[S04.E01: Chapter One: The Hellfire Club]

1 hour ago, Spartan Girl said:

Because I wasn’t a fan of Billy’s eleventh hour redemption, I have a hard time buying that Max would be still so broken up over his death. I get that it was traumatizing, but I wasn’t under the impression they were that close. But grief is a funny thing.

Yeah, I'm thinking a lot of it probably has to do with how much her family life sucks now -- and maybe that makes her more sympathetic in retrospect to Billy's We're family now so we look out for each other shtick.

[S06.E07: Plan and Execution]

1 hour ago, ahmerali said:

Two words: Mike Ehrmantraut.

I wonder if Kim is going to be the one who goes to Mike against Jimmy's wishes. And if I'm right about Lalo wanting Saul to deliver the tape to Eladio, I wonder if Mike ends up intercepting it as a result. That could be the explanation for both the expected rift between Jimmy and Kim and the "It wasn't me, it was Ignacio!" line: Saul thinks Lalo is coming after him for not delivering the tape and tries to pin it on Nacho instead, since he can't very well blame Kim.

[S06.E07: Plan and Execution]

The saddest part is that Lalo was probably there for the most banal possible reason: to give Saul the tape he made so he can give it to Don Eladio if he doesn't make it out of the laundry alive.

Edited to add: Well, banal for Lalo. I guess that would be a pretty dramatic reason for anyone who isn't an evil genius drug kingpin.

[S03.E05: crazytimesh*tshow]

52 minutes ago, aghst said:

It was probably meant to be satire, how companies like Netflix are too reliant on AI.

And I forget the expression they used, something about "taste centers" or taste something being in the right area?

"Taste clusters." Which, believe it or not, is actually a real term Netflix uses.

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But it's absurd, how quickly Sally's triumph disappeared.

Bill Hader mentioned in an interview that this was based on something he experienced:

I did have a guy I worked with tell me, “Hey, I have a show. It’s gonna be on Netflix,” and then going on Netflix and seeing it on the homepage that morning. Then I came back that night to watch it and it wasn’t on the homepage anymore so I searched it and it was like that joke that’s in there where she had to type out pretty much the whole thing before it showed up. That is from life.

Now, in real life, as Hader clarified in the Prestige Podcast someone mentioned earlier, this didn't happen the day the show premiered. And I doubt Hader had to type the guy's full name plus "N-E-W S-H-O-W" plus the name of the show to get it to come up. But like a lot of comedy, it's an exaggerated version of something that happened in real life.

[S06.E06: Axe and Grind]

1 hour ago, SimplexFish said:

Wasn't the only proof that Hector was asking for was proving Gus was behind the assignation attempt? 

No, all Hector said was that he should find "proof" before coming after Gus, presumably because the cartel would not take kindly to the Salamancas murdering their top earner if they had no reason to believe he'd been disloyal.

Maybe at first he meant they needed proof that Gus was behind the attempted assassination, but Nacho's sacrifice made that impossible, so the secret lab is Lalo's only other lead.

[S06.E06: Axe and Grind]

2 hours ago, gallimaufry said:

Another interesting aspect of that scene was how Jimmy couldn't understand how he could walk away from that passive income and Kim says something like "he knows what he wants."  And yet, at the end, Kim doesn't walk (or drive) away.

I don't see those as being in opposition. It's the axe vs. the grind again: Jimmy can't believe the vet is giving up on the criminal hustle, whereas Kim understands that he did it for a reason and now that goal is in sight. In the same way, Kim isn't going to go back to chasing after Howard indefinitely when she knows what she wants; she's going to end things cleanly.

And since everyone is discussing Howard and his wife, it's also worth noting how they fit into this theme. Howard is the one who wants to keep working through their issues (even literally grinding coffee to hopefully help them reconcile), while his wife seems eager for a clean break.

Edited to add: Oh, and then there's Cliff, who's introduced peering at the groaning courthouse coffee machine, and who represents for Kim the grinder's path to her dreams, not by winning a quick Sandpiper settlement but by doing the tough work of networking and building a foundation for her criminal defense practice.

[S06.E06: Axe and Grind]

2 minutes ago, PeterPirate said:

I am still flummoxed by the opener.  I am convinced from the behavior of Kim's mother that she was the instigator of some sort of scam.  Especially the part where she told Kim "You got away with it".

She did get away with it, precisely because Kim's mother did instigate a scam. Her mom pretended that she was this hardass who was going to punish Kim herself, so the store guy decided he didn't need to do anything else to her. It wasn't anything more convoluted than that.

[S06.E06: Axe and Grind]

16 minutes ago, PeterPirate said:

Young Kim took no pleasure from participating in the scam with her mother.  Adult Kim made the U-turn onto Bad Choice Road.  That is the effect Jimmy McGill has had on her over the course of the show. 

I think one crucial difference between the flashback and the current-day situation is that Kim's mom offered her a quick way out—extricating her from trouble and giving her what she wanted—whereas Jimmy could only offer the assurance that they could keep at it and nail Howard some other day.

It's the difference between the axe and the grind, and while Jimmy loves the grind, the seat-of-the-pants joy of scamming and scrapping through another day, that's the worst part for a high-strung, goal-oriented person like Kim. She's an axe woman (she of the sharp-edged earrings), who wants to slice through obstacles cleanly and then be done with them. She has to end it on D-day, or she'll be that little girl trapped in the back office of a department store waiting for the other shoe to drop.

13 minutes ago, dwmarch said:

I can't tie it together to Howard (other than that the end result will somehow make him look bad) but they seem to be trying to force an early settlement on the Sandpiper case by impersonating a judge who is involved. I hope they have something good worked up for this because I am with you in that this scheme doesn't make a whole lot of sense right now.

I think the idea is that they're going to convince Howard that Jimmy is bribing the mediator so he'll make a huge fuss on the client conference call, only for the mediator to confirm that he's never met Jimmy so that Howard looks deranged. (Presumably after also dilating his pupils so it looks like it's the drugs that are making him paranoid.)

[S03.E04: all the sauces]

5 hours ago, PinkRibbons said:

If I was putting a hit out on someone I definitely wouldn't use my real name or try to make any kind of close contact with whoever I hired. I'd be pretty worried about blackmail, at the very least.

But why would Fuches assume that it wasn't the wife putting out the hit unless he had specific reason to think it was someone else? If an untraceable person hires you to take out a guy, wouldn't the guy's spouse be one of the most likely suspects?

I mean, maybe the joke will be that Fuches is an idiot and didn't bother to verify that it wasn't the wife, but that particular error seems more convoluted and thus less punchy than other "Fuches is an idiot" jokes we've seen, like him sneering that he knows he has a right not to submit a DNA sample as he gets his saliva all over a Coke can.

4 hours ago, aghst said:

Fuches may be betting on Annabeth not knowing that he's the guy who arranges the hits.  But she may conclude that since he knows the details he is the one who arranged it.

The comedy will come from Fuches discovering that he's the target.

Per the family's discussion, he's definitely not the current target. The victim's son talks about how "it's like the guy said—the cops aren't doing anything," and the mom remarks, "I just never thought I was this kind of person." None of that is really consistent with the idea that they're actually hunting down Fuches to stop him from exposing that they ordered the hit or whatever.

Which, again, only leaves room for a super convoluted story where the mom is just pretending to want revenge on Barry for her son's benefit, when in fact she secretly wants to take out Fuches. I think the more likely explanation is that she's plotting with her son to take out Barry because neither of them had anything to do with the guy's murder and they actually want to take out Barry.

(The joke I figured the revenge panther storyline is pointing toward is that Fuches stupidly sent two marks after the same target, and that they just might end up killing each other instead of Barry.)

[S03.E04: all the sauces]

10 hours ago, PinkRibbons said:

I'm calling it that Annabeth Gish put out the hit on her husband.

But wouldn't Fuches know that, since he's the one who books the hits in the first place? I doubt that he was suggesting to the people who originally hired him that they get revenge for the killings they themselves paid for.

[S06.E05: Black and Blue]

1 hour ago, PeterPirate said:

I was under the impression the construction site Gus showed Lalo was at an alternate, above-ground location.

Yeah, it was a fake construction site at the chicken farm. He definitely didn't show Lalo his underground laboratory he was building in secret to throw him off the trail of the underground laboratory he was building in secret.

[S03.E03: ben mendelsohn]

13 hours ago, Ottis said:

As much as I enjoy the show, this ep made me wonder what we are supposed to be getting out of it besides some laughs. Is the point that Barry is a damaged person who hurts everyone around him?

I mean . . . in a way, I think it kind of is? That's more or less what I always took the show to be about: it satirizes both the vapid positivity of L.A. self-improvement culture and the crowd-pleasing edginess of modern antihero dramas by telling the story of a cold-blooded murderer who deludes himself into believing that he can redeem himself through acting.

But in another way, I share your unease. Because the meatiest part of that story is the delusion—the ways in which Barry convinces himself that he's not a monster, and what that self-deception says about him and the L.A. scene—and now that Barry is just driving around with his acting teacher in the trunk of his car, the veil of that delusion is all but ripped away. And then what are we left with? The fact that Barry is damaged and destructive is essential to the story, but I don't know that it's interesting enough in and of itself to be the story.

Honestly, the parts of these first few episodes that I've found by far the most interesting are the ones that remained focused on the Hollywood self-deception: Katie's attempts to reckon with Barry's violent nature, only to run into the brick wall of an industry that conditions people to smile and look the other way. "He's totally harmless. I'm sure he was having a bad day. I was in an acting class with Barry, and he's a really good guy. He yelled at us a few times, and, you know, he told us that he killed a few people in . . . some war, and that it really messed him up. But, I don't think that makes him violent."

[S06.E05: Black and Blue]

2 hours ago, SimplexFish said:

Wouldn't a piece of equipment like that move on a daily basis though? 

They halted construction after Werner's death, so it's not moving anytime soon.

1 hour ago, Penman61 said:

Also: Howard DOES know Kim is involved with Jimmy's schemes because Cliff told him Kim arranged the lunch where Cliff would see the staged Wendy expulsion.

I think he assumes that Jimmy found out about Kim's meeting and decided to crash it without her knowledge.

[S06.E05: Black and Blue]

1 minute ago, peeayebee said:

It looked like a trap to me as well. Also, he measured off the distance to the backhoe before he knelt down and took the gun out. Well, we didn't see that it was the gun, so I'm wondering if he put something else there, but maybe I'm just overthinking it. Anyway, I guess he's just being super-prepared for Lalo appearing anywhere, including the Superlab.

In the last shot, I believe we do see that it was the gun he put there.

My assumption is that he was pacing out the distances so he can cut all the lights and still find his weapon in the dark.

[S06.E05: Black and Blue]

41 minutes ago, SailorGirl said:

I know we were discussing last week which of the BB characters could be Cliff Main's son. I'm leaning toward Skinny Pete as the tie-in, because he knew how to play classical piano very well.

Skinny Pete's father is "a contractor or something." Skinny mentions it when he offers to hook Jesse up with home repairs.

So, yes, he comes from money, but it's not "dad's a lawyer" money.

[S06.E04: Hit and Run]

11 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

Isn't Badger too young to have that guy as a father? I know he could have him later in life, but it seems like a stretch for no reason that makes things seem fake. Lots of people are drug addicts, after all.

Yeah, Badger is way too young, lives in a different city, comes from a much more working-class background (his cousin Clovis runs an auto repair/towing company), and has a different first and last name. The writers would have to retcon basically everything we know about the character for the cheap shock of him being Cliff's son.

[S06.E04: Hit and Run]

55 minutes ago, ilovebeaarthur said:

Part of me wonders if it’s someone like Skinny Pete 🤔

Skinny Pete's father is "like a contractor or something," not a lawyer, so it couldn't be him.

The one suggestion I've heard that doesn't seem completely far fetched is that Gregory Main could be the support group leader Jesse encounters in rehab:

Though even that would be a pretty random connection—that this recovered cokehead from Portsmouth, Virginia, who meets Jesse in a rehab center in Albuquerque just happens to be the son of this big-time lawyer from Santa Fe.

[S03.E02: Limonada]

1 hour ago, aghst said:

But does Gene understand at this point that Barry is a professional killer, not just someone who killed Janice?

Barry told him he was a hit man in the first episode of the series; Gene just thought it was an improv rather than the truth. And Gene knows Moss was investigating a hit on one of his students just before she died, so he's probably put two and two together.

[S06.E04: Hit and Run]

3 hours ago, Ellaria Sand said:

Kim looked unnerved after finding out that Lalo is alive. Last week, I thought that she felt a certain sense of confidence about the “cartel lawyer” possibilities. I’m not sure about that any longer. Kim is still a huge question mark for me.

What I found interesting is that she didn't immediately tell Jimmy about it. I wonder if that will end up playing some part in an eventual rift between the two.

I always assumed we'd eventually find out that Jimmy's relationship with Kim is at the emotional center of Saul's comment in Breaking Bad that supposedly explains his sleazy cynicism: "I caught my second wife screwing my stepdad. OK? It's a cruel world, Walt. Grow up." I didn't literally think that Kim was going to have sex with one of Jimmy's relatives, but I figured she'd somehow betray him to an older authority figure -- first I thought it would be Chuck, then maybe Howard. Now I'm wondering if maybe it'll be Mike -- the two of them keeping secrets to supposedly protect Jimmy from himself.

[S06.E03: Rock and Hard Place]

11 minutes ago, Milburn Stone said:

Not disputing this, but (as someone who hasn't seen BB in a long time) I wonder: Do the first seasons of BB take place around 2008? The show began airing then, but could the events first depicted in it actually have taken place in, say, 2005? 

As far as I know, the two main anchor points for the Gilliganverse timeline are a) the assumption that it was originally taking place at roughly the time it premiered (January 2008), since there was initially no reason for it to be a period piece, and b) the fact that the Phoenix lander discovering water on Mars was a major plot point in one episode, and in the real world it didn't set down until May 2008.

The writers have never been super scrupulous with the timeline (just try to make sense of the age difference between Jimmy and Chuck, I dare you!), so it's possible they'll decide that the Phoenix reference doesn't matter and scoot back the dates, but it'd be a much larger retcon than any of their previous flubs—and it would be a pretty awkward gotcha for them to be like, "Surprise, Breaking Bad actually took place years earlier than you assumed, because we don't care that this is inconsistent!" So I'm inclined to think that they'll stick with the 2008 anchor point.

[S06.E03: Rock and Hard Place]

2 hours ago, scenario said:

If this episode happens in 2004 and the first season of BB were in 2008, that meant that Saul's line was about two people who haven't been heard from in 4 years, especially Nacho who we know is dead. Why bring up the name of two people who haven't been around in that long? 

We don't know that Lalo won't still be around in 2008. In fact, it's possible that Saul won't realize Lalo is still alive until around that time—making it a recent worry for him, not an old one.

As for Nacho, if Saul thinks that Lalo is coming after him for supposedly being involved in the assassination attempt in Mexico, it makes sense for him to insist that he wasn't involved in that (which he wasn't), that it was all Nacho's doing (which it was). The fact that it was years ago and Nacho is long dead doesn't change the facts of the setup.

40 minutes ago, SunnyBeBe said:

Good points, but with Hector and Gus out of the way,  there’d be more room for others to move in without resistance….so, a golden opportunity or free for all.

A golden opportunity for what? Mike is a security expert and a fixer, not a drug lord. He wouldn't be the one moving into the vacuum; he'd just be killing the kingpin who pays him so he can be replaced by someone who doesn't.

Also, Mike would not be able to take out six people with a bolt action sniper rifle before they were able to recognize what was happening and take cover. Look at what happens when he misses his first shot at the mercenary's car in "Bagman"—it takes more than five seconds for him to reload and resight.

[S06.E03: Rock and Hard Place]

6 hours ago, scenario said:

I'm certain he didn't know for certain that Nacho was dead.

My guess is that Mike tells Saul that Nacho fled to Belize but Saul suspects that means "he's dead"—which is why Saul thought of "a trip to Belize" as a euphemism for murdering an associate in Breaking Bad.

Quote

The line did bring up two points. At some point between now and when that line is spoken, people in the cartel learn that Lalo is alive or Saul wouldn't have said it. 

Yeah, it seems likely that at around the time of that scene, everyone realizes that Lalo is still alive and Saul starts freaking out that he'll come after him.

Quote

And it can't be too far in the future when Saul says these lines. If no one had seen Nacho or Lalo for two or three years why bring them up?

It is pretty far in the future, though. Better Call Saul has only gotten us up to June 2004, and the first few seasons of Breaking Bad take place around 2008.

[S06.E03: Rock and Hard Place]

3 hours ago, PeterPirate said:

Nacho had the gun to Bolsa's head for 22 seconds, including 12 seconds before Mike's made his utterance.  If Mike did not want Nacho to shoot Bolsa, he would not have said "Do it", he would have said "Don't do it".

Only if he believed that Nacho might actually shoot Bolsa, which I don't think he did, because that would've been insane and of no value to anyone. The only one who might just kill Bolsa for shits and giggles is the vengeful turncoat Nacho was pretending to be, but unlike the Salamancas and Bolsa himself, Mike knew that was a pose.

Thus, Mike also knew that by holding a gun to Bolsa's head, Nacho was just stalling. By "Do it" I think he just meant stop fucking around and do the plan we talked about -- act like he's trying to run away so Gus's men can put him down cleanly. He wasn't expecting him to shoot himself in the head instead.

[S06.E03: Rock and Hard Place]

2 hours ago, Melonie77 said:

A very angry Nacho was being forced to sacrifice himself and I think he would have wanted to at least take out Hector if the writer's weren't hobbled by the BB script.
I believe Mike was hoping Nacho would take out a Salamanca or two.

If there's one thing Nacho knows about Gus, it's that he desperately wants Hector to live. Nothing would have blown up Nacho's final arrangement with Gus more catastrophically than if he'd randomly started gunning down Salamancas. That would've served no one's interests, least of all Nacho's.

[S06.E03: Rock and Hard Place]

2 hours ago, peeayebee said:

We saw Nacho smuggled into the building (when Mike removed the floor panels in the truck trailer). And people are smuggled across the border all the time. Gus's people bringing Nacho back from Mexico wouldn't have raised any red flags with Hector.

Yep, especially since Gus's operation has been put in charge of all smuggling in and out of Albuquerque. Even if some other cartel affiliate had found Nacho, Gus would still have been in charge of bringing him across the border to face Hector.

And, of course, the fact that Gus is in charge of moving all the cartel's product must mean he has reliable smugglers south of the border.