Better Call Saul - Season Four Discussion & Digestion

They talked about it quite a bit on the podcast, but funnily enough no one mentioned that angle. Apparently the writer of the dialogue for that scene was a big fan of that movie.

 

That was just a silly incest joke.

 

Except it showed that Gus was cruel to the core from a early age and will enjoy seeing Hector speechless in a wheelchair, just as he enjoyed keeping the animal suffering with a broken leg.

 

We saw Jimmy’s mother die in an earlier season of Better Call Saul when Chuck and Jimmy are adults. Jimmy steps out of the hospital room for a minute. Their mother dies in front of Chuck. Her last words are to ask for Jimmy. Jimmy comes back, ask Chuck if she had any last words, and Chuck lies and says that she said nothing before dying.

 

Can you please explain it again?

 

i'm a lawyer, and I completely agree. unconvincing scene.

 

i think he irritated Mike because he bragged about his previous job. which said to Mike he couldn't trust him to keep his mouth shut.

 

Thanks, yes I remember that now - a great scene revealing the extent of Chuck's lifelong bitterness that "the happiest I ever saw mother was the day she brought you home from the hospital - you brought a shine to her life that nothing else ever did," (paraphrasing) as he mentions again in his posthumous letter to Jimmy.

 

I see that you are from New York City. Out here on the prairie, there are no overhead considerations from real estate. We have almost infinite space to sprawl out into, inexpensively—at least for the space needs of any law firm. That is a very interesting difference in different parts of the U.S.

 

I totally missed that! I'm laughing now, so I guess that will suffice.

 

I've lost track. S&C represents the defendants in the Sandpiper case? Then that's a huge issue (depending on what the ethical rules are in New Mexico). At least during the time in question in New York, even a so-called "Chinese Wall" between Kim and the rest of the S&C attorneys would not be sufficient without client (the Sandpiper plaintiffs) consent. This isn't just a legal nerd issue. I think there is something involving the rules governing attorney-client relationships that will figure into how the characters will be able to interact on a personal level. It suggests to me the Sandpiper litigation still looms large in the plot.

 

Agreed. And it was the first time ever that a scene with Gus had me not totally riveted.

 

I may be wrong - lord knows it wouldn't be the first time - but I think the show's creators chose "Giselle" for a reason. There is a famous ballet called "Giselle", which is about a peasant girl who loves to dance but has a weak heart. She falls for a man (Albrecht) whom she doesn't realize has another identity. She is warned that her dancing could cause her heart to give out. Giselle discovers Albrecht's duplicity, becomes very distraught, and kills herself. Ghostly spirits of dead girls jilted on their wedding day, who have the power to force men to dance to their deaths, seek to recruit Giselle. Meanwhile Albrecht, full of remorse and sorrow, comes to mourn at Giselle’s grave and seek her forgiveness. The spirits decide that Albrecht must die, but Giselle intervenes. She has him seek shelter in a place where she can protect him. The spirits force Giselle to dance, which she does, and Albrecht is drawn to her. The spirits attempt to force Albrecht to dance until he dies. Albrecht dances until he collapses from exhaustion, but the light of dawn forces the spirits to leave. Giselle returns to her grave, having saved Albrecht. Albrecht, overcome by his love for Giselle and her forgiveness, is left to weep at her grave.

Now I don't know if this, if applicable, illuminates the future of merely explains the past. I don't think it was mere happenstance that she told Jimmy about her new association with the law firm at the place where the two, as Giselle and Viktor, perpetrated their last "scam". I believe she said something to the effect that she was not there (at the restaurant) as Giselle. Perhaps she is finished trying to protect him from the forces that ultimately will overtake him. Perhaps she will rescue him at some future date. Perhaps the name Giselle merely floated to the top of the milk in a BCS writer's bowl of Alpha-Bits.

 

Thank you. That is really interesting!

 

I noticed it on first viewing but did not connect it to Howard Hamlin.

What the Howard’s End reference did make me do was look up the year that this Oscar pool would have taken place. The film was released in 1992, so the Oscar pool would have taken place in 1993. Kim tells Chuck in that scene that she is in her third year of law school. When the first season of Better Call Saul began there were articles in which the show’s creators said that the first season was set in 2002 as I recall.

So Kim was in her oppressed associate attorney status at H&M, as shown in the early years of this show, after having worked there as an attorney for nine years. That is an unexpectedly long time for an attorney to work at one firm and still be subject to the kind of treatment that Howard Hamlin dished out to her. It makes Howard seem cruel and Kim seem remarkably patient and loyal to HHM. It makes more sense that S&C tried to recruit her earlier in the show’s history.

 

Yes, that made me scratch my head as well - I can't imagine the promising future lawyer Kim was back then to be so patient at HHM. Anyway, great episode, just finished it. Not as heavy on plot as I guessed in this thread last week, but nonetheless I feel the course has ultimately been set for this season's last four episodes.

 

I wonder, and actually really hope, that Kim gets out of this series alive. I think it might be a nice twist to have her totally move on from Jimmy’s world only to reappear in Gene’s. Maybe as a judge or something. I don’t think she’s going to stay at this new firm very long.

 

Coming 38 pages in...

I sort of binged the first six episodes of Season 4 early this week, and my main takeaway is this:

Spoiler: SPOILER

Howard is getting exactly what he deserves, and I like it! Hopefully this doesn't sound petty, and it's only a TV show, so I'm loving that this character got smacked by karma.

Also, I'm glad Kim got the sweet firm job under ideal circumstances.

As far as Jimmy, well, we all know he's hopeless and will continue to descend.

"The Making of Fring's Meth Lab," was a good idea. I love how Mike and Gus sniff out the first engineer/architect as in over his head, or a ********ter or a fraud.

 

Yeah, but Gus was hanging out, listening, so it wasn't just Mike's call. Maybe it goes to show how much Mike and Gus are on the same page.

Yeah, it was cool until it was overwrought. It served its purpose, but my nit to pick is that it was too long for the content that it held.

 

I have no idea whether Gilligan and Gould are as erudite as misterjones. But this makes a lot of sense, for one reason: there is NO way this ends well for Kim. As much as we like her, and as much as we might hope she will see the light, drive to Hastings, Nebraska, and find happiness as a small town corporate lawyer, that is not this show’s “logic.” Like “Breaking Bad,” the show is about its characters’ free choices, and the consequences those choices have for themselves and others. I cannot think of the character who didn’t come out dead or maimed from their interaction with Walt, and Jimmy is no different. Vegas odds are that Kim will end up as dead as

Spoiler

Jane, Andrea, Gus, Mike, Hank and Gomez.

If she’s lucky, she’ll just be ruined, like

Spoiler

Jesse, Skylar, Flynn, Marie and Brock.

Our man misterjones offers as credible a path as anyone for how that could happen.

 

Not so erudite as always suspicious that the BCS people like to insert esoteric references into their shows, if only for their own amusement. The name "Giselle" struck me as a strange choice and possibly meaningful. I searched the name and settled upon the possibly relevant ballet of the same name.

Recall that Chuck was playing the highly relevant song "It Never Entered My Mind" (in instrumental form by Miles Davis) as he kicked over the lantern. One had to recognize the tune then listen to a version with the lyrics to get the reference. (This was entirely coincidental for me, as I happened to be listening to Helen Forrest singing the song a few days later.) I think the BCS folks probably do that much more than we realize. The "Howard's End" reference in last week's show was another one (that I totally missed).

 

Try as I might, and as much as I enjoy the song, I don't see how the lyrics "fit" with Chuck's final hours.

 

Here are the lyrics to "It Never Entered My Mind":

I don't care if there's powder on my nose
I don't care if my hairdo is in place
I've lost the very meaning of repose
I never put a mudpack on my face
Oh, who'd have thought that I'd walk in a daze now?
I never go to shows at night, just to matinees now
I see the show
And home I go

(Chorus)
Once you told me I was mistaken
That I'd awaken
With the sun
And order orange juice for one
It never entered my mind

Once I laughed when I heard you saying
That I'd be playing
Solitaire
Uneasy in my easy chair
It never entered my mind

You have what I lack myself
And now I even have to scratch my back myself

Once you warned me
That if you scorned me
I'd say the maiden's prayer again
And wish that you were there again
To get into my hair again
It never entered my mind

 

I first got into jazz in the mid-1970s. A lot of jazz LPs were out of print at that time. (CDs had not been invented. There was no internet or streaming or downloading. You either bought physical LPs or nothing). Jazz lovers were encouraged by a reissue series of 2 LP sets called Prestige 2-fers, which contained two albums from the 1950s to mid-1960s, by major jazz figures, with new photographs of the artist on the cover. I bought several of them and my friends who were also getting into jazz bought some of them too.

There was a Miles Davis Prestige 2-fer called "Workin' and Steamin'". The version of "It Never Entered My Mind" that is playing in Chuck's house, is the version that leads off that 2 LP reissue. I played it often in the mid-1970s during my first burst of jazz enthusiasm.

When it was presented on Better Call Saul, I thought, "oh great, my musical tastes now seem to the world like the musical tastes of an almost impossibly nerdy snob."

 

I thought it was nothing more than a reference to Gisele Bündchen, who, in 2003, was pretty much top of the heap in the world of supermodels and was known at that time as Leonardo DiCaprio's girlfriend (these days she's Mrs. Tom Brady).