I wanted to happen in this series. But Gilligan and crew are smarter than I am. I think, in the end, the protestors will come to see that also.

 

"The winner takes it all, the loser standing small..."

 

Ahh, don't even worry about it. S'all good, man!

 

Loved season four and can't wait for season five.

 

I think the things in this particular episode that don't necessarily seem the *most* logical are only lacking logic when taking a totally dispassionate, distanced look.

For instance, I too thought for a moment that Kim's incredulity at the very end (a powerful moment regardless of how justified her reaction is) regarding Jimmy's insincerity seemed too extreme, given not only her familiarity with Jimmy in general but also, as someone else pointed out, the fact that she had been helping Jimmy with essentially a *very* "long" con over the span of a week or two faking grief over Chuck's death in various ways (grave site, "reading room", etc.)

But you gotta remember, she loves Jimmy. It think plenty of folks can relate to loving someone, or otherwise deeply caring for them, and continually hoping and/or assuming they'll "do the right thing" eventually, that they'll be "good" when it comes the most important stuff. Think about it - even Chuck admits in talking to Jimmy and Kim that at various points he probably was too hoodwinked into thinking Jimmy would "change." When you think about the fact that Kim "loves" Jimmy in an arguably deeper (or more passionate, or romantic, or whatever) way, it's even easier to believe she both knows Jimmy's nature but continually gets burned.

That conversation Chuck had with Kim a couple seasons back, that was a *very* important speech. In the moment, it was important because it fueled Kim's passion to *defend* Jimmy against Chuck. But I also thought back at that time that, however much of a jerk Chuck was and however much he *wasn't* being the "bigger" person and trying to help Jimmy in more constructive ways (e.g. just give him the dang *approval* and be proud of him the way they both know Jimmy wants), Chuck's words to Kim probably spelled out how Kim would also end up being burned by Jimmy.

The question now is how much she'll let herself get burned beyond what we've already seen.

 

Perfect song for both the Chuck/Jimmy relationship and the Kim/Jimmy relationship.

Critic Chuck Klosterman described the song as “the only pop song that examines the self-aware guilt one feels when talking to a person who has humanely obliterated your heart."

Kim is always there for Jimmy and doesnt want him to feel bad even while her heart is being ripped out as his marriage to Saul begins.

Sorry Kim, but you do know Jimmy has been cheating on you from the beginning?

 

Nice! Great observation.

 

Jimmy shifted gears pretty quickly. I'm sure I'm not the only person that thought, at the very least "dude, wait to call the guy an a-hole until you're, you know, OUTSIDE the main part of the building."

I thought his cockiness was pretty brazen. When told of "good news", he assumes he already knows what the good news is (which kinda implies insincerity in the hearing), and then immediately notes his name change (which DEFINITELY calls into question his sincerity of upholding the McGill name). We get a "sweetheart" to boot, and we're certainly in "Saul" territory both figuratively and literally now.

 

In a weird way, Kim sorta got what was coming her way.

She gets a thrill out of pulling these scams, and even asks Jimmy to "do it again."

Well, Jimmy did do it yet again -- Kim just never thought she'd end up being the mark. Well, cue Bob Dylan: "How does it feel?"

 

1. Kim's surprise at finding out that Jimmy had conned the appeal board shows just how much she loves him. Love is blindness.

2. Lalo climbing through the ceiling seemed to be a device used to show the viewer that this is a guy to be feared, capable of anything. Perhaps a worthy adversary to Gus?

3. To me, Werner being childlike makes sense. I've known a lot of people with overdeveloped intellects and had other aspects of their personalities that were underdeveloped. Underdeveloped emotions, common sense, etc.

4. Mike killing Werner surely represents a real turning point for him.

5. Ernie is the best worst singer ever!

 

It depends on how you look at it (whether Kim's response was too extreme). I think what happened was that, con not withstanding, that Kim thought that Jimmy was going off script and finally expressing his real feelings about Chuck. He had her fooled and when that was made clear to her, it completely devastated her. So, I don't think her response was 'too extreme'.

 

Yes, I've known folks like this as well, and their "child-like" attributes would prevent them from getting involved with a plan, an organization, and a crew like Gus'.

How would a guy like Werner even end up in this space? He could not just have stumbled across it or have it fall in his lap?

A guy like Werner and his "genius" would end up making sacks of cash at AECOM or Thornton Tomasetti... His "child-like" attributes would take him down that path.

There was no "desperation" or "personality" angle to drive Werner here -- He's a guy with no children just living with his wife who comes across completely happy and satisfied with domesticity.

 

How did he even get up in the ceiling? Go go gadget legs? What about the cameras in the building? They for sure were watching him and will be able to identify him as killing the employee.
Or am I just looking too far into it?

 

Great season! We go into season 5 with Jimmy turned full blown Saul Goodman. Mike has broken bad. We see a little more into the mind of Kim - and that relationship is in trouble.

As far as Mike, he obviously made a bad choice in joining up with Gus. I don't think he would have joined up if he felt it would lead to stuff like this. Or he could have made a deal with Gus from the beginning that Mike does no killing other than self defense. Mike certainly felt if he didn't kill Werner, he'd be in serious trouble with Gus, maybe killed. So he felt he had no choice. If he regrets teaming with Gus, couldn't he put his brilliant mind to work in extricating himself from that situation, by whatever means necessary? On the other hand, maybe he's accepted the situation now. It'll be interesting to see his thinking on his situation in Season 5.

 

Ernie is the new William Hung!

 

I dunno; people are complicated. Think about the *other* people Fring ends up having to use for his "business." They are all presumably good at specific things, and then also have severe deficiencies in others. Walt being the most obvious example.

I have no problem believing that Werner was the guy that was needed to do the job, but also had a number of "Achilles heels" so to speak, which normally would not be so inflamed on a typical "job." I don't even think his panic attack is meant to be specifically and solely related to missing his wife. I think it was a conflation of a number of factors. Going stir crazy in that setting, missing his wife, worrying that the job will keep taking longer, and I'd even say, despite being partially ignorant as to the severity of the Fring operation, was probably also *somewhat* aware of any number of potential negative aftermaths of the job.

I think the Werner character was *way* more interesting the way they sketched him out, by being complicated and with bit of dichotomy. He's good at his job, but he's kind of a wiener and isn't full of braggadocio, etc. He's smart enough to know the general nature of what he's doing, but either doesn't see or chooses not to see more specifics. He knows Fring has to be a powerful guy, but also at least think it's possible *he* can talk Fring into understanding his deal. All this stuff was way more interesting and tragic than either having a "badass" no-nonsense tough guy in the role (e.g. a German Mike essentially), or a genius guy that's a total wiener (like Gale for instance, not that Gale didn't have his own unique character things going on). I thought Werner came off great, and the right amount of complicated. He pleads for himself up to the last moment he can, but then is also smart enough to be able to shift gears into doing what he has to, in tragic fashion, to save his wife.

I thought the whole Werner thing was played out well, and was interesting for the sake of itself rather than needing to be about something bigger. Ultimately, I think Werner and the crew and showing the building of the lab is less about showing the genesis of the lab or even having one of those "that's the origin of that Breaking Bad thing!" sort of bits. I think it was mostly about *Mike*, about showing how he's shifting more into his "Breaking Bad" mode just as Jimmy/Saul is.

I thought they played Mike's murder of Werner as well as such a thing could be. It wasn't excessively maudlin on the part of Mike, nor was it 100% cold. Mike seems peeved about the whole thing, but it's an understandable mixture of "this whole situation sucks" as well as "if Werner hadn't screwed this up, we'd all be better off."

 

Interesting, because I see Gus and Mike as downright perfect for each other. I don't think Mike could have chosen a better "underworld" partner to work with. Mike and Gus are incredibly rational human beings who are constantly focused on strategy and the long game. They are not driven by immediate impulse or emotion... Look who they are surrounded by: impulsive Salamancas, naive Werner, ego-driven Walter White, etc.

Mike knows that Gus is his best ally in this scene.

 

Past scenes keep popping into my mind making my second guess..

Some of us say "Jimmy has always been Saul"

Yet Jimmy could have taken that little old ladies money very easily back in a previous season. He outted himself though, lost it all and his reputation with the old folks in order to "set things right". That would seem to have character. Someone we could admire. A stand up guy who turned his ways.

Yet he goes back again and again to his scheming ways.

There is a scene in season 4 in which Jimmy mourns the old ladies death. That and the guilt over the scam he was playing on the old folks seem to be the only two times Jimmy is sincerely bothered by his actions.

Could it be that his mothers death played into his guilt? That he sees an emotional connection there to the old woman in the commercial who died? Maybe his mothers death and its open endedness is very similar to his non-closure in Chucks death.

In Jimmys life there are a lot of "why's" in his mind.

Why was my dad like that? Why did my friend I use to run scams with have to die? Why is Kim even with a loser like me? Why did Chuck have to die like that? Why did he have to eviscerate me like he did with his parting comment? Why why why?

 

I agree, *I* don't think her response was too extreme given the proper context. I was simply saying that I understand how a more direct, non-contextualized, and dispassionate reading of the scene (and the preceding scenes) could result in feeling like Kim should know anything and everything Jimmy does or says could be a con, especially considering only days (I'm presuming) prior she watched Jimmy completely feign emotion and grief at the gravesite.

I just don't think she had seen Jimmy "in action" quite in that way in that extreme. She hasn't seen stuff like his routine in front of the malpractice insurance agent.

I mean, I'm never *not* going to find Jimmy/Saul an interesting character. But he's treading rather closely (arguably even more so than in "Breaking Bad" as he's depicted there) to being a full-on sociopath. He's not bending his emotion or the truth just a bit. He's putting on a full-on expert exhibition on how to completely fabricate an elaborate personal emotional moment/speech.

I also think Kim has been wanting Jimmy to have a break through and finally grieve Chuck's death. Little did she know that Jimmy (apparently) had that moment privately in his car (though that outburst was probably a culmination of a number of factors), and he was able to vacillate from *completely* deleting Chuck from his lexicon (in the first reinstatement hearing) to realizing Chuck content is what they were looking for and delivering *precisely* what they wanted in an apparently completely fabricated fashion (one could still understandably believe Jimmy was still at least drawing on some sort of base true emotion to put on his "show", just as actors who need to cry on command might think about something tragic in their life, etc.).

 

A great finale to a great season, imo. I like the comparison above to the fourth season of Breaking Bad--I actually might have preferred if that were the end of the series, the fifth season just was too "pat" for me.

Exactly. I took away from the "mis-wired" scene that Werner was having anxiety about losing his life so far from his wife and not being able to see her again. Just as he feared for his wife's safety at the end and had to anger her to get her back on the plane and to safety. I thought the writers telegraphed this well enough, but perhaps they could have been clearer. But Werner was who he was, just as Jimmy is who he is and Mike who he is. Werner was hired because he was capable and not bragging and responded to the challenge appropriately. Had the estimated job length been accurate Werner would be home with Margerethe and Mike would not have to wash his hands a few times so early. . . .

Poor Kim. She helped nurture and raise Saul and there he is right before her eyes, seen more clearly than ever, or clearly at last. It was a great con, and she may now truly wish it had been less effective.

The next season will be too long coming. I want more.

 

This is exactly it. Kim felt that she wasn't in with Jimmy any longer. She was now lumped in with the rest of the weepy-eyed ass holes in the room.

No, Jimmy didn't know that Kim was crying, too, but after making a mockery of their tears, for the first time Kim felt the aftermath of the con on a personal level.

 

I was often thinking that the extremes that Lalo was undertaking (full-on car chase-levels of car surveillance, attacking and possibly/probably murdering the TravelWire guy, etc.) seemed excessive for this early stage of learning about Fring and Mike and that whole operation. He seems "smooth", but he's not subtle or covert as someone like Mike would be.

Even a 100% heartless, murdering drug cartel operative would presumably try to minimize the number of crimes and full-on murders he leaves in his path at such an early stage of his "surveillance" and fact-finding.

That being said, I would presume Lalo would delete all needed security footage once he has access to the security system. At least *that* part seems easily explainable.

The question would be whether he just leaves the crime scene the way it is, or if he stopped to clean it up. If he just left everything ransacked, with a dead guy on the floor, then there's the possibility that other far-off witnesses (such as the lady who tries to come in and is waved off by Lalo) could give at least a bit of a description of Lalo.

Lalo seems far too brazen for someone that may end up surviving for quite some time. My recollection is that Saul's mention of Ignacio and Lalo in his first BB episode indicated Lalo was still alive (or at least that Saul assumes Lalo is still alive), while it's more open to interpretation as to whether his mention of Ignacio precludes Ignacio/Nacho still being alive.

 

Yes. He exhibited (and perhaps developed this) quite clearly in X-Files.

 

I wonder if Jimmy will now want an office with Kim still. A shared office without the stock market crash logo will not be the same. Not sure how the G will fit with the W.

Goodman And Wexler Assoc. does have a ring to it though.

Or was that dream pissed on (in Jimmys mind) by Kim and now Jimmy has no desire to be with Kim in a partnership?

Will Kim go back to H and M? Saul and Kim becoming enemies? Kim and Saul showdown with Gus, Mike and the Cartel the hinge?

All of the above is wrong of course. Gilligan will see to that