Here I am, at the end! read through it all. Wondering why "not so many people were commenting"? well, one of them waited for the episodes to be available on Netflix and watched them all one episode per day!
So, here we are at the end, reveling in the beauty of one of the best "slow" series. There is a serious ability to be applauded for building a world so captivating, that scenes where nothing happens seem so enticing.
The first episodes seem slow. Having two wasted guys doing stupid shit around town screaming "50% off!" seem so trivial compared to what happened in the latter episodes.
Some random thoughts here and there:
- I still don't understand why Jimmy entered Howard's property to throw the balls from inside to outside, especially since he was not seeing where the car was. Did I miss something? have I misunderstood the layout of the house? to me it felt like he climbed inside Howard's premises and throw the balls out in the streets.
- The desert scenes were awesome, no wonder Vince Gilligan directed that episode, he really learnt from BB to do these shots. I thought that they were gonna use the ambush to get the car from the sole survivor of the shootout, maybe Jimmy should have pretended to walk casually, notice the car and run in the desert to force the guy to come down and chase him by foot, allowing Mike to shoot him.
I've read that the car was drive by a stuntman who does these kind of crazy sheaningans - so no CGI or tricks involved, there was a guy in the car (with the proper harnesses and safety measures of course) who literally and for real flipped the car he was driving to crash it. Wow.
- A long time coming, and yet I was not ready to see Kim...... break bad. When the stuff you propose to SAUL GOODMAN leave him worried, you've gotta wonder what you're doing. It's the equivalent of having Ozzy Osbourne concerned for your drugs habits.
- Also Kim is all kind of badass. Standing up to Lalo Salamanca telling him angrily to get his shit together was more than impressive. Wow.
- I'm still not sure at how the showdown in Mexico will go down. Gus realized that Juan Bolsa (second in command with only Don Eladio above him) wanted to get the bailout money. Why? he favors Gus? he wanted Lalo to rot in jail? who called the hit on Lalo? Bolsa himself? they made a point of making Lalo look at the bottle left by a suddenly gone Nacho - did he realize it was Nacho that opened the doors?
Also, I bet everyone though that "Something terrible" was what would have happened in Mexico, maybe Nacho had to kill a lot of people to get to Lalo.... but it was Kim's idea of framing Howard. Again, wow.
About Kim... I don't think she'll die, Saul Goodman as we know it in Breaking Bad is too joyful and too casual with women to be destroyed and heartbroken by Kim's death. Either Saul leaves her for her own good, realizing what a toxic influence he became on her, or Kim goes through with the plan to frame Howard, gets caught and disbarred, and leaves ABQ.
Totally cheesy scenario but imagine Howard facing a disbarred Kim claiming that Jimmy ruined her, copying the final Walter / Skyler meeting.
Kim: "Howard, you have to understand, all the things I've done..."
Howard: "If I have to hear one more time you defending Jimmy..."
Kim: "I did it for me. I was good at it. It made me feel.... alive"
Great Rolling Stone interview btw. I love how Vince is so self conscious about the rules of writing, and how they are committed to stick to the landing. I totally forgot by now but also after El Camino I've read a passage in an interview that made me realize how much he's serious about the rules of writing and offering a quality product. Total opposite of the writers of Game of Thrones.
Anyway, to think we're at this stage thanks to a throaway line in Breaking Bad, that they had Saul say ("It was not me! it was Ignacio! did Lalo send you?") just to write up a generic "this lawyer has shady connection" scene. That's like getting Scenes from a Memory just because Petrucci thought it was clever and witty to add the tag "Part 1" to Metropolis for no real reason at all.