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March 28, 2024, 10:58:27 PM

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Better Call Saul - Season 5

Started by lankyguy95, November 20, 2019, 04:27:18 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

earl_sleek

While next season obviously isn't gonna be a barrel of laughs for Kim, I'll be disappointed if the final stage in Jimmy's descent to Sauldom is her death. It's just too obvious. I have faith in the writers though.

buttgammon

Yes - despite my morbid thoughts about Kim, the fact that they've seeded this thing with her considering framing Howard seems to be the line they'd be more likely to follow. That still leaves us with the question of what happens to Jimmy, though.

I can't wait to find out.

NoSleep

Talking about how far Jimmy has yet to go before he becomes Saul, wasn't Gene apparently choosing murder over disappearing again?

Blue Jam

Quote from: NoSleep on May 12, 2020, 03:10:12 PM
Talking about how far Jimmy has yet to go before he becomes Saul, wasn't Gene apparently choosing murder over disappearing again?

Good question. I assumed that during his phone call to Ed he had just had a sudden realisation that if Ed helped him disappear a second time he could just end up being recognised at his new location and then having to call him a third time, and then a fourth, and so on until his stash of diamonds ran out. That's why I also assumed that he was going to try and find his own way to disappear, but I hadn't considered that he'd plan to bump off the creepy taxi driver and his mate.

Ricin Cinnabon, anyone? Ricinnabon?

NoSleep

I hadn't thought that Gene might have some other plan than murder. Maybe.

Keebleman

There will have to be some big jarring jumps in those last 13 episodes to get BCS Jimmy aligned with BB's Saul, but I think we've already had a big jarring jump in the final episode of season 5, though there the leaper was Kim rather than Jimmy.  This hatred she has for Howard has come from nowhere!  Yes, she has been angry with him before and certainly has less respect for him than he realises, but wanting to destroy him?  Doesn't tally for me.

Still absolutely love the show though.

mr. logic

Agree with some of this. The show is just fatally undermined by having to retrospectively make a seedy bit of comic relief a leading guy. It would be tricky enough to do with just an actor, never mind the character. And I don't think it's a challenge they have met, ultimately. I just find it impossible to care. It would be one thing if we knew he died; but to know he turns into an irredeemable shit is quite another. I suppose Walter does the same thing, but that's how his story was conceived. Personally I find the idea
that this is better than Breaking Bad inexplicable.

Is there a reason this had to be a prequel? Have I missed something there? They laugh about how they had envisioned a sit-com don't they? Might have been better to move away from the Breaking Bad template.



Blue Jam

Quote from: mr. logic on June 02, 2020, 05:48:36 AM
Is there a reason this had to be a prequel?

I'll post a link to one of those interviews I keep mentioning:

https://www.vox.com/2015/2/3/7968975/better-call-saul-vince-gilligan

Quote from: Vince GilliganWhen you meet Saul Goodman in that first episode of Breaking Bad, he's pretty comfortable in his own skin. He's pretty comfortable suggesting that Walt and Jesse shank Saul's own client, Badger. He says all that without blinking an eye. We figured if he was that guy right at the beginning of Better Call Saul, a) he doesn't have anywhere to go, and b) a guy who's comfortable in his own skin is not necessarily going to allow you as a writer to concoct reams and reams of drama. It's the characters who have self-doubts and frustration and dark nights of the soul who are the most interesting to write about.

Gilligan and Gould have said similar in quite a few interviews, that's just one example. Essentially, a character who is comfortable in their own skin, who is blisteringly confident and who doesn't give a fuck what other people think of them is fine as a supporting character but would be very very dull as a lead character (which is why Ricky Gervais's After Life is so fucking boring). For a character like that it's far more interesting to watch their rise or their fall- and with Jimmy McGill and Gene Takavic BCS gives us both.

There are some aspects of the Jimmy--->Saul transition I have a problem with, and others I don't. I can see him getting more comfortable with the Saul persona and the lairy suits even if he isn't quite there yet. I don't have a problem seeing how he can become so much more morally bankrupt either- Jimmy is greedy and we've seen how the relatively small sum of $100,000 made him do dnagerous and reckless things, I can imagine how drug lords offering him far larger sums in the future could send him on a downward spiral very rapidly.

I also don't have a problem with him casually suggesting Badger gets shanked in prison. I think the Jimmy McGill who suffered PTSD after his encounter with some real bad dudes in the desert is still a long way off from that, but we know Saul was never a man of action, that he would hire heavies to do the dirty work, that he hired bodyguards and wore a bullet-prood vest, and that he never liked guns and when he eventually caved in and got one it was the tiniest one imaginable.

The major aspect I can't get my head round is the sleaziness. Jimmy is a bit sleazy but also a bit adorable, while Saul is frequently shuddersome just in the things he says, even before you consider him getting visits from his "chiropractor" and sexually harassing poor Francesca. I was expecting a massive time jump in season five to get him to that point but it never happened. It's still four years before the beginning of the BB timeline isn't it? Now I'm wondering if the timelines won't quite meet up, and I'm kind of hoping they don't.

In any case I think BCS works as a standalone show- I've got Mr Jam watching it despite him having seen very little of BB and not liking what he saw. I'm also able to switch off and just consider BB in the callbacks to that show as if they're only in there as fanservice.

All that said I have confidence that the ending of this will be up there with the ending of Mad Men, though I would like to see Gene feature a lot more in it.

Puce Moment

That does raise a good point about the aims of BCS. We have assumed that this show will forensically detail the smooth and credible transition from Jimmy to Saul, but there is no reason why they have to do that. This could finish 3 years before the start of BB and we get little to no explanation for how a driven, rule bending lawyer becomes Saul. I would consider that a missed opportunity, but so be it.

jobotic

Also the Cinnabun scenes make me think I'm watching Jimmy from BCS, not Saul from BB. A sad tired Jimmy.

Blue Jam

Also: I really can't imagine Kim sticking with Jimmy after his transformation into Saul is complete. She may like a bit of rough, a bit of danger, but I can't see her liking a bit of sleaze. Or tolerating the "chiropractor".

mr. logic

See, I think it's almost testament to how talented they are that this basically works. But I'm reading That Difficult Men book about the great shows (you know the ones) and they all shared head writers with a vision they had nursed for years. Even if the shows zig-zagged in different directions, often increasing or decreasing in quality too, they still had an underpinning artistic reason for being, and were cloaked by a fundamental understanding of the character and the character's journey.

I would recommend the book, btw. Your man Giligan as ever comes across as a real gent.

Blue Jam, I'm saying this because you mentioned the Mad Men ending, which I think is brilliant and brave and obviously something that had been knocking around in Weiner's head for years. This by its sheer form won't have that. It will have something that at this point is going to have to be massively jarring or fundamentally untrue to the fictional  world that, frankly, it has almost hi-jacked from its predecessor. Somebody in one of the threads (which I noticed were much more critical in general during the earlier years, for whatever reason) pointed out that the slow deliberate planning stuff made sense for Walt because that was his character. In making it a trope you're being if not hacky then certainly uncreative.

Although, funnily enough, the sleaze it something I don't have trouble seeing him slip into. Seems to happen to men as they get older without them really realising.

Blue Jam

Quote from: mr. logic on June 02, 2020, 06:40:39 PM
Although, funnily enough, the sleaze it something I don't have trouble seeing him slip into. Seems to happen to men as they get older without them really realising.

Now you mention it, and I've mentioned Mad Men, Don Draper got a hell of a lot sleazier over the the decade that show is set in. He went from having a trophy wife and two kids and a nice house to
Spoiler alert
watching cockroaches scurrying about his flat, shagging a waitress in an alley, ending up in the drunk tank after punching someone in a bar and flirting with one of his teenage daughter's friends
[close]
. Do you reckon Saul will be the result of Jimmy have a midlife crisis? That seems plausible to me now.

Ah yes, that book about Difficult Men Prestige Television Drama, please remind me who it's by and what it's called again? I know there's that GQ article but I forgot there was an entire book.

Blue Jam

Difficult Men by Brett Martin. Got it on my Kindle now, cheers.

Twonty Gostelow

I've appreciated BB and BCS even more since belatedly watching Ozark. I'm enjoying it spasmodically - there are some great moments - but some of the characterisation seems inconsistent or even non-existent (eg Rachel). Maybe that's due to the show's creator(s) not being ever-present like Gilligan, or just that Gilligan is something special. (I'm only half way through S2 admittedly; someone told me S3 is a huge leap in quality.)

Mobius

Funnily enough I finished Ozark last night, binged all 3 seasons in probably a fortnight. Loved it.

Season 3 was great yeah, and after finishing the final episode last night I am absolutely gagging for Season 4 ASAP

Took me ages to get around to doing Ozark but very glad I did, and I highly recommend it to people looking for something Breaking Baddy.

mr. logic

Quote from: Blue Jam on June 03, 2020, 12:57:57 AM
Difficult Men by Brett Martin. Got it on my Kindle now, cheers.

That's the one, yeah. But be aware that there's spoilers all over it. You will stumble across massive Sopranos spoilers in the Mad Men chapters for example.

NoSleep

Quote from: Mobius on June 03, 2020, 02:15:46 AM
Took me ages to get around to doing Ozark but very glad I did, and I highly recommend it to people looking for something Breaking Baddy.

Entertaining but just not in the same league as BCS or BB. As Twonty said, there are a few inconsistencies. But it's fun.

a peepee tipi

Been slowly catching up with this here and there over the past few months. My favorite show right now. Unfortunately just as I finished season 4 my service took down S5, I'll get around to downloading Bitdefender or something and doing dirty deeds to be all caught up but I'm already in love, don't know why I didn't watch from the start. Haven't read the thread yet to avoid spoilers, just wanted to toss myself in as a fan.

Probably no original takes  tbh. Chuck's mental illness ensuring that he never saw the good in Jimmy and how that could have been capitalized on. I mean, fuck, how do you live the way he lived and not be totally for and full of yourself? Kim might be my favorite character between both shows, I love the way she immediately denied Jimmy Walt'e excuse, "I save me". Nacho going from recurring shadowy presence to the Jesse of the show. Mike never not being Mike because even before he was really Mike he was still Mike. Three eps, well, two and the end of one and I'm already pretty pumped for every scene with Lalo. Hand down, greatest soundtrack for a television show. Love it man.

Talking to my best friend, who is Mexican and has seen S5, he had some interesting observations about the Spanish accents in the shows -

Raymond Cruz (Tuco) has a clear first-generation Mexican-American accent that fits in comparison to Michael Mando's, who is a bit too Amercanized than what we know of Nacho's background would suggest  but he has enough leeway to where it's not really an issue. Steven Bauer is a good enough actor that it doesn't immediately come to mind, but when other characters talk after him his Cuban accent stands out. Giancarlo Esposito gets an A for effort, but his is all too clearly his best effort. Mark Margolis is so bad that he's a delight. Astonishingly bad and ridiculously so he said, I don't remember too much of Oz, but I seem to remember Mark Margolis in that sounding a little like Steven Wright, could be totally off. Tony Dalton, who per google comes from telenovellas, is perfect for his character in every way and he keeps telling me how awesome Lalo is and I hate my stupid dumbass friend.

Anyways, glad this is on. Bob Odenkirk really is something else, doing a rewatch of Mr. Show too (if you have the DVDs, the commentaries are fun too)

Blue Jam

The cast done a Q&A on Zoom this week. You can check out their nice houses and their various lockdown haircuts here:

https://youtu.be/9XUso5-uMl4

Michael Mando obviously already had some clippers. Giancarlo Esposito evidently hasn't been rushing out to buy some but fair play to him, that's a strong lockdown look. Bob Odenkirk keeps getting distracted by his cute chonky dog playing fetch.

Pseudopath

Quote from: Blue Jam on July 06, 2020, 02:08:16 PM
Bob Odenkirk keeps getting distracted by his cute chonky dog playing fetch.

I'm sure somebody linked it further up-thread, but here's a lovely dog-related BCS story from Bob Odenkirk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWeWAdcrxTc

Heart-warming.

Blue Jam

Yep, that was me. Anything to do with doggos here is probably me. Maybe he's got a few more running about the gaff.

Enjoying this interview but I can't take my eyes away from the top left-hand corner waiting for dog toys to fly into shot.

EDIT: the chat gets very doggy around 18.00 and then the adopted mother and her runt make an appearance! Awwwwww <3<3<3

NoSleep

Giancarlo is nothing like Gus; quite a bouncy character.

Blue Jam

Also The Chicken Man is a vegan!

Bob'n'Rhea'n'Patrick living together in the BCS house? With a dog and eight puppies? That should be a reality show. Get some cameras up in there.

They do come across as a great bunch of lads and lasses.

Blue Jam

Bob needs to get himself an iFetch.

It's heartening to see that the runt Patrick adopted has now grown up into an absolute unit <3

Harpo Speaks

If you're interested in a bit more Giancarlo Esposito, he's going to be playing the main villain in Far Cry 6.

Follows in the footsteps of Michael Mando who was played Vaas in Far Cry 3.

lankyguy95

I don't give a fuck about awards but Rhea Seehorn has missed out on an Emmy nomination again. Which is odd.

Blue Jam

I don't give a fuck about the Emmy's either but THIS IS BOLLOCKS.

Puce Moment

The show wasn't nominated in the drama category, and also nothing for Odenkirk. Esposito gets a nom, but this is a very clear case of snubbery.

After those last couple episodes I assumed she had it the bag. But not even a nomination

Twit 2

They should wear that as a badge of pride. BCS is far too good for awards.