Better Call Saul Season 6 thread (with spoilers)

I had been liking this mid-season finale a lot, right up until the very end, which I hated.

The strangeness of Gilligan is that he celebrates his own meticulousness with these elaborately staged visual sequences and slow-burn plot set-ups, but then falls back on one of the favorite tools of the hack auteur, the splash of violence.

 

It was pretty much the same ending as Ozark Season 4.

 

I really enjoyed the way the Lalo in the sewer scenes were shot. Tony Dalton is just so electric, he's fun to watch.

I was shocked by the ending, but I'm not sure how earned it was, other than Lalo just wanting him to shut the fuck up and having no remorse in ending him.

I agree with the guys on the Watch podcast -- how much is there left to tell in six episodes? We know Lalo dies, and I'm sure the confrontation at Gus' lab will be beautifully shot. I suppose there's a question of who kills Lalo (I'd put my money on Mike). I think Kim lives, somehow. Of course, I'm going to watch, just for the production value. But I wonder just how much plot is left.

 

The prequel nature of the show boxed them in. They’re making the best of it, but we know what happens. It’s just how.

Agreed that it’s now more an appreciation of the production value at this point.

 

Howard Hamlin was a problematic character to start with. (Not Patrick Fabian, he did great in the role.)

Ancillary at first, after Jimmy’s brother died, he should have exited quietly.

But they fell victim to fan service and kept him on. That meant shoe-horning him into the show and that meant the dopey Spy vs. Spy shit between Jimmy/Kim and Howard.

That meant an equally unsatisfying neat tying of the bow where they converged two plot arcs together that should not have been. Don’t cross the streams.

Breaking Bad/Saul have had a lot of success with fan service characters, Saul himself being one of the biggest, but this was a swing and a miss.

 

To me part of what kept Breaking Bad from being an all-time elite show was this sort of thinking. An unpopular take, but Jesse Pinkman should have been off the show after Season 2. The plot mechanics they went through to create a rationale for ultra-precise Walter White choosing undependable drug addict Jesse as his partner were weak. Invent a new character—like, say, The Wire would have done. Same for Season Five of Breaking Bad, when Mike, the ultimate close-to-the-vest guy, agrees to throw in with Walt and Jesse. Made no sense.

Mantra for an ambitious show: be better than Rocky IV, when Rocky ends up being managed by Apollo's old manager because...he's the only familiar character left.

 

I kind of think the central question of BCS is, "How does one go from Jimmy, a kind of goofy con man, to Saul, a degenerate lawyer who's openly serving as a middleman and representing gangsters?" And the answer seems to be, it's not just any one incident - It's a continual decay, it's a series of escalating decisions with intended and unintended consequences. Saul and Kim thought they could keep their "legitimate" actions siloed from their cartel work, but they're in just as deep as everyone else. Howard is the latest collateral damage in that, because Lalo immediately sizes up that he has principles, that he's not going to play ball like Saul will.

 

Okay, but... How's Walter White going to find drug dealers to peddle his stuff? I think over and over again IRL, people choose the devil they know vs. the devil they don't. I think Walter views Jesse as a simple fuck-up that he can control, and likewise, I think Mike prefers "knowing" Walt and Jesse, vs. dealing with who knows what that'll fill the power vacuum.

 

They continually addressed those issues during Breaking Bad. Walt kept Jesse around for several reasons that became increasingly deeper and twisted as their relationship evolved. Walt initially viewed it as a chance to be a teacher; then he viewed Jesse as a surrogate son and felt a paternal responsibility for him; then he needed Jesse as a pawn, a lackey, and a bargaining chip during the war with Gus.

With Mike, he threw in with Walt and Jesse because he didn't have a choice. His gravy train with Fring and the Cartel was gone. He wanted to get out and have nothing to do with Walt and Jesse, but then the DEA put the squeeze on him and he needed the money. He was trying to protect the guys who worked for him and provide for his granddaughter. As BCS is establishing very well, his loyalty is his biggest fault and led to his demise. His loyalty wasn't to Walt and Jesse, though, it was to the other people who were relying on him. Walt and Jesse were a necessary evil to accomplish that.

 

I know that the storylines gave justifications to prop up the decisions—I just found that the flying buttresses detracted from the architecture.

 

I was the rare person who really liked the Spy vs. Spy stuff, right up until the second they decided to involve Lalo in that plot line.

 

Yeah, but it’s a Stretch Armstrong leap to put Howard in their apartment when Lalo shows up.

Lalo could have shot anyone, a delivery guy for crying out loud, and they’re still in deep shit both literally (if they got shot themselves) and after the fact if they survive as how do you explain how someone just gets shot in your apartment? If the cops (or cartel) knew it was Lalo, even more so.