S01.E06: Five-O

[Lonesome Rhodes]

Do any of y'all see any potential blowback coming down on Jimmy for his little coffee stunt?  The thing I so love about the few shows like BrBa and BCS is that it can be the littlest thing/smallest offense that ruins EVERYthing for the protagonists.  That very thing happened in BrBa, did it not?  Here, we have Jimmy in a conspiracy after the fact with the crooked county workers and nothing comes of it.  What tiny oversight, or "miss" is gonna trip up our hero, Jimmy?  

 

I love this show.

[stephinmn]

Wouldn't Matty have been shot by his fellow cops either way? If he had gone to IA, they would have killed him. He took the money and apparently hesitated enough that they thought he might go to IA, so they killed him. Mike's advice to him, in the end, didn't matter. Matty was a dead man once he didn't immediately take his cut.

[SlackerInc]

Kerry broke her accent during Mike's monologue. It pulled me out of the scene for a moment. Her body language and face were stiff and overly emotive. Here's my fanwank - VG used Mike's best take, not Stacey's, and he's using praise to smooth over using the less flattering performance. She did excellent work on Rome and she still has time to earn the praise on Better Call Saul. I thought Skylar was an awful actress too until later in BrBa.

 

That's a nice fanwank!  It could be true and would make sense.  But I still feel like he could have dialled it down or just not gone there (it wasn't like someone asked him how her acting was or something like that).  He could have said, if he felt he needed to direct a little sugar her way: "Love Kerry Condon...I remember after seeing her on ________ I became really interested in having her on the show, and she's such a joy to have on the set [insert behind-the-scenes anecdote about something nice or funny she did that the cast and crew enjoyed]" and left it at that.  No need to talk her up as the second coming of Meryl Streep and lose credibility.

 

Do any of y'all see any potential blowback coming down on Jimmy for his little coffee stunt?  The thing I so love about the few shows like BrBa and BCS is that it can be the littlest thing/smallest offense that ruins EVERYthing for the protagonists.  That very thing happened in BrBa, did it not?  Here, we have Jimmy in a conspiracy after the fact with the crooked county workers and nothing comes of it.  What tiny oversight, or "miss" is gonna trip up our hero, Jimmy?  

 

I love this show.

 

Yeah, I sense somehow they are not going to go with the blowback (though I could be wrong--we'll see).  But in real life, I'd have to think this would be a pretty dangerous move.  That cop is going to know exactly what happened, even if he can't technically prove it; and it's not like he's not going to miss the pad where he took all his notes.  But maybe he's too embarrassed to make a stink about it.

[ShadowFacts]

 

Wouldn't Matty have been shot by his fellow cops either way? If he had gone to IA, they would have killed him. He took the money and apparently hesitated enough that they thought he might go to IA, so they killed him. Mike's advice to him, in the end, didn't matter. Matty was a dead man once he didn't immediately take his cut.

 

Yes, I think this is exactly the way the writing has set it up.  He would be a target even if he up and quit the force.  The poor guy was pretty well screwed no matter what, and just about any advice Mike gave him would not have changed the outcome.  Plus, he had to reveal himself as dirty to his son who put him on a pedastal.  All adding up to the worst kind of agonzing guilt and grief imaginable for a parent. 

[shapeshifter]

Do any of y'all see any potential blowback coming down on Jimmy for his little coffee stunt?...

Now that you mention it, and given that Jimmy/Saul has consistently been caught in his own schemes on both BrBa and BCS, we should be expecting this to happen. A fan could easily write a college essay comparing and contrasting Walter White getting in deeper and deeper every time he gets caught with Jimmy/Saul being repeatedly saved by getting caught. So it should be interesting to see if/where they take this.

[duVerre]

 

No need to talk her up as the second coming of Meryl Streep and lose credibility.

 

I began my career as an actress (spent ten years doing that), and in my experience, people who are involved in creating drama or comedy together often lose their critical faculties about the thing they created together. It doesn't tend to happen in the writing stage, when the writer is writing alone or a group of writers are together in a room. It's easy and natural to be objective then. But once you have actors putting themselves out there/making themselves vulnerable, shooting long hours with director and crew, an esprit de corps develops. You become a little army, or a group of survivors. The blood, sweat and tears somehow hold you all together.  You love each other because you were there for each other, in the moment. The result is that later on it's really hard to make judgements against each other (unless one of the group has made themselves a nightmare, or is downright appalling at what they do).  Several years later your view might change. But the emotional hangover of filming or rehearsing together lasts a long, long time.

 

So I think the admiring comments about KC from Gilligan and the rest are sincere.

Edited March 13, 2015 by duVerre

[WicketyWack]

One of the many things I loved about this episode is it's one of the rare times on Better Call Saul so far that we get glimpses of the ingenious, badass Mike that we know and love on Breaking Bad. The first time is outside the bar where he's breaking into the police car with an artfully tied loop knot (and if anyone knows the exact name of that knot, holler). The second is when his son's killers, plotting his staged suicide, hear a loud "That's what I'd do"  and turn to see a very lucid Mike standing with a gun trained on them. It's like — oh yeah, this is Mike F*ing Ehrmantraut! These guys are toast.

[WicketyWack]

Ah yes, Crazy Clara, the forest chick who looked like the girl who crawled out of the well in The Ring!  I hated her acting on TWD, and I didn't think her acting was good on BCS.  It was a great episode, which I already expanded on in this thread, but her acting didn't feel real.  It felt too much like acting.

To me, she wasn't acting enough during Mike's monologue -- I felt like she was just like any one of us, riveted and hanging onto Mike's every word, without much emotional investment. Not the reaction I would expect from a woman learning some painful truths about her recently deceased husband  -- including the fact that he was murdered by men he trusted. 

[shapeshifter]

This episode's title uses the letter O like the original, 1960s TV show, Hawaii Five-O, rather than the number 0 like the current TV show, Hawaii Five-0. This has something to do with copyright, branding, and/or permissions, right? Or was it because the episodes were all supposed to end with the letter O (until the Jell-O folks got in a quiver).

[morgankobi]

Maybe it's so it will be pronounced out loud correctly. So people say it as oh, not zero.

But, yes, it also keeps it in-line with their naming conventions for this season.

Edited March 13, 2015 by morgankobi

[Ronin Jackson]

I'm not sure what's going on with that wonky trivia entry, but as editorgrrl mentions, the basis for most of the timeline seems to be the divorce papers glimpsed briefly on screen in one episode, which give Walt's date of birth as "9/7/59." Obviously, that doesn't jibe with the information about Jane's birthdate; unlike the wiki users, I would consider the latter to be more definitive, considering it's based on script rather than set decoration.

Assuming that everything else about the wiki timeline is roughly correct, you'd just have to shift everything back by ten months so that Jane dies in March 2009 instead of January 2010. That would put the beginning of the series in or around November 2008, which is just about six years after the May 2002 start of Better Call Saul.

I think the divorce papers can be chalked up to a clerical error. It's amusing how much pull that little detail has been given by fans. There was also talk that the wintery scenes in Vermont near the end of the show must have been a mistake because the months leading up to a September B day wouldn't have been snowy. That works better if the date is November, but ultimately fans have to give the show runners freedom for creative license, especially when it comes to things like weather or the appearance and age of actors in a prequel shot after the original.

[shapeshifter]

I think the divorce papers can be chalked up to a clerical error. It's amusing how much pull that little detail has been given by fans. There was also talk that the wintery scenes in Vermont near the end of the show must have been a mistake because the months leading up to a September B day wouldn't have been snowy....

20 years after my divorce and 19½ years after my ex remarried, I decided to change my last name back to my birth name, only to discover that due to a "clerical error" (yes, those were the words used) my divorce had never been finalized. So, yeah, those clerical errors happen. If they zoomed in on the date on the divorce papers, that would mean something for the plot, but I don't recall seeing it.

[editorgrrl]

On the "Better Call Saul" Insider podcast, Vince Gilligan talked about how careful they are to make sure every piece of paper that's shown on screen is accurate. He even threw shade at other shows. I took that to mean that 9/7/59 is canon. YMMV.

[ShadowFacts]

 

To me, she wasn't acting enough during Mike's monologue -- I felt like she was just like any one of us, riveted and hanging onto Mike's every word, without much emotional investment. Not the reaction I would expect from a woman learning some painful truths about her recently deceased husband  -- including the fact that he was murdered by men he trusted.

 

That's how it came across to me, too much of a flat affect.  The only way that makes sense to me is if she was already suspicious of something, not exactly what she finally found out, but something.  I think she already knew, not only suspected, that Mike was on the other end of the phone (via caller ID or dialback or *69 or whatever) and knew he was bullshitting her at the first backyard conversation.  She might have girded herself for whatever was going to come out, whenever it did.  That's the only way I can reconcile her seeming relatively unemotional. 

[Ronin Jackson]

On the "Better Call Saul" Insider podcast, Vince Gilligan talked about how careful they are to make sure every piece of paper that's shown on screen is accurate. He even threw shade at other shows. I took that to mean that 9/7/59 is canon. YMMV.

Mistakes happen in film and television productions. And on divorce papers. Doesn't it make more sense for there to be a mistake on divorce papers than for Jane's father to get her DOB wrong... especially if the divorce papers would throw off the BCS timeline which VG has stated takes place 6 years prior, not 7?

[TVFan17]

I have to admit -- I've gotten lost on the timeline thing.  I'm clearly slow on the uptake, but what is the confusion about or inconsistency with the timeline? 

 

Breaking Bad debuted in January 2008, and it covered a period of just over 2 years (in the timeline of the BB story, that is;  for us, the viewers, the series did not end until 2013).  Maybe 2-1/2 years. 

 

Better Call Saul is supposed to have begun 6 years in the past -- in early 2002.  I don't know if it will stay in 2002 or if it will advance, but that's where it began, correct?

Edited March 13, 2015 by Sherry67

[SlackerInc]

That's how it came across to me, too much of a flat affect.  

 

I went back and rewatched, and to get even more specific there appears to be a mannerism she employs to attempt a kind of halting, emotional seriousness or uncertainty to a dramatic scene--but it just doesn't land, in part because it's so metronomic.  She pauses regularly between words toward the end of a phrase, in a way that's obviously intended to avoid sounding like she's just monotonously reciting dialogue, but it's not varied enough or tailored to the individual beats.

 

It reminds me in a way of an NPR reporter that I've come to really find annoying: Neda Ulaby.  She's got a distinctive little vocal maneuver she does that could be very, very cool if it were reserved for the occasional wry observation.  But instead, she just does it again and again, without regard for the content of the sentence, sounding at first jarring and then ultimately like she's simply reciting text without thinking about it.

[Dev F]

I have to admit -- I've gotten lost on the timeline thing.  I'm clearly slow on the uptake, but what is the confusion about or inconsistency with the timeline? 

 

Breaking Bad debuted in January 2008, and it covered a period of just over 2 years (in the timeline of the BB story, that is;  for us, the viewers, the series did not end until 2013).  Maybe 2-1/2 years.

 

Exactly two years. It began on Walter White's fiftieth birthday and ended on his fifty-second.

 

But knowing the span of the series doesn't necessarily tell us the dates of the series, as there's no particular reason to assume that the timeline of the series begins in January 2008 just because that's when the series happened to premiere. And as we've mentioned, there are a number of references within the series itself -- Walter's birthdate on his divorce papers, Jane's birthdate and how old she was just before she died -- that suggest a different start date than January 2008.

Edited March 13, 2015 by Dev F

[SlackerInc]

Maybe this is overly picky, but didn't it actually end a few days after his fifty-second birthday?  You're not telling me all the events that transpired after he bought the machine gun were on the same day?

[TVFan17]

Maybe this is overly picky, but didn't it actually end a few days after his fifty-second birthday?  You're not telling me all the events that transpired after he bought the machine gun were on the same day?

 

I was just signing in here to say the same thing. While the timeline of BB was almost exactly two years, I, too, though that the story itself did not end on Walt's birthday, but slightly after.

 

In any case, the BB story may not have begun in exactly January 2008 (when the series began), or maybe it did -- but, whatever the case, I would assume that we were not seeing a day-by-day account of Walt's life.  I would assume that we skipped lots of days in the course of the two years, which might lead to confusion with things like the date of Jane's birth/death and Walt's divorce papers etc.  I have no clue.

 

And I would assume that BCS is not set firmly, exactly 6 years before every single event on BB happened, but more or less 6 years ahead of time.  Some events may end up crossing over into a different time frame that puts it outside of 6 years or inside 6 years.  Who knows?  If I stop to obsess over it I might never enjoy either show again!  Lol.

Edited March 13, 2015 by Sherry67

[DangerousMinds]

Why Saul turns on Mike:

Remember in BB when Mike presses for Jesse's whereabouts and Saul's reaction?

Interesting, but there is still an active BB forum here. Would love to discuss there.

[pasdetrois]

While I appreciate the character Mike, I was kind of bored at an entire episode devoted to him. My mind kept asking "but what about Saul?"

[TVFan17]

While I appreciate the character Mike, I was kind of bored at an entire episode devoted to him. My mind kept asking "but what about Saul?"

 

I would bet that there were a lot of people in your camp, wondering the same thing, and there were probably a few people in my camp who were thinking, "Awesome!  It's a whole Mike episode!"  Lol.   I loved it.  Mike (and the promise of some of Mike's interesting connections) was basically the main reason I decided I would watch this series, as a show solely about Saul was going to otherwise be tough for me.

 

I've said before in assorted episode threads that I can't quite get a handle on how the show will proceed, both for the rest of this season and next season.   In other words, I can't tell if we will continue to see stories unfold which involve both Saul and Mike equally, as they work together on cases or as Mike brings clients to Saul, or if we will see a few separate storylines -- maybe one episode is Mike-centric and involves things that have nothing to do with Saul, while the next one could be all Saul and has nothing to do with Mike.   It will be interesting to watch it all unfold.

[ghoulina]

That's how it came across to me, too much of a flat affect.  The only way that makes sense to me is if she was already suspicious of something, not exactly what she finally found out, but something.  I think she already knew, not only suspected, that Mike was on the other end of the phone (via caller ID or dialback or *69 or whatever) and knew he was bullshitting her at the first backyard conversation.  She might have girded herself for whatever was going to come out, whenever it did.  That's the only way I can reconcile her seeming relatively unemotional.

 

Yea, I don't think she knew exactly what happened, but I think she was almost certain that Mike was on the phone that night, and that HE knew what had happened. That's why she iced him out. She didn't like him keeping it from her. I still think hearing the truth finally come out might have garnered a bigger reaction, but I'll be honest - I was so entranced with JB's performance that I wasn't really paying her much mind.

[Bcharmer]

Other than her accent slipping a little, I don't understand the criticism of her acting. I finally had to look it up to see where I'd seen her before. She played Rosie on "Luck," a show I dearly loved, and was sad to see cancelled after one season. There, she was able to speak in her own accent, which I found refreshing. Wish more shows would do that. Why couldn't she just be Irish? Not really sure I understand the trend of casting foreign actors to play Americans. 

[Umbelina]

I would bet that there were a lot of people in your camp, wondering the same thing, and there were probably a few people in my camp who were thinking, "Awesome!  It's a whole Mike episode!"  Lol.   I loved it.  Mike (and the promise of some of Mike's interesting connections) was basically the main reason I decided I would watch this series, as a show solely about Saul was going to otherwise be tough for me.

 

I've said before in assorted episode threads that I can't quite get a handle on how the show will proceed, both for the rest of this season and next season.   In other words, I can't tell if we will continue to see stories unfold which involve both Saul and Mike equally, as they work together on cases or as Mike brings clients to Saul, or if we will see a few separate storylines -- maybe one episode is Mike-centric and involves things that have nothing to do with Saul, while the next one could be all Saul and has nothing to do with Mike.   It will be interesting to watch it all unfold.

 

I think Saul/Jimmy will be the steak and potatoes of the show.  Mike will be the sour cream and chives for the potato, and the fresh cracked salt and pepper for the steak, as well as an occasional scrumptious dessert.  Various other cases Saul/Jimmy takes on will be the other side dishes, occasionally so good that you finish those before the steak.

[RustbeltWriter]

I gotta try that method of breaking into a car.

[editorgrrl]

On the AMC website, you can view 16 pages of Detective Abbasi's Case Notes. There's a behind-the-scenes video with cast & crew, or watch the entire episode for the next 24 days. Here's the interrogation scene:

Edited March 16, 2015 by editorgrrl

[LoneHaranguer]

 

I gotta try that method of breaking into a car.

The odds are against it working. Car makers theft-proofed the knobs a long time ago, either having them disappear into the door or shaping them so they can't be grasped that way. Maybe on a car that's been customized.

[panthergirl13]

Other than her accent slipping a little, I don't understand the criticism of her acting. I finally had to look it up to see where I'd seen her before. She played Rosie on "Luck," a show I dearly loved, and was sad to see cancelled after one season. There, she was able to speak in her own accent, which I found refreshing. Wish more shows would do that. Why couldn't she just be Irish? Not really sure I understand the trend of casting foreign actors to play Americans. 

Honestly? I came to the forum specifically to bitch about her acting. I just listened to the podcast where VG was waxing poetic about her and I thought, "Seriously?" I was so distracted by the disparity between her skills and Jonathan Banks' that I felt sorry for him as an actor which in turn took away from my ability to focus on the scene.

 

I think we get so spoiled by seeing great acting MOST of the time that bad acting really sticks out. This show seems to employ more 2nd rate talent than BB did. (the Philadelphia cops were absolutely painful to watch, but at least they were dead soon.)

 

While I'm here, I'll just add that while I did listen to every BB Insider Podcast and will continue to do so with BCS, all the back-slapping really gets to me. Contrast that with the Slate podcast for The Americans, where they've got the showrunner and one actor (or last week Noah Emmerich as an actor and director) and none of the "wunnerful, wunnerful" stuff. A lot more interesting and easier to take (although Keri Russell is way more of an annoying loudmouth than I would have imagined. /OT)

[scenario]

I was just thinking back on this episode with all the stuff going on in the world.

Mike's son was killed by two dirty cops. The moral and right thing to do would be to turn the dirty cops in. But he didn't have enough evidence that a jury would agree with to make it stick. To too many people, all cops are perfect people with no flaws. He also had the problem that police stick together. It helped him because none of the other cops would turn him in for being a dirty cop. But it also means that the other cops who weren't involved would have supported their fellow cops any way they could. Many of them would have been willing to commit perjury to protect the dirty cops who killed Mike's son. He would have been attacked for not protecting the cops who killed his son.

His choices were to just let it go, or to take the law into his own hands and kill the dirty cops. There was no realistic way he could have gone after them legally. More than likely he'd have been charged with the crime if he tried to do it the right way. While I don't agree with what he did, I understand why he did it and sympathize with him. He was in a no win situation. 

[gallimaufry]

I agree.  But... I also think it was about pure vengeance: certainly that seems to be what Gus sees in Mike in 505.  And we know from Mike's famous "half-measures" story that he would worry about giving a get-out for either of these two.  (That said, I think this story is a bit of an albatross for Mike -- certainly, I don't think this encapsulates his philosophy very well at all, either in BCS or BB.  If it fits anywhere though, it's here).

Basically, even under the most ideal circumstances, I don't think Mike would ever have considered letting Fensky and Hoffman live.  

[scenario]

On 10/28/2020 at 7:36 PM, gallimaufry said:

I agree.  But... I also think it was about pure vengeance: certainly that seems to be what Gus sees in Mike in 505.  And we know from Mike's famous "half-measures" story that he would worry about giving a get-out for either of these two.  (That said, I think this story is a bit of an albatross for Mike -- certainly, I don't think this encapsulates his philosophy very well at all, either in BCS or BB.  If it fits anywhere though, it's here).

Basically, even under the most ideal circumstances, I don't think Mike would ever have considered letting Fensky and Hoffman live.  

He absolutely wanted vengeance. But cops in prison tend to have really unpleasant and short lives. And I'm sure he's got friends in prison who would have been more than happy to kill a cop if they had a chance. If he had a good chance to put them in prison, he probably would have. If they were charged and tried, they'd never be cops again and if they were found innocent he still had the option of killing them later. He'd just be one of many suspects. Once dirty cops have been kicked off the force they lose all of there friends and create a lot of enemies.

But the problem is the system as it currently stands. Police support each other no matter what. There have been hundreds of cases where police have been recorded committing felonies and fellow cops have lied and committed perjury to protect them. The culture of many police departments is to stand by your fellow police officers no matter what. This isn't new. The movie Serpico was made in 1973 about this very issue. And this case has the additional problem of very weak evidence. There is zero chance that these two cops would ever be convicted and they would almost certainly never even be charged.

This was before his philosophy of half measures was fully in place. That wasn't really finalized until the BCS years. At this point he had two choices. Do nothing and let them get away with it or take the law into his own hands. Its one of the consequences of having a system where some people are above the law. 

[Anela]

This was an amazing episode, and I wish I'd been giving it my full attention on the TV, rather than having it play on my phone, as I was trying to wake up. I'll have to watch it again.

I started watching this when it first premiered, and then stopped with the Tuco episode. I hated Tuco, and didn't think about the fact that they were setting up Saul's world, which included all of that. I did like Mike, though, because of the actor. He is so good. 

[SunnyBeBe]

On 8/9/2022 at 6:58 AM, Anela said:

This was an amazing episode, and I wish I'd been giving it my full attention on the TV, rather than having it play on my phone, as I was trying to wake up. I'll have to watch it again.

I started watching this when it first premiered, and then stopped with the Tuco episode. I hated Tuco, and didn't think about the fact that they were setting up Saul's world, which included all of that. I did like Mike, though, because of the actor. He is so good. 

I recently watched all the seasons once again, even though I’ve already watched them several times. Lol. It’s amazing how I still find new things and I even see things a lot differently this time around.  Mike was my favorite character for sure.