Better Call Saul

[Lemon]

Michael McKean's moral indignation and Bob Odenkirk working at Cinnabon are two of my favorite things ever put on television.

[Amelia Blank]

Would you say Chuck is the main villain of Saul?

[znarf]

Would you say Chuck is the main villain of Saul?

Main antagonist, perhaps.  Asshole, for sure.

[Dad Noises]

Would you say Chuck is the main villain of Saul?

Main antagonist, perhaps.  Asshole, for sure.

Better Fuck Chuck

[Lemon]

Christ I love that Chuck sued Hamlin Hamlin and McGill. It was perfectly within his worldview. Here he was a good, decent, honest man working to defend this company that he holds so dear, and then out of nowhere comes Howard's treachery. He really took his one and only choice after being mistreated by Howard like that.

Then later Jimmy comes by and Chuck gets to tell him just how unimportant he was. He pities Jimmy, you see. Jimmy doesn't have a moral center like Chuck does. Nor does he have the mental will to force himself to get over his very real illness all by himself without any help from anyone. What a magnificent individual.

This season has also been a bit lighter on Mike, which I think is a good thing. Yes, Mike is fun to watch, but I'm a little bored of all the 20 minute scenes where he's Mirror Universe Wile E Coyote and evey elaborate plan he has works out perfectly.

Also, I think it's pretty amazing that in three seasons, nobody has died.

[Lemon]

SEASON 4!

So right off the bat I'm very sad that Chuck is dead. The more he doubled down, the more sure he was of being the only moral person in an increasingly immoral universe, the more I loved watching him. He was a ceaseless methodical implementation engine of negativity, and a chasm of need that turns empathy into cruelty. I just loved watching it happen. I'm disappointed there won't be more of that.

I've also just grown accustomed to Mike being a wizard. It is canonical to the universe that Mike is imbued with magical powers where everything he tries to do goes perfectly, that's just the way it's supposed to go. In a show where everything goes wrong, he's the one person who does everything flawlessly. And you know what happens to him in the end regardless. Meantime, he's just going to continue to involve himself with his son's ex-wife who basically sees him as an ATM with arms and legs.


Speaking of which the Hummel robbery was, all things considered, the most effective crime ever committed in this series. They actually made it out with the merch, the copier guy didn't get garotted, and they didn't accidentally steal something the cartel wanted. Plus, good feelings at the end. Kudos all around, even if it was a crime that seemed low enough stakes to matter. Jimmy didn't have an immediate need for $2k, and Mike definitely didn't, so it was clearly only considered for the love of doing crime.

Nacho is still terrific. I like that, sort of like Jack Lemmon in Glengarry/Glenn Ross, they stop short of making him a fully sympathetic character. The situation he's got himself in is the result of a half-cocked attempt to protect his own father, but that doesn't mean he's able or willing to protect others.

And Kim is probably going to die this season. I'm not sure exactly why, but even with the busted arm things are going pretty smoothly for her, so I'm pretty sure that's gonna get severely disturbed.

[I Liked That Joke]

I don't see Kim dying. She's never near any real crime and Jimmy's arc seems to be less about the implicit dangers of crime and more about him cutting himself off from his emotions.

My theory: Kim confronts him about how weird he's acting about Howard's death, Jimmy explains that he genuinely doesn't feel any guilt, Kim is alienated and decides to get out of his life, and without any humanizing bonds left he goes full Saul. Kim moves on to a pretty normal law career, potentially leaving Albuquerque, but almost certainly cutting ties with Jimmy.

[Frank West]

I just finished season 3, I liked seasons 1 and 2 but like I said in my previous post, they did feel like they meandered around a bit, which was nice but also not that gripping. Season 3 kept my interest a lot more (it helps that both Mike AND Nacho had full storylines to go through, so we could switch over to them and not stop the plot cold.)

The portrayal of Chuck's mental illness is incredibly strong. Almost any other show would have had his illness be either "The main problem is that he believes this crazy thing, and curing him involves getting him not to believe this crazy thing" or "He believes this crazy thing, and also he's very very sad all the time" or "It's all in his head. Better Call Saul makes it clear that the electrosensitivity Chuck experiences is not only very real, from his perspective, but also only a symptom of his mental illness, not the cause. Very few shows are willing to show that people can just become miserable, and stay that way, and that when people develop mental illnesses it's not just "oh all their family members rally around them" because people with mental illnesses destroy their relationships.

The people who viciously hate Chuck remind me of the people who viciously hated Skyler: they're getting in the way of our noble hero so they must be a bad person. But this ignores that both of them are right: In Skyler's case, Walt was cooking meth and killing people, and in Chuck's case, he's right, Jimmy shouldn't have been hired by Hamlin Hamlin and McGill. He is, in fact, unable to stop himself from conning people, and he shows that by continually sabotaging his own business in ways that would absolutely hurt HHM if he was working for them. It's possible that Chuck could have (and probably should have) supported Jimmy and helped him become a better person instead of working against him, so I'm not saying Chuck is without blame, but it's honestly alarming to me how many people have decided that a man who is mentally ill and self-destructing as a result is this monstrous bad guy, especially considering that Chuck ends up intentionally throwing away his last lifeline, then killing himself.. To me, the main antagonist up against Jimmy isn't Chuck or HHM or the legal system or whatever: it's Saul Goodman.

I think maybe Howard and Francesca are the only moral people on the show.

[Frank West]

Hey are we all still watching this? The way the latest episode ended (JMM) is so, so good.

[Adam Bozarth]

Anna and I have been keeping up and are loving it. I am fairly certain that Kim ends up running the Saul Goodman practice with Jimmy and the final season shows how she pulls the strings and Jimmy is the face of the operation. He probably calls the vacuum salesman in the first place to protect her when the shit goes down in Breaking Bad.

I hope that Peter Gould and/or Vince Gilligan get another show, because "Saul" has remained so much fun to watch since it premiered.

We're also obsessed with the actor who plays Lalo, Tony Dalton. He's an amazing actor on "Saul" and is super famous in Mexico. We ended up finding this appearance he made on this strange Jackass-style show where he is completely wrapped in bubblewrap

[Frank West]

I've been pretty sure since season 1 that Jimmy will break up with Kim for her own good, as his final bit of transformation into Saul Goodman, and he'll end up meeting her again in the flash forward bits, or maybe that she'll end up dead somehow and that sends him into the final spiral of Saul. but I like your idea too now that I'm thinking about it.

Also I watched most of this season thinking it was the final season, which got increasingly confusing as I neared the end of it. I guess I just assumed it would have the same number of seasons as breaking bad? It's put a real fun spin on some of the events happening, every episode has been upping the ante enough that I kind of managed to convince myself they could somehow end it in the next few episodes. I kind of wish I'd kept thinking that until the season finale.

[Adam Bozarth]

We thought this was the last season as well, and realized there's been no Walt at all so far, but I honestly don't miss him. I thought they were building to a drama I forgot that this show moves at a really measured pace.

One thing I like about this show is that it feels like watching a real adults' show without the same goofy man-child baggage attached to Breaking Bad/Heisenberg. Like, there's not goofy merch or toys or t-shirts or whatever. Although, the comedy manchild in me was stoked to see Jay Johnston from Mr. Show show up this season.

[Frank West]

That was a weird season finale, since the last three episodes all ended on something that could have been the season finale in it's own right. The Jimmy parts of this one felt largely like wrapping up some details and setting up for next season, while the Nacho parts were the actual climax, even though we know that Eladio won't die and there was no way they were going to kill Lalo, either. I'd say it was kind of a let down but I'm still really looking forward to watching Kim and Jimmy destroy Howard.