Penman61

Gene doesn't have plenty of time, and he knows it: Marion and Jeff have his name, his car's make/model. LEOs can run that info instantly and get his driver's license and address.

My response is that Kim’s FL life was supposed to read as safe, routine, and minimally satisfying but not really exciting or challenging her. Kim seeing the defense attorney prepping her client at the NM courthouse was meant for us and her to think of what she lost, professionally. Sex with Yeppers was in stark contrast to carnal-engine-revving pleasure of listening to a name partnered attorney ruin his own career. Could be a lot worse. Could also be better.

Were Jeff and Gene running a deeper con than we knew? They seemed to have their phone call from the police station scripted. Was Jeff wrecking the cab planned?

HE WAS ABOUT TO BRAIN A TERMINAL CANCER PATIENT WITH HIS DEAD DOG RUSTY’S ASHES! I don’t know what to tell you people. Jimmy is lost.

All the naysayers (including me) gotta eat some crow: “Carol Burnett is wasted in this role!” ”Why cast an actress of this stature as Howard’s wife?” ”I don’t think we need to see Kim anymore.” ”Saul is redeemable!” ”Rhea Seehorn isn’t much of an actress.”

The ONLY spinoff I want to see at this point is a prequel called That's My Lalo! It's a multi-camera 30-minute sitcom with laugh track where that scamp Lalo gets into zany scrapes and misunderstandings that always end with another character laughing ruefully and saying "That's my Lalo!" But also EVERY episode ends with a grisly, meticulously planned and executed murder involving either fire, acid, or flaying (or sometimes all three). That's my Lalo!

Yeah, let's be clear, that's some victim-blaming bs Gene is spewing. Chances are VERY high that at least one of his other middle-aged male victims has some other significant disease, loss, setback...Gene just wasn't told about them. But they are ALL human, and not drugging and scamming one because he has cancer isn't morally praiseworthy; drugging and scamming ANY of them is despicable.

This is fun. VERY glad they cut it. I mean, if she wants to wheel by a Tarzan or GWTW bluray at check-out, ok, but an actual ear-tugging? Too much, imho. But fun that they considered it.

(Emphasis added.) Yes, it really is. We saw Walt take this to the extreme with the drugging/poisoning of Brock. I was LIVID when Kim and Jimmy put the topical on Howard's photos. I realize Jimmy "testing" it on himself helped him rationalize using it, but different people respond differently. And now we have this wholesale drugging of what, at least a dozen unsuspecting men? Yes, they are riding in a cab, so at least not driving while drugged, but once they're home, they could fall and injure/kill themselves. And then of course there's each person's possible reaction to the barbiturates + alcohol + whatever other meds the person is taking + possible allergic reaction + on and on and on. Huge risk, serious crime here. So thanks for foregrounding how truly appalling this drugging is. It's way worse than the identity theft that follows.

100%. And if we accept that it was Kim on the other end of the line in this ep (I don't yet), then I think only a brisk, blanket, self-saving, unadulterated rejection from Kim could have made Jimmy so mad so fast that he became violent. Good for her. If true. :)

I want this to be true, but I just don't see how Kim will get within a country mile of Jimmy unless he's shown significant progress, and he's showing very much the opposite. I also feel like this flirts with Good Woman Savior tropes, i.e., all Jimmy needs is the love of a good woman to save him. He needs to start by trying to save his own damn self, and that is not what's happening so far.

I think she's only been posting for a few months, and in that time her viewership has grown pretty fast. This week her video's interpretive frame of Frankenstein was fascinating (and, to me, unexpected). The BB/BCS universe is so much about shifting identities, and the idea that Jimmy/Saul/Gene has "devolved" into something else, something monstrous was, for me, very illuminating. Like a lot of viewers, I was casually thinking that what we'd see over the course of this series is "Jimmy becoming Saul." Well, we got that, but now we've also gotten this other thing, someone obviously still tethered to those previous identities, but someone who, at least as of this episode, seems is willing to seriously risk someone else's health or even life, and is less and less heedless of his own. "Saul" was, if nothing else, a survivor, la cucaracha, but that seems to be gone now.

I do think the writers owe us more about how Kim ended besides "She left her man for moral/ethical reasons." We got two substantial Kim childhood flashbacks. She's such a developed character on her own that it matters to me to know her character's outcome, separate from Jimmy's. I mean, we don't even know if she was on the phone in this ep's call. Anyway, I'd bet that we get more Kim before this is all over. #TellKimsStory

Yeah, I upped my monitor brightness before taking these. Also, iPhone/Photos does a ton of processing automatically, including jacking the contrast. Anyway, I think we can see the bill denominations here. :)

First and third stack look like current $100. Middle stack looks like earlier version of $100. So, if each stack has 100 bills x $100 = $10K, then Francesca got $30K?

Here's the screenshots I got of the three stacks' covers. (LOL AMC won't let you do a computer screenshot, so these are phone pics of my monitor--sorry.) Third stack:

Does it matter which particular barbiturate it is? In the scene where Gene was mixing the drug into the water bottles, you could see a partial label that read "[something] sodium." Which barbiturate might that be? And, btw, in that scene you could clearly see that the bottle caps Gene replaced were intact and complete, i.e., they had the little ring still attached that will stay on the bottle when you twist off the cap normally. No half measures.

The only bill I could see clearly/fully had Ben Franklin on it, which is $100. And if the character doesn't discover that the high-value cover bill is a misdirect (i.e., the rest of the bills underneath that $100 are, say, $1s or plain paper!), then I think it's a MOVIE/TV LAW that the rest of the bills in the pack are the same as that cover. tldr: Saul paid Francesca A LOT of money.

Thanks so much for this. So 6 years have passed between Kim breaking up with/leaving Jimmy and Gene's phone call to Kim in this episode.

I know I've seen the name "Buddy" on the subtitles when [Jeff's friend] is on screen, but now I'm realizing that since [Jeff's friend] is nearly always onscreen with his suspensefully well-behaved dog, "Buddy" could also be the dog's name. #TellBuddysStory

Fair enough, but I'm basing my wish on how central a character Kim has been to BCS. I think this did they/didn't they? phone call is NOT an ending to the story of #2 character in this series. I suppose we could infer that because Kim has a normal job, she hasn't gone off the deep end like Gene has now, but that would be an iffy inference in this world: After all, Gene is still a Cinnabon manager while he commits crimes against cancer victims. We deserve to know! #TellKimsStory

Hear, hear. I really think we need to see whether Kim, unlike Jimmy, was able to stay clean. Would be interesting for Jimmy to know that, too.

What's the timespan between Kim & Jimmy breaking up and this ep's phone call? We know we're in November 2010 when this call happens. Did we establish that the break-up was in 2005 or...? I'm still not convinced that Gene actually spoke with Kim during that phone call, but I also can't imagine why he'd get that angry at a receptionist or whoever was telling him he couldn't talk to Kim. Going to rewatch that scene... OK, back from rewatching Gene's call to Kim scene. No breakthroughs, but I did notice this time that the part of the call that we didn't hear was very short, which could support that it wasn't Kim but someone telling Gene she wouldn't talk to him; but it also could be Kim telling Gene shortly "I said no contact" and then hanging up on him. Also, Gene is enraged at the end. Have we seen him act out like this in frustrated rage? He repeatedly slams the receiver, and eventually kicks out the glass in the booth. What happened in that call to make him, not hurt, but so enraged? I'm going to go with Kim told the receptionist to tell Gene she's won't take his call, now or ever.

I don't disagree but would just add that the early seasons of BCS showed us that Chuck's treatment of Jimmy was a key catalyst in his reversion to Slippin' Jimmy/Saul. The beauty of this show, in my opinion, is that it leaves us with this accurate representation of how complex our motives are: Did Chuck make Jimmy slip again? Well, no, Jimmy had agency, free will, etc. But, boy, Chuck didn't help. Maybe Chuck didn't hand Jimmy that machine gun, but he sure made Jimmy's trigger finger itch...

Do we know whether Gene actually spoke with Kim? I wouldn’t have pegged them for an escalate-to-yelling-in-no-time divorced couple.