The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Better Call Saul' Season 6, Episode 11 Recap

Episode Date: August 3, 2022

Joanna and Ben begin the podcast by talking about their recent Cinnabon adventures and dissecting the promo art for this week's episode. Next, they discuss the tie-ins between 'Better Call Saul' and the film 'The Days of Wine and Roses', and theorize if this series is following a similar plotline. (14:50) They then break down Gene's emotional phone calls with Francesca and Kim and discuss the varying implications of both. (20:04) This leads to a debate about Gene/Saul/Jimmy's morality arc and a thorough examination of the scam montage. (33:22) After the break, they take a look Walt and Jesse's appearance, and all the scenes that connect the 'Breaking Bad' and 'Better Call Saul' timelines. (52:52) Finally, they speculate on what lies ahead in the final two episodes.(1:11:25) Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Ben Lindbergh Producer: Chris Sutton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up, everybody? Are you tuning in to the Challenge USA on CBS? Well, tune in to me, Tyson Apostle, as I break down each and every episode with my co-host, Amelia Weddemeier. I'm also a contestant on the show, which gives you all the insider scoop. Amelia, how stoked are you to do this? Tyson, I'm freaking excited. I cannot wait to sit my butt down every single week to watch the show, then come here and recap it with you on the Ringer Reality TV podcast. This episode is brought to by Boris Head. What if we told you the taste of deep fried turkey is now available at your local deli? Well, Boar's Head just did that. Bursting with flavor, perfectly seasoned with that indulgent taste that usually means

pointing your whole day around it. Presenting the Friars Turkey Breast only from Boar's Head. The backyard tradition now available behind the counter. Visit your local deli today. Discover the craftmanship behind every bite. Boar's Head committed to craft since 1905. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty

limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango, Yuzu, chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sale sign storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joyna Robinson and joining me for my very special Cineban Report. It's Ben Lindberg. Hi, Ben. How are you? I am good. I didn't bring baked goods this time. I brought only my keen insights into Better CallSall, hopefully. The keenest, the sharpest, the synobon of insights.

We're here to talk about Better Call Sol, of course. That is what this show is all about. We're here to talk about season 6, episode 11, Breaking Bad, written and directed by the great Tom Schnaws. Before we get into all of that, few things. Programming reminders, as per usual. If you liked seeing Aaron Paul on this show, guess what? I talked about Aaron Paul a lot on another show on this feed covering Westworld with Danny Hyfitts and David Schumacher. It was an incredible Aaron Paul episode on Westwood.

World this week. Wow. Big week for our boy. Yeah, we're a big week for our guy. He did a fantastic job on West World this week. He was a very Aaron Paul-centric episode. It was great stuff. And also just a reminder that what we do here in case you're joining us for the first

time here at the end of all things is that, you know, we watch the episode on a Monday night. We listen to Chris and Andy talk about on the watch. We read all the interviews we can. We stroll around Reddit. We listen to the Insider podcast. We better cross all sponges over here. We put it all into a nice, tasty soup, or, you know, swirl it into like a cinnamon roll type shape, smear it with the frosting of our own insights. And that's what this podcast is for you.

You can add to that by emailing us at Kim Wexler lives at gmail.com. That's how you can reach us. I was actually, now that I'm thinking more and more about what's going on with Kim over in Florida, Ben, I'm thinking we should change our email to Kimwaxer thrives at gmail.com because that's what I want for her. Not just to live, but to thrive. Yeah. Kim Wexler, sell sprinklers at gmail.com. Yeah. It's a version of thriving. And then I also want to do a little corrections department.

We've got a few this week, mostly. I have the guilty party. Accountability and podcasting. Both had our issues. First of all, I said Maine instead of New Hampshire last week in terms of where Walt was at the end of Breaking Bad. Big misstep. I hate to dishonor the granted state of New Hampshire. Hampshire. So my apologies. Yeah, we have a lot of listeners in New Hampshire, it turns out.

They let us know. A lot of frosty emails. And then we fell into the fool's trap of trying to trace the timeline on a better call solid or breaking bad. I already, I've already talked about this, how this is a fool's errand. But a lot of people reached out in terms of our football timeline that we laid out in terms of when we're talking about. And all of it's moot because now we know we're in November for sure. So it doesn't much matter. But point of order, point of clarification. If you're in Nebraska in September enjoying some college football, there will not be as much snow on the ground as there was when Jean stymied Marion on her scooter on the street. So weather conditions in Nebraska, point of order this week. Yes. I think I aired in maybe discussing some of the

college football incidents there because they had referenced something that had happened in September, but they were discussing it in October. It seems pretty clear that maybe the first meeting between Jimmy and the security guards in the security room or Gene or Saul or whatever we're calling him this week happens in late October, maybe the 24th. It seems to be after a game on the 23rd. By getting so specific here, I'm opening us up to further corrections emails, but I'm going to risk it. But they referenced this, it's where the player hit his thumb on a helmet, right? But that had happened in September, but that player was then returning at the time that they were having that meeting in late October. So all of that seems to happen in late October.

So it didn't start at September. It didn't take place over an extended period, it seems. But I think it does not defy the climate of Nebraska. If anyone screwed up there, it was probably us, not the creators of Better Callsall. I love that my takeaway was like, okay, let's stop worrying about the timeline. And Ben's like, let me double down the specifics of the timeline. Do you want to hit our next one, which is less of a correction and more of an omission? Yeah.

So we mentioned that the scene where they're doing the Nathan Fielder-esque rehearsal in the field and they're doing the dry run for the department store scene, kind of a callback maybe to Jimmy's days as a bingo caller. But also, as listener and emailer Allen pointed out, this seems to be a pretty clear reference to The Dirty Dozen as well, and probably something that Jimmy as an old movie Aficionado, I'm clearly switching between names now for this character, which will probably be a theme in this episode. But that seems to be a reference to a fairly famous scene from that film where they're rehearsing their heist, their mission behind enemy lines in The Dirty Tousin, and they count out 16 steps, rhyming steps, very much like that scene. So it had been quite some time

since I had seen The Dirty Desson. So I did not make that connection, but we have a lot of smart listeners who did. I've never seen The Dirty DZZZZZN, and I'm really excited to watch it now that, I mean, I don't know why I've never seen it. It's a very important reference point in one of my favorite films Sleep Lus in Seattle.

So I definitely need to see it to get the full. Speaking of Dirty Dozens, I have, I wanted my Sinebond adventure yesterday. I would have gone on it this morning, except the synobon does not open before we're recording this podcast. So I had to do it last night during rush hour. But I said last night on our last week on the podcast that there weren't a lot of synabonds in the Bay Area.

Depending on your definition of the Bay Area, that is true. I got some people very frosty about my definition of the Bay Area. Yeah. I'm sorry if my stunt caused anyone to synisplain you because it seems like every time I opened Twitter for the past week, the Algo gave me tweets of you responding to someone who was tweeting at you about Bay Area Cineban locations. I should not have gotten into that conversation. Most of them were very pleasant.

That was the only one that got a little frosty. But anyway, point being, I polled a lot of people that I grew up with. And I was like, have you ever had a Cinnabon? And they all cited this one mall that's like over two hours away from us as like a place that they once had a Cineabon. But I never went to that mall as a kid. There were no malls that at Cinnabonds near me when I grew up. I checked. Anyway, I drove an hour round trip to get a Cinnabon last.

night to prove a point that it's not near near me in any way whatsoever. So thanks to the Southland Mall in Hayward where there was a derelict circus in the parking lot, but there was definitely a Cinnabon kiosk. I asked the lovely ladies at the Cinnabon kiosk if they too had seen a bump since Better Call Sol. They did not know what the fuck I was talking about. I'm telling you, Ben. I mean, I salute your commitment to the bit because you went way farther for your roles than I would have been willing. to go for mine. And I hope it was worth the trip, but it didn't pay off for either of us in trying to commiserate, trying to strike up a conversation with the Cinnibon employees about

better calls all just fell on deaf ears. It's pretty funny because there's a great interview with the Cinnabon VP over on Collider. Collider went and did some extra Cinebon shoe leather reporting and interview the VP. Like a really charming interview, to be honest with you. My favorite is when they asked this guy to pick a Cinnibon item. that best exemplified Gene and Saul and Jimmy, which was which? Really cute. That being said, this guy in the interview says it's really cool to our team members that are working in the bakery, the excitement that they get when people come up and ask them questions about Better Call Saul.

It turns them into rock stars. This was not our experience personally. That's what I was looking for when I went in. And I asked about the previous episode. I did not sense that excitement at my local Cineban branch and apparently not at yours either. So they need to send a memo out. or something like, hey, people are going to be coming in asking about Better Call Saul. You don't have to binge six seasons or anything.

At least five people maybe are going to ask you, and two of them are people who podcast. At least two people who host a Better Call Saul podcast might do this. Yeah. So I did like that in that interview, the Citibon VP of Marketing says that he uses his hands to eat the roll, which was my canonical method, even though he was quick to assure everyone that there's no wrong way to eat a cinnamon roll. He's fine with the Frank method. well. I used a fork because I was intimidated by the ocean of frosting. It was a lot of frosting. It's hefty. Yeah. When you said frosty before, I thought you were referring to your cinnamon roll consumption. But I hope it was tasty. It was delicious, delightful, of course. You know, I felt a little bit more American as I ate it. I also then, like, took a nap because I felt like sugar crashed. But anyway, I've had a Cinawan. Now I know. Excellent. Great. And it definitely enhances my understanding of this straight.

show that we love. All right, so let's talk about the promo art as we've been doing the last couple weeks. It is, God, oh my God, don't get mad at me. Mr. White is a round bottom flask? What is his flask? Yes, I think that's right. We need Jesse in here to clarify for us. Okay. It's the flask, the aforementioned flask from the episode, and then it's got a fish, some water in it, and a fish, a goldfish inside. And in that scene where Saul, I suppose, This is what we should call him in that scene, in the RV when he picks with a flask and is talking to Jesse and Walt about it. He said, I had a fish that could he use this as a vacation home. Right.

I went a little deep on my interpretation of this promo art. What is your interpretation of the promo art here? Well, I guess you could say that he is trapped in a sense, right? He can't escape his fate, the cycles of this character. I was thinking of his literal fish that he had at one point, which, speaking of that. fish, we have not found out who got custody of Swimmy McGill as he goes in some circles. So huge loose end, right? There's still time to resolve that, but we don't know what happened to the fish. Maybe we'll find out in a Kim episode.

I asked friend of the pot, Alan Seppinwall, what he made of this artwork, and he said it's the two worlds colliding, right? Like the Jimmy World and the Saul world, right? You've got an item from the Jimmy World inside an item from the Saul world. And I was like, sure, sure. I was like, but what is the fish always meant on the show? Like, what does it mean? And I found a great Reddit post from, I love reading Redditor names. It makes us sound very highfalent. Eagle Plump is the name of the Redditor here. But they wrote a great piece of post on, like, what the Goldfish means.

So the Goldfish, if folks don't remember, was purchased by Saul or procured by Saul as a cover for having seen Dr. Caldera. So, like, they go to see this vet who's actually a shady doctor, but he and Mike both, like, come away with animals as cover stories. But then, as we see over the seasons, Jimmy and Kim, like, care for the fish as it goes on. So this thing that was bought is like a mere cover, but then he actually like cares for it and takes care of it. So this writer wrote, I think the goldfish is basically used by the writers of the show to display whether or not Jimmy still cares about others. It's basically a symbol of his conscious.

His scrappy little heart of gold still faintly beating inside. But as you all remember Saul saying in Breaking Bad, conscious gets expensive, doesn't it? The moment we find Saul not caring for his goldfish anymore in future seasons, I think it's safe to assume that Jimmy McGill is gone. So, as you noted, where's the goldfish? Yep. We know where everyone else is. We know what happened to Skyler.

We know what happened to various hule is okay, free hule. We don't know what happened to the fish, though. That's an important point. A couple other, like, bigger picture things before we break down the episode. We got a bunch of emails in our question last week of like, is this the last gene episode we're going to see? We got a bunch of emails from people pointing out that. that the Insider podcast that we swear we listen to very closely and faithfully

mentioned a couple things like the fact that all the directors in the final run of episodes here went to sort of black and white film school. So, you know, I think there was no doubt after watching this episode that this is probably going to be the case, but we are going to get at least some black and white for the rest of the series. Yeah. I have so much respect for the Insider Pod's typical preservation of secrecy that I don't really listen to glean clues about what's coming so much as just details about what we've seen

already, but I should have listened more closely because that was a hint in respect. I heard that one, and then I just like went right over my head. And then also just the idea that Carol Burnett was like around for a while and like living in Albuquerque. So like Marian, we're going to see her. And I think the film school paid off. This series has always played a lot with light and shadow in almost a black and white movie way, even when it was all in color. So it's been a pretty natural transition. But like, last. week when Gene's face was half in shadow as he tried to tempt Jeff to join the game. And then again, when he tells him he isn't his friend, like we've seen that sort of imagery before to

symbolize something about Jimmy or Kim. But if anything, it's more noticeable now, though the black and white does make the color in the flashbacks pop. So after Nippy and the all black and white world episode, just starting with the teaser that was color, that was like, whoa, okay. There we go. We're back. Also, like, in this, is, again, due to the insider pot, I hadn't really realized until I heard them talk about it numerous times on that show, how different the camera styles were on Better Call Cell versus Breaking Bad. That Breaking Bad favored a lot of handheld, and Better Call Sol favors a lot of steady cam, or only steady cam that they don't do handheld on Better Call Cell. And so when we got handheld in the Breaking Bad moments in this episode, I was like, oh, yeah, there it is. Yeah, it's jarring. Yeah, absolutely. And then I want to talk about Days of Wine and Roses again.

This is something we talked about at the beginning of this season because it's the name of the premiere of this season. And we talked about how that story, for folks who maybe weren't listening to the podcast at that time, that is a story about two young folks, Jack Lemon and Lee Remick, who fall in love and Jack Lemon is a drinker and she becomes a drinker because she spends time with him and they sort of fall into this pit of Al alcoholism and dereliction of everything. And then he gets clean and she can't.

And the ending is ambiguous and sad. I'm thinking about it again as we think about like how Kim and we sort of thought like, okay, maybe they're doing like a Kim is the Lee Remick character in Days of Wine and Roses. What's clear in this episode as we talk about Gene's horrible relapse into you know, what is essentially his drink of choice, scamming, crime, however you want to put it. But not actual drinking, which he keeps in the hot water bottle. Right. That he's the Lee Remig character and she's the Jack Lemon character and she's the one who's gotten clean and hopefully will stay clean.

And there's like, as we anticipate that perhaps we will see that these two characters interact again, either next week or the week after that, there's a couple scenes at the end of Days of Wine and Roses to think about. out. One is, and spoilers for days of wine and roses, if you haven't seen it and care not to know what happens. But one involves Jack Lemon, the character who's gotten clean, going to a motel room and finding, you know, his wife in a, you know, on a bender. And she's just like having sex with a bunch of guys and drinking in in a motel room. And he goes and he tries to get her to go with him and she tries to get him to stay. And he ends up drinking again, not because he really wants to drink, but because he wants to be with her. and that feels like the only way he can be with her. And then he gets clean again, is clean for a long while.

And she shows up having been clean for two days to try to get back together with him. And she talks about all these men that she was, like, sleeping with while she was gone. And she said they met nothing to me. That reminds me a lot of like what we see in Gene in this episode or what we saw saw, like, they mean nothing to me. She says they had no identity. I never gave anything of myself to them. I thought they'd help me from being so lonely. But love is the only thing that keys you from being lonely.

and I didn't have that. And then she's like trying to make this bid to get back together with him. And he's very resistant because they have a kid. He's like doesn't want her around the kid. She's only two days sober. And he's like, that's not a stable thing to build anything on. And she says, I know it could be all right if you'd help me. I know I could if we were together and things were like they used to be.

And I wasn't so nervous. I need to be loved. I get so lonely from not being loved. I can't stand it. I love you. And he says, I'm afraid of you. And he says, do you remember how it really was? You and me and booze.

threesome, do you remember? And, like, that's, I mean, if we think about, like, Kim and Jimmy and, like, we've talked about this before, but, like, the scam being the aphrodisiac of their relationship and it being the third member of their marriage, essentially.

And the way that that film ends is on a note of ambiguity. Like, thinking about how this might end, do I see a happy, after this episode, do I see a happy ending on the horizon? I'm not sure. It's a lot harder to see now at all. And I'm not sure I think he even deserves one.

And most of all, I just want Kim to keep her head clear and, you know, safe and free. Yeah, exactly. What do you think of all? I mean, this is, I'm not, they're obviously not mapping one-a-one a days of wine and roses. They're giving us, like, a little hint that this is something of an inspo. But, like, what do you think about an ambiguous, slightly, sad ending as a possibility for the show. Yeah, I mean, it seems like there are a lot of gender-swapped parallels there and we're going down a similar road.

And the ending of last week's episode, which could have, in theory, been a finale of sorts for Gene. Clearly, it was not. But there was that shot at the end, right, where he hangs up the suit and he walks away and it's sort of ambiguous because he has been scheming a little bit. But it looks like maybe he's put that behind him. if they had ended there, if that had been the end of the series, or if they had decided to just flash to Kim or flashback or wherever, then that might have been a similar note where we wouldn't have been confident that he could stay on the straight and arrow, but it wouldn't have been as disastrous a relapse as we saw this week. So is there time now with two episodes remaining, presumably some flashbacks in parts of those episodes as well as one would imagine a big focus on Kim? is there time, given what happened with Gene this week, to see him redeem himself or to just, you know, try to pitch himself to Kim as someone who is not currently off the wagon the way he was this week? That's a lot to compress into two more episodes, even if they're long ones like this one was. So I'm worried. I'm worried about Jimmy, Saul, Gene, and certainly about his future, if any, with Kim.

I was very disappointed in him in this episode. I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed. I'm also a little mad. Okay, so let's start with this. I know it starts with the Breaking Bad Interlude, but I thought maybe we would do all of that maybe at the center of our discussion here. So let's start with our Francesca phone call. Yeah, the pay phone that was promised. Ben. Ben has done such a good job of keeping these things in our mind. He mentioned the call. I think last week, you've been mentioning the diamonds, which we'll talk about, like these, like nothing subs by Ben. He remembers all the little things that have been promised. And then. surely will be paid off. So let's talk about this phone call. Like, how did it sit with you? Did it feel like something that was very additive? Or did it feel like now let's check in with all these characters and loose ends that we've been talking about?

Well, in typical Breaking Bad, Better Call, Salle fashion, they didn't know what they wanted the phone call to be when they initially introduced the idea of the phone call. So that was just there, a loose thread. And they had to figure out whether they wanted to pick up that thread. and if so, what they wanted to do with it. So that has been successful before. That process has led to Nacho and Lalo and has helped make this series what it is. This didn't feel as essential,

but I think it does lead to the relapse, right? It gives him a reason to talk to Kim or attempt to talk to Kim and figure out what's going on with him. It's also, I guess, sort of fan service in a sense in that we get some closure on other characters. or get to find out what everyone's up to, right? But, you know, this could be the kiss goodbye. This could be the last call.

This could be closing the book on his old life. Instead, it's opening the book right back up again and pledging him into the depths of his darkness. Like, he almost gets away. He almost gets off this call without Kim coming up. He almost drives away. But, of course, that never happens at this series in this franchise. They never stay on the good choice road.

they always turn around, make the bad choice. And the call was a crossroads, as was the literal crossroads that we saw. It is very interesting and significant that he doesn't ask about Kim. He can't bring himself to ask about Kim. He asks about literally everyone else but Kim. And it's Francesca who brings King up. And it's almost like, you know, Francesca is not sentimental about Saul, right? She can't wait to get off the phone.

She doesn't even really want to pick up the phone. And as we saw quite a ride, she doesn't say goodbye. She's there mostly for the money at Saul who's hanging on the phone because he has no human contact or no substantial human contact in his life. The only people he talks to are the ones who work for him and the ones he's scamming. And Francesca is working for him here too. But at least it's a link to his old life, someone he used to know. And so when she says they have internet where you are, you know, he could Google these things. But he also just wants to talk.

I think he's hungry for that connection. also. So it's just sort of a sad, pathetic thing. And maybe Francesca mentioning Kim, it's almost like there's a little bit of just throwing him a bone there, like taking pity on him, right? Like, it's the last thing she says when she's just like, oh, there's nothing else to report. Oh, well, I did get one call. Kim called. She asked about you. You know, it's just trying maybe to do a kindness to him, whether he deserves a kindness or not. But ultimately, it ends up being the thing that. triggers his addiction. And I think that question of not just connection, but connection specifically to someone who knew him at the height of his power. Yeah. You know, some people have pointed out the parallel to Walt in the aforementioned episode, Granted State, where he is lonely and isolated in the cabin and he basically pays Ed the vacuum salesman to like stay with him a little while longer. And I feel like it's not just loneliness, which it absolutely is, but it's also like, you're someone who knew me when I was more powerful.

And it's not like Ed cares or Francesca cares at all. These are two of the least like I give a shit people that we've ever met. But like it ties into that Osamandias concept, I think. So later in the episode, Saul says this thing to Walt when the RV is out in the desert, he says like, you know, before we get buried under thousands of years of sand. And I like watching it, I was like, oh my God, it's an Osamandias reference. And then everyone under the sun was like, it's an Osama. And I was like, okay, Joanna, you're not, you're not very smart.

Everyone got that one. Okay. But Osamandia is the poem that gives one of the final episodes of Breaking Bad. Its title is about, you know, a statue, broken down statue in the middle of the wasteland, look at my works, Eamity and despair. But the entire empire that this person had built was a wasteland. So what is the point of it all? And this is the whole thing with Walter White. Like his legacy is empire.

becomes nothing. And when Gene here is asking about the money, as Ben has been reminding us, he has a stash of diamonds. So he's not asking

about the money because he needs money. He's asked about the money and the laser tag and the nails. That was his empire. That was my look on my works,

you might be in despair. And it's all, sall gone, you know, to quote a future episode of this show. Exactly. And in that scene

where Jesse asks who Lalo is and he says nobody, Saul says nobody. I mean, that's true at this point, right? Lalo is already buried and forgotten, literally buried, and Saul thought he was about to be buried in that scene. And it's a callback also, I think, to plan an execution when Howard asked Lalo who he was, and Lalo said, nobody.

Now it's true. He was believed to be dead then. Now he really is, and he was never really a public figure in Albuquerque, at least under his real name, so it's not shocking that Jesse would not have heard of him. but also he's just been wiped off the board now. And everything that he was has been forgotten by everyone who wasn't there. And so it's the same thing, right? With Saul, he basically has disappeared.

Literally, he has. No one knows where he is. His money-making empire is in ruins. And I think that is why he reacts like that, because like Walt, he's unwilling to walk away. We talked about that last week, right? He's not content to just be jean and live off the grid. and also likes Walt, he seems to crave some credit for what he did.

Like, when he finds out that the government shut down his whole operation, he says, so it's gone, it's all gone. Those sons of bitches took everything. It's his legacy that's gone. And maybe also he has some resentment toward Walt, not only for Walt's role in Saul's downfall, but also because Walt got the notoriety. He calls Walt Maestro on the call when he's talking to Francesca. And maybe there's some bitterness creeping into that in light of what we look.

learned in this episode that Saul viewed Walt as clay he could mold. He thinks of Walt as someone he helped create, and now Walt has eclipsed him, and Saul has sort of been forgotten. So even though Walt is dead and Saul is still alive, in the ways that are important to him, he's pretty much gone too. I'm hesitant to fall back into the timeline trap. And I'm hesitant, especially after Stranger Things, this kerfuffle around Will Byers' birthday on that show and how the creators were like, oh, we just kind of forgot. Yeah. But I think it's significant November 12th of 3 o'clock, the date that saw slash Gene said he

was going to call Francesca, that is canonically Jimmy McGill's birthday. We've seen it on his driver's license. November 12th is his birthday. And not only that, it's his 50th birthday in 2010. This is where Walter White starts on his 50th birthday in Breaking Bad, if you remember the fake bacon and a 5-0 on his eggs. Like his 50th birthday is what kicks things out for Walt. This here, this breaking bad incident for Gene Tachovic in Nebraska is on his 50th birthday.

Should I pin anything to that, Ben Lindberg, or am I setting myself up to get disappointed again by timeline things? I don't think that's a reach, given that he does some Breaking Bad himself in this episode. I think that tracks. All right, let's talk about the Kim Call. We're going to talk a little bit more about the Kim Call and sort of like the end of this episode, give you guys a chance to jump off because some Redditors have dug up some things and we'll talk about that later. We're not going to talk about it here in case everyone wants to keep themselves completely clean. But I think I can say in a clean way that Tom Schnau's like this

call that we hear that is either to Kim or someone who works at the sprinkler company in Florida that angers and upsets Jean so much that he goes on this bender here. Tom Schnauz did tell Lollywood reporter, we will hear the deep. of that call in a future episode, that they kept it, you know, very intentionally vague. What do you want to say about this Kim call here? Well, we don't know what he hears. And the first time I watched this, I wasn't sure. Is he talking to Kim? I was leaning toward that. But maybe he finds out that, who knows, Kim has a new last name now. She's remarried, right? I mean, there are all sorts of things that could set him off here. But clearly, there's a parallel. He kicks the phone booth just like he kicked the trash can. at HHM, right? And Kim was the one who was there to pick it up and put it back in its place. And now she's not there. So it's just broken class all the way down. There's no one to clean up the mess. And this is what sets him off. Whatever he hears here was not what he was

hoping to hear when he reconnected with Kim after however long it's been. Like, clearly he's been keeping tabs on her to some extent, which is not surprising, right, given her significance to him and the fact that at least as Saul, he had Mike at his disposal to dig up info on anyone he wanted. So if Kim moved to Tarpon, whatever it was, Road in Titusville during those years, then he could have gotten the skinny on that and kept track of her. But, you know, she's probably never been far from his mind, even though he wasn't necessarily going to open that up again until Francesca mentioned it. Once she did, it did not take him long to decide.

to pick up the phone and what? Who knows what he was hoping to do? Did he want to rekindle that connection? Did he think that the fact that she asked whether he was alive was so significant that it was an invitation, right? That she was sending a message to him. Call me, let me know you're okay. Would this be the spark that brought them back together? Whatever he was hoping, his hopes did not come to fruition in this conversation.

I love that connection to the trash can and had thought about that. But I think the breaking of the glass specifically is, so significant because again, the episode ends with another broken paint of glass, right, when he breaks into the Marx house. And I was thinking, not to beat a dead horse, but I was thinking again of Days of Wine and Roses because like a really significant scene in that film is a bender that Jack Lemmon's character goes on where he breaks into a greenhouse. It was so interesting. I was watching this interview that Jack Lemon gave Johnny Carson talking about that scene. And he was saying, First of all, that it's like the hardest scene he's ever had to shoot

because it's just like it's long and broken glass and broken pots of plants and all this sort of stuff. But also that similar to that scene in two episodes ago, the breakup scene between Kim and Jimmy, the director of that film, Blake Edwards, insisted on shooting the entire scene all the way through despite the fact that they had cuts. So they did it top to bottom all the way through to build that momentum

of this huge, huge scene that Jack Lemon has, But the idea of like broken glass everywhere is so significant. And that idea of like that's a bender that he goes on after trying to get clean. Like he tries to get clean a couple times. And it's like one of those things where it's like becoming an alcoholic is something of a slow road. But when you relapse, you relapse so hard. And that's sort of like in all the dignity is gone. And all the careful control is gone, at least in the instance of this character.

And I just think that that like idea. of glass breaking, whether or not it's a specific days of Winder Rose's illusion is such a so emblematic of what happens here because he just, he breaks all the way in a really ugly way in this episode. Yeah, he breaks glass in case of emergency. Basically, it's an emergency for him at this point. It's a crisis for him, yet another in a long line of crises. And I guess between the crossroads shot and the shot of Gene lying in the grave that

Walt and Jesse Doug for Saul that we see a little later, not the subtlest episode from an imagery standpoint. Sure. I guess you could put the broken glass in that category, too. But I'm willing to accept it and go along with it because a lot of those shots are so striking. And I think that Gene slash Saul losing control here, it's a good illustration of it. I think just slamming the phone would not have sufficed yet to break some stuff too.

Break something that is so, like, sharp and dangerous, you know. All right, so why does he do it? The money angle, again, as Ben has been careful to remind us, there was a gene sequence where we saw that he has a bunch of diamonds and a band-aid container, right? So he doesn't need the money. And Tom Schnauz has been on the interview circuit clarifying that. Because I think if you didn't remember about those diamonds, I think it would be very easy to watch him talk about all his money being gone

and then watch him try to earn a bunch of money and think that that's the connection there. But something that Tom Schnau said to Hollywood, reporter is this idea. He's like, he just stacks the money and shoves it away somewhere. You know, we see him spend it a bit on like sex workers and stuff like that, but like, he's not, he's not splashing out in the Saul Goodman way necessarily. And what Tom Schnau says is how much money you earn during these scams is a way of scorekeeping how successful you are.

And it just is just another instance of Jimmy trying to find, or Gene or whoever you want to call him, a measure of self-worth. It reminds me of that scene in Parks and Recreation with Adam Scott's character, the great Ben Wyatt is super depressed and makes like stop motion animation. It's a fantastic meme, right? And he's like, could a depressed person do this, right? Like, Gene's like, could a worthless person make this much money off a scam? You know, it's just like him trying to find, because he has no source of it inside of himself,

an external measure of worth. Yeah. Yeah, there's a line Howard says to him in the first. first episode of the series, you know, Jimmy, sometimes in our line of work, you can get so caught up in the idea of winning that you forget to listen to your heart. And that's what happens here. Now, his line of work at this point, not just being a manager of the local synobon, but also just being a scam artist. And we see him forget to listen to his heart or decide not to listen to his heart later in this episode when he has a little crisis of conscience. And he just decides to suppress that as he so often does. So yeah, he's, He has the bag of diamonds. I don't know how easy it is to convert diamonds into cash in Omaha. So maybe that's just there in case of emergency, too. That's like in case he has to do the disappearing act again.

But between the diamonds, plus that steady Cineban paycheck, he doesn't really need the money, especially if he's content to keep living his humble life as Gene, which he obviously isn't. So I don't think it's that he's saving up to make some grand gesture to Kim or take a first class flight to Florida or whatever it is here. Like, it's more than just the money. So so much for leaving the Saul suit on the rack last week and walking away. Like any hope that he had gotten Saul and slipping Jimmy out of his system with one last heist just went out the window this week. Went through the broken glass.

And it's not surprising. We've seen him just fall prey to this pattern before. But it's still disappointing because we've been through so much with this character. We're so close to the end now that I don't know that this takes away the possibility of redemption, but it makes it seem like a longer shot that this is a full-scale sol relapse here. Yeah. When I was talking to Alan Seppelmaul about this, he sort of characterized it as like, it's one of those episodes or one of those moments where a show forces you to realize that you've been sort of rooting for a bad person this whole time.

And I don't know that I'm like ready to call him a bad person, but I think what's true is that Jimmy, is someone who we loved and were worried about when he would relapse into this problematic behavior. Saul is someone who did way worse, far worse things. We haven't had to spend too much time with Saul since we fell in love with Jimmy, but that that's the case. And then we were hoping that Jean was like, okay, I'm coming out. But as the case, with relapses and all sorts of stuff, I'm almost ready to call Gene something worse than Saul or Jimmy, and that's so hard to watch. That's, you know, something that's new to this episode. Because we thought we maybe understood the trajectory of while we were on here.

But that's not what we get. Which forces me to ask the question, you know, the way that the creators of the show have been talking about Saul now after this episode is that Saul is the narcotic. Saul is the numbing agent that Jimmy uses when he feels pain. And you go back and you think about the various times that Saul crops up in better call Saul, when Jimmy is refusing to deal with Chuck or, you know, all these various things. Yeah. Or the Kim breakup, of course, where he just goes straight into Solmode, which happens here again. So you're forced to ask yourself a question that I don't want to be. Like, was Chuck right about Jimmy, right? Here's a pair of like very famous choice Chuck quotes about Jimmy, right?

I know you. I know what you were, what you are. People don't. change. You're slipping Jimmy and slip in Jimmy I can handle just fine, but slip in Jimmy with a law degrees like a chimp with the machine gun, the law is sacred. And then Chuck always says, of course, is very famous chicanery speech. He'll never change. He'll never change. Ever since he was nine, always the same. Couldn't keep his hands out of the cash door, but not our Jimmy, couldn't be precious Jimmy, stealing them blind. Ben Lindberg. Was Chuck McGill write about his brother, Jimmy? It's a complicated question because as we've discussed before, Chuck pushed him down that

path. Chuck really made it into a self-fulfilling prophecy by just hammering that home over and over again, refusing to give Jimmy any respect or recognition. So it seemed like there were multiple times. There were branches in the path where perhaps he could have stayed on the straight and narrow. Perhaps he could have just been Jimmy McGill and not slipping Jimmy and not Saul. But at each turn, whether it was Chuck or whether it was someone else, he didn't get the respect he craved. he didn't get the validation, and he reverted right back to his worst impulses. So that's in him clearly, but is it true that people don't change, that people can't change? Well, Kim seemingly has changed, at least based on what we know thus far.

So if she could do it, then maybe he could have done it too, but he's had so many opportunities to, and he keeps choosing not to. So here we see the swing masters back, the sex workers, the burner phones, the headset, that everything but the breakfast bars and the cold toilets. So he doesn't have the suits, right? But on the inside, he's the same. He's worse, potentially. Like, you can take the man out of Albuquerque.

You can put a mustache on the man. But if he's still kind of rotten to the core or at least conditioned to act in that way, then that's not going to be sufficient to have him turn over a new leaf and have it stick. I don't want to, like, put anything on Chuck because Chuck is a tragic figure in his own right, obviously. but I think that it's possible that this massive hole of worthlessness that Jimmy feels that he's constantly trying to fill with these scams. If he had had a loving brother who's like, I believe in you, you could be a great lawyer. I want to support you that that need inside of him wouldn't be there. I don't know how that sources back to his childhood because as far as we can tell his dad other than being like a bit of a sap, like a bit of a mark wasn't a bad dad.

right? It's not like he was raised in a loveless home. So I'm not really sure how to fully source that back, but I think as far as Chuck, there was at least an opportunity there for Chuck to nourish him in a way

that instead Chuck kept him starving and insecure. Because Chuck is the older brother, there was never a Jimmy without Chuck, right? So there's no alternate history where we could observe what Jimmy was like or would have been like without that man for a brother. And when Chuck is talking about, he'll never change, people never change. I mean,

he could be talking about himself, too, because he's sort of set in his ways and he's unwilling to see Jimmy in a different light. So there's some fault, I think, that's due to him there too. So it's, they're really inextricable, right? I mean, they were probably bad for each other the way that Jimmy and Kim were bad for each other. And I guess Jimmy is the constant there. Maybe Jimmy is bad for everyone. Maybe Chuck was right. But it's sad. on that theme of like, and we're about to get into the scams, I promise, but like on that theme of like, can people change? One of the, I think, most stunning lines from the insider podcast discussion of this episode is this question posed, which is, is this guy always just going to be like this? That's the question you're asking yourself out of this episode, which was not the question necessarily that we were plagued with.

Like, we knew that he had gotten his, I think the phrase Chris used on the watch podcast, gotten his beak wet last week. But, like, okay, put up, he hung up the suit and he walked away. Like, he can walk away. He can't. All right. So let's talk about the way they ease us into this, right? Ease us into Gene Tachovic's full turn here, right? Because the first mark we get is a really comically repug, like over-the-top repugnant person in terms of his demeanor.

He's played by the actor Devin Ratry, who our listener, Justin, wrote it to, like, alert us that this is the guy who played Buzz from home alone. So we've been conditioned from childhood to not like this guy. But the plan involves drugging, which, you know, Ben was our hard line about Howard. That's when we felt like really uncomfortable about the Howard plan because it involved drugging. Like when he said the word we're going to need, when he said we're going to need barbiturants, Ben, how did you feel? I can't lead anywhere good, really. I mean, yeah, you don't feel so bad for the first mark initially because he's clearly a bit of a con artist himself. He's almost in the game, in a sense.

He's an amateur compared to Jimmy slash Saul and Saul slash Gene or whoever is kind of playing along and playing the mark himself. But as the scheme progresses, the marks get more sympathetic culminating in the last one, of course, who has cancer. But this reminded me in season three, episode seven, I think, there's a scene where Jimmy and Kim go to a bar and they're scoping out marks just for fun. And there's one guy who's rude to a waiter, as it seems like this mark might be. And Jimmy proposes this plan to act drunk and have Kim pretend to lift a credit card off of him and then sell the fake card to the mark, the rude guy for $5,000. and Kim says, we're not actually doing this, right? We're just talking. And Jimmy says, yeah, just talking.

Sure. And now he's basically putting that plan into action. Kim's gone. He's not just talking. He's doing. And obviously, they ended up doing some schemes themselves before that part of the series was done too. But this is, I don't know if it's an intentional call back to that or not, but it's the same sort of idea. And here he has no partner, really, or at least not a partner he cares about.

who could restrain his worst impulses, much as Buddy might try. I'm really excited to talk about Buddy in a second. Yeah, he uses the name Victor, which is the name that he used to use when he was scamming with Kim. So that's all that. Okay.

What is this podcast for, if not reading too far into various details that come up? So let me ask you, Ben, do you read anything into the song choice of karaoke here, the song Brandy? Man, I don't know what to make of that. I mean, that's yet another callback. because I think there's a karaoke scene.

I want to say it's in Breaking Bad. All the timelines and series are crossing over for me now. But I know there's like a season four sol karaoke scene, I believe. And there's some other either visual or thematic allusions like that in this episode to the gas station and other things like that. It's not just Walt and Jesse. But the chiropractor comes up, I believe, in Breaking Bad as well. well. So I don't know. I was reading about the song. I'm aware of the song. I mean, it's about this woman who's pining for someone, right? And I guess Saul slash Gene slash whoever is pining for

Kim in a way here, even if he's suppressing that pain by falling back into his old ways. Like, there's someone he cares about who he's not with. And that is why he is acting this way to try to put that out of his mind. In my overreading of this, of the lyrics of this song, I would put Kim in the brandy role, and I would say that he is like, you know, the lyrics of Brandy, and Brandy, you're a fine girl. What a good wife he would be. But my life, my love, my lady is the sea. It's sort of like the sailor is choosing, you know, the sea, his vocation or whatever over his woman, right?

And so, like, Jimmy choosing the scam over Kim. Yeah. That's not quite the choice he made exactly, but kind of might as well. Yeah. And I guess. Someone mentioned this on the insider pod, possibly Peter Gold, but there's no excitement or camaraderie or romance to the swindling that happens here the way that there was with Marco or Kim, right? Like there's no tequila topper here. He's not even drinking.

It's a solitary exercise aside from his minions who he treats now in this imperious Heisenbergian way, right? So there's no joy in this. Obviously, even when there was joy, there was a disson. destructive aspect to it. And people were getting hurt by that. But at least it was bringing Jimmy closer together with a friend, with a romantic partner. And now it's nothing. He's just on his own, totally alone. We get another montage here. So first of all, we get the first mark that happens and buddy. And both buddy and his dog are, I was just like so impressed with how precise. I mean, first of all, the dog is just like completely still and quiet and trained.

And then Buddy himself is just so precise in everything that he does. Like, I was waiting for him to mess up. He didn't even like pull the old Watergate mistake of leaving the tape on the door, right? Like, he pulls off the tape. He gets everything right. He does everything right. Everyone is doing everything right except for when his, but like I think it's so important to show Buddy, who we don't even really know that well, doing everything so correctly and so precisely.

so that when Gene calls him out later on a moral decision that he makes and just choose him out, we know how wildly unreasonable Gene is being, not just on a moral point of view, but like this is such a good little lieutenant that you have who's executing your scheme for you. And you're throwing him away. His dog just sat silently at the door, like for scam after scam after scam. Like, what the hell? I was... I felt bad for the dog that they were making.

an accomplice to this crime and also providing a cover from the dog walking. But yeah, my wife and I were talking about like imagine if we tried to do this with our dog like she would give us away instantly. That would be, the chick would be up. But yeah, I thought there was an element of amateurishness

to it in that when Jeff follows the first mark in and he successfully places the tape, he looks pretty proud of himself. He's like, I did it. You know, he's smiling. And then also, yes, buddy, almost. forgets and leaves the tape and then he remembers and he goes back. So I think they have promise, right? And if they were schooled and coached, then they could probably get great at crimes too. But I think at this point, they're still sort of unpracticed and unpolished, but they have

potential. And he doesn't really recognize that in them. He just sees them as implements as tools, like the cab, like the hot water bottle, like whatever else he's using to pull off his schemes. And there's also another little schnauz farms type shoutout. I saw the Chirchus investments on the paperwork of the first mark is presumably a shout out to producer, writer, and Cherkis, who has worked on this series for a while. So I always enjoy a little shout out to someone who's had a lot of involvement in what has made the series a success. But yeah, he's pretty good at tiptoeing and around and not waking up the drugged guy. I think to show the like how how meticulously thought out and precise this plan is is important that we get it over and over and over and over and over again.

So that when shit goes south, as in she breaking a window to, you know, walk in on someone who may not be even drugged anymore. That's so important. And it makes me think about Walt, as we're thinking about Walt very much in this episode, makes me think about Walt and his like meth cooks, right? Like he's so precise in his.

in his cooks. He's so fastidious and how everything has to be done. And those are the montages that we would always get in Breaking Bad are the beautiful cooks that we get. And this is a beautiful cook. And if he could just keep to the plan... Even in this episode, right, where he doesn't want anyone to handle the flask. The flask, yeah. Please put that down. Don't break that glass. Yeah. Yeah. And right, I mean, the whole point of this scheme is that they'll never know that they were there until months later. So you break the class. That defeats the whole purpose.

Two more things about the montage. before moving on. First of all, the song choice here, tapioca tundra, you can hear Tom Chowns, or he has talked about this in every interview.

Tom Schnauz loves the monkeys. Yeah. Loves Mike Nesmith. This is a Mike Nesmith demo edition of a little-known monkey song, Tapioca Tundra. I had never heard it before. You can find this version

is up on YouTube. You know, you can find it around. It's not on Spotify. But there is, I just want to shout out. There is like a really fun, And like the act, the non-demo version of the song actually does suck, as Tom Schnawes says.

I listen to it. It really sucks. But there's a really fun cover by Mickey Dolan, another member of the monkeys. And on an album he titled, Mickey Dolans does Nesmith or something like that. So it's just like Mickey Dolans doing Mike Nesmith songs. But it's, his version is kind of these really fun, like ragtime, kind of like the Beatles Honey Pie like version of this song. I mean, it's a great fun song, classic Breaking Bad, Better Call Sall music, montage vibe to it. Yeah, that version of the song is so great when I heard it.

I was like, I have to have this. Yeah. It's so obscure. I like the monkeys and Mike Ness Smith, RIP, and I didn't know about this version. I knew the album version, which is totally different, not nearly as affecting. And this one is just on a hard-to-find deluxe edition of the birds, the bees, and the monkeys from 2010. And according to the conversation on the insider pot, it was tough to get clearance just because it was so obscure. So I'm glad that they did not only because it worked for the montage, but also because just excellent song.

And to your point about like not enjoying anything, like we see this, we see this strip club sequence and like Jeff and Buddy are having a pretty good time and Saul is there. But like, again, grimly. Yeah. Grimly paying for sex. Grimley in a strip club. Grimly watching women do aerobics on the television. Like, just, it's just disappointing. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey?

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from divot.com slash price match for details. All right, let's talk about Walton Jesse showing up and all the, all the Breaking Bad scenes that we get in this episode. I was rewatching the Better Call Sal episode, and I had forgotten that Francesca is also in that first episode that interacts so closely with the scenes in this episode. That's where we first saw Francesca as well. So I think it's fun that she's in this episode as well.

But talks about the Walton Jesse scenes. are concerned that these actors wouldn't be able to slip back into these roles? Like, how did you feel about it, Ben? Yeah. I mean, I did wonder whether the title Breaking Bad might be messing with us, right? That it might be another mystery act like last week, even in the teaser until we saw them with the masks off. Because I joked on a previous pot about bringing back Walt and Jesse in the ski masks so that we couldn't tell that they'd aged. And I wasn't that far off.

Another Limburgian strike of genius. We had some night shooting here. We had the masks on the top of their heads to provide partial coverage. It wasn't completely convincing, but close enough, right? I mean, you can't mask some of the effects of age. And Aaron Paul's voice seemingly a lot lower than it used to be, too. The voice is the real thing because someone on Reddit edited, like, the scenes together. Did you watch that?

No. Someone edited like the, you know, like to make it one long continuous sequence. And like as much as Aaron Paul looks a bit different, but not that bad in the ski mask and we're in the dark and it's, fine. It looked way better than I thought I would. But to go from scene to scene, the voice drop is huge. That's funny, because I know Schnau said he was dreading someone doing exactly that, right? But I was hoping that we would go along with it, and I think we will, right? We're happy to see these actors in these roles again. And why do you think the creators went to such lengths to keep Paul and Cranston's visit to Albuquerque's secret? I mean,

it was like a stealth mission, right? Like private plane and sworn to secrecy and staying in an Airbnb. And then they announced that they would appear before the season started. So was that, do you think, to suppress the speculation and hype that could have led to their somewhat sparing appearances on the show seeming like a letdown if we had all been building it up in our heads for week after week or what? Remember that Twitter moment where it's like I've been working on this article forever? He just tweeted it out. That's what Peter Cole did, right? He just tweeted it out.

At the Paley Center, I think, is where he did it. I'm glad that he did it. Like, it does seem... So initially, they did all this cloak and dagger. Initially, it seemed like they were trying to... And Aaron Paul and Brian Crasson have said as much. They're like, why the fuck did they do this to us? That they were trying to keep a secret.

I'm so glad they didn't. I really hate when shows do that. And I think it's so much better to be like, yep, Walton Jess here in this season. At some point, you'll see them. Yeah. Keeping it a secret might have made. it seem like the main attraction. It's like what the entire season is building up toward as opposed

to just these are supporting parts. It's a supporting scene. And this is not late Heisenberg, Walt, on the insider pod. They mentioned that they had to like frame the actors and refresh their memories. Okay, where are we in the timeline? And like, Cranston was sort of slipping into Heisenberg and, you know, had to just be coached back into Walt. And it's a different guy here. Like this time, Walt looks uncomfortable when Saul says, your Heisenberg, he puts two and two together. And Walt doesn't want anyone to know that. So this is a long way away from saying, say my name and you're goddamn right.

I am the one who knocks. Yeah, exactly. But I am unsurprised, but still relieved that the cameos weren't there solely for fan service, although there was an element of that. Because I know people were wondering since this series started whether Walt and Jesse would show up. and the writers, the creators, were wondering themselves when or if they should do that. But once Saul established itself as a classic series in its own right, Breaking Bad Crossovers, you know, they were an element of it, but they weren't foremost in my mind.

And on the insider pod, they spoke about how they had talked about doing flash forwards and intercutting timelines throughout the series. And I'm glad that they opted not to do that aside from the occasional gene scene and that season four scene in Saul's office. And I just, I care much more about what happens to Kim and Jimmy Saul Gene than I do about getting a glimpse of Walt and Jesse during a part of the timeline when things are pretty set in stone. They had to work pretty hard to find like even this brief little scene that was unshown. Yeah. So I'm glad they found a way to reincorporate those characters that was a treat for fans of the franchise. I enjoyed seeing them.

They still seemed like themselves, seeing them bicker. with each other, the Bickersons, right? That was fun. But it wasn't a distraction from the central story because Jimmy McGill at this point, like, he's the alpha and the omega of the Gilligan verse, right? Like, in terms of the timeline, we're with him before Walt and Jesse enter the picture. Now we're with him after they both exit the stage. So I don't know how this will work in the next two episodes, but in this one at least, Walt and Jesse are there largely to illustrate something about Jimmy Saul Gene. It's not just, hey, look, we brought them back again.

It's showing us something about our actual central character here, which is, you know, for one thing, I think he's drawn to Walt because he sees something of himself in this guy who reinvented himself and created a new persona and is trying to topple this established order, but also that Jimmy can't keep his hand out of the cookie jar, that he just can't break this cycle of scheming. And so even the title, Breaking Bad, refers as much to Gene's actions in the episode as it does to the flashback scenes themselves. I think that's so well said.

And I think that I think as fun as the Walt and Jesse scene is and as much of a, and I didn't think I would, but I got a thrill hearing her and Paul say like, yo or dick. Like I had a great time. I was like, here we are. Oh, no. I'm one of those people. But the mic scene seems almost more important, right? because like that is the can't keep his hands out of the, you know,

because Mike gives him excellent counsel, which is leave it alone. Yeah. And he can't, simply cannot. And the way that they cut, you know, the door slamming outside of the high school and the door slam in the gene timeline, draws the line pretty clearly between these two choices. And again, is this guy just always going to be this way? Is the question that this episode is asking? And here's evidence.

I think it was really clever to scoop out a moment. of choice here for what's the key choice that Saul makes in in breaking bad and it's this decision to go to Walt's classroom and and you know everything that kicks off from there so right and in the mike scene so saul is taking the vitamins right that he just referenced at the bar in the gene timeline and mike comes in wearing sunglasses as he did in his first breaking bad appearances meeting with jesse and it's it's not the first time that we've seen mike walk in on Saul with the swingmaster and have no patience for that also. But, you know, Mike says not to get involved with this guy, he's an amateur. Not only does Saul not listen, but we know that

Mike doesn't take his own advice, right? And they're both going to pay a price for that, a pretty steep price. And I saw a couple people point out that there are a lot of Frankenstein references in the episode. So Saul calls Jesse Igor and there's Jimmy slash Gene's pseudonym Victor, like Victor Frankenstein with a K instead of a C, and he mentions Frankenstein's monster to Mike walking like Frankenstein's monster, and then he references Frankenstein director, Frank Wales. And so maybe Saul is Jimmy's Frankenstein's monster, or maybe Walt is Saul's Frankenstein's monster, right, the creation that gets out of control and comes back to bite the creator in both cases. So that Mike scene, I guess it confirms, reinforces that Saul is.

aware that Mike is also serving another master at this point. It doesn't completely clarify why Mike is still working for Saul. Presumably, it's just a useful cover occupation for him or just a way to stay plugged into the Albuquerque underworld and find out about who's cooking the good meth, like some intelligence gathering service for Gus. But there's no warmth, really, to that relationship the way there was at one time. We are going to see more Walton Jesse per Odenkirk, per Cranston. So, like, this is not the last we've seen of them. But it's not going to be a massive part of the end of the series.

As you and I have already said, that's how we would prefer it. You know, Chris and Andy spoke eloquently on that as well. Like, I'm invested in Jimmy and Kim. And, like, I like sprinkling of Walt and Jesse is fine. All right, we get this breaking all the way bad with the final mark, Kevin Sussman, who a lot of people might recognize from Big Bang Theory, a number of other things. He's one of those actors where when he showed up as the final mark, I was like, oh, it's like when Reed Diven shows up as a Somalia, I was like, oh, okay, something's going to happen here.

You know, we find out he has cancer. Kevin Sussman is like one of the all-time also like Sad Sack actors. So like a really like good person to put in place here. Gene sort of rants about how he's worked so hard to find these marks. But really, like, you know, rich guys. So like a sort of Robin Hood-esque vibe there. But actually the other main qualifications is that they have to be alone. No one cares about them.

That's so predatory and very sad. He fires, buddy. We've got Marion, who is now hooked up with the Internet, paying attention to what she was going on here. Marion who was worried about her, Jeffie being involved in crime in Albuquerque, like, is Carol Burnett going to be the one to take down? Right. Yeah. Jimmy Saul Jean would love that for her. That would be great.

Anything else you want to say about this? Like, I mean, there are moments where you think, you know, like even down to the cab, even down to like this final mark being like, hey, man, you could take this cab. I don't have to take this one. You know, and he's like, nope, get in the cab. And we're all like, oh, no. Yep. It's happening. the door closing, right, the match cut on Saul closing the door when he's going into the high school to see Walt and then Gene or whoever he is at this point closing the door when he's going into the Mark's house.

It's just it's like closing the door on an alternate future, a better future that he just cannot embrace. But I have a few observations here. I think the line that you alluded to there, I have to weed through all these saps who have wives and families at home. find somebody who's alone with money. He's describing himself there. Like a sap who has a wife and her family at home. I mean, meanwhile, he's doing this to distract himself

from his latest loss of Kim, right? So are they the saps or is he the sap? And I think one of the saddest things in Nippy was when he walks into his house and he immediately puts on the police scanner. You know, it's just like to keep him company. There's no honey, I'm home. There's no, how is your day?

It's like the only human voice. is he hears are the police who could be coming for him and his own voice in the old Saul commercials he watches. And the only visitor he has is someone delivering his swing master so he can relive the old limber Saul days. It's just so sad that he's fallen back into this patterns. And, you know, he tells Buddy in that speech where he's trying to talk him back into this scheme, he says, before you know it, you forget all about it, right?

It's just like the mic speech that Jimmy parrots to Kim. And it didn't convince Kim. It doesn't convince Buddy. So there are people who can walk away, just not Jimmy, Jean Saul. Now, one thing about Walton Jesse, listener and emailer Lexi pointed out that Tom Schnaus did an interview with Variety where he was asked if Jesse is okay in the Gene timeline. And Schnauz said, things are still good for Jesse as of this episode you're watching, which seems worrisomely specific. Interesting. Interesting.

I don't know what this means. Saul knew that Jesse wanted to go to Alaska. So I suppose if he got caught here, he could give up Jesse or even Ed to save himself. It's hard to imagine that happening in the next two episodes. So I'm guessing that Walt and Jesse will continue to appear only in flashback scenes. I don't think we're going to see Jesse in black and white world. But the phrasing there made me wonder. So maybe that's just a red herring.

But one last thing about that Mark scene. So we get Saul, Gene, saying, so a guy with cancer can't be an asshole. Believe me, I speak from experience, right? Obviously, alluding to Walt to Heisenberg there. But he also says that conversation ends basically when the mark says you only go around once. And Saul says you got that right. But it's not true because he keeps going around and around. And I feel like the stand mixer is the metaphor in this episode that we keep seeing where he's staring at it, right?

And it's just going around and around in this circle, retracing its path. And that's very much what is happening to him here. And when the Mark is talking to him about like Bernie Madoff and the people behind Enron, and he says, I got to believe there's a special place in hell for those people, right? And of course, he's talking to one of those people, albeit on a smaller scale. he doesn't realize it. So ironically, he's saying he thinks the fraudsters are the exception, and he tells the man who is scamming him, you can't let a few bad apples spoil things for the rest of us. But if Jimmy Jean Saul is one of the bad apples, does that mean he is doomed to go to hell? Or can he somehow salvage himself here? With two episodes to go. It's tough. It's tough to imagine that. Yeah. And I don't want Marion to discover the seemier aspects of the internet. I just. just want to let her live in a world where it's all cat videos.

I know. But yeah, maybe one see-me-side she discovers is something about Saul. Maybe YouTube recommends a better call Saul commercial. And she reads up on him and realizes Gina's Saul. Like she's already seen Jeff fall in with a bad crowd in Albuquerque. She won't want to let that happen again. Like her suspicions are peaked here. So maybe the computer that Marion got with the money that Gene helped Jeff earn could be

Gene's undoing. I mean, I think a point that Chris or Andy made on the watch is, do you cast Carol Burnett just to watch funny cat videos? Maybe. Like, we'd all be happy to see her, but maybe there is an even bigger role. Yeah. And the way in which, like, that Jimmy Jean saw so confident in his ability to work older, you know, women specifically.

Coming back to Biden would be a fitting sort of moment. Another great Reddit post that I just want to mention really quick. quickly is a username Belichron posted this great idea, the meta read on the end of the coda of this series, right? The idea that other previous scenes of Breaking Bad or Better Calls all have had 10 episodes, and we've got three extra here. And this idea that if we had ended everything with Nippy, after all that a happy ending, as we've been mentioning, like, it wouldn't be the brightest of endings.

We didn't get to see Kim again, all that sort of stuff like that. But that is an ending of sorts. But this idea that like Gene, Saul, Jimmy doesn't realize his own show is over and he keeps going post episode 10 into these final three episodes. And like everyone's gone home, man, it's over. Hang up the suit and go home. It's over. And he's like, no, it's still happening. I thought that was a really brilliant.

I mean, whether or not that's the intention of the showner is that that was a really brilliant read on what we're seeing here in these final three episodes. Right. And the question is, who is he at this point? We've been struggling with what to call him throughout this pod. And there's that shot, the rearview mirror shot where Jeff looks at him in the rear view like he did in season four when he first sees him. But now he's scared to recognize Saul sitting behind him, whereas previously Saul was scared to see Jeff recognize him. So there's been a role reversal there. There's been a power swap. And last week we talked about him just being an amalgamation of all of his personas. And, and. There's certainly some Saul in there even then. And I meant to mention that when he first went over to Marion's house, I think he baked something for her. So he's using some of Gene's skill set to win her over, too. But Jimmy seemed to be the strongest presence. This week, it seems to be Saul coming out. The department store heist was more of a Jimmy move.

The drugging, I guess Jimmy did drug Howard, but not until he was on the verge of becoming Saul. So this seems like a Saul scheme. And this is relevant because in that variety interview with Schnauz, he had one other really interesting quote. He was asked, we see so many different versions of Saul throughout the show, Jimmy, Gene, Victor, will we get a new persona of Saul in the final episodes? And this is what Schnauz said. I'm hopefully not giving anything away, but I feel like we see a whole new character at some point. There's a version in a future episode where Bob walks on screen and it looks different than we've ever seen him before and it's great. Interesting. So make of that what you will. Does he

turn himself in? Is he in prison? Does he realize that he cannot be trusted in society and that he just has to go inside for a while? I don't know what that means, but it piqued my interest. I'm pretty ready to call this guy Gene. I think it's like, because it's a, it's a mix of Jimmy and Saul. And I think I was hesitant before because I didn't really feel like I understood like Gene as a person, but now I feel like I do who this guy is and what he's capable of. So in my head, I've just started calling him Gene. Obviously, throughout this podcast episode, I've called him a number of things. All right.

So let's talk about coming up, right? So again, you could jump off here if you don't want to hear anything about what's coming up. We have no spoilers. We haven't seen anything. No spoilers have leaked, anything like that. But just based on context clues that are out there. So again, you could jump off if you want to. Next time, the episode is called Waterworks.

So, you know, there's some expectation that, you know, here come the Waterworks is, of course, like, in reference to tears, but Kim is working for a sprinkler company in Florida. So is this just a Kim visit? Is this an entire Kim-centric episode? That's what Alan Seppin-Wall was floating to me. Alan was wrong last week about this being the last cheat episode, though, so, like, Alan doesn't know anything more than we do. but like, would you want an entire Kim-centric? What has Kim been up to since? Are we going to get like a montage of Kim opening the sprinkler store?

What is the modanity of her? Are we going to get flashbacks to breaking bad timeline with Kim this time? Like, what do you want a whole Kim episode? Do you want just some Kim? Like, how are you feeling about it, Ben? I think Kim and Ray Shearn are certainly entitled to an episode on their own because of what they've meant to the show. Yeah. I think it only makes sense if we're going to.

learn something significant about that character, right, by spending that time with her. So if the big significant change in her character was what we saw in her conversation with Jimmy and at the end of that timeline, if she's still the same person now and she has not relapsed and she is living more or less happily ever after, then I don't know, do we need the beat by beat? Do we need to see how she got from point A to point B or can we just infer that? I don't know. But I would be happy to spend that time with her. And, you know, I think if you heard that Kim was in Titusville, Florida, Palm Coast sprinklers, you might think that sounds like something Ed the disappearer set up for her, right?

Like Saul goes to a Cineban, Kim goes to a sprinkler company, but she's still using her real name, evidently. Yeah, if he can find her, then I don't think that's a vacuum special. Yeah. There is a scene in season two, episode seven, I think it's the episode inflatable. Kim says that if she hadn't left her hometown, she would probably be married to the guy who ran the town gas station and working as a cashier at a supermarket called Hinky Dinky. And she's looking down on that possible alternate pastor herself, right? Like she's gone on to bigger and better things, except now maybe she's realized that that's actually okay, that she wants to work retail, that that is safer, that that is fulfilling in some way that her legal career wasn't at least.

once she started going down the bad choice road. So I hope she's happy. I hope that reconnecting with Jimmy, Gene Saul does not lead her down a dark path, that if anything, she's able to rescue him or that they just go their separate ways and she's okay. But we should probably count our blessings that Kim is alive with two episodes left, right? And she's gainfully employed in Florida. And as far as we know, she's not involved in the criminal underworld. like that's a win.

I think we would have taken that in past seasons when we just didn't know whether Kim would make it this part. Kim Wexler still lives. Great. Yes, she does. I love to see it. I think we had an email, but I don't know. I've seen it around this idea. Actually, I don't think any of our listeners would have emailed this to me.

So I think I saw it on Reddit. This idea that like Kim will show up to save Jimmy and I like wanted to like vomit in a shoe. Because like that's not what that's not why Kim Waxler is here. Kim Waxler is not here to save Jimmy McGill. If he can save himself to deserve her with two episodes to go, good luck to him, and I hope he can. But I am the guy who is insisting on praying upon a cancer victim is not a guy that I want for Kim Wexler. So that's where I'm right. Yeah.

So next week, Waterworks is a Gilligan episode directed and written. The last one will be a gold. He will do the finale. Yeah. And the last episode's title is out there, too. I don't know whether we can trust these things ever, but supposedly it's Sahl Gond. So that raises the question, how and why? Is he gone in what way?

Is he gone? Is the persona of Saldon? Is he dead? Who knows? Is it all gone? Like it being his empire and plus the diamonds, who knows? Yeah, this is Vince's first episode that he is directed and solo written. Like, it's just a Vince Gill.

I mean, that's not how TV writing was. works, but like usually he's a co-byline on an episode in terms of writing. But this is a solo Gilligan outing. So I'm interested to see it. Last thing I want to talk about is that is that phone call. Again, please jump off if you don't want to hear any discussion of this. But this is a really curious thing that at least one listener emailed us about that we want to talk about. So jump off if you don't want to hear anything about that phone call that made Gene Tachovic kick a paint of glass out of a phone booth.

But we got this email from an entire band, Brandy and the Alexander's is the name of the band. The email was signed from all of them. That on Reddit, someone had found a German translation of the closed captioning of the call in this episode where Gene says, on Gene's side of the call, he says, you have no idea what I did or didn't do. Okay, why don't you turn yourself in?

You don't have to be considerer of me. I can only be hang once. Okay, look, Kim. Why are you even talking about this? We're both too smart. However, Ben, what's the complication of this German caption reveal? Yeah. So I read elsewhere, and I have not personally verified any of this, but apparently there

are other language dubs. There's not just the German dub, but there's a French dub. And in these various versions, there are various accounts of the dialogue and various parts of this call were audible or not. So sort of the same gist of the conversation. I think, but the motivations are kind of different. And one version, apparently, Gene is deciding she's a hypocrite who never cared about him. And the French version, which is maybe more vague, has Gene pleading about something?

And then there's the German version, as you said, having Kim telling him to turn himself in. So we don't know what the mechanism of this is. I assume this was not intentional. It seems like they wanted us to wait and perhaps hear this conversation from Kim's end. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But something seems to have perhaps inadvertently ended up sneaking into closed captioning here with other language dub. So I don't know that that's anything shocking. But if true, that would seem to confirm, at least that it was Kim he was talking to. I mean, we didn't, we knew that this conversation did not go the way he wanted it to. So this seems about what I felt like was happening in that scene. So yeah. I don't think they're, I don't think they're like holding back any like huge mystery. of like, they have a kid together or something. You know, like, it's just sort of something that Tom Schnau said is like, we just watched him to have one long phone conversation with Francesca.

Do we want to do like another phone conversation after that? And so they decide to like obscure it and wait to reveal it later. I think it's not for plot reasons. It's just sort of for like effect reasons. So I think we got to go. Reminder, Kim Wexler lives at gmail.com. Only two more weeks to reach there. Actually, that email will be open.

You can just email us. for years to come about your Better Callsell theories if you want. But anything you want to say before we wrap up? Conjugate much. By the way, that's not conjugation. It's not a verb. It's a noun. It's like gender your Spanish much is what the guy should have said to her.

All right. From this Narca to you, we're headed out. This episode was produced by the great Chris Sutton and we'll see you next. Spring just slid into your DM. grab that boho look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that can keep up with you, and hang some string lights to give your patio a glow up. Springs Calling.

Ross, work your magic. Ryan Reynolds here for MintMobil. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did and have one of your assistants assistants

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