r/betterCallSaul

I am a bit late to the party, but I am just finishing up BCS. I hate Saul, and I hate Kim at the end of it all. The way they repeatedly chose the dangerous/destructive path was exhausting and infuriating. I wanted to dislike Chuck, but in the scene where Jimmy got sworn in, he seemed like such a caring and protective brother. That one scene changed my whole perspective on Chuck. I don't think Jimmy is a bad person, but he is clearly deeply flawed and self-destructive, and Chuck was just fed up with his character flaws like I eventually grew to be.

I also appreciate that we got to see more of Mike's back story. I did not really like Mike as a person in Breaking Bad because he was just so cold and harsh. I saw from the BCS, though, that he really was a solid guy with a good heart.

I hated Lalo. He was a complete psycho piece of crap, but I love that they kept with the irony by making him an upbeat and personable personality.

Nacho was by far my favorite person. Even though he worked for the cartel, he had a good heart. He clearly tried to do as little damage as possible, even though his vocation was inherently harmful. I cried when he died.

Something I've been wondering for a while is how "obviously Jewish" Jimmy's chosen surname is to the average American.

It comes up twice. Once during the first meeting with Walt, where he says he chose it to sound Jewish because he thinks a Jewish lawyer is going to sound "better" in some way. (though we see in BCS he mostly chose it because it sounded good)

And the other one is the golf course incident with Kevin Wachtell, which has me really curious.

Saul goes all "moment you heard the surname Goodman you thought I'm Jewish and let your antisemitism show," etc. And it works.

Now, I'm not American and I was wondering how that would realistically go, at least nowadays.

Mike's best available play in the series was when he got hold of the Kettleman bag of $1.5 million. In that moment he could have solved his family's money problems while only screwing over three unethical people. As Jimmy pointed out to the kettlemans, none of the three could have gone to the cops or else they would all go to jail. Jimmy even thanks him for not taking the money to the Bahamas, knowing Mike could have totally gotten away with it. Had he done that he would have avoided his encounters with Fring, the legacy people, heisenberg, basically all the bad shit that unfolded could have been avoided by absconding with that bag. Mrs. Kettleman was content to tell people in trial that there was no money and keep telling that story for the rest of her life to avoid jailtime for Craig and herself (for bribing Jimmy). Jimmy would have no way of reporting Mike without severely incriminating himself for bribery and theft, and would have been left with little recourse but to try (and most likely lose) the case in court. Which would have been a legal black eye for Jimmy but would have undoubtedly been a better outcome for Jimmy as well.

I liked Suits for what it is - an office drama set in a law firm. They just throw around a term every so often to make it seem like it's a legal series, especially in the latter seasons.

Having just finished my second go at Suits and now rewatching Better Call Saul, I can now better appreciate why it's called the most legally accurate TV show. BCS gives us the (maybe) boring but super real aspects of law practice like grinding to find clients, doc review, and those long deliberate meetings. Watching Kim Wexler feels like following the career of a driven, intelligent, but sometimes-troubled career SmallLaw attorney.

Bravo, Vince and Peter Gould.

So Lalo's on the scene and pretty quickly finds parts of Fring's operation that don't add up, and the first bit of compelling evidence he finds is the meth Nacho picks up from the chicken farm being mixed in with other meth, which he verifies by inspecting it thoroughly and taking a few quick bumps

We know from earlier that Gus has finally started mixing cartel batches with locally sourced meth after secretly sabotaging their smuggling operation and having Gale test some samples, so it's fairly clear WHERE the meth is from, but WHY is it there?

Presumably Gus is positioning himself so he can make money free of cartel supply without seeming too suspicious, but it wouldn't make any sense for Bolsa to hide supply chain issues that reflect poorly on the Salamancas while also making less cash, and in any case that can't be his excuse for this particular batch of meth being switched because when he's asked to explain himself, he lies to Bolsa and Lalo that the missing Salamanca meth was stolen by Werner, and Gus' admission says that the meth was inferior in quality, which seems to be verified by Lalo's nose

So what's the real reason he gave them inferior meth? Given the elaborate lie he told, it's clearly part of his wider plans against the cartel, but how does giving the Salamancas inferior meth, which goes to dealers and gets mixed in with cartel meth anyways, further his agenda?

I know that first i have to finish the BCS before posting in the subreddit because there can be spoilers but im really impatient about talking about BCS vs BrBa war😭

Of course theres no need to prefer one over another but after finishing the BrBa, i find myself always comparing characters casts production etc.

I remember when i was young Bcs was stil running the season 5, i wasnt fully aware of how popular breaking bad became (its both because im from turkey and i wasnt into series that much) but i heard the BCS somewhere and told myself that i should give it a try and started watching the first episode

And oh my god how hardly i was bored by gene's cutscene which only took few minutes, and i closed it mid episode when jimmy crashed to those skater, to only watch it after so many years.

Me and my mom usually make movie nights but few months ago we were hooked up by tv show arcane and when it ended i searched up a tv serie so i can spend more time with my mom

Thats how our breaking bad journey began and im so grateful after breaking bad we started to so called prequel of breaking bad but from the first ever scene of gene. I got flashbacks, told myself that it was that serie!

Now we are at middle of season 4. But i wanna know if theres anyone who started to BCS before, like when i think both series have their own important things. Like i compare jane's death with Chuck's death, jesse was more emotional even tho jimmy learned it was his fault that chuck suicided to burn, but i read on internet that real fun starts after season 4* so let me know what you think

*: Im not into "real fun starts after this episode" thing because every episode of the serie must be fun so i can enjoy the whole serie, like people say breaking bad starts to get fun after season 3 but i had enjoyed each episode.

Its not like im not enjoying BCS but i can definitely say it has his own actions definitely a different show than breaking bad, and i love it.

So what is the order and what you think to watch first i wonder

Third time watching bcs and just can’t seem to understand why Pryce gives Nacho his hummer when he gets his baseball cards back. Can someone explain please?

Maybe i am too naive to understand the reason behind all they did.

But, all the time when they talked about doing something to Howard, different ways of balding him and in the convo they didn't even seem to be kidding. It felt like 2 psychopaths talking. Then what they did for their final act, rumouring him to be a drug addict, embarassing him infront of everyone.....just why? Howard was a bit of a dick in the start, but deep inside he was very kind, he tried to help people genuinely, including Jimmy and Kim, Chuck's death affected him so much and he even blamed himself for it. Then in one scene J and K were sitting outside HHM, drinking ig, that felt as something psychopaths would do, enjoying the fall of a genuinely nice person, for what? Putting Kim into doc review?

And when i saw other reddit posts, people were saying "I don't hate Jimmy and Kim for what they did to Howard" why?? Please tell me if i missed a whole season where Howard commited genocide.

Rewatching the series with the knowledge that Chuck was behind Howard's initial assholery, I was hard pressed to find any flaw with Howard's behavior toward those two. Even in the moment that turned Kim against him (accusing her of having a Jimmy problem) he was entirely accurate according to Kim's own admission. He turned the other cheek to Jimmy countless times and was still willing to offer him a job after the hooker and bowling ball incidents. He wrote Chuck's obituary knowing Jimmy wouldn't do it, then ran it by him for approval. He set up that boxing match to let Jimmy get it out of his system. If anything, Howard himself seemed to have a Jimmy problem, and his willingness to overlook Jimmy's massive flaws is what ultimately caused his demise. I can't really pinpoint any moment when he wasn't a generally upstanding fellow, even goes out of pocket to save the firm from Chuck's wrath.

I'm about to finish The Lincoln Lawyer (today or tomorrow) and I've decided to jump into Better Call Saul so I can get a gander at the other side of law. I tried getting into years and years ago, but there was too much going on in my life. I like to do reviews of what I'm watching and I'd like to do that here. Any tips or tricks I should pay attention to while watching? No spoilers please (obviously). My reviews can either be a nifty graphic card or pure text, whichever the community prefers. Totally happy to share samples if you want!

This show was the epitome of character driven story arcs, the acting & writing was insane. I know this is said beforehand by many people but its just truly astonishing.

I have watched many shows but the way this was portrayed and the transition of Jimmy McGill to Saul Goodman was done in a very methodical and moving manner. Especially the last season was a rollercoaster ride.

Also all the characters in this show was so well written, When I started the show straight after BB & Elcamino, I expected to like Saul, Mike, Gus etc. But the new character introductions in the BCS storyline was so well written. Kim, Howard, Chuck, Lalo (bro what a character this guy was, loved him), Nacho & others.

I think Kim Wexler has to be one of the best written female characters of all time, She probably have to be one of my fav characters also. Rhea Seehorn is a brilliant actress.

It was special from the first episode onwards, I previously had trouble watching BB, but I was instantly hooked in this show from start. Now after the whole journey it has left a hole in my heart on what to do next lol.

The story is a masterpiece.. I feel like rewatching it all over again.. Idk what to do now...

It’s a Mexican standoff on one direction it’s Walter than Mike,Chuck,Lalo and Kim with Jimmy in the middle. Each character is demanding Saul come there way which direction is Saul going and why?

I recently wrote a grad school history paper on Operation Paperclip - the classified military program in the 50s that secretly and illegally recruited hundreds of German scientists and engineers, many of whom were nazis intimately involved in war crimes, to assist in the development of rockets and other types of military tech for the US in the lead up to the Cold War. Realized recently how similar the arrangements Fring sets up in S4 for the construction workers and their housing is to the historical paperclip. Both began as clandestine, under the table operations bringing German/European experts together on a project, isolated from the rest of the world but at the same time living it up in expensive luxury etc. Making it even more similar is the fact that both operations were led by a more matured leading expert named Wernher. Wernher Ziegler for BCS and engineer Wernher von Braun for the team in paperclip.

Given this would make Gus the equivalent of the military/intelligence, what makes this even more interesting is the fact that, as it has been discussed on here and the BB sub a few times before, Fring was more than likely some kind of CIA asset or at least once was one: Starts his life out having some kind of involvement with the CIA/MI6 backed Pinochet regime and then from this position winds up being a major drug dealer and Mexico-USA drug smuggler right around the time of Iran-Contra, manages to later get his record scrubbed etc.

If we want to get really out there, Wernher Ziegler's last name is likely a reference to the character Ziegler in Eyes Wide Shut - of which lends itself to themes deeply related to the intelligence industry's relationships and associations with occultist ritual groups, the cousin's religious beliefs, Kubrick, and so on.

This may not be very original but I'm thinking about him and wanna write about him.

No, he's not just a more self righteous Walt. I think the main reason was his criminality was never a taboo to break (given his upbringing). It's implied Walt grew up fairly comfortable. While not much is said about his mother, I actually don't think she was a Livia Soprano, but was fairly loving and probably quite patronising, which Walt was embarrassed by (but that's it's own can of worms). Mike grew up poor on the streets of Philly with a failed deadbeat dad. Crime was normal to him. He likely fought in Vietnam voluntarily (it's implied he was a sniper) implying he was at some point patriotic and optimistic, and lost much of his optimism between this and taking his first bribe when he came back home and served as a Philly beat cop, seeing the worst of America day to day.

What Mike never lost (or possibly regained seeing his son’s moral steadfastness) was his value for human life. For Mike, whose life was a father he couldn't rely on, fighting a brutal war in Vietnam for nothing and then spending the next few decades of his life in a corrupt police force seeing the worst society has to offer (namely the wife beater he describes to Walt). To Mike, crime was the norm. To Walt it was the exception. Mike, a corrupt man who was never truly at peace with what he was doing, was set apart by his empathy. Walt, a straight arrow genius who was looked down on most of his adult life by people less smart than him was set apart by his pride and ego (and he eventually had an excuse to let his demons loose once he was told he'd be dead in two years).

Where they are similar, however, is A: they both enjoyed much of what they did (who doesn't like succeeding in their field?) and more importantly, their lack of value for morals. Mike dodges moral responsibility and tries to atone for it by taking the full brunt of emotional responsibility. We see this with Werner, a man Mike values, and the first time since he avenges his son that he breaks his new rule of never killing. Better Call Saul is largely the story of two guys trying to change and failing, and Mike killing Werner was the beeping red light, but what I find interesting was Mike choosing to kill Werner himself. Of course, a part of this was empathy and sparing him from being tortured by Gus’ men, but I also think Mike does this to atone for his role (as a criminal conspirator) in getting Werner killed so he can continue never having to do the right thing. By looking Werner in the eyes, telling him what has to happen and pulling the trigger on him he gets to play the “I’m a bad man, I know what I'm getting into and I'll accept the consequences” card, which is his main way of getting out of responsibility. Same with Nacho, who he beats up instead of letting Gus’ men do it, and looks in the eye and talks to before he's handed over to the Cartel.

The speeches Mike gives to Jimmy expose him a bit I think. His “I do this for my family and understand it's my fault if I get caught or killed” speech in the desert would be the prime example. I think this and Gus’ “a man provides” speech resonates with people, not just because it tells you to do more for your loved ones, but also the idea of having a free pass to be ruthless and immoral to do so is something people resonate with. Being good and moral is difficult, and people want to ease the burden by reducing the scope of their morality. Mike very much meets his match when he confronts Nacho’s father, ready to atone for Nacho’s death by telling a father his son is dead. He tells the father he'll seek justice, but the father shoots him in the eye with complete indifference as to which criminals face justice and which don't, which cuts deeply at mike who deep down sees himself as one of the good ones.