wendyg

Loandbehold: Have a look at the opening scene of Tom Stoppard's ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD: Rosencrantz: Did you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it? Guildenstern: No. Rosencrantz: Nor do I, really. It's silly to be depressed by it. I mean, one thinks of it like being alive in a box. One keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead, which should make all the difference, shouldn't it? I mean, you'd never *know* you were in a box, would you? It would be just like you were asleep in a box. Not that I'd like to sleep in a box, mind you. Not without any air. You'd wake up dead for a start, and then where would you be? In a box. That's the bit I don't like, frankly. That's why I don't think of it. Because you'd be helpless, wouldn't you? Stuffed in a box like that. I mean, you'd be in there forever, even taking into account the fact that you're dead. It isn't a pleasant thought. Especially if you're dead, really. Ask yourself, if I asked you straight off, "I'm going to stuff you in this box. Now, would you rather be alive or dead?" naturally, you'd prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance, at least. You could lie there thinking, "Well, at least I'm not dead. In a minute somebody is going to bang on the lid, and tell me to come out." [bangs on lid] Rosencrantz: "Hey you! What's your name? Come out of there!" Guildenstern: [long pause] I think I'm going to kill you. wg

Would a vampire *want* to be considered a person, legally? True, it would mean they could rent homes, get driver's licenses and passports, seek gainful employment, pay taxes, and get married. On the flip side...

They scammed him but they didn't keep the money.

...which reminds me that besides Gale I was very pleased to see Fran, the waitress at Mike's favorite restaurant, again.

My theory is that Kim looked at the models and saw them as "This is what my life is going to be" and didn't like the prospect even though by any reasonable definition it's the kind of success she's been working for. As for the courthouse...would she be able to find financial documents like corporate tax returns and so on there? Because one thing that occurs to me is she might like to look into how they're financing all this. Whatever, I tend to link the courthouse and the models. On the other hand, we've known Kim for more than three years now, and despite that we know shockingly little about her background. She never mentions any family, we have no idea whether her parents are alive, whether she has siblings, or whether any of them know she's in a serious relationship. We have no idea whether she grew up rich or poor, why she chose Albuquerque to settle in, or what she did before she joined HHM. It is entirely possible that her reaction has something to do with her *own* background and little to do with Jimmy and Chuck at all. (Come to think of it, we didn't learn those things about Marie or Skyler, either...) Finally: the actress who plays Viola, the paralegal: it's Lane from GILMORE GIRLS, yes?

lembergwatcher: It's arguable that mind-wipe-resets are a Whedon specialty. The dolls in DOLLHOUSE are wiped every time they finish a job and exist in a twilight blank state in between. Plus the temporary wipes in TABULA RASA and SPIN THE BOTTLE. Not that this helps you like it any better.

You're forgetting Francesca. Now that we know she was working for Saul when he was Jimmy McGill, we know that she knows a *lot* about him, more than anyone else alive now. She is not dead, and it strikes me that if there were a lever to flush Gene out of Omaha and back to ABQ she would be it. She was not always happy about what Saul asked her to do - eg, making the call to Hank - but it seemed to be Walt she blamed most. Huell is also still alive, and while he wouldn't know *much*, he'd know that Saul involved him in the Brock poisoning scheme, and he doubtless has memories of various of Saul's conversations, too. We can be sure the police and DEA know about Saul's involvement - Skyler will have told them. There's nothing illegal about defending criminals, but they can get Saul on money laundering, conspiracy, probably obstruction of justice. We don't know anything about Saul's *other* practice, which had his waiting room filled at all times with anxious Latinos; was he helping them stay in the country illegally, helping them become legal and documented, or their lawyer of choice for petty crimes? Most likely a mix of all three...so although probably none of those clients are eager to help the police, it's easy to imagine deals being made. It's also interesting to wonder where Howard and others who knew Jimmy in the BCS timeline are in the BB timeline (other than "not created yet"). There has to have been some pretty impressive reason why in a town the size of Albuquerque no one from the legal community reacts publicly to seeing all those pictures of Jimmy McGill on those benches and billboards advertising Saul Goodman's legal services. But whatever it is, that should be over now. It's entirely reasonable for Jimmy/Saul/Gene to think that all of Albuquerque is buzzing about him.

I don't think this is where the story is going. It's too obvious for these writers, and also Jimmy would know Mike was not going to *enjoy* stealing them; there's no cleverness involved. Whatever the plan is, it's something else.

tennisgurl: Oh, no, Nacho's friend got the best of it. Nacho now gets to live with Gus's ongoing torture.

SnarkyTart: I was about to say the same thing, except I'd forgotten the details of the client.

My thought re the Hummel figurines was not that Jimmy wanted to steal them but that it was somehow connected to that Sandpiper client he had - the one in the ad, I think - who collected them.

Five stages, as identified by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. For a brilliantly worked example, see Bob Fosse's movie ALL THAT JAZZ.

LoneHaranguer: Not based on any sort of evidence (I don't think), but my feeling has always been that BCS picks up about six months after Saul's vanishment from BB. He's had time to establish a routine, learn his job (on one of the DVD commentaries, Odenkirk says he went through the Cinnabon training program to learn all the bun-making moves), etc. The complete action of BB takes two years, beginning when the show first aired in 2008. So I'm guessing that we're seeing Gene in 2011.

We'll just have to pretend that the demon got caught on a tree branch on the way down, and that's how Buffy caught him so she could haul him back out.

ShadowFacts: IME medical personnel in the US always ask for SSNs - medical insurance apparently requires them. The only way I know of that you don't have to supply one is if you pay cash. Certainly in that time period, anyway. Happy to be corrected about the present.

If I were picking a BB character to blow Gene out of the water it would be Francesca.

iMonrey: FYI, Amy Hoggart's father was Simon Hoggart, a widely read, very popular, very witty political columnist for the Guardian for many years, one of the greats of 20th century British journalism (for decades he wrote the Parliamentary sketch, the slot now occupied by John Crace); her grandfather was Richard Hoggart, who was famously an expert witness opposing censorship in the LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER trial in 1960. Richard Hoggart has a building named after him at Goldsmith University.

Yes: it wouldn't make any sense for Ed, the Disappearer to use fake SSNs, when they'd be so easily spotted any time the Disappeared got a job, applied for credit, or went to a doctor (presumably, Gene has medical insurance, too). So the SSN is stolen but real, and the big risk is that instead of having been assigned to a child who died young it in fact belongs to someone who is alive and encountering difficulties and reporting them. (People do get caught for this.) Gilligan said on the DVD commentary to the end of BB that a guy who did a similar job (not for criminals as much as people who just wanted to disappear, such as victims of domestic violence) found that the hardest thing about keeping his clients disappeared is that they would call home. Saul didn't seem to have anyone in his life that he'd be likely to call, but he's living under great strain with his true personality suppressed (as he did as Jimmy) and enormous fear of being caught by very small things. In the opener to S2 of BCS, for example, when he was trapped in the garbage collection area, he waited for an hour or something for someone else to come rather than sound the alarm by exiting using the emergency door. He's not going to be able to live like this for all that long.

Well, Glenn Quinn was on ROSEANNE for years as Becky's boyfriend, then husband. I would expect him to have been used to the attention and money before joining ANGEL.

"Cruel?" I think Jimmy just reasonably expected that the result would be the insurance company raising the premiums, which is what they did. So his action was vengeful, but all he thought it would cost Chuck and HHM was *money*, which they had plenty of. He did *not* foresee - and couldn't have - that this would be Howard's excuse to force Chuck out.

nosleepforme: She takes those parts because they're offered to her and she needs or wants the work. It doesn't matter what you did in the past when you need to pay the rent...

I hated the ending of this episode *so much*. The *only* conceivable reason Angel has to tell Buffy what he's done in turning back time is to manipulate the audience's emotions. It makes no sense: why would you want your final memory of the one day you have together to be of your loved on sobbing her heart out? Why would you tell her *at all*, since she's not going to remember it anyway? (Quite apart from, if there was a demon that could rehumanize vampires, why wouldn't the Watchers have discovered it long ago and begun using it to help rid the planet of the scourge?)

Bryce Lynch: Thanks for posting the podcast link. I particularly liked this exchange: "How the hell did you burn that house down?" "It was a shame. The family was very nice about it..."

The show skips over that, but it's fairly easy: we see Mike asking for the company's address when he calls Directory Assistance. So my assumption is he stakes out the company parking lot, picks an employee he thinks is suitable for him to impersonate (bald, same height), follows him home, and then steals the credential, which most people probably do keep in their car and hobbles the car so the guy will be delayed. Then all he has to do is show up the next morning. If you know how security consultants do the kind of attack Mike did, all his activities once he was in were pretty clear. Companies often hire this type of consultant to attempt to get in and use "social engineering" to convince people to give them stuff they shouldn't in order to test the quality of their security. They don't usually steal credentials and mess up people's cars, though.

A small point: I really love the detail that Juan Bolsa translates to "Johnny Sack".