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Better Call Saul


Niners Fan in CT

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I was fine with the recast.  If Gene had turned the tables on Jeff he should be kind of diminished by it.  Plus I’m plenty threatened by that goddamn sweater.  You don’t not notice the recast of course.  But the rear view mirror shot was also evocative enough to smooth that wrinkle.

McClaren is incredible.

Edited by Brandon Bones
Needed to give props.
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1 hour ago, Craig H said:

It’s not. This is what the rest of the season will be.

My only response to the episode is, dammit Jimmy! These guys are totally going to steak again so you better hope you have a plan to downplay that you know them.

You think the Walt and Jesse scenes are in the Gene timeline?

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1 minute ago, ohtani's jacket said:

You think the Walt and Jesse scenes are in the Gene timeline?

My guess is the Walt and Jesse scene is a whole lot of nothing. It will be like when Walt shows up in El Camino during a flashback. That's what I'm figuring the Walt and Jesse stuff is. Jimmy tells those two to get out while they can and be happy with what they have and Jimmy thinks back to that because he could have been content with essentially getting away with everything, but he had to push it.

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Slippin' Jimmy. Him saying "pigs get fat while the hogs get slaughtered" after I'd been listening to World Burns to Death tickled me to no end. You just know he is gonna push this in a bad direction, because he can't not. 

Also: CAROL BURNETT! Probably because she's my mom's favorite comedian it only took me around ten seconds to identify her. 

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I liked the subversion in this episode. You're thinking that Gene is just trying to run another Slippin' Jimmy type scheme, when it is just a long game to protect himself.  Took me forever to remember who Jeff was though, not gonna lie.

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On 7/26/2022 at 7:23 AM, ohtani's jacket said:

I liked the episode, but I can imagine a lot of people didn't. I wonder if that's the last we'll see of Gene. 

Yeah, this one was hard to get into for me because of the sudden momentum shift from the last two episodes to this.  It was like when Walking Dead teased they'd killed Glen, then the next episode was a 90 minute flashback to how Morgan got his stick and learned to be zen.   Or when South Park left on a cliffhanger and then did a whole Terrence and Philip episode after that.  Again, not a bad episode, just a really unexpected shift.

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It just dawned on me: Did old dude wear gloves? Because as a legal defense Jimmy could have bought some of those shirts and gotten his fingerprints/handprints, or any of the other shit he touched. 

That suit was the gaudiest thing in the history of clothing. 

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The actor who originally played Jeff the cabby is Don Harvey, who couldn't play him here because he was playing this guy in We Own This City:

9GUDWS9.jpg

 "I can't be on the Breaking Bad adjacent show because I am busy working on the The Wire adjacent show" has to be right up there among the best possible legitimate humble brags any actor has ever been able to make!

Edit: I might as well be the one to make a "Scheme Gene" reference, since I'm here.

Edited by Gordlow
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I hate to say this and I absolutely hope I'm proven wrong next week but so far these final episodes seem highly superfluous. The Howard/Lalo/Kim walking out stuff would've been the perfect ending. Don't really need to see Breaking Bad fan service or need to know Huell and the like end up. Again, hope I'm eating crow next week.

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How about that karaoke scene? Where’s Michael McKean when we need him.

Tracks well that another escalation in Jimmy’s scumminess follows another argument with Kim. Loved the parallel with him approaching Walt and him breaking the door, crossing lines we all clearly know shouldn’t be crossed. 

I sense this last batch of episodes will be divisive, but it’s always been a deliberately paced set of shows. I’m not too concerned the plot isn’t humming at the level some people wish it was. I’m happy to watch as many meticulous Jimmy/Saul/Gene/Viktor schemes as we can get for as long as we can get them. 

I’m no longer worried about Kim. Now Carol Burnett and her cat videos have to be protected at all cost.

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Jimmy saying "Ho, enter Sunshine! Cast some light into my cold dark world" as Mike walks in wearing black aviators looking like the Grim Reaper was one of the funniest moments in the whole series. 

I'm thinking this all ends with a whimper instead of a bang. Everyone wants the bang but that already occurred. 

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I would normally trust the process given that Gilligan, Gould etc have given us some of the best episodes of tv we’ll ever see BUT there’s literally nothing to play with for the final two episodes, everything that has to be done is done. Whatever happens to Gene is irrelevant. 

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Walt died. Mike died. Gus died. Jesse made it to Alaska. Skyler cut a deal. 

All that shit, and none of them ended up behind bars. 

Frankly, I think that's where Gene's headed. Regardless, I definitely want to know what happens to him. 

Also, the episode where Kim left Jimmy is BCS's Ozymandias. We're in the epilogue of this world at large now. I think that's pretty huge. 

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I think (and hope) that Gene makes a trip to Florida.

Something is going to go wrong with his scam. Either the guy with cancer or Carol Burnett are going to mess things up for Gene. I don't know if he'll flee Omaha or if the whole point of making this new money is to go get Kim, but he's got some kind of plan.

While I did love the scene Kim went out on, I don't think we've seen the last of her.

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19 hours ago, southofheavy said:

Frankly, I think that's where Gene's headed. Regardless, I definitely want to know what happens to him. 
 

With these past two episodes I've gotten the feeling he or his cronies are going to screw up one of their schemes and wind up in prison. Either that or Jeff's mom is going to fear Jeff is getting back into his old habits and call the cops on him, or perhaps discover Gene's true identity via Chekov's laptop. When Jeff previously showed up he had that laconic attitude with underlying menace similar to Lalo and I kept expecting him to be an associate someone Saul/Walt had crossed in Albuquerque but now he's just some run of the mill schmuck. I still wonder if the trouble in New Mexico his mother alluded to is revealed. 

These Omaha episodes have definitely felt like something that should have taken place earlier in the series and not a few episodes before the finale, but I trust the showrunners enough to see whatever their final vision is. Did anyone else get the impression Gene is broke or at least getting close to it based on that phone call at the beginning? Between his vacuum cleaner bill and making payouts to those he felt he owed (see parallel to Mike paying off his former associates who ended up in jail) he needs a cash infusion. That and he missed running schemes. Maybe he gets arrested and gets to be Saul one more time acting in his own defense?

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See the Saul is broke take doesn't make sense to me. In his keepsake shoe box he has a bunch of diamonds. He obviously converted a portion of his wealth into diamonds to make it easier to transport. Why does he need to scheme it up to get 20k when he's probably got a million in diamonds in that box? I don't think he needs the money. I think the money is irrelevant to the end game.

The way it played to me is that his argument in the phone booth was with Kim, pleading with him to turn himself in. He does not want to give up. He isn't a quitter. But I think there's this internal struggle within him, he wants to do the right thing. He wants to do what Kim wants of him. He's purposely pushing it too far so he can get caught. And go well gee oops I just couldn't control myself and got caught. Stupid me. But it's actually his way of turning himself in.

I guess we'll see. But god damn do I wish these episodes where in color. The use of color and how they compose shots has been so important to this series & BB. So it's losing so much of it's charm being in black & white for me.

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