I guess I'm in the minority that I enjoyed the finale. You were never going to meet the energy/intensity of last week.

But, you needed a gear-grinding episode to start to understand how Jimmy, himself, begins to understand that he's Saul (who is actually Slippin' Jimmy with a law degree).

The one thing I'd say is that it seems a little abrupt toward the end. I'm not sure we really knew enough about Marco to connect that his words were enough to combine with Chuck's betrayal to make Jimmy understand who he really is.

But, I'm OK with that because the season on the whole was terrific. And I'm much more excited to see a Season 2 where Jimmy is on the direct path to Saul than I would be him slogging through another law firm and trying to figure out how/why he gets out of there.

I think Hamlin turned out to be a quite good character but I hope Season 2 is less Kim/Hamlin and more Mike/Nacho.

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You know me like that.

i read that review too, and i do agree with a lot of it. i really liked most of the episode. his decision at the end didn't add up. not the way the structure of the episode had been put together. the whole time, it was leaning toward the "one last hurrah" for jimmy. he is goaded into doing "one more fix". it leads to his friend's death, seemingly ending that lifestyle for him. but then, he decides suddenly that everybody was right all along--even though he has proven everyone wrong. his brother, marco. he was on a better path. typically what makes a person fall off the right path is a traumatic experience that makes them give up again. like, if he'd have taken the position with that other firm, and then they screw him over somehow...he comes to realize...hey, i'm better off as slippin' jimmy, the hell with being honest.

but honesty was getting him somewhere. so the decision felt more like...the writers realized they needed to take this to the next level and so they wrote an ending that fit that need. but it didn't necessarily justify it. i never felt that jimmy was really convinced by marco by anything marco was telling him. and like jimmy said, it was going to take time to make money. plus, he knew he was going to make "big bank" by getting this deal with HHM and the other firm. there was no credible reason for jimmy to say what he did at the end of the episode and leave. it was completely against the logic of the episode and the character.

to justify it as "this is what we see as saul" doesn't make up for that. you're not supposed to know what he becomes at this point. and to get to point B, you need a real reason.

i'll still stick with the show because it is, for the most part, very well written. but that was a very weak ending.

That doesnt work. You gotta start with episode 1.

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CSFMB 2014 Nascar Pick 'em Champion

We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan

i think you can skip the 1st season. i can tell the show will be good but this was all back story and character setup. the good episodes are coming, especially at time draws closer to when he meets bryan cranston

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

My initial reaction was the same.

But, as I thought more about it, I get this ending. It's the culmination. Chuck's revelation at first was incomprehensible to Jimmy. Then he goes to Cicero and does his thing. His friend dies telling him that this was the best week of his life. He's about to enter a life-changing meeting and starts to ask himself while rubbing the ring -

"Is this what I want?"

"Why am I here?"

"Who am I doing this for?"

I can see a person snapping at that point. He is Slippin' Jimmy. He tried not to be because he owed his brother that and his brother shows no loyalty to him.

I think it works.

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You know me like that.

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Good people drink good beer - Hunter S. Thompson

<º)))><

Waiting for the time when I can finally say
That this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way

i think it also helps knowing he just got a $20k check and will be getting 100k or so more at least, so he has the means to start going on his own now.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

Agreed.

He realized Marco was his true "brother". He respects Marco more than Chuck and it was a fork in the road moment. Does he want to be an loyal con man (with a law degree) like Marco or a dishonest backstabbing high powered attorney like Chuck?


It probably could have been imparted better than it was, but I believe that is the thinking.

When he meets Gus will be even better

forgot about this guy. must be too black for me to remember. i liked him though

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

I don't think Saul knows Gus. Mike just happens to work for both. Unless you were talking about Mike.

I wonder why they didnt end the last episode at the point where Jimmy is walking towards the building & pauses tapping his pinky ring?

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CSFMB 2014 Nascar Pick 'em Champion

We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan

He absolutely knows Gus. He set Walter up with Gus.

In BB, Saul tells Walt that he "knows a guy (Mike) who knows a guy (?)....who knows a guy (Gus)".

This doesn't really work because Mike obviously knows Gus directly but maybe Saul never knew that or, at least, didn't know it early in the Walt/Saul relationship and that's just what Mike told him.

? guy could be Nacho and that's just what Mike told Saul originally about Gus.

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You know me like that.

I don't feel strongly about this show. It's funny and entertaining. Kind of just there. Nothing ground-breaking or particularly noteworthy about it.

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Back off, Warchild. Seriously.

Its up for debate here http://www.reddit.com/r/breakingbad/comments/2nooe7/i_think_gus_fring_and_saul_goodman_never_met


I think they know of each other at the very least Gus refers to " the lawyer" and Walt mentions him by name to Saul


But I took the "I know a guy who knows a guy" more as an explanation of the connection, not necessarily that he doesn't know the person

I enjoyed the whole season greatly but the season finale felt unfinished to me. An extra scene that flows into next season would have been better. Obviously we know he becomes a shady lawyer but the whole show will pretty much start from scratch next year since nothing really is carrying over.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

i watched it again. while i see where that comes from, here's my lingering problem: what's the difference between a con man and a back stabbing high powered attorney? a con man doesn't walk away from a sure thing, and that's exactly what jimmy did. this suit was going to pretty much going to get him into the big leagues, where he wouldn't have to be small fry elder law lawyer. he would be, in marco's terms, be "making bank". to stay with the case wouldn't have just been "the right thing" it would have been the smart thing and the profitable thing. he wouldn't be working with chuck, and he could make a name for himself with a rival firm. making enough money to eventually start his own in time anyway. but even if that was too "long" of a plan, he was already in the money. that's why i still don't buy him walking away. i can see them making sense of it in a second season, which i hope it gets, but i still think it was an unnecessary way to end the show.

dude it was given a second season right after they test-viewed the first episode or something. that's why they didnt have to hit you over the head with a big cliffhanger.

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He realized the only reason he is a lawyer is because of Chuck.

Mike and Marco and even Nacho are more honorable than Chuck.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Right but he doesn't leave the profession. He just becomes corrupt.

Starting back up in a few weeks and getting more positive buzz, at least from this critic... I need to go back and at least watch the last
episode from last season.


The point I’m getting at here is that season one of Better Call Saul was very good, and the second season, which debuts on February 15, is off to another strong start through the two episodes released to critics.

Season two picks up moments before season one ended and hits the audience with an immediate swerve. (Season one drops on Netflix February 1, so it might be good to double back on the finale — or just the last 10 minutes, or the entire season, up to you — before picking things up again.) We end up exactly where we ended up before, with Jimmy saying “I know what stopped me and it’s never stopping me again” and speeding away from the courthouse humming “Smoke on the Water,” but it fills things in a little and sets up his next step. Which, as pictured above, involves floating in a lazy river and drinking grifted boat drinks for a bit. It’s a fun step.

And that, as they say, remains the rub. Jimmy’s tormented by the push and pull between flim-flam man and respected member of the legal community, which he seems to want to be equally at different times, even while knowing he can’t really have both. He can combine them to make a suspicious flim-flam lawyer — which, as we know, he will — but right now we’re still mid-struggle. So, yes, he will put the suit back on and continue pushing forward with the big nursing home case he and Chuck started working on last season, but he’ll also fudge the lines a bit in some other areas, and his eyes will light up with glee when he does.

What else, what else…

Well, the cinematography and writing are still both top-notch. And the people who work at the show still appear to be having quite a bit of fun. Examples: Mike has a delightful little arc doing some work for the pill-selling pharmaceutical employee that features about three or four Level 5 Jonathan Banks Eye Rolls; Chuck is moving quickly from troubled genius mentor to something like a supervillain; and if you enjoyed last season’s “Chicago Sunroof” reveal (and who among us doesn’t enjoy an unhinged lawyer interrupting bingo to tell a group of seniors about pooping through a sunroof?), I am pleased to announce that the phrase “Hoboken squat cobbler” is a major part of Jimmy’s defense of a client in the second episode.

That’s one of my favorite things about the show. Not specifically the vivid scatological humor it sprinkles in (although that, too), but the fun, in general. A big part of that is the fact that they get to point a camera at Bob Odenkirk every day, but think about this: The first season of this show featured jokes about a sexually suggestive talking toilet and Jonathan Banks’ gut-wrenching “I broke my boy” speech. Not a lot of shows can pull that off. And the result of it all, which I realized while watching the second episode of season two, is that I think I might enjoy watching Better Call Saul more than Breaking Bad. That’s not me saying it’s “better.” One full season and two episodes of the second is way too soon to make a call like that, and the bar to clear is located somewhere in the stratosphere. But, for a drama, any drama, it is almost a joy to watch.

The other interesting thing about Better Call Saul is that, just by its nature as a prequel, we know where he ends up. We know at some point he makes the full-on transition from Jimmy McGill, small-time criminal lawyer working out of the back of a nail salon, to Saul Goodman, a flashy and felonious “criminal” lawyer working out of a strip mall. So the question with the show isn’t so much “Where is all this headed?” as it is “How are we getting there?” Season two might be too early for Jimmy to print up new business cards and buy fuchsia dress shirts, but so far, it’s definitely providing more insight into how that happens. Better Call Saul, like life, is about the journey, not the destination. And sometimes, also like life, it’s about drinking margaritas in a lazy river. So it’s like life in two ways, really.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Season starts in 5 Minutes.

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KEN WINS.

Making a pre-appearance.

Love this show.

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You know me like that.

I couldn't place him. Knew we had seen him before but assumed it was last season on BCS. Totally forgot about his appearance on BB. Didn't Walt blow up his car at a gas station?

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Nice start. I love how they played that guy. The yellow Hummer made me laugh. What sort of
Time frame are we supposed to be in at this point year wise? Whenever the H2 came out I guess.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

2002 I believe

Was the stock market guy the same one who had his car blown up by Walt?

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-- source

Yes, Ken Wins. Even though he has taken two HUGE L's in both appearances