This show feels like it's actively challenging me to keep watching it. It's still beautiful and has great moments, but this is the first time in this or Breaking Bad that I've really felt like it's spinning its wheels. "Mike does some Macgyver shit" has been used with such frequency now that it's becoming stale, and I'm just not interested in the character any more.
+5
syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
This show feels like it's actively challenging me to keep watching it. It's still beautiful and has great moments, but this is the first time in this or Breaking Bad that I've really felt like it's spinning its wheels. "Mike does some Macgyver shit" has been used with such frequency now that it's becoming stale, and I'm just not interested in the character any more.
I don't know if you watched Breaking Bad in real-time, but there were multiple episodes that inched the plot along maybe a few steps, but otherwise just focused on characters reacting to things that happened and lots of deliberate cinematography. These episodes felt fine when you can immediately jump into the next one but feel pretty empty as the last thing you can watch.
That said, a few things did happen here:
Chuck's spiteful shitty plan revealed
Fring leverage's Mikes dislike of Hector to "employ" him
Hector's "business" gets in trouble in a big, border-crossing federal agents kind of way
Jimmy gets a lawyer, and decides to risk jailtime in order to protect his ability to practice law
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
standing outside without his space blanket and talking to Jimmy while they waited for the police to arrive.
It also kind of felt like the episode ended abruptly =/
Its been proven time and time again
That Chucks "illness" mysteriously disappears whenever he has a chance to fuck over Jimmy, then comes surging back when he realizes he cant/hits a roadblock
Did we just get Chuck foreshadowing? Is what Jimmy said about Chuck dying alone in a hospital actually going to happen? Is Jimmy/Saul going to put Chuck in the hospital in some way, once he gets his connections?
Any other show and I'd say that's just an offhand remark, but these are the guys who took Saul's offhand remark about working in a Cinnabon in Omaha and made it literal.
I can't help but think there's going to be a very good reason Chuck wasn't a part of Breaking Bad. Kim too.
Did we just get Chuck foreshadowing? Is what Jimmy said about Chuck dying alone in a hospital actually going to happen? Is Jimmy/Saul going to put Chuck in the hospital in some way, once he gets his connections?
Any other show and I'd say that's just an offhand remark, but these are the guys who took Saul's offhand remark about working in a Cinnabon in Omaha and made it literal.
I can't help but think there's going to be a very good reason Chuck wasn't a part of Breaking Bad. Kim too.
Doubt it's as nefarious as that. Been Jimmy's the one who's been making sure that stuff doesn't happen. If Jimmy finally just bails on his brother instead of trying to prove he can live up to Chuck's high standards, who's going to take care of Chuck? Nobody, that's who. It's a statement that he's done with Chuck's bullshit, not that he's going to do anything quite as awful as putting him there.
Kim is the one who is going to get fucked in the whole deal.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
The more I ruminate on this, the more I think that Chuck's
"disease" is a psychotic manifestation of his detest and hatred for his brother, and more succinctly, the fact that his brother passed The Bar and got his license. It seems it started around that time, and anything that Chuck does to further Jimmy being removed from the law, he is suddenly better and out about town.
any time theres a roadblock, a setback, or things dont go perfectly for chunk in general and he needs someone to blame, he falls back on his "illness"
How bad is Chuck's illness going to get once Jimmy becomes Saul Goodman and starts actively courting criminal dregs? He'll probably be permanently catatonic at that point.
How bad is Chuck's illness going to get once Jimmy becomes Saul Goodman and starts actively courting criminal dregs? He'll probably be permanently catatonic at that point.
I'm guessing that happens after "Here's what's gonna happen.".
It would be hilarious in a sadistic way if Chuck of all people hasn't set up a will, and when he dies HHM is forced to pay Jimmy a huge inheritance and subsequently goes under. Personally, though, I'm hoping Chuck's storyline ends with Chuck somehow getting convicted of a felony and going to prison.
I'm holding out some faint, tiny, glimmer of hope that they get some closure and maybe Chuck shows Jimmy the tiniest shred of respect and dignity as a fellow lawyer.
I'm pretty sure I'm going to be disappointed.
That would be even more painful for the audience, because in the end we know Jimmy becomes Saul and in effect Chuck is proven right. It's more comforting for the audience to think that Jimmy's downfall is entirely a self-fulfilling prophecy on the part of Chuck.
What if.... the end of the show is Jimmy waking up in the hospital after being in a coma for 3 years with Chuck by his side. Jimmy is confused and tries to get up, but he's handcuffed to the bed.
Jimmy's collapse at the beginning of season 3 had him hit his head and coma stuff. That caused him to be found out.
Chuck tells him he knew it would eventually come to this, but that he's still there and won't give up on him.
Jimmy says he wishes he would have listened to Chuck, that he was always right.
Cause in the flash fowards Jimmy isn't exactly happy about the way things turned out. We gotta remember, Saul has absolutely fucked up his life.
No I don't.
0
knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
edited April 2017
Well shit. the ending cut off on my recording.
And fuck Chuck.
Not bad enough that he sets Jimmy up specifically to get him arrested, but then he fires Ernie.
If Jimmy with a law degree is a monkey with a machine gun, Chuck is the guy who takes the gun away only to turn it on a crowd of war orphans.
knitdan on
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Chuck has Jimmy dead to rights, right? I predict Jimmy's case goes to trial, and Jimmy pulls some elaborate chicanery of questionable morality to win the trial. Maybe he'll forge some evidence to exaggerate Chuck's mental illness and make him look like a raving lunatic or something. Something really crazy that puts Jimmy into "magnificent bastard" territory. And it works. Jimmy actually manages to get himself acquitted.
Then word spreads around how Jimmy pulled some crazy shit to successfully defend himself, and some criminals in the drug trade facing prosecution think to themselves, hey, I want that guy defending me too. And they seek Jimmy out, and that's how Jimmy gets into the business of defending drug dealers.
I'm like 90% that the crazy shit is going to be:
Ripping Chuck to shreds on the witness stand using his mental illness in which the tin foil suit he'll be wearing plays a major role. It was hinted at in his conversation with the prosecutor and it will have some nice symbolism since Jimmy originally created the suit to help Chuck appear normal and this will be him completely burning down the relationship with Chuck and exposing him for a crazy person to the world. It'll basically end Chuck's legal career if not end up with him catatonic and committed to a mental hospital.
That will probably be part of it, but there has to be something beyond just that. There have to be some hijinks that top what we saw last season where he went to Kinkos and swapped the numbers in the addresses in Chuck's documents. Remember, Chuck is only one of three witnesses. He has to do something to discredit or disarm the other two, too. Maybe he'll find some way to blackmail or threaten them.
That will probably be part of it, but there has to be something beyond just that. There have to be some hijinks that top what we saw last season where he went to Kinkos and swapped the numbers in the addresses in Chuck's documents. Remember, Chuck is only one of three witnesses. He has to do something to discredit or disarm the other two, too. Maybe he'll find some way to blackmail or threaten them.
I think Hamlin might be the easiest to deal with there.
He doesn't like the situation in the first place, and if he's given an out I think he'll probably take it.
The PI was hired to do a job. We don't really know how dedicated to his job he is.
Fair chance he rolls over for a better paycheck, especially if he hears that Hamlin is going to flop.
Yea, Jimmy's definitely going to do something to seriously discredit Chuck in court, and probably
Seriously damage and discredit the family name while he's at it. I'm really excited to see how it plays out and what the exact moment Jimmy goes from being Jimmy to Saul.
I'm also interested with how much black and white present exposition we'll eventually get from the show.
I'll definitely agree the show has dragged a bit in some places, and felt a bit uneven, but the style really is there. I love some of the touches they do, like when Mike's standing outside the clinicia gratita and how his plan worked out.
How do you guys think the circle will be squared on the name change and how does Kim play into it all? Definitely going to be in the trial for both, I think.
MadCaddy on
0
knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
Re: Clinica
Did anyone else notice
That's the doctor who patches up Gus and Mike after their little trip to Mexico.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
For me the difference between a Walter White plotline being slow and a Mike plotline being slow is that we didn't know what was going to happen to Walter White. We also don't really know what's going to happen to Jimmy. There are a lot of questions still to be answered about how he turned into Saul.
With Mike, there are no questions. What happens to him? He ends up working for Gus and seems to be pretty happy doing so. He stays pretty much the same character. There was a time when there were questions and the prequel character was interesting. Primarily the question "how did he turn to crime?". I just don't think there's anything left to answer. His ingenious and complex schemes are starting to reach parodic levels.
I love the character of Mike and want them to drop him before he stops being interesting. This show isn't a two hander, it should primarily be about Saul. Failing that, there are characters that deserve the screen time and development more, like Kim. Kim, in fact, is one of the only characters where we have no idea where she ends up. She's really interesting, and wonderfully performed. Give me more Kim and less evidence of a writer's room sitting around saying "what incredible thing did Mike do this week?"
We've already seen that Mike and Saul occasionally call each other for favours.
+2
Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
edited April 2017
I love the Mike stuff, both the character and his role in BCS but I totally see the criticisms. His presence makes things feel more like a Breaking Bad Prologue than if it were Jimmy alone.
There's something to be said about him getting too much screentime compared to Kim, but like it or not the show has sorta positioned him as the deuteragonist while Kim is only as important as Hamlin and Chuck.
It's feels like Mike's side of stuff provides the prologue feeling so Jimmy's doesn't have to. Some people want this to be BrBa Season Zero, and they can sorta get that from the Mike story, while Jimmy's can be concerned only with telling the story they want to.
There were only a few instances of Mike doing crazy things in BB that I can think of. The most impressive was that long sequence of him taking back that factory, where the most innovative thing was using balloons to short out cameras and showing a solid grasp of tactics. Mike as Macgyver is very much a BCS addition, to my knowledge.
+5
Zilla36021st Century. |She/Her|Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered Userregular
Mike always seemed like a streetwise, world-weary guy, that thought on his feet. So him going full Macgyver isn't that surprising to me, IMO.
There were only a few instances of Mike doing crazy things in BB that I can think of. The most impressive was that long sequence of him taking back that factory, where the most innovative thing was using balloons to short out cameras and showing a solid grasp of tactics. Mike as Macgyver is very much a BCS addition, to my knowledge.
The only real problem I have with what he did, is it was "show cool" and not "what he would have done". Because the amount of danger and planning he did to accomplish that (not to mention laws he broke), would have been equivalent to just calling the border with a hot tip and plate #. Its a "stupid move" that was a "cool tv move" and I'm pretty alright with it.
I'm not cool with showing the audience surveillance duty in near real time. Or long drawn out scenes of Mike driving his car somewhere, stopping in the middle of the road, only to walk 15 feet further forward of the car he was just driving. It's a bit much and near filler territory.
Then they would have known someone tipped off the border guards.
This makes it look like incompetence on their part.
Incompetence if they're lucky.
I'd think the first conclusion the drug lord would be likely to come to would be "So, they've been getting into my supply? Have they been selling it on the side or using it themselves?".
He might come to "Well, they're just idiots" eventually, but I don't think that'll happen before a pile of bodies suddenly shows up in the middle of the desert.
Exactly. This way the suspicion is pointed inward at their own people, and not outward at "who would call and rat on us, who else would benefit from this."
That's the doctor who patches up Gus and Mike after their little trip to Mexico.
Yep, and I love it. He gave a great performance in BB, and I cheered when I saw him turn up in BCS. In a way that didn't happen with some other cameos just because I didn't recognize the other actors until they were pointed out in behind the scenes videos, even though they played more substantial roles.
Also, just throwing it out there, but how rad would it be if an ep next season were called, "Here's what's gonna happen..."? Even if Vince and Co. were just messing with us.
Zoku Gojira on
"Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are." - Bertolt Brecht
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It also kind of felt like the episode ended abruptly =/
I don't know if you watched Breaking Bad in real-time, but there were multiple episodes that inched the plot along maybe a few steps, but otherwise just focused on characters reacting to things that happened and lots of deliberate cinematography. These episodes felt fine when you can immediately jump into the next one but feel pretty empty as the last thing you can watch.
That said, a few things did happen here:
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Its been proven time and time again
Any other show and I'd say that's just an offhand remark, but these are the guys who took Saul's offhand remark about working in a Cinnabon in Omaha and made it literal.
I can't help but think there's going to be a very good reason Chuck wasn't a part of Breaking Bad. Kim too.
Kim is the one who is going to get fucked in the whole deal.
any time theres a roadblock, a setback, or things dont go perfectly for chunk in general and he needs someone to blame, he falls back on his "illness"
I'm guessing that happens after "Here's what's gonna happen.".
I'm pretty sure I'm going to be disappointed.
Jimmy's collapse at the beginning of season 3 had him hit his head and coma stuff. That caused him to be found out.
Chuck tells him he knew it would eventually come to this, but that he's still there and won't give up on him.
Jimmy says he wishes he would have listened to Chuck, that he was always right.
Cause in the flash fowards Jimmy isn't exactly happy about the way things turned out. We gotta remember, Saul has absolutely fucked up his life.
And fuck Chuck.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I'm like 90% that the crazy shit is going to be:
He doesn't like the situation in the first place, and if he's given an out I think he'll probably take it.
The PI was hired to do a job. We don't really know how dedicated to his job he is.
Fair chance he rolls over for a better paycheck, especially if he hears that Hamlin is going to flop.
I'm also interested with how much black and white present exposition we'll eventually get from the show.
I'll definitely agree the show has dragged a bit in some places, and felt a bit uneven, but the style really is there. I love some of the touches they do, like when Mike's standing outside the clinicia gratita and how his plan worked out.
How do you guys think the circle will be squared on the name change and how does Kim play into it all? Definitely going to be in the trial for both, I think.
Did anyone else notice
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
With Mike, there are no questions. What happens to him? He ends up working for Gus and seems to be pretty happy doing so. He stays pretty much the same character. There was a time when there were questions and the prequel character was interesting. Primarily the question "how did he turn to crime?". I just don't think there's anything left to answer. His ingenious and complex schemes are starting to reach parodic levels.
I love the character of Mike and want them to drop him before he stops being interesting. This show isn't a two hander, it should primarily be about Saul. Failing that, there are characters that deserve the screen time and development more, like Kim. Kim, in fact, is one of the only characters where we have no idea where she ends up. She's really interesting, and wonderfully performed. Give me more Kim and less evidence of a writer's room sitting around saying "what incredible thing did Mike do this week?"
Law and Order ≠ Justice
ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
That's my take. somehow Saul gets mixed in to all of Mike's side story stuff in a way that transcends eating a chicken dinner.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
There's something to be said about him getting too much screentime compared to Kim, but like it or not the show has sorta positioned him as the deuteragonist while Kim is only as important as Hamlin and Chuck.
It's feels like Mike's side of stuff provides the prologue feeling so Jimmy's doesn't have to. Some people want this to be BrBa Season Zero, and they can sorta get that from the Mike story, while Jimmy's can be concerned only with telling the story they want to.
I now know way more about the 'shoes on utility lines' thing than I ever thought possible.
I guess Mike isn't perfect after all.
This is why I like the focus on mike.
Shows us behind the scenes shit. All we've gotten with Mike in BB is basically the highlight wheel that shows him as some super human ultimate badass.
While he's still a bad ass, BCS has shown it to be born from cleverness and perseverance, not from some godliness.
The only real problem I have with what he did, is it was "show cool" and not "what he would have done". Because the amount of danger and planning he did to accomplish that (not to mention laws he broke), would have been equivalent to just calling the border with a hot tip and plate #. Its a "stupid move" that was a "cool tv move" and I'm pretty alright with it.
I'm not cool with showing the audience surveillance duty in near real time. Or long drawn out scenes of Mike driving his car somewhere, stopping in the middle of the road, only to walk 15 feet further forward of the car he was just driving. It's a bit much and near filler territory.
This makes it look like incompetence on their part.
Incompetence if they're lucky.
I'd think the first conclusion the drug lord would be likely to come to would be "So, they've been getting into my supply? Have they been selling it on the side or using it themselves?".
He might come to "Well, they're just idiots" eventually, but I don't think that'll happen before a pile of bodies suddenly shows up in the middle of the desert.
Yep, and I love it. He gave a great performance in BB, and I cheered when I saw him turn up in BCS. In a way that didn't happen with some other cameos just because I didn't recognize the other actors until they were pointed out in behind the scenes videos, even though they played more substantial roles.
Also, just throwing it out there, but how rad would it be if an ep next season were called, "Here's what's gonna happen..."? Even if Vince and Co. were just messing with us.