Better Call Saul 5.08
Apr. 9th, 2020 05:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which the New Mexican landscape is used to great effect, to put as unspoilery as possible.
There's a Breaking Bad episode - in season 2, I think - where Walt and Jesse get involuntarily stranded in the desert and have to make their way back to civilisation. Beyond the endurance test days in the desert provides, it does lead to promises, bonding, and Walt ending up naked since he has to fake amnesia in order to explain his absence to Skyler. Jimmy has told Kim what's going on, - well, the toned down, airbrushed version of it - , but that leads to her confronting Lalo Salamanca, and now the Cartel has her number. See, when Mike told Jimmy while they were trekking through the desert that he does it all for his family/the people he loves, that this gives him the strength to continue, I wasn't touched as much as I shuddered in ominous foreboding. Whenever someone makes that claim in this universe, it usually means nothing good for the people designated as loved ones, and their future relationships with the claim-maker. Ask Skyler White. And Hank. And Marie. And good lord, ask Jesse.
Incidentally, kudos to Tony Walton for his performance - there are Salamancas like the Cousins who creep out via silence, there are Salamancas who scare via over the top shouting and psycho-ness, then there's good old Hector who manages to be dangerous even when reduced to ringing a bell, but otherwise works via blunt intimidation and General unpleasantness. But Lalo works through bonhommie, and jovial good temper, and it's frightening as hell. (Last week, too, when Jimmy had to remind him whom he had killed and whose family that was.)
As with so many things, Jimmy had an option not to get into the sitution he finds himself in. But greed was stronger, and thus he ends up in the desert with Mike, a lot of corpses and an unseen pursuer whom he ends up playing bait for, luring him to his death, when he's past fear, past caring for anything but to get out of this. Note that the "world's second best lawyer" cup, his gift from Kim, symbol of their relationship through the series, gets shot mid episode already. The show has always used the desert well, when it did. I don't think the point here was to push Jimmy to discover his inner survivor - I mean, in the pilot, he already ends up in the desert and saving himself from getting shot by the gift of gab (and being a great lawyer, as he points out) - but to the point where he is ready to kill. It's not that Saul Goodman, years later, doesn't still have some empathy left under the business veneer (again, ask Jesse, or Skyler), but he's someone who can suggest death as a solution for inconvenient human obstacles. Now when that car showed up in the final reel, what I was afraid of was that it wouldn't be a faceless gunman but Kim, searching for Jimmy. It wasn't her. But later it occured to me what the blackest possible irony for all the "she's my wife" (Jimmy) and "doing all for the people you love" (Mike) would be - if Jimmy ends up in a "do it to Julia" scenario straight from 1984.
*goes back to fretting about Kim*
There's a Breaking Bad episode - in season 2, I think - where Walt and Jesse get involuntarily stranded in the desert and have to make their way back to civilisation. Beyond the endurance test days in the desert provides, it does lead to promises, bonding, and Walt ending up naked since he has to fake amnesia in order to explain his absence to Skyler. Jimmy has told Kim what's going on, - well, the toned down, airbrushed version of it - , but that leads to her confronting Lalo Salamanca, and now the Cartel has her number. See, when Mike told Jimmy while they were trekking through the desert that he does it all for his family/the people he loves, that this gives him the strength to continue, I wasn't touched as much as I shuddered in ominous foreboding. Whenever someone makes that claim in this universe, it usually means nothing good for the people designated as loved ones, and their future relationships with the claim-maker. Ask Skyler White. And Hank. And Marie. And good lord, ask Jesse.
Incidentally, kudos to Tony Walton for his performance - there are Salamancas like the Cousins who creep out via silence, there are Salamancas who scare via over the top shouting and psycho-ness, then there's good old Hector who manages to be dangerous even when reduced to ringing a bell, but otherwise works via blunt intimidation and General unpleasantness. But Lalo works through bonhommie, and jovial good temper, and it's frightening as hell. (Last week, too, when Jimmy had to remind him whom he had killed and whose family that was.)
As with so many things, Jimmy had an option not to get into the sitution he finds himself in. But greed was stronger, and thus he ends up in the desert with Mike, a lot of corpses and an unseen pursuer whom he ends up playing bait for, luring him to his death, when he's past fear, past caring for anything but to get out of this. Note that the "world's second best lawyer" cup, his gift from Kim, symbol of their relationship through the series, gets shot mid episode already. The show has always used the desert well, when it did. I don't think the point here was to push Jimmy to discover his inner survivor - I mean, in the pilot, he already ends up in the desert and saving himself from getting shot by the gift of gab (and being a great lawyer, as he points out) - but to the point where he is ready to kill. It's not that Saul Goodman, years later, doesn't still have some empathy left under the business veneer (again, ask Jesse, or Skyler), but he's someone who can suggest death as a solution for inconvenient human obstacles. Now when that car showed up in the final reel, what I was afraid of was that it wouldn't be a faceless gunman but Kim, searching for Jimmy. It wasn't her. But later it occured to me what the blackest possible irony for all the "she's my wife" (Jimmy) and "doing all for the people you love" (Mike) would be - if Jimmy ends up in a "do it to Julia" scenario straight from 1984.
*goes back to fretting about Kim*
no subject
Date: 2020-04-09 04:41 pm (UTC)I don't think the point here was to push Jimmy to discover his inner survivor
Absolutely. Lalo, even on relatively short acquaintance, already has Jimmy's number on this one. He does have cockroach-like survival abilities, and as long as hasn't already been shot dead, he'll make it through. Lalo has seen that in him and so have we, really, even entirely apart from knowing as viewers that it's not his fate to die there in the desert. But that moment where he enacts that plan to murder their pursuer... I completely agree: that is a turning point decision, I think, and one that is perhaps made all the more interesting by the fact that I'm really not sure if he even notices that it is. I doubt he's thinking about morality or the crossing of lines or what kind of person he is now, or anything beyond his own desperation and the need to do whatever it takes to get out of the situation and get a drink of water.
As for Kim, maybe I should be fearing for her life right now, but I think I'm still more worried for her soul.