Support NeoGAF

[Nowise10]

Man, this show.

Once they cut back to Chuck that night after the scene with Jimmy's regrets all the alarm bells went off. An innocent moment of taking some pills and checking his journal but my heart already knew.

Also loved their technique for dealing with Kim's lost time, and it properly set it up for its use later in the season.

Great stuff.

I knew something was going to happen when they had a shot of Jimmy putting his phones and watch in the mailbox, and kept it on the mailbox for 10+ seconds as Jimmy walked towards the house. We had seen it dozens of times already before, but they made it clear it was going to be the last time we ever see it.

 

[Lothar]

I didn't think her age was listed anywhere.

Unless Wikipedia saying that she graduated from University in 1994 is just a lie, then 45 couldn't be too far from the truth.

I care about it because I think it's awesome that they hired a woman in her 40s for the role when they could have hired someone in their late 20s/early 30s. I hope the character is 45 too. I'd like to think that she and Jimmy are about the same age. I think it makes for a better story as well. Someone struggling in their 40s is different than struggling in their 30s and 20s. There would be more on the line in Season 2 when Jimmy is putting her career in jeopardy as it took longer for her to climb the ladder to reach that point. Their relationship would be even more unique on TV being two 40 year olds with no kids involved.

 

[funkystudent]

Damn it if they didn't really make me feel real sympathetic for Chuck by the end.

Watching him break was kind of hard to watch.


Edit


Also just realized Kin and Jimmys secretary was Sauls secretary in BB. Thats cool. I should have noticed that before reading a wiki

 

[Kadayi]

Here's a thought. I don't think Howard wants money from Chuck, he certainly doesn't need it, but... Howard agreed to buy out Chuck's share of HHM. Chuck killing himself doesn't negate this because his partnership and share in HHM is a real tangible thing of value. What happens to it now? Did Chuck negate the agreement in his will? Did he not leave a will? Did he appoint Jimmy as his executor? All of this could play into Jimmy and Kim going up against Howard again.

I doubt Chuck set anything aside for Jimmy in his will given his animosity to him. I suspect whatever is left of Chuck's estate will go to his ex-wife.

 

[Lothar]

Also just realized Kin and Jimmys secretary was Sauls secretary in BB. Thats cool. I should have noticed that before reading a wiki

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6LzaoGBeqE
The most fascinating transformation. And a sign of just how far the show has to go. Saul must have put her through some shit.

 

[ColdPizza]

Everyone is expecting Kim to die or something or become estranged, so I hope they throw us a curveball and make her the mastermind behind Saul Goodman. Despite all of Jimmy's flaws, she seems to love him and even seemingly handwaved the whole Irene thing.

 

[Dai101]

Everyone is expecting Kim to die or something or become estranged, so I hope they throw us a curveball and make her the mastermind behind Saul Goodman. Despite all of Jimmy's flaws, she seems to love him and even seemingly handwaved the whole Irene thing.

I've always wondered who was in charge of the whole "Ice Station Zebra Associates" since the BrBa days..... I wonder..........

It has to be someone that knows about finances, banks and regulations afterall.

 

[Poor GRIMES]

Everyone is expecting Kim to die or something or become estranged, so I hope they throw us a curveball and make her the mastermind behind Saul Goodman. Despite all of Jimmy's flaws, she seems to love him and even seemingly handwaved the whole Irene thing.

She won't die, but she very clearly will become estranged. It will probably be one of the climaxes in the final season. What other reason would saul choose to move to Kentucky? (if I remember correctly); it's because that's where Kim grew up. I think the show will end on a happy note with them re-uniting

 

[Kaizer]

Also just realized Kim and Jimmys secretary was Sauls secretary in BB. Thats cool. I should have noticed that before reading a wiki

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6LzaoGBeqE
The most fascinating transformation. And a sign of just how far the show has to go. Saul must have put her through some shit.

Wow, holy shit I had no idea. Damn, that's really cool. Guess we haven't seen the last of her.

 

[BeforeU]

wow I just caught up with the finale. I had a super busy week, and glad I stayed the fuck away from this thread. and any article related to it.

What the fuckkkk, I am shook. Brilliant ending. The way they presented was just so powerful, I felt really bad for chuck and just 2 episode ago, I absolutely hated him.

That's starting scene in the tent and the ending. Too good.

 

[minor effort]

She won't die, but she very clearly will become estranged. It will probably be one of the climaxes in the final season. What other reason would saul choose to move to Kentucky? (if I remember correctly); it's because that's where Kim grew up. I think the show will end on a happy note with them re-uniting

Nebraska, and was it actually Saul's choice? I remember in the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad when they're in the vacuum shop with Robert Forster, Saul notices he's having a Nebraska ID being made for him and he asks "Nebraska? What's in Nebraska?" and gets a response of "You."

At least in that episode it sounds like Nebraska was a state randomly chosen for him.

 

[rekameohs]

For the Gene story, I wonder if someone will call an ambulance for him after fainting, they won't find medical records for him, and he'll have to come clean that he's Jimmy / Saul. Depends on how thorough the disappearer operates.

 

[RecRoulette]

Fuck Chuck reddit contribution to the events of the season finale...

http://youtubedoubler.com/?video1=h...=LH-QwK4v0ZI&start2=34&authorName=aphrocarlin

lmao

That's a hell of a sendoff.

 

[Turin]

Michael Mando deserves some more love for his performance this year.

Nacho's mission to protect his dad was rather endearing to me.

 

[the_firewithin]

Never thought it would happen but Howard was likable. He didn't take chucks shit and told him to kick rocks

 

[Chumley]

I think the show will end on a happy note with them re-uniting

There's basically no other way it could end. Telegraphed since Season 1 and with what we know about BB, the only big question left BCS has to answer is how and why the split happens.

Jimmy didn't just randomly pick Nebraska. He wants to find her again.

 

[riotous]

Yeah, this is a good take. Honestly, the real uphill climb will be Francesca.

The most fascinating transformation.

Seen a few comments like this the last few weeks; not really feeling the same way. They've barely shown her personality; she's a new employee acting a bit meek at this point. If she has a darker side she wouldn't have shown it in BCS at this point.

 

[MrBadger]

Chuck really is the most tragic character in the BrBa universe. Like Walt, he's driven entirely by pride. Howard shutting him down by suggesting retirement last week mirrored Saul shutting Walt down when he started demanding names of hitmen to take Jack out. But unlike Walt, having his pride broken didn't turn Chuck into a monster, it just left him with nothing to live for.

side note - looking at the way he went out, I suppose my Frank Grimes comparison from a few weeks back was pretty apt

 

[Creamium]

side note - looking at the way he went out, I suppose my Frank Grimes comparison from a few weeks back was pretty apt

Oh man, when he was destroying the walls I kept seeing Grimes' final moments and thought that was the way he was going out. The comparison even makes sense in terms of character and his relation with Homer.

 

[Monocle]

Damn this season has left me speechless, this is how you take advantage of the TV format, implementing such an in-depth characterization through splendid visual storytelling, pitch perfect acting and stellar writing with exposition at the most appropriate time.

Yep, strip away BCS's exceptional style and you have a show that excels in the fundamentals of storytelling and takes full advantage of its format. It's a damn good show, the kind that makes me hope other series will follow suit and use their time to build complex characters and layered stories. The medium has so much potential.

 

[crisdecuba]

Yep, strip away BCS's exceptional style and you have a show that excels in the fundamentals of storytelling and takes full advantage of its format. It's a damn good show, the kind that makes me hope other series will follow suit and use their time to build complex characters and layered stories. The medium has so much potential.

Do most dramatic TV shows have a writer's room that gets time to hash things through the way this show seems to? Part of the success of the show feels like it stems from giving a team of creative people space and time to just figure out their way through it...

 

[Creaking]

Poor Ernesto though

 

[SpaceWolf]

Interesting to see how people have warmed up to Nacho. His thuggish behavior in Seasons 1 and 2 have still done a great deal to prevent me from fully backing that character.

 

[Human Trashcan]

Do most dramatic TV shows have a writer's room that gets time to hash things through the way this show seems to? Part of the success of the show feels like it stems from giving a team of creative people space and time to just figure out their way through it...

That's how most, if not all, shows operate, yeah.

 

[MrBadger]

Oh man, when he was destroying the walls I kept seeing Grimes' final moments and thought that was the way he was going out. The comparison even makes sense in terms of character and his relation with Homer.

They both had a harder time making it due to not being as likeable as the other guy, they were both driven mad by their resentment and envy, and they should both be kept away from electricity

 

[Kadayi]

What the flick did their end of season review (Ben and Alonso), but Rhea Seehorn (Kim) was also there as a guest and had a lot to say about the process of production etc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhgbbiy94ZQ

Interesting to see how people have warmed up to Nacho. His thuggish behavior in Seasons 1 and 2 have still done a great deal to prevent me from fully backing that character.

Sure he's a criminal, but principally he's interested in making money more than anything else. I quite liked the pretty human reaction he had to having a gun pointed at his head earlier in the season, simply because his asshole boss wanted to push Gus's buttons. It might be a power play to Hector, but it's Nacho's life on the line over a bag of coke.

 

[gun_haver]

There's basically no other way it could end. Telegraphed since Season 1 and with what we know about BB, the only big question left BCS has to answer is how and why the split happens.

Jimmy didn't just randomly pick Nebraska. He wants to find her again.

Jimmy didn't pick Nebraska, the cleaner they hired to give them new lives did. As far as we know it's the only option he had. When he realises he is being sent there, he asks 'What's in Nebraska?' and the cleaner says 'You.'. No indication he was happy about that, mostly just confused/curious.

 

[crisdecuba]

That's how most, if not all, shows operate, yeah.

So there's just some really good talent work here hehe

 

[Vagabundo]

Did Nacho change the pills? And if not, would the doctors even think to check if the pills are what they say on the box?



I don't know.

I take it that Jimmy does feel a measure of empathy and regret for what he did, not just because it wasn't the way he wanted it to happen for himself. If nothing else, it feels like it'd take an incredible amount of integrity to give up a million dollars because you don't feel you personally did a job right.

I feel it's more that the characters these particular showrunners write go through a series of micro arcs rather than one big arc from A to B. By the end of BB, we could conclude that Walter White was firmly a monster (and even then, there are debates about how pure he was in that regard), but over the course of the show he'd just constantly swing back and forth. Here he is doing something for his family, here he is escalating things needlessly, here he is being selfless, here he is being selfish.

I think it's something like that. This arc had Jimmy come closer to Saul than any other previously, but it ended with his most unselfish act thus far. And it will go on like that. From here, something will prompt him to act selfishly again, then decently, then selfishly again and so on until we end up at Saul Goodman.

And I feel like that's something that would be a detriment to most other shows. But here, it just makes it feel real. All these random real life events that pull the characters this way and that, changing people but not really changing, conflating motivations, etc. It makes it really compelling.

Walt was never not a monster; first episode became a drug dealer, killed two people. Oh he had his "reasons" and he was a likeable/watchable monster, but he became the person he always wanted to be but was too cowed to realise. It took a life crisis to bring it to the fore.

Saul struggles more with himself. There are parallels, but I don't think its the same.

 

[Human Trashcan]

Walt was never not a monster; first episode became a drug dealer, killed two people. Oh he had his "reasons" and he was a likeable/watchable monster, but he became the person he always wanted to be but was too cowed to realise. It took a life crisis to bring it to the fore.

Saul struggles more with himself. There are parallels, but I don't think its the same.

I agree with that read. Walt is an awful person who was just too scared to do anything until the cancer "freed" him, because he knew he was a dead man walking anyway. Sure he displays some remorse now and then, but always after the fact. And it's like Chuck said: what good is a conscience if it doesn't prevent you from doing bad things? But in Walt's case it's a million times worse than anything Jimmy has done up to this point in BCS.

Everything Walt did, he did for himself, because he liked it. He even admitted it in the end.

 

[Lothar]

Walt was never not a monster; first episode became a drug dealer, killed two people. Oh he had his "reasons" and he was a likeable/watchable monster, but he became the person he always wanted to be but was too cowed to realise. It took a life crisis to bring it to the fore.

Saul struggles more with himself. There are parallels, but I don't think its the same.

That was self defense in the first episode. The point of the show is that he turns from good to bad. So I disagree.

Seen a few comments like this the last few weeks; not really feeling the same way. They've barely shown her personality; she's a new employee acting a bit meek at this point. If she has a darker side she wouldn't have shown it in BCS at this point.

I doubt that she's pretending to be meek and hiding her darker side, mostly because that would be the least interesting they could do with her character.

 

[SpaceWolf]

Walt was never not a monster; first episode became a drug dealer, killed two people. Oh he had his "reasons"

Like self-defense?

 

[MrBadger]

Walt was never not a monster; first episode became a drug dealer, killed two people. Oh he had his "reasons" and he was a likeable/watchable monster, but he became the person he always wanted to be but was too cowed to realise. It took a life crisis to bring it to the fore.

Saul struggles more with himself. There are parallels, but I don't think its the same.

Walt had a conscience at the start. He acted irrationally with a gun to his head in the first episode, and he really wanted to let Krazy 8 go and only killed him in a heated moment after spending days trying to empathise with him.

 

[Cornballer]

- Sepinwall interview: Bob Odenkirk’s Not Looking Forward To Being Saul Goodman Again On ‘Better Call Saul’
- Warming Glow: Why We Love Jimmy McGill In ‘Better Call Saul’ In Ways We Could Never Love Saul Goodman In ‘Breaking Bad’

 

[Human Trashcan]

Walt killed those guys in self defense sure but he starts cooking meth for real because he wants to, after the first time he has the offer from Gretchen and Elliott but doesn't take it because of his pride. At that point he's made his bed and you can't really defend anything afterwards.

 

[Lothar]

Walt killed those guys in self defense sure but he starts cooking meth for real because he wants to, after the first time he has the offer from Gretchen and Elliott but doesn't take it because of his pride. At that point he's made his bed and you can't really defend anything afterwards.

But you're not a monster just because you deal drugs, are you? Gus and Gail aren't monsters. Jesse is not a monster.

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

But you're not a monster just because you deal drugs, are you? Gus and Gail aren't monsters. Jesse is not a monster.

Gus is absolutely a monster.

 

[minor effort]

But you're not a monster just because you deal drugs, are you? Gus and Gail aren't monsters. Jesse is not a monster.

Eh, to be fair Gus did threaten to kill Walt's entire family.

 

[SpaceWolf]

But you're not a monster just because you deal drugs, are you? Gus and Gail aren't monsters.

Tell me you're not serious.

 

[-griffy-]

Look at this nice man.

 

[Dubbedinenglish]

But you're not a monster just because you deal drugs, are you? Gus and Gail aren't monsters. Jesse is not a monster.

Uhh implication in BB was that Gus was a general under Pinochet. He absolutely is a monster.

 

[Human Trashcan]

No you see guys, as long as you're civil and polite about it, you can do whatever you want, that's how morality works

 

[ScottSullivan]

The shot for the car crash was so well done, it really caught me off guard how sudden it was, I hadn't ever seen a shot like that in a TV show or movie

 

[crisdecuba]

The shot for the car crash was so well done, it really caught me off guard how sudden it was, I hadn't ever seen a shot like that in a TV show or movie

Especially with the trend these days for us to see the vehicle that strikes the car the split second before it happens. I was waiting for that moment.

 

[MrBadger]

But you're not a monster just because you deal drugs, are you? Gus and Gail aren't monsters. Jesse is not a monster.

I remember when BrBa was still going, people were posting crazy theories about Gus being the literal devil.

Apparently he spied on Walt with birds or some shit

 

[Lothar]

I remember when BrBa was still going, people were posting crazy theories about Gus being the literal devil.

Apparently he spied on Walt with birds or some shit

Yes, a few posters beat you to it. I guess you didn't see them. Ignore Gus. That was not the point of the post.

Let's stick to Gail was not a monster.

 

[MrBadger]

Yes, a few posters beat you to it. I guess you didn't see them. Ignore Gus. That was not the point of the post.

Let's stick to Gail was not a monster.

Didn't see anyone else bringing up silly Breaking Bad fan theories about Gus being the devil /shrug

If you read my earlier posts, you'll see that I agree with you that Walt wasn't a monster at the beginning

 

[pigeon]

But you're not a monster just because you deal drugs, are you? Gus and Gail aren't monsters. Jesse is not a monster.

Yes, a few posters beat you to it. I guess you didn't see them. Ignore Gus. That was not the point of the post.

Let's stick to Gail was not a monster.

Gale, for God's sake. His name is Gale.

 

[Toa TAK]

I remember when BrBa was still going, people were posting crazy theories about Gus being the literal devil.

Apparently he spied on Walt with birds or some shit

L

O

L


What show were they watching?

 

[Fuu]

Seen a few comments like this the last few weeks; not really feeling the same way. They've barely shown her personality; she's a new employee acting a bit meek at this point. If she has a darker side she wouldn't have shown it in BCS at this point.

Also another good point. I didn't consider she could be putting up some type of front and that would certainly make the transition easier. It wouldn't be very interesting when compared to a slow descent, but I trust these writers to make anything work.

Gale, for God's sake. His name is Gale.

Let me tell you about Skylar White.