[S05.E02: 50% Off]

1 hour ago, teddysmom said:

He does it for the money, to take care of Stacey & Kaylee, and he knows if he bides his time eventually Gus will take out Salamanca.  

Yes but there was never a need for him to pursue Salamanca.  He was, as Gus said (paraphrasing) trying to fix something that cannot be fixed, the death of the Good Samaritan.  There wasn't even a need for him to take Gus's job - Gus only came on heavy to try and bounce him into doing it and Mike saw right through it.  He says he's doing it for the money but the money is the excuse.

As for the ageing actors... Banks I don't mind too much because I can just mentally age him up in BB and age him down in BCS.  Kaylee's age makes no sense - she seems to spend about 7 years as an 8 year old, sometimes looking closer to 10.   Jimmy passes okay.  Gus I don't notice too much but it is a bit of an issue.

But the one that really sticks out is Aaron Paul in "El Camino" (and Todd for that matter).  I really, really hope they don't try to put him into BCS.  He looked very different even from end-of-BB escaped Jesse.  If they try and pass him off as a teenager again, it will be absurd. 

[S05.E02: 50% Off]

Yes, I think the problem with Mike is there's no external need for him to be a part of Gus's business.  It is contrary to his character on such a deep level to do these things.  And so Kaylee & Stacey are almost Mike's Gretchen & Elliott -- they're a redemption he can't bring himself to embrace.  In Walt's case, he'd lose face; in Mike's case, he knows that either his relationship with his granddaughter will always be a lie or that one day Kaylee will have to live with the fact that Mike broke his own son.

Incidentally, just did a quick skim through and very, very (very) roughly, in episode 1 we had:

Gene - 13 mins
Jimmy and/or Kim - 19 mins
Cartel - 19 mins including only about 6-odd minutes of Mike

In episode 2, excluding the final scene which pulls Saul into the cartel:

Jimmy and/or Kim - 16 mins
Cartel (including teaser) - 21 minutes
Mike - 6 minutes

To be fair, the worlds will obviously overlap from next week.  Still,  while we all knew BCS would intersect with the cartel world, it's strange for 50% of the show to be in that world, near enough as much as Jimmy/Kim/Mike screentime put together in this one.  If this is what hey mean by "speeding up" as we get to the end, it just makes me wish they'd paced it out better.

"Breaking Bad" did a great job of adding characters like Gus, Saul, Mike, Todd and others but keeping the focus primarily on Walt, Jesse, Skylar and to some extent Hank.  I hope it balances out a lot more as the season progresses.

[S05.E02: 50% Off]

The teaser could have worked if it was edited way down and had better music.  I mean, it would have been a lot cheaper to film and more interesting just to have a montage of the debris and aftermath of lots of crimes and then have them waking up and realising: hey, 50% off!  Instead, the punchline was kind of known from the start.  And looking back, it was more than 3 minutes... over half the time Mike got this whole episode.  Peeayebee said it best: 

51 minutes ago, peeayebee said:

but I just wasn't entertained.

Ultimately, sometimes these things don't turn out as hoped.  It's just a shame if they're losing their magic touch going into the final stretch.

[S05.E02: 50% Off]

13 minutes ago, teddysmom said:

Do we know how Nacho knows Saul? I can't recall if we do. Was it back first season when Tuco & Company kidnapped Saul and the two skateboarding kids and took them to the desert?  I need to rewatch the last half of S4. 

Yep; and he was trying to con the Kettlemans.

[S05.E02: 50% Off]

Man, that intro with the two idiots was insufferable.  It was great to make the point about the impact of Saul's 50% off promotion but did it need nearly 3 minutes?  Especially when it doesn't look like they'll even be clients.

The rest of the episode was good.  I liked the scene with Kim thawing a little although it feels like just putting off the inevitable... I love how taciturn Kim can be but usually we can see her thought process.  However, it's becoming harder to see how she's justifying this.  There are so many things in the air - how Mesa Verde react to the bank footprint changes, how Rich reacts to Saul and how it reflects on Kim, how her PD clients react to a new "speedy justice" option...

I really liked the scene with Mike and Kaylee and the new actress for Kaylee is great.  I really liked Nacho finding a way to prove his worth to Lalo.  I loved Howard's far-too-short cameo and really want to see more of him.  Very intrigued to hear why he wants to meet with Jimmy.   Great stuff with the DA.

However, the balance of the show feels really off at the moment.  For four years, our leads have been Jimmy, Kim and Mike and we followed even the tiny minutiae of their lives and emotions.  But Mike and Kim were relatively small parts of this and obviously Jimmy is now inhabiting a very different role.  I'm glad Nacho is stepping up -- it's overdue and his arc is great.  And none of it is bad.  But it does feel abruptly very different from what's gone before.  I don't want the show to become Cartel Wars with Jimmy, Mike and Kim subplots. 

[S05.E01: Magic Man]

Not the best episode but some good features.  It does feel very dark and joyless at the moment... even the magic man Saul stuff doesn't have the cheeky thrill of previous capers.  I think that's probably right as it really sells Jimmy's descent into darkness but I'm looking forward to Kim regaining the front foot again, even if it means going against Saul.  Watching the vice tighten on her character is quite harrowing. 

I like Lalo well enough as a character but I wanted to see more from Mike and Nacho.  Mike got a bit more play at the end at least and I enjoyed him rejecting Gus.

The cinematography was quite dark and monochrome, quite gritty, not like BB and BCS have been for a long time.

The Gene scenes were decent - loved Robert Forster.  But the taxi driver scene was just... weird.

I really miss Howard and I hope he has a lot more to do this season.  That world of HHM was a huge part of the show and I hope they keep it up.

I've always loved BCS and although this isn't the show at the strongest, I still have high hopes for it to stick the landing.

[S04.E08: Years, Continents, Bloodshed]

I agree completely, Ailianna.  In fact, not just Lilly but EVERY central S1 mystery was about a core relationship.  Why did Veronica's first love end things?  Where is Veronica's mother and why did she leave?  Who raped V?  And, later, who is her father?  Each of these stories is immensely personal -- more than almost any mystery since.  Just comparing the number of flashbacks between Season 1 and other seasons is instructive -- Season 1 is the story of Veronica.  The later seasons are stories featuring Veronica.

To that end, the cast is completely constructed around this mystery.  Keith gives us an angle into the Lianne mystery and the sheriff's department.  Weevil is our insight into the PCHers, Logan the 09ers, Duncan into the Kane family.  Wallace is the only one who doesn't serve a purpose related to the mystery but is essential as the only person Veronica can truly trust not to be hiding something and a way to deliver lots of exposition.  Mallory wasn't tied in either but was written out quickly anyway.  The result is that the relationship drama and the mystery is one and the same.  Inevitably, as seasons progressed, an increasing portion of the cast were irrelevant to the mystery or tied to the mystery but largely irrelevant to Veronica's character development.  Tacking one way and then the other has been an increasing reason the show felt so schizophrenic; the FBI pilot seemed a similarly massive misstep as the pure teen anthology of late S3 and the pure mystery format prefaced in S4.

It's not the only maverick show to have struggled to reinvent itself past a perfectly-constructed first season.  "Jessica Jones", "Murder One" and others didn't manage to have lightning strike twice.  "24" had a first season cast constructed around its premise and struggled to reincorporate them, only finding success in later seasons by doing almost a ground-up reinvention, something that Thomas clearly has in mind here.  "24" showrunner Howard Gordon once observed that he built new seasons by saying "who does the audience want to see?" and building around them.  VM could have done this - who killed Lamb, whatever happened to Dick Casablancas or Liana Mars, who taped Piz and Veronica... all of these had the potential to be arcs in their own right.  But I guess it's vastly more difficult to build a compelling mystery around characters you know quite well.

I've always felt this to some degree but 408 really crystallises things more than ever.  I may occasionally drop in on S2, I'll happily watch chunks of S3 and the film is quite decent (don't see myself ever caring to revisit S4 admittedly), but...

"Veronica Mars", to me, IS Season 1.  There's nice stuff after, some fantastic episodes, but I view that as a speculative extra.  S1 is the complete story and it is all you need.  The only thing that ever stopped it feeling complete in itself was the cliffhanger ending and I've come to view it that it's not a cliffhanger but a last mystery.  We join the PCHers and the 09ers at war and we end that way.  We join Veronica snooping on people's late night trysts in the pilot and, after she says goodbye to Lilly, we're no longer privy to Veronica's thoughts and so her late night visitor is her mystery to keep.  She's closed the door on the audience.  It plays with the rhythms of a cliffhanger and for a long time it annoyed me that it made it feel necessary to seek completion in later, weaker, seasons but I now think it's a near-perfect final ending to a nigh-on perfect series and the ideal stopping point.

[Breaking Bad - General Discussion]

El Camino.  Generally positive with small reservations.  Spoilers for safety.

Spoiler

Really liked the movie overall.  Some great tension, some really funny moments (especially the "sports medicine" line -- hilarious!), great scenes especially with Badger and Skinny Pete.  The cop reveal was great and the gunfight was pretty epic although it's sad that this is, I think, the first time Jesse has killed purely to protect himself.  I guess his soul is already dark enough that this won't do much to change it.  It was good to see his parents.  I thought it was a shame with all the back-references that there was no nod to Hank and Gomez.  That said, I loved that Clarence was the third guy Daniel Wormald tried to hire from "Better Call Saul" Season 1; he bolted when Mike took the other guy's guns off him.  So obscure!  I'll be interested to rewatch to see if there are other such callbacks.  Interesting that I don't think they fully confirmed Lydia's death when they easily could have; still a very outside chance she could be around in Gene's time in BCS.  

I guess my only reservation... there's a part of me that wonders whether it really added anything to BB and I'm not sure I can say it did.  There was an elegance and restraint and a perfection to Jesse's ending in BB that this lacks, essentially taking 2 hours to get to an ending with an identical flavour, if different details.  The flashback scenes especially suffer from a couple of the actors looking just way too old to slip back into their roles seamlessly, the different aspect ratio and slightly more muted colour balance makes it feel disconnected from the rest of the universe and by relying so heavily on referencing the show in the final few scenes oddly robbed the movie even more of its own distinctive character.  I do think there's a lot of potential for a series or mini-series about Jesse trying to start afresh and that long-form, slow-burn storytelling is absolutely where Gilligan thrives.  As flashbacks in a 10-episode mini-series -- Northern Exposure meets The Fugitive -- this could have established its own unique character and had something distinctive to say.  Instead, it feels unnecessary and a little inelegant.  But, hey, also tremendous fun and a welcome slice of the ABQverse in the long wait for the next season of BCS.

[S04.E08: Years, Continents, Bloodshed]

I can definitely see the argument for Logan overpowering the show and potentially leading to a certain amount of paralysis.  Certainly, the on-again-off-again stuff has to be done and having him off on missions can only work for so long as Logan is such a popular character and it makes his absence so notable.  I could see other obstacles breaking them apart such as Logan or Veronica being in prison.  Or Logan leaving with their child because Veronica is in too deep and it's not safe: so much potential there for a dark echo of Liane's struggle with addiction.  But the romantic complications won't cut it any more (they were worn out during S3).  Thing is though... if the reason for removing Logan is to promote a different romantic prospect, has there been any other romantic prospect that has even nearly matched the spark of Logan/Veronica?  And granted, some of them will probably end up being villains anyway, but it seems like a real arrested development for the character to go back to, ironically, the soap opera, especially knowing that there's no point getting invested in any of these characters because if any of them last any time, they'll exit in a body bag.

Yes, it's certainly tough to work in Logan and it was evident here that there was a stretch to draw him in.  That said, I thought opportunities were missed; given that Veronica was investigating Richard Casablancas you'd think Logan would have a bit more of an opportunity to get close.  And of course, they have a stable and grounding force in Veronica's life through Keith but if they'd gone down the dementia route with Keith, Keith would need support and someone would need to step in to back Veronica up.  And then you have to wonder what a character as volatile as Logan would do if he was forced to leave the military; what would adult Logan's implosion be like?  On the flip side, what if the pair of them really used their talents and connections to try and improve Neptune - have Veronica run for Sheriff or Logan run for mayor?  Not that they'd win but it would feel like they're using their talents in Neptune for a reason.

Now sure, having the husband at home doesn't perfectly tick genre boxes but since when is that a bad thing?  Better the show is true to its characters.  In any event, arguably you'd just be swapping out Sherlock and Luther for Nick and Nora Charles as a template.  Plus, exploring Logan and Veronica in Neptune doesn't empty the options box for later: killing Logan isn't without merit as a potential plot and could make a great season 8 or something.  But now?  I'm reminded of Vince Gilligan's observations that writing shouldn't be trying to force an outcome but taking the next logical steps for the characters and that he seeks to get the most 'juice' out of every stage rather than rush to the next situation.  Rob seems to have gone down the exact opposite route, contorting the plot and characters around genre requirements and zooming forward without checking in with the characters.  Not so much cutting off a limb to save the body as cutting off a head to better fit in a coffin.

3 minutes ago, spaceghostess said:

RT goes on and on about "noir," but taking VM out of Neptune undercuts one of the genre's great conventions: the city (or town, in the case of Western noir) as a character and the detective's cohorts and nemeses woven into the fabric of that setting. The lawyers, the stoolies, the obstructive cops, the crappy P.I.s, the corrupt politicians, the tough guys; VM did such a fantastic job of establishing characters to represent all of these. WHY does RT think having Veronica start over with a clean slate in new place after new place would be the least bit appealing? Noir P.I.s may be loners, but they have networks they carefully cultivate and rely on to do their jobs. Itinerant Veronica will never develop a network anywhere, and I couldn't give fewer fucks about getting to know new people every week when I was happy as hell with the ones we already had and trusted RT to add compelling new characters as necessary. I've loved Veronica from minute one, but not even the strongest, most well-drawn hero/antihero can live in a vacuum. And that's what RT's new concept for the show would be asking her to do.

Brilliantly said.

[S04.E08: Years, Continents, Bloodshed]

So Rob's interviews pretty much confirm that it was a plot move to set up a single, free-wheeling detective Veronica.

The weird thing about Rob in his new interviews is that he talks about him and his staff not being mystery writers primarily but being character writers first and yet... it's the characters who have been completely underserved this year and in previous VM seasons that had flaws.  The first season was completely character driven because the mystery was built around Veronica.  No, you can't do that every year and one of the struggles the show had in S2 and S3 was keeping Veronica invested in the various mysteries.  But the show's biggest triumphs came from character just the same -- S2 had a weak plot but Beaver as the villain redeemed it because we cared about him so much; and the consequences of Veronica's vengefulness in 320 put everyone she loves at risk and torpedoed her father's campaign.  It feels though that in moving away from "soap opera" the show is also trying to move away from... well... drama!

As has been mentioned upthread, "Thousand Dollar Tanline" especially had a much more emotionally-driven story for Veronica while Wallace and Dick were completely sidelined.  Yes, in the interests of accessibility but it's not like Wallace has huge backstory baggage anyway and Dick had so much to react to in the final episode (and, yes, availability but surely if they knew they were killing Big Dick they could have planned the schedule earlier).  In fact, what scenes did Dick and his father have of any consequence?  Why use Big Dick at all if this was all he was there for? Keith's dementia had huge potential for pathos but that plot was, in the end, just a red herring and a less-impressive rehash of the paternity revelation in S1.   

And of course, the off-screen, off-hand Logan death - no character material there.  Jason Dohring would have smashed a death arc - look at how Veronica flouted the law when Duncan was in trouble in S2.  Imagine how far she and Logan would push each other if things became really bad; if their backs were against the wall, if one or both were in mortal peril, if their mistakes really caught up with them.  That's your noir right there.  Whereas Rob has said he feels proud at how Logan and Veronica getting together in 118 was "earned", they didn't even try to earn Logan's death.

Moving on from Neptune seems a particularly bad move.  So much of the show is the aesthetic.  I mean, you could temporarily take Sherlock or Luther out of London, Batman out of Gotham or Spidey out of New York but ultimately these characters are grounded in such a sense of place that to do so for very long would seem counterproductive.  But then this isn't the first weird decision he's made in the interests of trying to slot VM into a genre box -- episodes 16-18 of S3 also suffered from the arc-free approach.  And the FBI pitch was a lucky escape.  In retrospect, Rob's been self-sabotaging VM for a long while.  Such a waste.

[S04.E08: Years, Continents, Bloodshed]

I thought the season was decent, if a bit cold for the most part - not much emotional investment until near the end.  I liked the way it used lots of past characters but smartly and unobtrusively.  The plot was decent and kept me guessing even if the final reveal wasn't exactly a Beaver type shocker.  I thought it might be Matty.

But the ending just felt... meh.  I'm not a shipper especially and it's obvious that the show's dependence on Logan is its Achilles heel, although frankly the material has always generally been stronger when they've been together than broken up.  He's there because he's such a strong, magnetic character and it seems impossible to imagine that they would ever believably replace that. So killing him off also kills off all sorts of avenues of development for Veronica, some of which they were doing a pretty decent job of exploring.  And to do it in such an offhand way made it feel strangely undramatic.  It wasn't moving or full of great acting and it doesn't obviously set up future possibilities (I love Patton Oswalt but there's no way his character's going to become Veronica's Moriarty or anything).  It felt like a move not a piece of drama. 

It reminds me of Lamb's death (although that, it seems, was forced by circumstance) in that it seems like a huge missed opportunity.  The death of Logan would be a case that could finally eclipse Lilly's in terms of emotional investment and resonance but this was only one up on putting on screen: "Note: Logan died on the way back to his home planet."

I was more shocked by the way Big Dick went out and I was keener to see Dick's response to his father's loss but we didn't get anything of that. 

So... good season but a really poorly executed ending.

And the show has always been so on the bubble that, absent the huge Logan fanbase, I don't think S5 is exactly likely which means this was likely also the last word on the show.

[Better Call Saul In The Media]

S4 aired about 14 months after S3 ended.  Unless it's well into 2020, it looks like S5 will be about 15 or 16 months after.  Not a big difference and one I'm happy to see given the quality of the show and the difficult task they have in the next season or two to stick the landing.

[Better Call Saul In The Media]

Peter Gould has said that seasons take them about 14 months.  He did say in the last episode's inside podcast that they will come back in 14 months' time but I'm not sure if he meant from the date of speaking or the date of airing.  Either way, this puts a return between October 19 and January 20.  Perhaps if "Saul" isn't back until January, "Greenbriar" will fill the void a little.  I'm not wild about the delay but equally we know the show most probably only has another two seasons left and all the people are committed to making it as good as it can be so ultimately I think it's for the best.  It's always worth the wait.

[S04.E09: Wiedersehen]

I think the whole "full measure" philosophy was just for Walt.  I've never felt it reflects Mike's character at all.  That said, I don't think he has much choice now.  Werner is too unreliable to be trusted to be discrete.  On the other hand, the fact that he wants to reunite with his wife makes it difficult as she presumably can be tracked.  With Lalo sniffing around Gus's empire, I can see fun times ahead.

I enjoyed the bell scene.  Yes, it's a shameless bit of continuity but it still worked as a scene, especially for Lalo's maniacal laugh when he starts ringing the bell.  I hate Hector but I do love Mark Margolis and I feel sad that we'll never see him in his true, terrible form again.

No Howard again.  I like that the show doesn't force appearances unnecessarily but it's striking that he's appeared in barely a handful of scenes this season.  Granted, those scenes have almost all been stand-outs.  I hope and expect to see more of him just as Nacho has had seasons where he's been quiet.

Gus is fun although at the moment his plot feels very much in a holding pattern.  I loved Nacho's expression to him when he brought Lalo to Los Pollos.

So Kim and Jimmy... hmm.  I love the structure of the scene and the acting and Jimmy not getting his law licence back was indeed a shock.  I loved that it came down to Chuck as though Chuck, from beyond the grave, was still keeping Jimmy down.  And I loved that in his ranting Jimmy referenced all the putdowns he'd internalised - "the kind of lawyer guilty people hire" and "Slipping Jimmy".  I didn't personally feel "you're always down" as being as big a slap-down as some people seem to think.  It's blunt but fairly inarguable.

The first Kim scene though was hard to watch.  For one, it seems like it's going to be incredibly difficult to justify to anyone how it happened and the fiction seems difficult to maintain.  There will be blowback and I don't see how Kim's sleight of hand even remotely covers herself or the firm for that.  Even if Kevin loves Kim for it, Paige and Rich are going to be cautious and that could be a much bigger issue down the line when the firm starts getting bad press.  I feel like this was as big an act of self-sabotage as hanging up on Paige but I still can't see why.  The diner scene was intriguing but there's still so much about Kim's psychology that seems very hard to unpick.

Sad it's the finale already next week but it looks like being a good one.  I really hope we see more Chuck in the finale.  The one flashback was good but his absence has been so profound this season.

[S04.E08: Coushatta]

An interesting episode.  Mike and the Germans... we'll see where this goes.  I will say that, for all the precautions they've taken, letting them loose in Albuquerque seems like an unusually stupid choice.  I didn't think they even knew before in which city the laundry was located.

The stuff with the court was a joy to watch but... I found Kim's behaviour change, especially at the end... a reach.  Yes, it's a twist and it's not unprecedented -- they've foreshadowed a darker side to Kim.  Still, it feels a big leap from where she was only relatively recently in the timeline.  When she found out about the squat cobbler and address change scams, she expressed displeasure but swallowed it and turned a blind eye.  Here, she is actively participating and now pursuing it.  What's changed?

She's certainly been through a lot.  She worked herself into the ground to gain and maintain the esteem of first HHM and now Mesa Verde.  In the end, she couldn't maintain the pace of Mesa Verde and she started getting her fix from the pro bono cases.  However, it doesn't seem to have moved her much further forward -- in her meetings with Mesa Verde, she still has to be the person to put a limit on ambition and colour within the lines and in her PD work, she's not really given much credit or respect.

I think Jimmy's superpower, to Kim, is that he doesn't care about any of that.  He torpedoed Davis & Main.  He took on Rich at the drinks party.  When Kim tries to find a sensible solution, he says he'll handle it his way.  No worries, no holding back.  When Kim comments at the end, "I saw your Esteem in the parking lot", I think it plays into the metaphor about Jimmy's Esteem.  He doesn't have the esteem of his brother, society or his clients but he does have a unique kind of self-esteem -- a conviction that he can step outside the law as needed.

That's my reading and my interpretation but I feel there's a lot to unpick next episode if the show's going to stick the landing on this twist.

[S04.E04: Talk]

Yeah, Mike's end was really disappointing.  So much so that I'd love to think that there was a ruse we're not aware of going on between Saul and Mike and he got away.  I don't think his death is ambiguous, sadly, but I still hope there's more to that sequence than meets the eye.

Another thing that really worked about the teaser is that the present day scene is from the middle of the episode.  It's like this is all that's playing through Mike's mind during what he's saying.  I'd almost love to see this edited so that the flashbacks are side by side with his "talk".

Another nice touch.  He talks about Henry having "a tell" and Gus having "an ask".  It's an interesting turn of phrase and I like that it backs up the idea that Mike really doesn't need words to read people.

[S04.E04: Talk]

An excellent episode.  With all the characters following their own separate trajectories, it feels more like an ensemble show than the the two-track structure of past seasons but this has the advantage that we have a really good knowledge of each of the characters.

Really pleased to see the flashback teaser -- and a Mike one!  I don't want the show to go all "Lost" in requiring flashbacks but I do think these are very interesting and I hope we get more of them, especially with different characters.

This is one of the strongest Mike episodes in a long time.  I loved seeing him torpedo the grief group and his reaction to Stacey's admissions were heartbreakingly brilliant.  Mike hates dishonesty but he feels he's the most broken and dishonest one of all for killing his boy so he goes to Gus with not a care in the world and gets stuck in.  It makes sense and calling out Gus's tactics was brilliant.  Don't play a player.

Nacho had some great material this week too.  The Salamanca gunfight was epic and Gus's strategy was good.  But my favourite scene was with his father.  I just love that actor.  He radiates love and sadness in equal measure.  And that relationship is so perfect and really defines Nacho's character.

Kim also seemed to move on more than she has in a while despite only being in a few scenes.  I loved her absolute disdain for the cynical judge and her effectively giving him the finger by sitting right back down.  Although he mocked a heroic movie-style case, he's also right: we know she does want to be Atticus Finch.  As ever, I'm intrigued to see where she goes.  I also like that they address last week's ending not with a conversation but with an action - Kim suggests talking and not to her.

No Howard for the second episode in a row.  I like that the show doesn't force appearances where they aren't necessary and I can see that Howard is very peripheral as things stand.  Still, I've really grown to like Howard and I hope, like Nacho in S3, he gets a really good spotlight in the back half.

And finally, Jimmy.  I loved that they had him bouncing the ball at the end of one scene, stacked a load of other scenes in between, and when he came back he was still bouncing the ball.  The mobile phone job was always going to be a train wreck but I was surprised how quickly.  It was a nice bit of prequel work to show the origin of Saul's need for an endless supply of phones -- I wonder if he's going to try and acquire some before his employers realise what a mistake they've made.  I liked his relationship with Ira too.

I was interested that, in the timeline, he still has 10 months before he can return to the law.  I thought they might try to move that along a little faster as, if they keep the current pace and the pace of most of BB, we wouldn't reach the end of his time until S7 which is longer than the show will likely run.  Obviously they'll need to hit fast-forward at some point, hopefully a little more slickly than "Gliding Over All" which I felt condensed a little too much too quickly. 

I do miss Jimmy the lawyer and except for his bit of phone salesmanship last week, we haven't seen it this year.  There's also a lot building up in the Jimmy/Kim relationship.  As a result, the Jimmy stuff feels like waiting for the other shoe to drop.  We're so used to Jimmy talking and he's just not and it gives the plot a pressure cooker feel.  I'm nervously excited to see where this goes...

[Speculation Without Spoilers]

Okay, here's a wild piece of speculation.  

Kim is cagey about where she grew up.  We don't know anything about her family.  We know nothing about her past before she started in the mail room at HHM.  She seems comfortable in the grifter groove even though she's very paranoid about staying on the straight and narrow.  She also had a strong negative reaction to the bank models and seems to spend a lot of time looking at them but also looking at the locations.  What if she's actually looking for a particular location?  As in, worried that she might one day her work might take her too near to a particular location to which she daren't return?

Why would this worry her?  Why be so vague?  My completely off-the-wall speculation is that Kim was the first person the "Disappearer" disappeared and it's through him that Saul knows of his existence.

Extreme long-shot but I kind of like the symmetry that Kim is another "Gene".

[S04.E03 Something Beautiful]

I don't buy the letter being forged.  It contains Chuck's jealousy over Jimmy's presence in their mother's life and his pride in keeping Jimmy in the mailroom.  That's all quite personal to Chuck and quite believable.  Jimmy's reaction is indifferent because the pomposity of the letter isn't anything new.  I also think we'd have seen Kim swap it if they were going to do that - they seem to prefer the drama of watching people doing wrong things than revealing foul intent in retrospect.

Kim's reaction to the Mesa Verde expansion will be interesting.  That scene was beautifully shot (as they all are).  Her going to the court would be fun.  If she's going for a nobler calling, perhaps she'll go into criminal law?  That would keep her on the same track as Jimmy for a while longer.

One negative note.  As much as I like BB, this is the first episode where I felt that the prequel status was a real impediment.  Yes, it was fun to see Gael but I'm not sure it added anything to our sum knowledge of his character, Gus's character or the universe.  Indeed, Nacho is now the only major character in the cartel arc who doesn't have a thoroughly sketched out ending on BB.  Moreover, while Jimmy is still in the process of changing towards his BB character (and there is potential for after), only Mike among them still has much change to get to their BB status (and Mike's not too far off).  What have we really learned about Gus's character since he returned that we didn't know from BB?  This universe's greatest strength is showing characters change quite drastically but the closer we get into the BB prequel orbit the less room I can see for that and that's a pity.  Hopefully it'll pick up - there's still a lot to say about Gus in particular with respect to his family, past etc. and I hope they explore this aspect soon.

[S04.E01 Smoke]

I adore the artistry of this show.

Smoke.  A metaphor for suspicion. No smoke without fire. Without heat.

Nacho has the whiff of smoke about him - he wears red, covered in black. Mike is on the trail of smoke. Howard thinks he is the smoke - black jumper and charcoal suit smothering the Hamlindigo blue at the start and end. Gene, Stacey, the taxi driver, the broken car guy, even the audience, all smell smoke.

So when Chuck died of "smoke" inhalation... he literally died of inhaling suspicion. Allergic to electricity? Electricity is just what people use to heat things faster.

Water quells heat like confession quells suspicion - "coming clean". Kayleigh with her hose that Mike thinks, perhaps subconsciously, about cutting dry. The river Nacho throws the pills into (also the blue highlights on his shirt which are more prominent when he seems to have escaped Bolsa's suspicions). Omaha, full of ice - surely no smoke there? Jimmy's pet fish, fed and happy surrounded by water.

So when Jimmy leaves the tap running...

He's literally pouring away his guilt. Until Kim turns off the tap.

So what if smoke and water mix? The water just becomes impure. The coffee Jimmy drinks in happy obliviousness in the morning. The coffee he gives to Kim before she knows Hamlin is trying to call. The coffee bar guys at Madrigal, oblivious to the impurities around them. Kim pours tequila - muddy yellow even though it's from a blue bottle; it promises confession but that's not what it delivers.

At the end though, when Jimmy makes the coffee...

He applies heat. Controls the water. Dumps the waste.

Suspicions? Guilt? Collateral damage?

'S all good, man.

At least until Gene. Overflowing soap-filled water and an empty coffee cup drip, drip, dripping dry...

[Speculation Without Spoilers]

Great to see the Howard love.  In a recent interview, Howard joked about being the moral centre of the show but as it stands he's not too far off.  I love seeing him under pressure though.  At some point, I can't wait to see him take on Saul in court (I know he was cross-examined as a witness in "Chicanery" but that's not nearly the same).

For spin-offs, I've read that the writers like a Cinnabon Gene concept but I've also read that they think Kim could be the focus of something.

I love this.  I'm not optimistic that it's going to happen and in some respects I hope her BCS arc is definitive enough not to warrant one but it's an awesome idea.  Kim is an amazing character and it would be possible to skip to the present day (which, by the time they finish BCS and get a new show off the ground, would be nearly 20 years on from the BCS timeline) and have incredible scope to tell a story with her.  I've always loved the idea of a series called "ABQ" about the characters in this little pocket world they've created in BCS and BB.  The only thing is, these shows are about change so she'd need an arc.   I'd love to see a proper redemption arc in one of these shows.  I don't know where Kim's going in BCS but my fear is that it's nowhere good so there has to be a good chance that she'll need to dig herself out of whatever hole she's in after getting sucked into the nexus of Saul.  Perhaps a spin-off could find her out of prison and, since she can't practice law, working as a PI or something.  In this post-BB world, it's possible we could see Skyler and Marie as well as BCS characters like Howard and Nacho.  And, of course, Huell.

[S07.E12: Paean To The People]

Didn't do anything for me at all.

Keane is such a horrible character with such an off-the-wall plot and, while I'm glad she's gone, giving her a noble send-off feels unearned and largely out of character.  The whole arc, despite occasional glimmers of some real promise, has been a huge misstep.

The Carrie arc was well-acted but I can't see the long-term consequences are any worse than she's already faced.  I mean, she had a full-fledged psychotic break just a couple of episodes ago.

The Russian stuff seems wrapped up in as neat a bow as you can get with these sorts of things.

After the tension of the siege and the great stuff with Dante and the Russians, it feels like the season really fell to pieces in the third art.  A pity.

[S07.E10: Clarity]

So Dante is definitely dead.  What a waste of a promising character.

Frannie... well, who cares really.  Even though Carrie's brother-in-law is a bit of a prick, Carrie's so monstrously unsuited to motherhood as this season ably shows.

The president demonstrates no leadership at all, just paranoid mania.  She deserves impeachment.  One of the least compelling fictional presidents ever.

Saul... I don't really know what the point of Saul was in this episode.

Really disappointing episode.  "Homeland" is always a weird show and has been from the start - it can be really good or it can spin its wheels endlessly.  I don't think it's ever been truly great but it's touched greatness a few times including earlier this season.  But now it seems like an incoherent mess.  A shame.

[S07.E09: Useful Idiot]

I liked the tweet trap door and the useful idiot motif, plus that was a great creepy ending but it's difficult to see what the producers' endgame is here.  The Russian operation is now blown to pieces so it's hard to see where the plot goes from here.  If Dante is dead, it seems like a waste of a good character; if he isn't, it seems like a weird/overly-convenient plot move.  Keane and Wellington are hugely unsympathetic; so is the Senator.  Whatever happens to them... who cares, frankly.  Carrie is hugely unsympathetic because of her maltreatment of her daughter who probably isn't dead but you never know.  There are some good elements this season but the only stakes left right now seem to be Carrie's sanity and I'm not sure I'm all that interested in three episodes of mental ward Carrie.  Shame because some elements of this season had promise.

[S07.E07: Andante]

Oh, Carrie.  It's painful to see Carrie's decision-making with regard to Frannie be so poor and, to be honest, I find it hard to credit.  Carrie does a lot of things wrong but deliberately putting her infant daughter in the home of a possible Russian spy who the National Security Advisor is gunning for really pushes credibility.

Although when they introduced Frannie, I thought she was a terrible idea, she's actually been good for the show on balance.  A tether for Carrie to stop her going completely off the deep end and I don't find her overused or annoying.  This was the first time she's been in the spotlight much at all and I didn't find her a problem so much as the credibility of Carrie's situation.  That said, I can't see how this ends with her alive.  With the show entering its final season, the character is too much of a lead weight on them.

Dante is a great character and I enjoy his ambiguity.  They've done a good job of bottling the mystery with Brody that made Series 1 tick and I hope, like Brody, they don't rush to pin him down.  (Incidentally, someone mentioned Dana upthread.  Probably a really unpopular opinion, but I'd quite like to see what became of Dana and Jessica.  They were such a huge part of the first season and Dana is Frannie's sister-in-law.  Did they even know about Frannie?  That said, I can't see any logical reason for them to turn up so perhaps it's as well they're kept off-screen.

I don't get why Max put himself at risk of jail time for Carrie in the first place so I don't have much sympathy for him here.  In fact, in 7 years, I've never understood his character really.

Wellington though... that plot isn't working for me at all.  I can't get over the strike he ordered over her explicit instructions and I just don't see how he's that essential.  Where was he last season? 

The Keane plot is floundering again.  It feels like they're giving her things to do to justify her role such as manipulate the funeral arrangements or bicker with the Veep.  And I have to say, the Vice-President didn't interest me as a character one bit which is a real shame because offing Keane and installing a new character might have been their best course-correct at this point.  It's not that the actress is bad but trying to write in the Trumpian elements feels increasingly difficult to sustain with her underlying characterisation.

Saul is good value as ever but feels like he's going through the motions at the moment.  The man has gone from prison to the top of government but is still acting like a spy kingpin and through it all I really don't have much of a sense of who he is.

I hoped we might get more follow-up on the siege but I guess that's died a death.  If this was Moscow's big play, it's hardly succeeded.  I hope we get some closure on O'Keefe at least.