Better Call Saul 4.08
Sep. 26th, 2018 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which we find out what Kim’s plan was, and I’m back to worrying about her, while also having an unholy (new) suspicion about where the Mike tale is going.
To wit: not with Mike having to kill Kai the insufferable, but with Mike having to kill nice, endearing Werner. The two of them having been bonding through the recent episodes, and this one has emphasized both that Mike really likes Werner - who is a good, quiet professional with a lot of (current) loneliness in his life, much like him -, and that Mike accidentally made a bid mistake of the type that can get you killed if you’re working for Gus Fring. So my new suspicion is that those people Werner met at the bar will indeed remember the German engineer who’s employed somewhere in the larger vicinity, and/or one of them will turn out to be an undercover cop, or working for the Cartel, or anything that Gus really does not need knowing about the future superlab. Presto Mike making the step to terminator-ness and losing some more of his humanity.
Speaking of people awakening their inner monster due to working for Gus Fring, Nacho evidentally has arrived at Jesse Pinkman in later s3, early s4 stage of self loathing nihilism, complete with using the financial gains from being a drug dealer for a big house and two women he’s utterly disconnected from (remember Jesse’s unfun party marathon?). He also sits in Hector Salamanca’s old position once it’s pay day for the smaller dealers, while an old buddy has Nacho’s old job, and when challenged displays ruthless fearsomeness. Somehow I doubt by the time is finished, Nacho will be alive - or if he is, there won’t be much left of who he used to be.
Which brings me to my latest fear for Kim. Outfoxing the state attorney with hundreds of faked letters from Huell’s hometown (partly written and brought to Lousiana for posting by Jimmy who adds a few touches as well as sourcing out letter writting to fellow bus passengers, or using the team he had for his advertising videos to answer some phonecalls from state attorney) and a stone cold demeanour, essentially bluffing her into lettting Huell go, was on the one hand a marvelous melding of Kim’s skills with the con artist skills she picked up when playing Giselle with Jimmy, and a welcome call back to the s1 days of the show. On the other, when it turns out that Kim’s pokerface and no-comment attitude she showed towards JImmy as well didn’t hide, as he and the audience thought, her rage at his carelessness, and on the contrary the high she gets from pulling this particular bluff off and getting Huell free underlines to her how boring the Mesa Verde stuff is for her now, a sinister new prospect occured to me. So far, the worst futures I could think of for Kim were either her dying or being professionally ruined due to Jimmy’s shenanigans. But between her celebration sex with Jimmy and her “let’s do it again” when he apologizes for risking so much for so little, I suddenly thought that Gould & Gilligan could be evil enough to let Kim go down the slippery slope of criminality not because Jimmy does something but because she knowingly takes those risks, and just as she did last season with her workoholism, gets into a spiral. If Kim ends up destroying all she’s ever worked so hard for... Jimmy getting disabarred for half a year was an annoying inconvenience for him. Kim getting disabarred for good would wreck her. And THAT might be the last push to become Saul Goodman, because I don’t believe Jimmy, as JImmy, could live with himself if that happened.
Conversely: could also see Jimmy envisioning just such a scenario and in order to save Kim from it do come to the conclusion he’s a bad influence and they need to end. And in order to ensure she will stay as far from him as possible, he creates the complete version of Saul Goodman. It’s the sort of quixotic gesture he came up with to undo some of the damage he did to Irene last season - create a situation where all the old people who adored him overheard him being as repellent as possible, ruin himself in their eyes. I could see Jimmy wanting to ruin himself in Kim’s eyes, IF he thought that would save her (which of course would be ignoring her “you don’t save me, I save me” from s2). And it would be the kind of unexpected and yet precedent twist this show does....
To wit: not with Mike having to kill Kai the insufferable, but with Mike having to kill nice, endearing Werner. The two of them having been bonding through the recent episodes, and this one has emphasized both that Mike really likes Werner - who is a good, quiet professional with a lot of (current) loneliness in his life, much like him -, and that Mike accidentally made a bid mistake of the type that can get you killed if you’re working for Gus Fring. So my new suspicion is that those people Werner met at the bar will indeed remember the German engineer who’s employed somewhere in the larger vicinity, and/or one of them will turn out to be an undercover cop, or working for the Cartel, or anything that Gus really does not need knowing about the future superlab. Presto Mike making the step to terminator-ness and losing some more of his humanity.
Speaking of people awakening their inner monster due to working for Gus Fring, Nacho evidentally has arrived at Jesse Pinkman in later s3, early s4 stage of self loathing nihilism, complete with using the financial gains from being a drug dealer for a big house and two women he’s utterly disconnected from (remember Jesse’s unfun party marathon?). He also sits in Hector Salamanca’s old position once it’s pay day for the smaller dealers, while an old buddy has Nacho’s old job, and when challenged displays ruthless fearsomeness. Somehow I doubt by the time is finished, Nacho will be alive - or if he is, there won’t be much left of who he used to be.
Which brings me to my latest fear for Kim. Outfoxing the state attorney with hundreds of faked letters from Huell’s hometown (partly written and brought to Lousiana for posting by Jimmy who adds a few touches as well as sourcing out letter writting to fellow bus passengers, or using the team he had for his advertising videos to answer some phonecalls from state attorney) and a stone cold demeanour, essentially bluffing her into lettting Huell go, was on the one hand a marvelous melding of Kim’s skills with the con artist skills she picked up when playing Giselle with Jimmy, and a welcome call back to the s1 days of the show. On the other, when it turns out that Kim’s pokerface and no-comment attitude she showed towards JImmy as well didn’t hide, as he and the audience thought, her rage at his carelessness, and on the contrary the high she gets from pulling this particular bluff off and getting Huell free underlines to her how boring the Mesa Verde stuff is for her now, a sinister new prospect occured to me. So far, the worst futures I could think of for Kim were either her dying or being professionally ruined due to Jimmy’s shenanigans. But between her celebration sex with Jimmy and her “let’s do it again” when he apologizes for risking so much for so little, I suddenly thought that Gould & Gilligan could be evil enough to let Kim go down the slippery slope of criminality not because Jimmy does something but because she knowingly takes those risks, and just as she did last season with her workoholism, gets into a spiral. If Kim ends up destroying all she’s ever worked so hard for... Jimmy getting disabarred for half a year was an annoying inconvenience for him. Kim getting disabarred for good would wreck her. And THAT might be the last push to become Saul Goodman, because I don’t believe Jimmy, as JImmy, could live with himself if that happened.
Conversely: could also see Jimmy envisioning just such a scenario and in order to save Kim from it do come to the conclusion he’s a bad influence and they need to end. And in order to ensure she will stay as far from him as possible, he creates the complete version of Saul Goodman. It’s the sort of quixotic gesture he came up with to undo some of the damage he did to Irene last season - create a situation where all the old people who adored him overheard him being as repellent as possible, ruin himself in their eyes. I could see Jimmy wanting to ruin himself in Kim’s eyes, IF he thought that would save her (which of course would be ignoring her “you don’t save me, I save me” from s2). And it would be the kind of unexpected and yet precedent twist this show does....
