Lurky McLurkerson

The problem with this is that we're back to Walt's insecurity and ego as to why he has that that perception Elliot and Gretchen/Gray Matter. Gretchen expresses confusion in S2 as to why Walt left her family's home when she took him home for a holiday weekend. Her perception is that he walked out on her/them/the company. I think Walt is an unreliable narrator on the Gray Matter front, and all it showed me was that his pride, ego, and insecurity hobbled him pretty much his whole adult life. (I actually remember feeling bad for disliking Walt so much the first time I watched S2's "Gray Matter" because, at that time, I felt like I was supposed to pity for this poor, fish-out-of-water middle class person at the fancy party recently off a lung cancer diagnosis. Instead, I found myself really disliking him and finding him to be a pompous buffoon and then feeling like I wasn't getting the show.) I don't think Walt went from Mr. Chips to Scarface. I don't think he was ever Mr. Chips, and Scarface was right there just without the power to act until Walt found meth. At the risk of sounding desensitized to the horrible things that they do, I start from the base level with nearly all these characters -- Chuck was a bit of a surprise to me -- that they are flawed and imperfect, usually to a pretty monstrous degree. Gilligan doesn't do Mary Janes and saviors. I can like Mike the character without thinking that his criminal endeavors are okay. I can feel horrible for Jesse Pinkman that he was so lost that a partnership with Walter White seemed like a good business opportunity while still condemning him for murder and freakin' soliciting drug customers at an NA meeting. Hell, I can find Walt to be deplorable but still admire his amazing scientific knowledge and skills. That's why I like Gilligan & Co. - the complexity of the story. It has pretty much ruined me for a lot of other TV.

Well, sure, you and I know that because we're watching Better Call Saul and got to see the Kim-hustling-for-business montage. How does Schweikart know that? She was pretty careful to pretend she was taking lunch to not be seen doing her cold-calls at HH&M. Many law firms are also very conservative in hiring. It's not about potential, it's about what you've got in hand right now. Lawyers are expensive and need to be able to provide "food" not only for themselves but also the overhead staff resources that they consume. I can see slowly courting a Kim based on potential, but she needs to be bringing the big-money client (or a handful of small/medium clients) with her when she moves. Is the bank client coming with her or was the head of the bank more taken with Howard's walk down memory lane about the image on his passbook as a kid and let's-deal-on-the-golf-course show? Eh, I find that a little reductionist. If we have to start hating all television/movie characters because they're drug dealers and murderers, that's going to wipe out a lot of the "gritty" shows going all the way back to The Godfather and The Sopranos. It's possible to like a character, or, hell, in Mike's case, admire how well he does his deplorable job and his cajones without having to feel similarly about another character that is equally criminal. What makes Mike more "likable" (and these are obviously not people with whom most of us would ever hang in real life) is that Mike knows what he is, and Walt spent nearly five seasons/18-24 months blustering about the noble cause that drove all his bad actions when it was nothing more than ego. Walt is constantly running around from crisis to crisis like a chicken with his head cut off, and it's a beautiful contrast to Mike's world-weary, been-there-done-that approach to the job. After Walt killed Gus and met Mike in the desert, Mike told him he didn't know a good thing when he saw it, and he was right. It's Mike's speech to Playuh -- we're criminals by definition. "Good guy" or not, you are what you are when you engage in criminal activities.

This is exactly how I took it as well. I haven't seen any evidence that ISZ Corp. is currently anything other than a fictional element of Gisele and Viktor-with-a-K's cons, and I could see Saul using it as a tribute to Kim/their relationship. I don't see where the idea that Kim has set up this phony corporation is coming from. I think this is right. Main seemed way more pissed off that Jimmy didn't run the ad by them, which is a legitimate concern. Do I think they would have let Jimmy run it? No. Do I think Jimmy's marketing strategy was way better than their waving-blue-background/middle-of-the-night airing? Absolutely. It's just a really stupid thing to do on your own without your (brand new) employer's okay, and certainly not without having it reviewed to ensure that it complied with rules/regulations for law firm advertising. Also, law firms ARE very ring-kissy kinds of places. There is a hierarchy and a power structure, and it's typically not a good idea to disregard it. Exceptions are made if your rogue actions net a huge client, but people remember the "disrespect" for a long damn time. I do kind of wonder if hiring Kim is just an effort to bench her from the case. She would no longer be working on the HH&M side, and she can't work on it from the S&C side. (What would happen is that the firm would institute an ethical wall between her and the case. People would be divided into "sides" of the wall, and Kim's side of the ethical wall would be barred from looking at materials related to case or discussing the case with anyone. Violation of the wall would be subject to being reported to the bar for ethical violations, and, were HH&M, I would demand to see the ethical wall protocol that was being used to shield Kim from the case.) You can't just NOT hire people with ethical conflicts, particularly in smaller markets, and there are times you really want a candidate with a particular skill set enough to work around the conflicts. (I once hired someone with niche skills that had to be walled off from about a dozen matters, and, while the ethics compliance people hated me, we set up the screens and staffed the person to other matters without issue.) The problem is that I can't see what skills Kim has that are so compelling they'd be willing to bench her from a large matter. Maybe S&C is a bigger firm with enough work to keep her busy elsewhere, but I am not sure what is drawing them to Kim. Usually, firms are looking for lateral attorneys with a book of business to bring with them.

Well, in the Fring v. White battle and assuming you mean who walked away from the head-to-head, literal "sudden-death" round, clearly White did, but I'm not willing to chalk that up to Walt being a better planner (and Gus lost because he gave into a very uncharacteristic, Walt-like need to gloat and take revenge on Hector) nor being better at the game itself. And what did Walt "win"? Maybe another year of his life unraveling at a frenetic pace, destroying his life and relationships with everyone he loved (or claimed to), a cross-country trip in a tanker truck, and months of solitude and having to pay $10K for a single card game before going out with a glorious bang after blackmailing the Schwartzes to get money to the family he whose lives he ruined, to the son that wouldn't take the money from him and wished him dead. Fring lived for years hiding in plain sight, enjoying the fruits of his illicit profits more than Walt ever could. Allowing Walt into his carefully crafted life against his initial gut instinct was one of his few mistakes, but clearly a fatal one. I'm still calling the long game for Gus. Pretty much everyone in the BB world is better off without Walter White in their lives, which is how we ended up with a prequel for the spin-off, I think. There was nowhere interesting forward from there (as beautifully illustrated by poor Gene the Cinnabon manager's B&W scenes -- and the more I see of Jimmy McGill, the more hellish Gene's existence looks -- the guy who lives for attention and showmanship has to fade into the background of the mall food court), so we have to go to the past for a story, which I think is more of a challenge for the writers because the "ending" is already written in stone. I love this analysis. And grief, dissolving relationships, and the death of dreams can be slow-moving stuff that certain explain the slower pace of the show (whereas BB hurtled you down the track at breakneck speed toward the finale just like the clock ticked at increasing intensity from Walt's diagnosis to demise). I have a hard time gauging if BCS seems slow to me because it IS slow-moving, of if I'm still expecting the BB pace. I think Gilligan & Co. have a wonderful knack for finding humor in sadness and the grotesque, too.

It looks like, from the preview for next week's episode, that at least the Saul flair for flamboyant suits is being introduced.

Sufficed to say I'm not Team Walt -- that's not at all how I view Walter White or his actions. The cracks in his veneer showed up very early in the series (the first of which was the brilliant episode that Bannon cites above). I think Mike is fundamentally different (and it's more pronounced in BCS because he's a main character) because Mike know what he's doing and makes no excuses for why he's doing it. I think he has little (probably only Kaylee) left to live for and is doing what he knows how to do best to provide her financial security -- but Mike seems to have no illusion that he's doing something noble. As he told Pryce in "Pimento", they're criminals, which is not he same as good guy/bad guy. He pragmatic and doesn't have romanticized rationale for his actions. (And, it's part of what has always made Mike so fun to watch -- his again-with-this-shit annoyance at the amateurs he has to deal with and matter-of-fact approach even to his enforcer/wet works duties.) Nope, same show, different impression. Gus Fring was a meticulous planner with a good long game. Mike is careful and comes prepared (loved the carbon paper under the mat, snuck in right under the nose of a Salamanca foot soldier and his murder of the corrupt officers was brilliantly laid out with the drowning-his-sorrows setup). Walt was a master manipulator who could talk himself out of nearly any situation. There was a lot of flying by the seat of his pants, and even Vince Gilligan has called him lucky, at least with regard to "Felina". Not that he never planned, but, particularly in contrast to Gus and Mike, Walt was not so meticulous.

I don't see Mike and Walter as alike at all. Walt was not a meticulous planner but very good at thinking on his feet. He was a petty, insecure, self-centered man who used his family as an excuse for his illegal activities and wreaked havoc on everyone (his family included) he touched in the last 18 months of his life to feed his insatiable ego and sense of personal vengeance. I agree that Mike's guilt over his son drives a lot of his actions and makes him fine with walking into a situation he may not walk out of, but I think he is trying to do right by Kaylee. Mike also has no delusions of grandeur about what he really is. Ah, I stand corrected. I see my zero semesters of law school have finally caught up to me. ;)

What crime did they commit, if they have not cashed the check or done anything fraudulent with the bank routing/account information on it? I'm not arguing that it's a smart thing for Kim to do (because it is supremely dumb), but I think Ken would have more of a criminal complaint against them than latest mark. Cash the check, and it becomes fraud/theft/probably any number of things. Without the money, it could be chalked up to practical joke or drunken dare. Stupid, but unlikely to be criminal -- maybe a misdemeanor. They'd probably have more traction with a bar association ethics complaint. (Fraud targets are also sometimes hesitant to go to the police because they don't want to look stupid. I am far more worried about Kim running into one of their marks professionally.)

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean that to be critical of your post! Just musing over the master timeline based on the fact that I'd just recently watched the BB episode and was trying to splice the two together in my head. As Bryce Lynch noted in the quote below, it possible that the BB scene is from about 15 years before this episode of BCS, so the Salamancas could already be a decade into the meth business here. With regard to the latter, as I was watching "Hermanos", I had totally forgotten that Hector peed in the pool and immediately thought, "Well, what's left for him to do in Saul? Vomit on someone deliberately?" (In BB, I thought his aggressively pissing in the pool when able-bodied and then soiling himself to clear the room at the DEA was an interesting parallel. This guy seems to like to use his bodily wastes as a form of aggression.)

They didn't get a check from the Ken Wins scam -- they got dinner and drinks from a financial manager thinking he was wooing big-time clients. They walked away with a financial services contract, which they promptly dumped in the parking lot trash can. This was scamming at the next level. It's not at all relevant to the to the $50K being no big thing to the Salamanca (it's not), but this ties into an unrelated pondering I was doing after watching this episode last night. I'm can't figure out if the cartel is in the meth business at this stage. I'm actually doing a BB rewatch right now, and I just watched the "Hermanos" episode from S4 on Sunday and trying to place the timing in the Better Call Saul timeline (rather unsuccessfully). This includes a flashback to -- the cartel's focus is cocaine with an active disinterest in meth. That obviously changes before BB, and maybe if Gus shows up in Saul, it will make better sense timewise.

Oh, absolutely, I have no doubt that JIMMY would have kept it, but the comment was about Kim having graduated to grifting for cash. For Jimmy, this is a way of life, a career. For Kim, it's like a budding addiction, a flirt with danger.

Yeah, I think the math works out for Kim. Associate track in Big Law (though I have a hard time calling either HH&M or Davis & Main "Big Law" -- they may be big firms for New Mexico, but they're not cracking the AmLaw 200) is usually about 7 years, and it's a solid 7 years. I worked with someone truly brilliant who'd built a strong client base, and they actively turned down early promotion to partner because of the bad taste it had left in people's mouths for prior early promotees. If she worked for even 5 years post-college, law school is either 3 years (full-time) or 5-6 years (part-time), and she's clearly a mid-level associate. Early 40s doesn't seem off to me, though she is likely to be older than her peers. Law is a very reputation- and relationship-based business. I have seen people leave a firm and then be persona non grata to both the firm they departed and certain clients who feel abandoned. Kim brings the bank client on and then leaves before they really dig in? That looks bad. It can also be hard to break into work at the new firm because some attorneys don't like laterals that they have not seen "pay their dues" within the organization. In Kim's shoes, I would aboslutely make the move, but I understand her hesitation, both from a loyalty and a career-impact perspective. I thought that, when she and Jimmy were talking at her apartment, one of them made a comment about it being a souvenir/memento from their con. I didn't get the impression that either of them was going to cash the check. I was really surprised that Mike was that careless with his granddaughter's safety -- both leading the creepy Cousins to Kaylee and also going to the meeting with the cartel by himself. I got the sense that he let Tuco beat the shit out of him as some sort of personal penance that also generated cash for his granddaughter, but he is no good to Kaylee dead. He must have been very confident that Tio wasn't going to off him because I wouldn't put it past the Cousins to go after his family after Mike was not there to defend them. I'm not sure how much of this is Mike's "code" versus loyalty and relationship-building. He's basically building an ally for himself within the Salamanca empire. Same with the guys in prison he was continuing to pay in Breaking Bad. That was hush money and keeping his team loyal to him. I am kind of ready to see some proto-Saul Goodman next week. "Colorful", indeed.

Honestly, I find that law school really does not prepare lawyers for actual practice at all. There are some that are starting to add practicum and practical classes, but not the Almighty Tier 1 schools that Big Law loves. This is also why the ABA's restrictions on distance education that we've discussed re Jimmy's correspondence course with UAS is dumb -- it's all very theoretical/ivory-tower-y. Personally, I think the entire third year should be replaced with a practicum, courses in rainmaking, project management, people management, and other things actually useful. (I strongly recommend that people take a couple years off and go work in a legal environment in which they'd like to practice before going to law school because it ain't Law & Order.) So, I get people like the associate who insisted that we did not have to file the "Motion for X" along with the "Memorandum in Support of Motion for X" -- and, god help me, I TRIED to tell them that we really needed a motion before the partner came to sign it and was told that they were the lawyer and they had "read" the rules and didn't need the motion. Once they started insinuating I was stupid, I just let them go and prepped it myself for when the partner came to sign the documents and immediately asked, "Where's the motion?" (Don't look at me, man, I tried to keep you from looking like an idiot.) True story... I once narrowly avoided being sent on a document review where the materials couldn't leave the client's site, and they had to clear the snakes out of the warehouse before the team could get in there to review. Thank you, but I do NOT do snakes. Now, document review is done almost entirely on computers, until you get to the important documents, and the partners insist on paper copies.

This is absolutely true, though now clients are also not paying for Big Law associates to do document review -- they use technology-assisted review or hire contract attorneys for about $35/hour. (I will also say that I don't blame clients for refusing to foot the law firm's HVAC bills. They're already paying hundreds of dollars per attorney per hour. Climate control is a cost of doing business, and that firms were once passing their utility costs through to clients for after-hours work is just insane to me. I have worked many a climate-control-less weekend/evening at a Big Law firm, and it's miserable, but I put that on the firm.) If I had a quarter for every associate who grumbled to me that they didn't go to law school to do document review, I'd have a vacation home by now.

I think BB was deliberately vague on whether Gretchen and Elliot really screwed Walt over or if he left in some sort of prideful display (possibly related to his going to meet Gretchen's family and leaving abruptly without giving a reason) and screwed himself. Best I recall, they bought out his share of the company, though their Charlie Rose interview distancing themselves from him hints that they are taking credit for at least some of his contributions.

This episode raised way more questions than it answered. What the hell is up with Mike's daughter-in-law? What exactly was Jimmy's motivation for not going through channels on his commercial? Is Jimmy going to get fired, even if his commercial is wildly successful? Who is Nacho sending Mike after? (And I'm most interested in the answer to the last one, obviously. I mean, Nacho could take care of Playuh himself and BB watchers know what's in store for Tuco, Jimmy/Saul, and Gus -- and Saul/Jimmy makes reference to Nacho in BB, so whatever he is asking Mike to do does not appear to have blown back on him that badly.) I felt like this one kind of dragged, too. It's weird, I usually wait and just binge-watch shows, but the few times I do appointment TV and have to wait between episodes, it does affect how I feel about them. In a run of 2-3 episodes, Amarillo would have left me wanting more, I think, but having to wait another week for resolution, the want subsides. Now, I find myself arguing multiple sides of each question (dangers of working with lawyers for an extended period of time, I guess) and not happy with any of the answers.

Yep, this, and I've seen a lot of instances where you have to suggest what you're looking for to a client, not because they've done anything wrong or you're encouraging them to make shit up, but because they need to help you find the materials that prove the case when the facts are disputed. (Do you have a contract or other written communication that lays out your agreement? How did you discuss the change in scope? Do you still have the voicemails?, Is there anyone else who was present when you had this discussion?, etc.) A lot of people require guidance from their attorney on discovery materials. But there are prohibitions on knowingly presenting false evidence in the NM Code of Professional Responsibility, including that, if you present evidence and later find out it is false, you are ethically required to disclose that as soon as it comes to your attention. I am actually really interested to get more of Kim's backstory. I haven't really decided how I feel about her and am interested to know more about her.

What gray area is there around completely fabricated evidence? We're not talking about an issue of privilege, relevance, hearsay, or whether or not it was legally obtained. I've never seen an admissibility flowchart that had to include the criteria, "Is this a lie you made up?". It also looks like the New Mexico bar does have a professional reporting standard for lawyers (Rule 16-803). I believe that I said that I saw parallels between the two, not that anyone who complained about Kim was exactly like the people who pilloried Skyler (and, in some cases, Anna Gunn). They are clearly very different situations and relationships -- for one thing, as you noted, Kim's got more of an opportunity to walk away from her relationship with Jimmy, whether it's friendship, friends with benefits, or something more. (Though, I think it is not always so easy to walk away from people about whom you care deeply nor do I think, particularly in some of the circumstances that Bannon described like addiction, that "moving the fuck on" is not the best thing you can do for someone). That said, I get the same tenor of "killjoy" and "but she did X that wasn't 100% above board" and even a bit of "shrieking harpy" from some commentary on the show (not all here, not necessarily you specifically), and I don't think raising the comparison is invalid or not worth talking about.

There is an enormous difference between the-check-is-in-the-mail lying/BSing at work and committing a direct violation of your profession's ethical canon that can destroy your career. Fabrication of evidence is not a gray area in the law. There are a lot of ethical areas you can push in legal, this isn't one of them. I would argue that Jimmy's lying to the police is part of the falsification, too. I've seen lawyers bluster to try to avert focus from a damaging fact, and I've seen them "hide" documents bad for their case in enormous document dumps. I've never seen one completely make something up and present it as evidence, and I'd be obligated to turn them in if I did. I like Jimmy. I find him charming, and he's fun to watch (though part of me gets why he galls Chuck so much -- not an excuse for Chuck! I think Chuck's behavior towards Jimmy is atrocious. But I get why Jimmy's easy charm and lucking/conning his way through life pisses Chuck off.). But I enjoy watching Jimmy-the-show and would never want to watch Jimmy-in-real-life because he's a trainwreck waiting to happen. Frankly, I find a lot of parallels between the defense of Jimmy's behavior/condemnation of Kim and the Team Walt arguments from Breaking Bad. And I really don't want to see Kim Wexler get the Skyler White treatment.

The video was exculpatory evidence to spare his client from being charged with (or further investigated for) a drug crime. It's like telling the police that your client couldn't have possibly committed that murder because here's a (fake) video of said client at another location during that time. It is just as unethical as manufacturing evidence to convict someone, and it's particularly egregious coming from an attorney because should be better versed in evidentiary law than your average citizen and have sworn an oath that requires following a code of ethics. Evidence is not just used to prove crimes, it's also used to exonerate suspects, which Jimmy did here falsely. I'm also surprised that Kim's being called a killjoy for taking Jimmy to task for this. It's a serious violation of ethics, and it could result in his being disbarred. There are certainly very unethical attorneys and attorney who skate the line between ethical and not, but the legal system often relies upon attorney staking their oath and ethics seriously, and unethical behavior is something I've found real-life, non-Saul-esque attorneys care very deeply about. It could also affect her, if she has a duty to report ethical violations. Being disbarred or seriously sanctioned by the bar ruins your career as an attorney. I honestly think that part of her reaction to his story is that she knows how quickly it could destroy all he's worked for, particularly given the Chuck situation, but it's also shitty of him to dump that knowledge on her and possibly put her in an ethical bind with regard to her career.

Last season, we got to see the fun and the vulnerable sides of Tasytee. She and Poussey had a fun friendship doing their white people impersonations, and they showed the strong commraderie that came from being stuck in a shitty situation. Her joy at being paroled, her struggles on the outside, and her finally giving up and reoffending -- they made for a good and compelling story, and you felt for her. Even in the first part of Season 2, she fought really hard thinking the prize for the Dress for Success workshop was an actual job. After that, she turns her back on Poussey and is one step behind Suzanne in her efforts to remain in Vee's good graces. She's not fun, she not loyal, and she's using her smarts to help run Vee's cigarette business instead of preparing for her release. It's possible that we're meant to think that the misguided loyalty she feels towards Vee and her being defeated after her release and the Dress for Success let-down pushed her back in the direction of making bad decisions, but the dots weren't really connected if that is the conclusion we were supposed to draw. I think her storyline could have been handled much better to reach the same end but with more shading in the middle.

I've been doing a modified BtVS rewatch, inspired by Sars, but not subjecting myself to the likes of "Inca Mummy Girl". I watched "The Wish" last night. (I didn't watch Buffy in first run based on how shitty the film version was and decided to give it a try when it hit Netflix. I was wrong, and I missed out.) It's really amazing how much better the earlier seasons of the show were (and how much I miss Oz, actual bad-ass Spike, and pre-graduation Giles). I also think Boreanaz's Angelus is way more interesting to watch than "soulful", wounded puppy Angel. I kind of loved what they did there in "The Wish" with making him the "puppy".

Of the two, I'm kind of surprised they picked Waynesboro, VA give that the PA town is much smaller, more rural, and actually in Appalachia. Waynesboro, VA is close to Staunton and Charlottesville and more in central than western Virginia. My husband is from the last county in Virginia before you hit Tennessee and Kentucky, and the cultural difference between there and the Waynesboro area is substantial. Waynesboro, VA is more Southern than Appalachain. I could totally see Tiffany being a high-school classmate of my husband's. Between that and the statement that she had her abortions in Fredericksburg (2 hours away) instead of Charlottesville (30 minutes away and with signficant medical resources), it honestly sounds like either whomever came up with Pennsatucky's backstory didn't bother to do any sort of research on Virginia at all or Taryn Manning doesn't know from what state her character is actually supposed to be. I also kind of wonder what Tiffany was charged with that puts her in a federal prison instead of the state system. I would expect a woman who murdered in Fredericksburg to be in Fluvannah Correctional Center for Women.