It really bugs me that they haven't tried to look for Dustin at all yet
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@abstractlegend I know right? And I know the kids have Nancy and Jonathan, but after S2, I’d expect them to get help from Steve.
Your father was still in coma after being shot and what you think the most urgent thing to do is walking your dog?
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@cooltomatos and having steamy shower sex with your girlfriend...
I find Jughead a bit exhausting at the moment.
Dude, you've been in the gang for like three months and even life-long Serpents like Toni can take the jacket off during the school day, so please chill and sit down, Jug.loading replies
@haibara Seriously. It's not that hard to temporarily take off the jacket. All of the other Serpents get it and don't take the rule so personally.
Shout by Wéjih M'zoughi
Mrs Andrews talking to her son like that was priceless. that boy needs to learn some damn respect and to think before he does or says anything stupid.
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@pato22 That scene was the most I've liked Molly Ringwald on this show. It's about time someone put Archie in his place.
I'm usually not a fan of musical episodes (though I hate black-white episodes even more), but I didn't really worry when I heard about the musical episode because so far Riverdale has really nailed all music scenes.
The only complaints I have is that some scenes had some really bad lip-syncing, and that Jughead's camera scenes seemed weirdly out of place and pointless the whole time. It was just a bit too much - I would have rather seen a different episode where they focused on these camera scenes instead of a musical episode and the reality show camera at the same time.Some random comments/thoughts:
- I have to admit Archie made me laugh again - Once again he's overshadowed by all the other actors who have impressive voices while he sounded so... normal.
- Why does the whole Hiram/Archie story seem more and more like some weird love relationship? "A young man never forgets his first car" - Hiram made it sound like he just stole Archie's first kiss, Jesus.
- Ugh, why did Hal and Alice have to get back together. I feel like they have no chemistry at all (and Hal no personality) and I would rather see them separated and see how Alice slowly starts a relationship with FP (which would make Betty/Jughead awkward, but it wouldn't be the weirdest thing we have on this show).
- Also, we're still not considering therapy or any kind of help for Cheryl? Really? No one? Well, then...
- What the fuck was that ending? It was so absurd and so typical Riverdale, Jesus Christ.loading replies
@haibara Jughead's camera shots were so awkward. It's like the show couldn't survive without his presence missing for one episode or something. Ugh.
Once more, they took out almost all the excitment of the "big" revelation. Oh and... Daddy issues much?
Also, remember how b.h. wanted betty "aaall for himself"? Yeah that's not cringy at all
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@majo618 Yeah who’s dad will be the killer of season 3 ?
I'm sorry, but I can't bring myself to feel sad that Archie is dead.
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@xadyu Sure, but this isn't one of those cases (where he's the least celebrated). Maybe he's a bit of a martyr, but i'd miss him. It would leave a huge vacuum in the show imo.
- I'm mostly just here to applaud Reggie because YES BOY, YOU TELL HER! Veronica doesn't appreciate him or what he did at all and I can't believe she really thinks they're even now just because she bought his car back. It shouldn't surprise me considering we're talking about Veronica here, but somehow I am baffled.
- I like Toni, I like Cheryl, I like them together, but I'm sure we all knew this relationship was going nowhere. It was like Toni was Cheryl's pet and they were both together just for fanservice. Give them some actual plot, please. And while I'm already complaining about queer characters with no plot - How about giving Kevin some plot that doesn't revolve around getting dick (which was literally his reason again for joining the farm). Crazy idea!
- And God no, Archie owns a gym now. So that boxing plot will drag into the next season? Christ have mercy. Also, how dumb must Archie be once again for actually agreeing to taking something from Hiram "with no strings attached"? His dumbness seems to be one of the only consistent things in this show.
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@haibara So true. Is back to kissing Hiram’s ass despite being framed by him. Among other things.
the blurring thing becomes annoying and distracting
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@tasa24 seriously I thought I was the one who noticed it in the first place.. they have to stop doing it yes :c
I really wanna like the show but this episode is a disaster. Political correctness all over the place. A girl with the size of a dwarf wants to join the basketball team. The coach says she cant because she is a girl. In the end women unite to get her into a test match and with Sabrina's spells she hits the basket.
Except for the gay brother and Sabrina's two love interests there is like not a single good man in this show they are all-out evil.
I love the the story and all around the witch stuff. But its really hard to watch it as a man especially THIS episode.
PS: Dont get me wrong its all fine the Susie -> Theo stuff or the gay brother or whatever, these are all fine to me but the fact that almost all men are written as bad guys shows how sexism (especially on netflix) really looks like these days.
4/10 for this episode
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@frozn1991 As a feminine woman I always enjoy watching women's voice on screens. But for this episode, I frankly say they r getting annoying. Not only feminism but also lgbt things. I dont care people's choices but this doesnt mean every damn episode they should put in audience's eyes these topics. Almost every minute in the episode, characters talk about feminism and homosexuality. I really couldnt wait new season and I started to watch 1st episode on the release day of the new season but I couldnt stand to finish 1st episode of 2nd season. In addition to this, I also totaly agree with what you said about netflix.
Seeing Marvin from Fresh off the Boat really threw me for a loop.
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@phug True but Reaper also came to mind. He was great as the Devil.
Watching this without any sort of idea what this is about kind of gave me that element of surprise. I've never seen Penn Badgley since Gossip Girl so I'm kind of excited to hear he had a new show coming up. A few thoughts about the pilot coming at you in bullets:
-Penn Badgley should narrate something, has he ever done anything like that in his career? because i think he should.
-This girl doesn't have curtains in her apartment, and her bedroom view is across the side walk. it's literally a feast for the eyes of peeping toms and stalkers
-Please stop romanticizing stalkers PLEASE...and a thief.
Hopefully this show gives us Badgley's best performance of his career, knowing it's a mystery, thriller show I hope to see some of that psycho-killer type of actingloading replies
@davidisrad I agree, he should do more narrating it's seriously so good.
wait.. did they compare taking in a black teenage athlete to taking in a large dog?
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@tballw32 they compared a big, clumsy, dumb teenager with a big, clumsy, dumb dog. They constantly make fun of Luke (and Dylan) for the exact same reasons and i didn't see anyone complaining about it. You are the one seeing skin color in that joke. Who is being racist, the writers of the show or you? In fact, Luke was compared to a dog a long time ago. Stop this political correctness madness, you are not helping.
I really liked the dance :)
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@ngear Me too, had to see the dance more than once. It is brilliant.
why has their always got to be incest in shows???
it feels like its happening in more shows than ever! - got the vibe from episode oneloading replies
@wakandanforever ...you know they've all been adopted, right? It's equivalent to orphans falling in love with each other.
i just finished and are you KIDDING ME it ends with a cliffhanger istg
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@cubegobbler Correct... to complain about a cliffhanger, I’m baffled... like, why? Isn’t that the point of seasons?
i just finished and are you KIDDING ME it ends with a cliffhanger istg
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@frostnyms it's not a cliffhanger, it's a plot hook for next season.
As dark as what Walter did was, she deserved it. She was completely full of herself and blackmailed Walter for the money. Not to mention she was basically making Jesse's decisions for him. While she may have truly loved him, she would've definitely used that money to continue being an addict. That's most likely the very reason she even wanted the money. I'm not going to feel sympathy now that she's dead.
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@legendaryfang56 Agreed. But I do feel bad for her father, as he really tried to turn it around. Also, makes me dislike Jesse - he was essentially the one who got her back into it - if she hadn't met him, things would have likely turned out better for her.
@bjarne-castelein just imagine u had to wait 1 year after this cliff hanger.. !
This became very violent. I didn't like that. I liked this series because of his lack of violence (I mean, almost lack of it) and now it has been many deaths.
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those are the consequences of crimes bro
whats episode 23? netflix has it.. im about to watch it but its not here ...
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Episodes 23 & 24 were released as a movie called "Prison Break: The Final Break".
This was the closure we were all waiting for! Fantastic series I just wish is didn't have to end so soon.
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@anthony_muld As sad as it was, I did think the Season 4 finale was a beautiful ending. I didn't think this season was necessary, but it was nice to have.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9Jimmy has hustle. Mike feels obligated to help his daughter-in-law. And Jimmy loves his brother.
It's so easy to boil these episodes down to a few simple themes, and yet it's the way the show depicts and explores them that makes it superlative.
Take Mike's storyline for instance. It's literally three scenes, each of them fairly short, and yet all of them communicate a great deal about who Mike is and what his motivation and moral calculus is in that brief time. When Mike is on the phone with his daughter-in-law in the tollbooth, we see him not only stand at attention, but wave someone through the gate without bothering to check their stickers. If there's one thing we've seen from Mike in Better Call Saul, it's a devotion to the rules of the parking lot, where he hassles Jimmy and even if it seems dumb, he falls back on the fact that it's just "the rules." And yet he tells his son's wife that he'll drop whatever he's doing, whenever he needs her. We see that dramatized as suddenly those same rules have no purchase with the previously doctrinaire Mr. Ehrmentraut, and it emphasizes the truth of his promise to help her however he can, with the subtext of his guilt for, in his mind, taking her husband away from her.
Then we see the not-so-subtle manipulation from Stacey, who initially asks Mike if it's okay to spend the money that effectively got her husband killed, and after receiving Mike's blessing, seamlessly segues into talking about how hard it is to make ends meet without him. She let's the silence after this statement hang in the air before sneaking a furtive glance at Mike. Mike's a smart guy; he has to know that Stacey is effectively using Mike's guilt to convince him to help them out financially. It's not necessarily craven; as a single mother of a young child, she likely needs a great deal of support. and yet at the same time, it does feel uncomfortable to see her taking advantage of Mike's guilt rather than simply asking him for help. But the look on Mike's face says it all, and speaks to the depth of those feelings of remorse and regret. So when we see him back at the vet's office, looking for "work," we get one step closer to the Mike we know and love Breaking Bad.
Throughout all of this, Mike never once says how important Stacey and her daughter's well-being are to him; we never hear him say how much his guilt over his son's death still drives him; and we never hear him say that's he's dipping into the underworld in order to help support Stacey and clear his conscience for what happened with Matty. And yet all of those things are 100% clear from his actions, from what we know about the character from prior episodes, and from the relationships the show has built so far. It's not even that big a part of the episode! And it still moves Mike's arc forward quite a bit in a very limited amount of screentime because of how much it says without saying anything.
That's the beauty of Better Call Saul (or, at least the beauty apart from wonderfully composed and framed shots like the one at the end of this episode). Vince Gilligan and his lieutenants know how to tell you what a character is thinking, what they're feeling, what's pushing them in one direction or another, with the characters rarely having to announce or vocalize these things. In fact, the show's pretty good about having a character declare something about themselves or their intentions while conveying the opposite. It's the epitome of "show, don't tell" storytelling, and it's one of the things that makes the series so engaging despite the fact, or perhaps because, you can boil a given episode's big ideas down to a few short sentences.
In the same vein, no one in "RICO" ever tells us that Jimmy has the utmost admiration and affection for his brother, or that what he lacks in Chuck's brilliance he makes up for in sweat, or that the scales are tipped against him. But it all comes through loud and clear.
The hustle is the easiest to process. The idea that Jimmy worked in the mailroom of his brother's firm, that he used distance learning to make up his remaining credits, that he found a law school that would accept him and managed, after a couple of failed attempts, to pass the bar, shows remarkable commitment and perseverance. And when we see him combing through a dumpster in order to find the shredded documents he needs to make his RICO case against the nursing home, when we see him tirelessly trying to piece together the shredded documents, we see him working harder than his well-heeled colleague on the other side of the case would ever have to. It comes through, and we learn a little more about who he is, what makes him admirable despite a certain shadiness, and what differentiates him from the other folks in his orbit.
But we also see some really cleverness from him. He's obviously not the precedent-spouting legal whiz that Chuck is, but he picks up on the irregularities in the story his wills client is telling him; he figures out a MacGyver-esque plan to write a demand letter and try to stop the spoliation of evidence then and there, and he even has the wherewithal to stake out the nursing home's garbage to collect the evidence (with proper legal support for why it's acceptable!) even if he's not quite clever enough to check the recycle bins first.
And it's also clear that Jimmy both loves and admires his brother. Again, the show never outright says that Jimmy became a lawyer because 1. he wanted to make his brother proud of him and 2. he respects Chuck so much that he thought the best way to make himself respectable would be to emulate his brother, but that subtext (and Chuck's bemused, slightly incredulous, but warm surprise at the news in the flashback), is palpable throughout. There's something aspirational about Jimmy here, and that makes the audience all the more apt to side with him when Hamlin crushes his dreams of working alongside chuck (in a wonderfully effective, dialogue-free scene), or when the nursing home's lawyers try to intimidate and condescend to him.
Jimmy wants to become his brother's equal, to measure up to the man who always stood out as the best a McGill could be in contrast to his good-for-nothing little brother. He loves Chuck, and while Chuck can be a bit patronizing to Jimmy as well, the affection is clearly mutual, as is the pride when Chuck realizes what Jimmy's managed to uncover. And Chuck is revitalized by that. He's quiet and nervous in the negotiation until he speaks up and demands the $20 million like the legal ace we see in the opening flashback.
The series has yet to tell us how Chuck went from being the star partner we see in that flashback to the beleaguered shut-in we meet at the beginning of Better Call Saul, but what we've seen thus far suggests that he's suffered a loss, a setback, that made him not himself, that made him feel less than capable, and that he became convinced of his electromagnetic sensitivity as a way to shield or excuse himself from that. And we see Jimmy putting little breadcrumbs to help bring his brother back to who he was. That's what makes the scene at the end of the episode so flabbergasting, where Chuck is once again in his element, to the point that he doesn't even realize he's stepped outside without any ill-effects. There's still problems on the horizon (Chuck's partnership agreement and the use of his billing code seems like a Chekov's gun for one thing), but the enormity of that moment, and the build to get there, are all expressed with hardly a word, and without ever making those concepts too literal or blunt. It's a thing of beauty, and part of what makes "RICO" such a superlative episode of television, and Better Call Saul a great series right out of the gate.
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Keep up the good work, your reviews are very informative and entertaining.
What I love about Better Call Saul are the little things, the subtle touches that communicate something powerful about who a character is or what's going through their minds in a clear, but artful way. When Jimmy returns to his nail salon beginnings and goes to record his voicemail, he starts off with his faux-British secretary routine. Then he stops, and tries it again in his regular speaking voice, not as James M. McGill Esquire, but as Jimmy McGill, attorney at law. It's a small distinction, but a big difference.
It is, on the one hand, a concession to Kim's way of thinking, and a sign that she's gotten through to him, if only a little bit. When she turns down his offer for partnership a second time, he's clearly hurt, but takes it as well as can be expected. He cares about what Kim thinks of him, and the fact that his "colorful" ways were enough to scare her off may not be enough to make him straighten up and fly right, but it's enough to make him forego a little piece of the trickery that rubs her the wrong way. Davis & Main was too much and too fast for Jimmy. He was never meant to be that guy, as much as he wanted to for Kim. But he can be a better version of the Jimmy we know and love.
On the other hand, it's also a small reject of Chuck and an affirmation of himself. The pretensions of having a fancy secretary, of Jimmy's strange conception of sophistication manifested in a stuffy, mildly foppish voicemail, is a strange reflection of how he sees his brother, or what being a fancy pants attorney means. By moving away from that, he's turning away from chasing his brother's shadow. That doesn't mean he's going to immediately revert to being a con artist again. But he's going to be bombastic. He's going to be rough around the edges. As the name he uses on the answering machine suggests, he's just going to be himself.
Kim has a small but meaningful moment of her own. After a successful interview with Rick Schweikart and his fellow partners, Kim says goodbye and thank you to her potential employers, and accidentally calls Rick "Howard." It's a Freudian slip, but also a sign of how Jimmy's caution that it would be a lateral move for her, that Howard Hamlin and Rick Schweikart are interchangeable, has gotten through to her as well.
In that interview, Kim explains that she left her hometown because she wanted something more, and she's starting to realize that even if that doesn't mean coloring outside the lines like Jimmy does, she's too much of a free spirit as well, too much the kind of person who's not satisfied to be another cog in one nigh-identical machine or another, that she once again wants to bet on herself.
It's little moments like these, that say so much while saying so little, that make me frustrated with scenes like the cold open. That opening flashback takes us back in time to Jimmy's childhood, while we watch his father get taken advantage of by a grifter who tells Jimmy that there are wolves and sharks and he has to decide which one he's going to be, prompting Jimmy to take his (presumably) first few purloined dollars out of the till. After all, if Papa McGill is going to be bilked anyway, it may as well go to his family.
It's not an entirely bad scene. It lines up with Chuck's description of his father, and small touches like young Jimmy pretending to sweep or hiding the Playboy behind Boy's Life or refusing to give the grifter his cartons of cigarettes before getting the money show Jimmy's savvy even at a young age. But the whole thing feels a little too perfect--not unlike the flashbacks in BoJack Horseman--when it comes to accounting for the current psychological state of Jimmy McGill. His father is a little too trusting, even for a rube; the grifter is a little too slick, especially with the corny advice he gives to Jimmy; and Jimmy himself takes the lesson to heart a little too quickly. I like what BCS was trying to do, but overall, it was a little too tidy and too blunt to work as well as it needed to.
In truth, the "Inflatable" montage that juxtaposes a loudly-dressed, obnoxious adult Jimmy and a wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man who is just as flamboyant, is not particularly subtle in what it communicates either. By damn it all, the sequence is just too much fun for me to care. The De Palma-esque split screens that put Jimmy's fruit-smashing, turd-laying, bagpipe-playing antics side-by-side with a frantic, improvisational balloon creature dancing in the wind like a rainbow-colored dervish is a deliriously funny scene and speaks to how the younger McGill brother hopes to escape with his bonus intact by doubling down on his unique individuality.
And yet, when Clifford Main gives Jimmy what he wants and fires him for being a jackass instead of for cause, there's remorse on Jimmy's part. He isn't lying when he says it was a bad fit, and there's something very true and very unfortunate when Clifford asks Jimmy how they mistreated him or didn't do everything they could to put him in a good position. Cliff took a chance on Jimmy, and the fact that the arrangement was doomed from the beginning isn't his fault. Jimmy knows that, and it may not be enough to get him to sacrifice his bonus, but it's enough for him to offer to pay them back for the fancy new desk, to tell Clifford that he thinks he's still a good guy, and most importantly, to feel at least the slightest twinge of guilt about it.
Jimmy isn't the only one with regrets however. In another one of those little touches, Mike never has to say that he's disgusted to consider the fact that a sleazeball like Jimmy approves of how he handled the Tuco situation, or that he feels conflicted and even a bit concerned with what paying for his daughter-in-law's emotional blackmail will make him have to do. The fact that he finds the comparison to Jimmy unflattering, that he thinks Jimmy's approval is an insult rather than the compliment it's intended as, comes through in the way he doesn't want the pair to share an elevator, or accept Jimmy's legal services as a gift. By the same token, all it takes is a look from Mike to convey the moral calculus he's doing in his head as Stacey picks out her dreamhouse.
And all it takes is a look from Jimmy to know how he feels about Kim's proposal that the two of them share an office, but remain separate. The scene features a wonderful shot of Jimmy stuck in the frame between the two pieces of the business card that Kim tore in half. He wants the two of them to be together, to be a single unit, personally and professionally. Kim's alternative isn't a rejection, but it is, as Mike would say, a half-measure.
In the world of Breaking Bad, half-measures are often deadly, ways of both making things worse in exchange for a temporary reprieve and delaying the inevitable. On the generally less lethal Better Call Saul, the effects are not unlikely to be nearly so extreme, but the character of the results have the potential to be just the same.
There's something that brings Jimmy and Kim together, a zest for life, for self-determination, for truth to themselves that they share. But there's differences that keep them apart: Kim's professionalism, Jimmy's shadier side, and the part of each of them that says the only reason to do this is to do it their own way. It's a little difference--being separate attorneys in the same offices rather than partners, being separate people who spend time with one another rather than being "together"--but for Jimmy, even if he gives it the old college try, it's a world of difference.
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It's kind of crazy to find your inspiration in a wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man, but that's Jimmy!
Season 3 starts just like the first two seasons boring as hell and slow.
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@edgaredgar That's the tone of the show, why would you keep watching or expect any different?
Probably the best episode of TV this year, if not one of the strongest I have ever seen.
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@lukebacich prolbably? NO! .... FOR SURE IT IS!
Watching Jimmy bring ruin to an elderly woman's social life for his own gain was flat out disgusting.
It was the first time I've ever felt genuinely disgusted with him. All the other lies and schemes - even his bar scams as shitty as they were - didn't feel as repulsive to watch as seeing him manipulate those women like that.
Pride, anger and desperation have stripped him of his moral limits. If he ever had any they're gone now. He's not Jimmy anymore, he's Saul Goodman.loading replies
@nmiguelcosta Agreed, feel really bad for her. He could have just explained...
Boring, dry and slow. I loved Saul in Breaking Bad but clearly he is not the same in this show. I will tune out and binge next season. Sorry AMC, not your best work.
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@chinoxl3 It's not the Saul we all know well, it's not a case that his name is Jimmy McGill. The whole series is gonna tell us how and why Saul Goodman is born. It's not time yet for him to be Saul Goodman as we know him, but we're getting there. If you started watching this show without knowing these thngs, that's not AMC or anybody's fault. This show is far too good, but unfortunately not all people can see that :)
[7.4/10] Jimmy McGill’s role in “Smoke” begins and ends with normalcy. In his first scenes in the episode, he gets up, feeds his fish, and makes coffee -- the mundane tasks of his life in the interregnum of his suspension. And in his last scene in the episode, he does the same things, remarking on his fish’s voracious appetite, tossing out coffee grounds, and seeming like a man very much returned to his routine.
The catch is that between that first feeding and the second, he found out his brother is dead.
I don’t know what Jimmy is feeling between those two moments. Better Call Saul and writer/showrunner Peter Gould play it close to the vest. He cries no tears. Despite his usual loquaciousness and bombast, he is uncharacteristically taciturn and reserved. And while he sports more of a hangdog expression than usual throughout the episode, he is something of a blank slate in the wake of such foundation-rocking news.
“Smoke” leaves you to wonder what’s going on between its protagonists’ ears. That is, as I’m fond of saying, a feature not a bug. There’s not a lot of talking in Better Call Saul’s Season 4 premiere. Instead, there’s a lot of mulling, a lot of concerned and affected faces, of siblings who look like they’re in shock, of culprits swallowing their anxieties, of bald heads bobbing over cubicle walls and sporting the same half frown that speaks authority and disdain with one downturned crinkle of the lip.
This series takes the time to show its characters thinking, and to let the audience fill in the gaps, or wonder what’s going on rather than explicating in heavy-handed terms what’s going through each and everyone’s heads.
That’s particularly true for Jimmy here. There are signs that Chuck’s death got to him. He sees the electronics scattered in the backyard and knows the events that felled his brother were part of a relapse. He shares in the once celebratory but now palliative shots that he once offered Kim, but still can’t sleep. He seems almost in a place of catatonia, of processing the enormous shock of his brother’s grim departure, in a state that could indicate numbness or contemplation or being overwhelmed or any number of the complicated emotions that attend grief.
The episode plays similarly coy at what’s motivating Mike Ehrmantraut. He quits his job as a parking attendant, seems poised to spend more time with his granddaughter, and has all the time in the world to sit at home and watch baseball games in his newfound spare time. But when he gets that first check from Madrigal for being a “security consultant,” something clicks inside of Mike, and he can’t leave well enough alone.
What follows is another one of Better Call Saul’s superlative sequences, where Mike proves that all you need is a badge, a clipboard, and the air of innate authority to go anywhere and do pretty much anything. It’s a visual feast as Mike skulks through a cubicle farm, rumbles through a maze of industrial shelves, and observes and corrects a host of Madrigal employees like he owns the place. It’s a sequence where the show’s dry sense of humor comes out, with Mike overhearing a breakroom debate over who would win in a fight between Bruce Lee and Muhammad Ali before providing his eye roll-fueled but definitive answer. Whoever wins, Mike isn’t content to sit idly by, but uses his misadventures to advise the nearest Madrigal outpost on what and where it’s going wrong.
“Smoke” leaves it characteristically hazy why Mike is doing all this. Maybe Mike is, true-to-form, scoping out this arrangement. Despite Lydia’s warning that his “salary” is a rounding error, it’s possible that Mike wants to make sure both that he’s seen doing some security consulting in case anyone starts asking questions, and also wants to make sure the people he’s getting into bed with on this are on the up-and-up. It might also be that sense of honor, that if he’s receiving a service and paycheck from these people, he wants to do the job he’s being paid for, and perhaps even show Lydia (and by extension, Gus Fring) what they’re getting.
Or it may just be that Mike cannot sit still. We know from Breaking Bad that Mike stays active in his line of work, one way or another, for a long time to come. Even if we didn’t, he doesn't seem like the type of man who would be fulfilled by or satisfied with watching baseball and drinking beer all day for very long. Mike is good at what he does, and when you have a talent like he does, not to mention someone who seems to appreciate it, it’s hard to let it go to waste.
And Gus might be in need of Mike’s services very soon. The part of the episode involving him and Nacho is the most “Breaking Bad prequel” portion of these proceedings. It’s the straightforward conclusion to Nacho completing his plan to induce a reaction in his boss. It gives Gus the chance to artfully try to fill in the power vacuum that Hector’s incapacitation creates, lest war follow. And his henchman’s scoping of Nacho ditching the evidence suggest he’ll have an angle to play.
These scenes are fairly slight, doing more to clean up after Hector’s reaction in the previous episode and hint at what might be the offing than moving things along. They’re about teasing a war in the New Mexico drug scene, but more about Nacho’s state of mind. You feel his jangle nerves, his concerns about the storm that might be ahead, his worries that Gus or Juan Bolsa know what he did. The episode spend a great deal of time just letting the viewer watch Nacho grow anxious and stew.
The truth is that not much happens in “Smoke.” A hell of a lot happened in last season’s finale, without much, or in some cases any, time for denouement or for the show to catch its breath. So a good chunk of this premiere is purposefully light on incident, more about the fallout of those series-shifting events and the effect they’ve had on Nacho, Mike, and Jimmy than about the next big bang in the Better Call Saul timeline.
That timeline seems to be speeding up though. The Jimmy McGill we meet at the end of “Smoke” seems closer to the man we meet in Breaking Bad. For most of the episode, he is almost inscrutable, with it unclear whether he’s stunned or unaffected or somewhere in between in his flat affect throughout the proceedings.
But the episode contrasts him with Howard, who is clearly broken up about this, and it presents a strange flip. Howard seems like the family member, while Jimmy seems like the staid business partner. Howard reads back an admiring obituary, and Jimmy doesn't even want to listen to it. At the funeral, Jimmy is shaking hands with all of Chuck’s colleagues and contemporaries, while Howard is comforting Chuck’s almost widow.
And the clincher of all of this is how Howard waits for Jimmy after the funeral, so he can offer a confession. Howard blames himself for Chuck’s death, knowing that someone as deliberate as his former partner didn’t let the lantern erupt by accident. Howard is broken up over his belief that him forcing Chuck out of HHM set him down this path, and he is trying to bare his soul and clear his conscience by confiding in the brother whom he imagines would be most hurt by this.
But unbeknownst to Howard, that confession only confirms to Jimmy that he was the superseding cause of his brother’s demise, that Jimmy’s own tip off to the insurance company is what set this whole thing in motion. And yet, Jimmy doesn't care, or at least doesn't want to be seen to outwardly. In a move that prompts a brief but palpable moment of disbelief from Kim, Jimmy starts whistling and going through this day, the day his brother was laid to rest, like it’s any other day.
Who knows if this is Jimmy giving into the man he’ll eventually become, the one who won’t accept blame for anything and has a casual obliviousness to those who stand in his way. Who knows if this is the sort of thing that slowly but surely pushes Kim out of his life. Who knows if Chuck’s last words to him truly obliterated whatever sort of affection Jimmy might have had for his brother, or even convinced him to be the amoral slimeball that Chuck told him was his true nature which he should embrace.
We don’t know what’s going on in Jimmy’s head during “Smoke.” All we know is that it ends with a version of Jimmy McGill who seems closer to Saul Goodman than ever, who seems ready to brush off his own brother’s death because that’s just the way things are, who is calm and cool and unbothered by any of it. And we know that it begins with a Cinnabon Gene who is anything but, who is unnerved and frightened by something as simple as a mistyped social security number, or an Albuquerque air freshener.
We still know the beginning and what seems to be the end game for Jimmy McGill’s adult life, and we know the beginning and what seems to be the end of his mourning for his brother. But Better Call Saul honors the complexity of, and trusts its audience to figure out, what happens in between.
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@sikanderx6 I'm convinced that Mike Ehrmentraut is the closest thing we'll ever get to a truly realistic live action Batman.
[7.4/10] Jimmy McGill’s role in “Smoke” begins and ends with normalcy. In his first scenes in the episode, he gets up, feeds his fish, and makes coffee -- the mundane tasks of his life in the interregnum of his suspension. And in his last scene in the episode, he does the same things, remarking on his fish’s voracious appetite, tossing out coffee grounds, and seeming like a man very much returned to his routine.
The catch is that between that first feeding and the second, he found out his brother is dead.
I don’t know what Jimmy is feeling between those two moments. Better Call Saul and writer/showrunner Peter Gould play it close to the vest. He cries no tears. Despite his usual loquaciousness and bombast, he is uncharacteristically taciturn and reserved. And while he sports more of a hangdog expression than usual throughout the episode, he is something of a blank slate in the wake of such foundation-rocking news.
“Smoke” leaves you to wonder what’s going on between its protagonists’ ears. That is, as I’m fond of saying, a feature not a bug. There’s not a lot of talking in Better Call Saul’s Season 4 premiere. Instead, there’s a lot of mulling, a lot of concerned and affected faces, of siblings who look like they’re in shock, of culprits swallowing their anxieties, of bald heads bobbing over cubicle walls and sporting the same half frown that speaks authority and disdain with one downturned crinkle of the lip.
This series takes the time to show its characters thinking, and to let the audience fill in the gaps, or wonder what’s going on rather than explicating in heavy-handed terms what’s going through each and everyone’s heads.
That’s particularly true for Jimmy here. There are signs that Chuck’s death got to him. He sees the electronics scattered in the backyard and knows the events that felled his brother were part of a relapse. He shares in the once celebratory but now palliative shots that he once offered Kim, but still can’t sleep. He seems almost in a place of catatonia, of processing the enormous shock of his brother’s grim departure, in a state that could indicate numbness or contemplation or being overwhelmed or any number of the complicated emotions that attend grief.
The episode plays similarly coy at what’s motivating Mike Ehrmantraut. He quits his job as a parking attendant, seems poised to spend more time with his granddaughter, and has all the time in the world to sit at home and watch baseball games in his newfound spare time. But when he gets that first check from Madrigal for being a “security consultant,” something clicks inside of Mike, and he can’t leave well enough alone.
What follows is another one of Better Call Saul’s superlative sequences, where Mike proves that all you need is a badge, a clipboard, and the air of innate authority to go anywhere and do pretty much anything. It’s a visual feast as Mike skulks through a cubicle farm, rumbles through a maze of industrial shelves, and observes and corrects a host of Madrigal employees like he owns the place. It’s a sequence where the show’s dry sense of humor comes out, with Mike overhearing a breakroom debate over who would win in a fight between Bruce Lee and Muhammad Ali before providing his eye roll-fueled but definitive answer. Whoever wins, Mike isn’t content to sit idly by, but uses his misadventures to advise the nearest Madrigal outpost on what and where it’s going wrong.
“Smoke” leaves it characteristically hazy why Mike is doing all this. Maybe Mike is, true-to-form, scoping out this arrangement. Despite Lydia’s warning that his “salary” is a rounding error, it’s possible that Mike wants to make sure both that he’s seen doing some security consulting in case anyone starts asking questions, and also wants to make sure the people he’s getting into bed with on this are on the up-and-up. It might also be that sense of honor, that if he’s receiving a service and paycheck from these people, he wants to do the job he’s being paid for, and perhaps even show Lydia (and by extension, Gus Fring) what they’re getting.
Or it may just be that Mike cannot sit still. We know from Breaking Bad that Mike stays active in his line of work, one way or another, for a long time to come. Even if we didn’t, he doesn't seem like the type of man who would be fulfilled by or satisfied with watching baseball and drinking beer all day for very long. Mike is good at what he does, and when you have a talent like he does, not to mention someone who seems to appreciate it, it’s hard to let it go to waste.
And Gus might be in need of Mike’s services very soon. The part of the episode involving him and Nacho is the most “Breaking Bad prequel” portion of these proceedings. It’s the straightforward conclusion to Nacho completing his plan to induce a reaction in his boss. It gives Gus the chance to artfully try to fill in the power vacuum that Hector’s incapacitation creates, lest war follow. And his henchman’s scoping of Nacho ditching the evidence suggest he’ll have an angle to play.
These scenes are fairly slight, doing more to clean up after Hector’s reaction in the previous episode and hint at what might be the offing than moving things along. They’re about teasing a war in the New Mexico drug scene, but more about Nacho’s state of mind. You feel his jangle nerves, his concerns about the storm that might be ahead, his worries that Gus or Juan Bolsa know what he did. The episode spend a great deal of time just letting the viewer watch Nacho grow anxious and stew.
The truth is that not much happens in “Smoke.” A hell of a lot happened in last season’s finale, without much, or in some cases any, time for denouement or for the show to catch its breath. So a good chunk of this premiere is purposefully light on incident, more about the fallout of those series-shifting events and the effect they’ve had on Nacho, Mike, and Jimmy than about the next big bang in the Better Call Saul timeline.
That timeline seems to be speeding up though. The Jimmy McGill we meet at the end of “Smoke” seems closer to the man we meet in Breaking Bad. For most of the episode, he is almost inscrutable, with it unclear whether he’s stunned or unaffected or somewhere in between in his flat affect throughout the proceedings.
But the episode contrasts him with Howard, who is clearly broken up about this, and it presents a strange flip. Howard seems like the family member, while Jimmy seems like the staid business partner. Howard reads back an admiring obituary, and Jimmy doesn't even want to listen to it. At the funeral, Jimmy is shaking hands with all of Chuck’s colleagues and contemporaries, while Howard is comforting Chuck’s almost widow.
And the clincher of all of this is how Howard waits for Jimmy after the funeral, so he can offer a confession. Howard blames himself for Chuck’s death, knowing that someone as deliberate as his former partner didn’t let the lantern erupt by accident. Howard is broken up over his belief that him forcing Chuck out of HHM set him down this path, and he is trying to bare his soul and clear his conscience by confiding in the brother whom he imagines would be most hurt by this.
But unbeknownst to Howard, that confession only confirms to Jimmy that he was the superseding cause of his brother’s demise, that Jimmy’s own tip off to the insurance company is what set this whole thing in motion. And yet, Jimmy doesn't care, or at least doesn't want to be seen to outwardly. In a move that prompts a brief but palpable moment of disbelief from Kim, Jimmy starts whistling and going through this day, the day his brother was laid to rest, like it’s any other day.
Who knows if this is Jimmy giving into the man he’ll eventually become, the one who won’t accept blame for anything and has a casual obliviousness to those who stand in his way. Who knows if this is the sort of thing that slowly but surely pushes Kim out of his life. Who knows if Chuck’s last words to him truly obliterated whatever sort of affection Jimmy might have had for his brother, or even convinced him to be the amoral slimeball that Chuck told him was his true nature which he should embrace.
We don’t know what’s going on in Jimmy’s head during “Smoke.” All we know is that it ends with a version of Jimmy McGill who seems closer to Saul Goodman than ever, who seems ready to brush off his own brother’s death because that’s just the way things are, who is calm and cool and unbothered by any of it. And we know that it begins with a Cinnabon Gene who is anything but, who is unnerved and frightened by something as simple as a mistyped social security number, or an Albuquerque air freshener.
We still know the beginning and what seems to be the end game for Jimmy McGill’s adult life, and we know the beginning and what seems to be the end of his mourning for his brother. But Better Call Saul honors the complexity of, and trusts its audience to figure out, what happens in between.
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@andrewbloom Mike strolling around with the stolen lanyard around his neck = super alpha move
