The Watch - Breaking Down the First Two Episodes of ‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6, With Joanna Robinson

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

Chris is joined by Joanna Robinson to talk about the first two episodes of ‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6. They talk about getting up to speed after the show’s two-year hiatus (1:00), where we find Kim and Jimmy’s relationship (25:15), and try to make some predictions for where the season might go (34:55). Host: Chris Ryan Guest: Joanna Robinson Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joanna, do you ever wish you could definitively prove that you have the right opinions about movies? Uh, yeah, Neil, because I do have the right opinions about movies and television, right, Dave? No, because I'm more right about those things, and I demand trial by content. Oh, boy, what is trial by content? Each week, we'll take on a huge question. Each of us will bring a choice and combine with listener submissions and your votes, we will come to a decision. It's trial by content every Tuesday on Spotify, the ringer.com, wherever you're listening right now. Don't let Neil win.

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Stand up and walk now. Now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. And I am an editor at the ringer.com. And joining me on the other line, she just got her taxes done by Sweet Liberty, and she has some questions. It's Joanna Robinson. Oh my God.

I've never had the... It's Andy Greenwald treatment. What an honor. Wow. Thank you so much for doing this with me, Joanna. We're going to be covering the first two episodes of Better Call Saul, which premiered on Monday night. Andy is still in transit.

And I can't wait to hear what he thinks about this. But I had to guess, I think he's going to say what we said, which is the Better Call Saul is back. It's like it never missed a beat. And I love this show so much. It's just like, it almost makes me emotional when that guitar reverb starts

during the credits because it's just such such an elite television show and I'm so excited to talk to you about it. I'm so excited to talk to you. Is Andy in London, like, investigating Oscar Isaac's accent? Is that what he's doing? Like on the ground investigation? He chases the scare of wherever it leads him.

That's his dedication to Disney Plus content. I don't know what to say. If I know one thing about him, it's that. That's right. Joanna, we can, let's sort of a little, some general stuff because it's been two years almost to the day since the last episode of Better Call Saul aired. And it's been delayed by obviously COVID slowdown. Bob Odenkirk suffered a heart attack on the set during the production of the sixth season.

The sixth season is split in half. So we're going to get half of it now and half of it at a point unknown. I hope this year. I think it's just the end of summer. Oh, it's really soon. Oh, it's really soon. Oh, okay, great. And in that time being, I don't know about you.

I mean, I didn't rewatch the series or anything. I felt like I was very on top of it personally. I just, you know, as a person who talked about it all the time, I was like, I got, I know what's going on in Better Call Saul. And then season six begins, the episode Wine and Roses, which was written by Peter Gold and directed by Michael Morris. and whine and Rosa starts and I'm just like, why is Nacho running again?

Like the two years definitely caught up with me at that point. Yeah, I was like, you messaged me. I was like, yeah, I guess they were eating ice cream? Oh, no. What's going on? Yeah, and I haven't gone back and rewatched the whole thing. I might at some point, but I rewatched the season five finale to sort of brush up a little bit.

But honestly, we'll go through these episodes. But honestly, I think a season one rewatch might be more rewarding for people than a season five rewatch at this point. Yeah. So the Kettlemans are back. And I remember, you know, when they when they popped up and it was almost like this kind of the reaction within the characters of the show itself are like the kettlemans. Oh my God.

And I'm like, this, you mean the people in season one who were like the county treasurer who embezzled money? And I had to like go back through the Breaking Bad Wicke. you know, that has all the characters God bless the wiki. God bless it. Oh, yeah, Betsy. She's a tough one. She was camping in her backyard.

So we're going to go through both of these episodes. I figured the way we could do it is kind of more cover the two, the major storylines that run throughout the two episodes rather than go beat by beat through the episodes themselves. Although I do think as two episodes of television, these were, you know,

which absolutely wonderful. And you could spend an hour talking about each one of them. General impressions, though, Joita. I thought it was nice that they gave us this double helping upon this show's long way to return. I do definitely think of Better Call Saul as one of the ultimate weekly episodic shows, though, where I get an episode and then really, really digest it,

usually watch it twice, think about it, go back to shots I love, go back to lines I love. So a feature film length dollop of Saul tonight. Yeah, well, it's funny. I was talking to our colleague, Ben Lindberg, about it. And he brought up this really good point about how Saul is this connected tissue to what feels like a bygone era. It's like the last thread back to that Prestige TV, you know, white male antihero sort of season of AMC and FX, etc. And I get extremely nostalgic watching this show that's airing right now.

Even though it's not hitting us hard and heavy with the Breaking Bad Easter eggs. I think the show has always been so finely calibrated in terms of the way in which it interacts with Breaking Bad and the way in which it exists independent of Breaking Bad. And I think more so there's like the doom and gloom of Breaking Bad looming over it than there is, hey, remember this? Like occasionally Hank shows up and you're like, oh, Hank, you know. But it's not trying to like prodding you in that way. But that feeling of watching slow TV in that way, there's a great Atlantic article up by Spencer Corn Haber that came up this last week. It was the social headline was Better Call Saul Dared to Bore Us.

And it's sort of like, have we lost the patience for prestige TV? And Saul has always been much more than Breaking Bad, like a slow burn show. And I really appreciate that. that about it. I like the idea of you being kind of like the Dosecchi's most interesting man in the world and you're like, I don't, I don't usually do this, but what I don't usually do white male anti-heroes, but when I do, I like them to be from Albuquerque. It's true. My exception, my exception to the rule is Bob Odenkirk. Bob Odenkirk. So I try really hard. I don't know what your stance is on Chris, but I try really hard to not have pariscial relationships with celebrities anymore

because I've just like met too many and know too much. Yeah. Plus they take care of that for us somehow in social media usually. Exactly. Yeah. But Bob Odenkirk is just like genuinely the nicest person I've ever met in my life. I met him before Breaking Bad at like some random event in San Francisco. And then post, you know, fame has not changed him.

Nicest guy in the world. You could see that by the way that people responded when he had his heart attack. So I do feel like very emotionally connected to Bob. Bob Odenkirk and very invested. It's interesting that you mentioned this because the early seasons of Better Call Saul, I thought, you know, in totality are masterful in their own right. But I found to be a little bit tough sledding with the doc review with the like, you know, lots of montages of highlighting and post-it notes and stuff like that.

But over the years, I would argue that the fans of the show have developed almost parisocial relationships with the characters themselves. because you see this incredible amount of collective anxiety about the fate of Kim Wexler, who we know doesn't appear in Breaking Bad, and the fate of Nachavarga, who I believe is mentioned in the first episode or among the first episodes of Breaking Bad,

but I can't, or is that Lalo that gets mentioned? Both of them, Ignacio and Lalo both get mentioned. Right. So this kind of deep investment that people have developed with these characters that we don't know the fate of, and even Saul himself or Jimmy McGill, who we do obviously get in Breaking Bad to a great extent, I think that people have like developed this kind of,

it's a very unique relationship in pop culture that happens when you got a long-running television show. And people, you know, you can have it in compressed ways. People can really fall in love with mayor from mayor of Easttown or really, you know, fall for like different, they can really feel for Kendall Roy. but, you know, it's kind of wild that we're ending this trip. And I wonder whether the show has ever been more beloved or popular.

Well, the genius of, you know, the idea of a prequel and a lot of people, I remember when Breaking Bad was ending and this spinoff was mentioned. And originally, my memory said originally it was going to be like a half hour courtroom comedy was sort of the original sort of pitch for this. And I think a lot of people were like, do we really want that? Do we want to dilute the power of Breaking Bad with this? sort of, you know, spin-off. And I remember all the other, like, jokes about what spinoffs of prestige TV shows would

be coming, like, Better Phone Joan and, like, all this or stuff like that, right? Off of Mad Men. But, but this, like, prequels so often don't work. But the tension of what's going to happen, not just to, like, characters like Kim Waxler, who we have absolutely fallen in love with or Nacho, who I have absolutely fallen in love with. But how did Jimmy, who we have fallen in love with, become. Saul. That's the question of any sort of premise. And you can answer it in a really dumb way and like solo colon a Star Wars story. We were like, oh, traveling solo, are you? This is how you got your

blaster? Like, I don't really care how Saul got his suits, but I do care how Jimmy becomes Saul. And that's still the question. As far in as we are, as much as we've seen him use the name, wear the suits. There's still a core, like, emotional or moral pivot that has yet to come. And that's the, that's the anxiety question hanging over everything because we don't want him to become Saul at this point. That's a tragedy for us, you know? Yeah. And we see what happens to Saul afterwards. So typically the seasons have opened with a black and white vignette of Saul Goodman, Jimmy McGill's post-breaking bad life somewhere in Nebraska where he's working in a Cineban. He's been extracted by the Robert Forster character and is living his life in the Midwest somewhere as like a guy

named Gene who just works in a mall. And this season opens with a beautiful if gaudy montage of a kind of McMansion, a kind of mini Versailles McMansion being disassembled and basically cleaned out by what looks like, I guess, a moving company. And it's unclear as to whether or not that's a house that is being worked on at the end of Better Call Saul or I guess the end of Breaking Bad. Did you have, when you were watching that, did you just assume that this is Jimmy's house at the end of Better Call Saul? Or did you wonder whether we were seeing something towards the end of Breaking Bad?

I feel like the end of Breaking Bad. And it feels like not a moving company per se, but more, um, I mean, it might be part of the deluxe package, right? Because at the end of Breaking Bad, Jimmy slash Saul escapes with this like, you know, the vacuum salesman, I will disappear you sort of package. And so it might be part of that, a cleaning crew, part of that. But what it felt like to me was something associated with the DEA. Like we are seizing this and we're just going to gut this place.

Because something that you'll notice if you look at it, there's other than this pink thong that is found hanging off the bathroom taps. There's nothing belonging to a woman in this house. The bathroom is all like Viagra and, you know, things belonging to Saul. So it seems for me, this reads as the end of Breaking Bad. He's left the state and they're coming in and gutting his house. And the way in which like the various trappings of Saul, the cardboard cut out, all that stuff is just trashed and treated. That's why that feels like very much.

of breaking bad to me. And then there's the, and there's a little bit more opulence than I think even Saul, who's first starting to sort of interrogate his, his color choices with his suits and starting to like really indulge in sort of the, I mean, he's still driving a Ford tempo or whatever in this episode. Yeah, yeah. So it would have to get, even though Kim is starting to plant the seeds that your character needs the trappings of a high power lawyer, he's still kind of like a normal guy.

Yeah, we're not gold toilet level yet. But I think that also, I don't know if I got this really nostalgic flashback to the Breaking Bad Cooks in this sequence. I mean, a lot of the, I think we got some of this with the Cinnabon montages, like, you know, the icing on the Cinnabon and the black and white sequences. Like, I think we've seen similar things. But watching all those ties sort of fall down in front of the camera in slow motion as the, the, the track Days of Wines and Roses plays that sort of like syrupy song over something kind of harsh and violating that's happening felt very breaking bad cook to me. Yeah, very reminiscent even of crystal blue persuasion or what, that, you know, playing.

I'm always thinking of crystal blue persuasion or Grooms and Clover, whatever it is. Yeah, yeah. So we can get into the episodes themselves. We can, I guess let's talk first about what happens with Jimmy and Kim in this episode. You mentioned the ice cream, and we're joining the action pretty much immediately after the conclusion of season 5. That is much more evident with Nacho, but Kim and Jimmy are just doing their thing. And Kim is sort of really obviously arrived at a place in her life where she truly loves what she does. I mean, she seems to be practically buzzing off of this new role as a pro bono defense attorney.

And meanwhile, Jimmy seems much more ambivalent, possibly because he saw sunburn from his drinking desert walk, about where he's arrived professionally, which is essentially as like a hybrid bagman, middleman for cartels and working with guys like Lalo and Gus and nachos. So we get to these opening scenes with Kim and Jimmy, and the thing that's still kind of uniting them, is the desire for revenge against Howard, Howard Hamlin, who is both of their bosses at various points and has been this kind of professional foil over the course of the series. And there's already talk about Sandpiper. There's already talk about kind of harkening back

to the early seasons. And Sam Piper was the retirement community class action suit that honestly was like the major storyline for several seasons. And I had to go back. and refresh my memory about what exactly happened with Sam Piper. But yeah, they're obviously like they enact a long-term scheme to make, create the perception that Howard is a cocaine addict.

Yeah, it's, it's, I think the turn at the end, I mean, if you want to call it a turn, it's a literal turn, but the end of season five, when they're sort of like, they're doing this, what if we did this to Howard and what if we did this to Howard? You know, because like the end of season five or mid-season five, Jimmy's doing all this stuff like throwing bowling balls over Howard's gate or hiring prostitutes to, you know, interrupt Howard's dinner. And in the season five finale, Howard confronts Kim. And he's like, hey, Jimmy's doing all this stuff. You don't want to hit your wagon to this. And Kim has a very sort of, how dare you, this is so patronizing for you to warn me off. Like, how dare you assume that I

don't have my own agency? So that's when she sort of gets her backup about Howard. But also, it feels like Jimmy's doing all this, this like, penny ante reckless schemes that are going to get him caught. And Kim, I don't, there's a couple things at play here. She's, I think she's both wanting to do a more sophisticated level of scheme so that they don't get caught. We'll do it the right way. We'll do it my way, right? Right. So it's protective of Jimmy, but also it's like Kim has got a taste for this.

Like if anyone's breaking bad, that's a big surprise of Better Call Saul. I think we watched this whole thing, knowing Kim. Kim's not in Breaking Bad, worrying that she's going to die or something's going to happen because of Jimmy's recklessness is going to put her in danger and she's either going to die or disappear forever for some reason. But now the question is the way I think that Odin Kirk and Sierra played it at the end of season five is like she's the one with the taste for it. Yeah. And he's bumping up against his moral quandaries. And so as much as he is like anti-Haward, he's like, but. this is a little much.

Yeah. Well, I think that his moral quandary is Kim. I think that he feels like Kim is becoming in danger, the more she becomes immersed in this world, this underworld, really. But you're right. I mean, this second episode that we'll get to, or we can talk about now even,

ends, gets towards the end, and it ends with a shot of Kim before they drive off from the Sweet Liberty Tax Services, where the Kettlemen's are now working. Kim is standing outside, leaning up against this crappy Ford that Jimmy has rented. And Vince Gilligan directed the second episode. And Jimmy comes out after having given the Kettleman's little bit of pocket money after Kim essentially destroys their lives.

And Kim is standing against this car. And the way they shoot it, it's obviously like the usual bright white, white, whitewash Albuquerque backdrop or desert backdrop, really. But Kim's eyes are like hooded in darkness. And I just want to say the show remains the most visually stunning show on TV. It may not always feel that way because it's not Carrie Fukunaga Wunner's or, you know, the sort of absolutely gorgeous, sumptuous pastoral TV, you know, filmmaking that you might find in other TV shows. But shot for shot in terms of the way you convey ideas visually, this show has got no peers to me.

Like the cinematography and the direction is always so no perfect. And that shot of Kim is, that's the door closing on Michael Corleone at the end of the godfather, you know? Yeah. I mean, that's how I felt when she turned around gave him like the finger guns at the end of season five. But like it's just going to get worse, it feels like. And I love that you point out that shot to me. I hadn't really noticed how her eyes were shaded and I went back and rewatched it. And it's incredible.

The thing about the better call saw camera and the breaking bad camera is like, obviously they've had different directors. in who have done slightly spins on things. You've got your Ryan Johnson episodes or Michelle McLaren will come in and there's like a little something extra going on. But no matter who's directing, there is this sort of emphasis always on placing the camera somewhere really interesting, right? It's never, I'm not never, but it's often you're left outside a room or you're the, what I like to call the impossible shot, which is they'll shoot up through a table that isn't

see-through, but they'll make it see-through, you know, so they're always trying to put the camera somewhere really bizarre, interesting. And when you watch a show like this, you want to be immersed in the action. But if you study a show like this, if you re-watch it obsessively, it's really fun to stop and think about where they decide to put the camera in these various shots. One of my favorites is in the second episode in Carrot and Stick with the shootout that Nacho gets himself into in the parking lot of the hotel. The over-head shot of Nacho lying down on the front seat of the truck. Yeah.

But it's like that truck, that truck's roof would not be that high, but it's, they're able to do stuff like that and make it feel very, very real and showy, but not distractingly showy. It just creates like a disorientation. And it honestly, it just like, it always keeps your, you know, when you're watching TV, especially, I think, when you're watching anything, but when you're watching TV, I think sometimes you're the side of your brain that's following and recognizing and either enjoying or critiquing or, or processing the writing can be bigger than the side of your brain that's thinking about why they put the camera there or what's this lighting like? And, you know, that sometimes is why TV

kind of is so digestible is because it's not necessarily visually challenging. Yeah. And I think that they sort of maybe have like the perfect combination of this brilliant writing with this very, very provocative filmmaking. It's also, I want to talk, I'm so curious to talk to you about this because I know you and shot had this great discussion about sort of like theory TV versus not theory TV and how to watch television. This has been the ongoing debate like since lost through Westworld, et cetera, et cetera. And I understand the stance that some people take, and I've heard Andy eloquently speak about this, where you don't want like a good story to get swallowed in the picking through of clues

and minutia and stuff like that. And I really understand that stance. I think for me, the way that I like to watch TV, the ideal is some combination. Sure. Of the two, where the minutia, where they're picking through for clues informs the story when you're trying to sort of predict something, you're doing it based on story and character that you've seen already, you know, and I get frustrated when it's not anchored there. I've seen no show or no pair of shows better than Better Callsall and Breaking Bad for threading

that needle because they're actively engaging in that. sort of like Reddit clue fandom when they code the episode titles of a season of Better Call Saul to read Frings Back to like, you know, signal to the audience that Giancarlo Esposito is coming. Yeah. If you put the first letter of every, you know, they're doing stuff. The titles for this season appear to all be blank and blank construction, carrot and stick, wine and roses. There's a few more that have been released.

I mean, one might be called. called Walt and Jesse because they've already announced that Walt and Jesse will make an appearance. I hope. And I don't know. And what that makes my brain do is try to guess what the final one will be. And I'm like, is it his and hers? Is it like what would be a really fun one? That's like a fun thing to think about. They also actively engage in color theory. And so I was paying attention to what Kim was wearing because it read really different and incorrect to me. I'm like, why is what Kim's wearing in that scene you're talking about where her eyes are shaded? Why is it reading so wrong to me? So I went back through and I looked.

And up to this point, Kim is mostly worn blacks and grays and blues and whites. Like, that's her color palette. They put her in a brown suit with these, like, gaudy stripes. Like, it's a Saul. Like, Saul wears brown suits. And Saul wears gaudily striped ties. So, like, they didn't do, like, a hokey, we're going to put her in a bright pink suit with a tie. sort of Saul thing, but they gave her this really subtle

Saul costume. I think it's brilliant. It was, so there are definitely shows that that I do engage in theory TV with. I think that my most recent experience that I needed to detox from was True Detective Season 3, where I was, you know,

getting deep into Lovecraft Reddit and then found out, oh, so this is just this guy's like Vietnam trauma? All right. Like, I thought we were going into a third plane of existence, but that's, all right. I love that season. With Better Call Saul, I am almost, I don't mean make this sound like weird. I just basically think these guys are smarter than me. So I'm just like, when I watch these scenes like Nacho kicking out the air conditioner sneaking into this

this little cabin that's on the premises of his hotel and then tricking the guy who's watching him into getting a phone call. Yeah. I'm like, how are you? you plot that? You know, how does like, it's, it's like still within the realm of like what Nacho could do. Like, it's not out of the question that Nacho would all of a sudden think of this scenario. But like, how do you show that on screen and have it be plausible? So routinely, the better call Saul writers do stuff where I'm like, I, I, I, you could have left me alone in a room of the typewriter for a hundred years and I couldn't have thought something that cool. The reason I didn't mean to so hastily be like, they are smarter than you, Chris, but they're

They're smarter than all of us because this is the thing that they do that I love. And I don't know if it's unique to this show, but I've never heard another showrunner or writer talk about this. Where they're very open about this thing that they do where they will write themselves into a corner just for the joy of writing themselves back out of that corner. Right. So how do we get nacho out of this hotel? Right. We're going to put him here. We're going to put nacho in this impossible situation at the end of season five.

Or we're going to put them in this hotel or, you know. And this is like a big scale version of that Because like how do we get to Gene at the Sinebond is like sort of the question that they've put for themselves? Or how do we get from Jimmy to Saul is the question they put from themselves? But the first time I think I remember them actively talking about it was in Breaking Bad when they put the gun in Walt's trunk, the trunk of his car. We see it in like a flash forward. Yeah. And they had no idea how it got there or what it meant.

But they were like, we'll figure that out. That's a little game we've set for ourselves. I mean, that's just extra level. Like, I couldn't even actively plot out a series as emotionally enriching as these shows are. And they're like, we've done it backwards and puzzle boxed it for ourselves, which is just honestly next level TV. And it's interesting when that kind of thinking starts to or does bleed over into the characters. So I think what Jimmy and Kim are doing to Howard is almost like they're writing better call Saul. You know, they're planting seeds of doubt.

They are creating scenarios in which something like this could happen. And the idea of bringing together both first Jimmy's like whole going into this country club and doing a whole anti-Semitism speech, all to distract people so that he can go plant fake cocaine on Howard. Yeah. Well, I can't remember Ed Begley's character's name off the top of my head. What is it? Cliff? Cliff that Cliff is going to discover.

And take Howard's word for it at the moment. But in the subsequent episode, we'll start to have that confidence chipped away when the Kettlemen's are like, and we heard Howard is a crazy cocaine addict. And it's like, it's just going to take one more incident like that. And Cliff is going to be like, I think Howard might be a cocaine addict. And that's, this is the Kim Wexler approach. And it's so smart and so subtle versus whatever Jimmy, you know, his, his prostitutes crashing lunch sort of move.

Jimmy probably would have just chosen to like run straight into Howard and have like a bag of cocaine explode and be like Howard, you're covered in cocaine. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I think that

the other thing that the show is so brilliant at is we're worried for Kim. We don't like that she's getting, she has a taste for this. But just like with Breaking Bad, the griffs are so fun. Right?

It's so fun to watch Walt do what he does and so it's seducing you the same way that the characters are being seduced into this. I love watching Kim and Jimmy do a grift. Like, every time they do one, it's so fun to watch them. So you're with them and you're like, yes. And even though Howard has not done anything overtly evil to deserve any of this, you're still kind of rooting for them to get away with it because we care about them and it's so fun. But if you step back, you're like, Kim, what are you doing?

I mean, even the carrot and the stick. scene. So even that scene towards the end of episode two where Kim sits through Jimmy's carrot routine sits through him trying to say like, everybody wants a little money in their pocket and like here, why don't we do this? Like we're going to work together. But and just tries to encourage them and say like, you know, this is, this is the best thing for you. Kim, you know, has heard enough. And she says enough carrot. And she calls the IRS. And she dresses down Betsy, who is a repulsive person, but still, I think that the brilliant thing that the show does is they can rescue moments of empathetic behavior or sympathetic behavior out of characters that are

not particularly sympathetic. And you just kind of feel for those two people in the moment because you're like, oh, you got worked by a master and that master is actually not Jimmy. It's Kim. The way that Kim, the night before, listening to Jimmy say, oh, I know these people, care it's going to work. And just like watching her say, figure out in her head, this is never going to work. I have to come and do it. He's going to mess it up, right? Yeah.

That's fantastic. But yeah, as you say, to make it so complicated, you talked about Kim's pro bono work. This is something that she sort of dove headlong into at the end of season five in the season five finale. She's like, give me all your pro bono cases. I need to do this. She is energized by that. And she does say that, like, if they get the sandpiper money,

she wants to, you know, devote herself to doing pro bono work. But it all feels like dressing up these darker impulses in this justification, right? This, like, do goodery. It's a complicated thing for Kim because we're used to Kim being so moral, holding the moral line. And so she's still doing this pro bono work. And that still exists for her character. But I feel like, again, your Michael Cori Lenny reference is perfect.

Like that Kim is gone, it feels like. And I'm worried we're never going to get her back. She's evaporating. I mean, you know, I wanted to mention just briefly the depiction of Kim and Jimmy's romantic relationship. Because one of the great accomplishments of this show is, I don't know if it's unique, but this, it's like a friendship that has manifested itself romantically because it needs to go to a. another level. But the way that they kind of show Jimmy and Kim being these people who, I don't know if they have like rabid sexual chemistry or anything, but they definitely like have like a deep understanding of one another, even if Jimmy is obviously like sometimes playing

three card Monty even on himself. Yeah. And this, it comes out in these like little ways, like, I love how this show conveys like intimacy between these two characters by having them eat together a lot and decide like what like they're going to have Thai food take out tonight or they're going to have a Sunday bar or like their levels of comfort in any given moment like Kim is like gorging yourself at the Mexican restaurant is like ordering more food and Jimmy's like I'll just have a Coke because like I don't know if I'm like comfortable with where everything is going right now and you don't have to come out and say it but I was wondering if if what you thought of Jim and Kim's Jimmy and Kim's just just regular

like the romantic relationship in general. It's not something we see a lot of. I love it. It reminds me of sort of one of my, well, there's two ideal TV couples that I think about often, which are like coach and Mrs. Coach, right? And Ben and Leslie and Parks and Recreation. I think those are two like really beautiful depictions of like people who like and love each other, right? It's not just about, like, well, they won't they? It's like, how do they? And so when you think about like coach and Tammy, just sharing a chardonnay in the backyard as they talk about their days, as they often would. Like, there would just be these moments or, like, making breakfast or whatever it was. And I think similarly with Ben and Leslie, you just, like, you see that camaraderie that is the foundation for hopefully a lifelong partnership.

With Kim and Jimmy, it's the eating together. It's the, like, there's several seasons of them just, like, watching movies together. Yeah. They'll just be at home watching, like, old black and white movies or whatever. I'm like, that looks so nice. Yeah. I love that for them. And what it does is paint a simple, quiet, domestic life that they're constantly putting at risk.

We're being shown what's on the line here. And it's this little life that they've built together. And if they could have just been happy with that little life together, then whatever happens to pull them apart for Breaking Bad, maybe need not have happened. I think that what's going to pull them apart is getting involved in the cartel wars. Could be. Could be. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something?

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Can I do one more thing about the, so the end of carrot and stick, Jimmy says, wolves and sheep. And like you, I need memory refreshers all the time on this show. But that was such a, that was such like an overt callback feeling moment. Yes. So I googled like wolves and sheep and break it bad. So this is the. fighting moment of young Jimmy's life is like when he was a kid working in his dad store and his dad was this like gentle pushover who would just like help anyone and give handouts and and he was a

target for grifters this grifter comes in tries to pull a grift on his dad and young jimmy is like dad he's trying to grift you his dad's like no i'm going to help him and so then jimmy sort of calls the grifter out on his bullshit and when his dad is out of the room and he and the grifter sort of exchanged this moment and the grifter says there's two types of people that and wolves in the world, wolves and sheep, and you have to decide who you're going to be. Right. And this whole time that we've been watching Jimmy turn into Saul, we're like, he's a, you know, he's a sheep and wolves closing.

That's certainly like how Chuck viewed him, right, as a wolf and sheep's closing, I should say, like, he's a wolf. But I think what we've seen, like, how he genuinely cares about Chuck, like all this stuff, all the ways in which he's been sort of misunderstood and pushed aside. Like, I think he's at his core, a sheep, and it's Kim, the surprise wolf and sheep's clothing. And that's so scary for Kim, you know. My reading of that moment was that was he was talking about the Kettleman's and that he was saying, maybe yeah. These people tried to play the game and they didn't have it. You know what I mean?

Like they didn't have what it takes to, you know, they couldn't get one over on me. They couldn't get one over in the city. And now they're living in a trailer in the middle of nowhere, skimming money off of people's tax returns. And just, you know, they're. And just, you know, giving them checks that they take to the casino. But yeah, he was probably also like, I just recognized the wolf and Kim. Yeah, maybe I'm the sheep. I don't know. Okay, so let's talk a little

bit about the Salamanca family business stuff going on in these two episodes. Nacho, who had orchestrated a hit on Lalo, an unsuccessful hit in a sort of myth-building moment for Lalo, if you need it anymore. He survives

this attack, goes on to kill a farmhand after drinking his wife's coffee and make his body look as close to Lalo as possible. That moment when the guy looks up in the mirror, which was in the trailer, and I think a lot of people were like, is this a new big bad or is there some new character? And it was just Lalo molding this guy into a corpse, essentially. Okay, so Lalo, I think, is a perfect character on television. Yeah.

And Tony Dalton is great no matter where he goes. Even if he's like in a sort of slightly subpar Marvel TV show, like he's incredible. Yes. But the idea that Lalo, when Lalo shows up, it's been, the show has been so interesting as it tries to balance. It started out as like it felt like two parallel shows, the Jimmy show and the Mike show or the Jimmy and Chuck show and the mic and whatever's happening with Mike's show. And then slowly we were adding chips on the mic side. Like, Nacho was there from the beginning. But like Gus shows up and that's sort of a spark of energy.

Because sometimes I would get impatient to go back to the Jimmy story because I was so emotionally invest in that. As much as I love Jonathan Banks and Mike Armich Trout. Like, but when Lalo comes on the scene last season, I was like, okay, here it is. Like, I'm never, I'm never tired of hanging out with Lalo. And the fact that Lalo, who's got the, like, brutality of Tuko and the sneaky cunning of Hector, has, like, curated this corpse, right? Because he has been, like, putting his teeth in his teeth. He's, like, been, like, messing with his dental records for a long time. Like, he's hand-selected this guy to be his double, should he ever need one.

Do you, Chris, do you have a guy that you're grooming to be your corpse should you ever need to swel? him in? I'm not going to say that Andy is getting some dental work done in England, but I'm not going to not say that. I mean, that's England not known for their dentists. Yeah, and off books, uh, dental swap happening in the, in the back streets of London right now. Um, yeah, it's, what a move. What a move. Again, another one of those things where I'm just not as as smart as these people, you know, like the, him being like, did he go to the dentist? Did he's, has even going to the dentist that I recommended? I was like, oh my God, you're kidding me?

Oh, yeah. So Lalo and Nacho are enacting a very, you know, kind of no country for old men, chasing one another across the Southwest thing. And in the balance between Nacho's trying to escape, he gets to this hotel. He's hold up in what, you know, I'm sure that place does not have great Yelps. Although the room service seems quite nice, you know, that woman bringing the tray of food every day. But I can't.

She bringing him like monsters or like he's probably a beer. But I was like, are those monster energy? That would be terrible is to get jacked up on monster while you're like stuck in an un-air-conditioned motel room. And, you know, Nacho figures out that there's a someone watching him from this sort of shed. He's on the phone with, he's in contact with Tyrus who is setting up a kind of extraction. but that's obviously like, you know, maybe or maybe not going to happen. And Nacho gets out of his hotel room by kicking an air conditioner out the window.

I think that was just an incredible, like, cool moment. He sneaks up on this guy who's watching him who doesn't know why he's watching him, but, you know, or claims to not know who he's working for, but it becomes quite obvious who he's working for. And then Nacho escapes from the hotel in the Salamanca cousins show up. Yeah. there's this incredible shootout. And that ties into this question that Gus is trying to answer for himself,

which is, does he want to cut bait on nacho and leave him? Or does he want to basically entice him to come back home by kidnapping his father? And the only thing standing away of that stuff is Mike. Entice is an interesting word. Yeah. Entice. Sweeten the deal. try to put some incentives in the deal

by kidnapping his father. So there's a lot to unpack here, but mostly I was curious about your feelings about the scene towards the end of episode two in the trailer where I think we're supposed to think that this sniper is looking out for Lalo popping up or some sort of threat on Gus. Yes.

And first of all, I'll just say, my favorite Breaking Bad episode is box cutter. And when I see Gus start picking up sharp objects, I get very nervous for everybody else in the room. But it's so funny that it can be so tense, even though we know all three men in those rooms survive to Breaking Bad. All three of those characters are in Breaking Bad,

but we're still like what's going to happen in this moment, you know, and how does the show do that? The detail of this guy picking up an entire broken glass in his bare hands and then just like sweeping it into the trash can. And the way that Gus Fring is always like cleaning and tidying and fastidious. Yes. Similarly, like last season when Lalo burns down the Poyos Armanos and he's just sort of like, he has a Poyos Armanos napkin that's been half burned.

And he's kind of like using it to wipe his hands as he's talking about what he's going to do. And then he just like throws it away. Like it's wreckage everywhere. Yeah. But he throws his napkin in the dumpster because that's who Gus Fring is always. Yes. Yeah. No, it's an incredible scene.

And the big question mark hanging over Mike and Gus is how do they get from where they are, which is kind of antagonistic, despite the fact that Mike is working for him, to a much more convivial relationship that they have in Breaking Bad. So, like, what is, you know, what is Mike going to do to win Gus's trust or what is Gus going to do to make Mike want to be his guy? you know, like, how is that relationship going to evolve is a question? And like, is Nacho the price that's paid on one side or the other of that? Right. And, you know, this idea that Mike is sort of saying to Gus, that loyalty goes both ways, you know, and that the idea is that like, you can't ask Nacho to do this thing if you're not going to also follow through with what you, what you set, your side of the bargain. And Gus just kind of looking at him, like an alien looking at a tree stump, you know, in terms of understanding concepts of loyalty.

But yeah, I just thought that was a wonderfully tense scene. So when Mike says, no matter what happens next, like, this is not going to go the way you think it's going to go. Is that suggestion that the guy with the sniper rifle is going to take everybody out if Mike gets hurt? Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way. I thought it was just like classic Mike Herman Trout, like Cajonis of Steel in any situation.

Mike has just got like just having a sniper with him all the time has just turned out to be a great decision for Mike. Great. Great move. Could have used one of the riverbank. But I think that, um, his softness for Nacho is like, this is just the classic Mike, uh, contradiction that has always existed in him. Like this similar to like the softness yes for Jesse, right?

It's just like this. And I can't tell if Nacho is supposed to be like our Jesse pink. and all of this. I don't quite know that he's like risen to that level of protect him at all cost. But Michael Mando's so good in the role. Yeah, I, I'm thinking of engaging my own sniper wherever I go. I think that's a great move for me. If I, if I told you right now that we're going to do a better call saw spin off about nachos two girlfriends getting on the bus, his methed out domino playing girlfriends. I need the, I need her. I need her. her to not. I would, I would watch the other one, but the domino girl, I was like, I need her.

She might be kind of intense. That would have to be like a quibby show. I can only six, I can only do six minutes with you. Quick bites with a domino meth girl. Yeah. The girlfriend seems safe for now. The father, I mean, and that's the thing is like Mike, when the whole safe gambit, which is a little obscure to follow for me initially, but like this idea that they crack open, not just safe, take everything out. bring in the identical safe, put everything back in except for the card that has the ID for Nach's dad. Yes.

And then they add the like Grand Cayman wire transfer balance sheet with the phone number, the motel on it, planted there, you know, to lead the cartel to Nacho, right? So Mike in that moment is prepared to give Nacho up. But the fact that Nacho survives, because he puts that in there, right? Yeah. Mike puts the envelope in there. It's Balsa, right? Who takes it out?

Who cracks it out? Yeah. So they planted that there so that they would find it and say like, oh, it was clearly Nacho, Nacho, who got paid by someone, you know, put the hit out on Lalo. He's the one and this is where you can find him. So Mike is ready to give him up. The fact that he survived the shootout, I think that's sort of like some old-fashioned Mike respects it.

He's like, okay, now I'm going to put myself out here to kind of protect Nacho. Certainly his dad, but like definitely not. The dad ID thing is. tough because, yeah, he puts, because he takes out nacho's ID, right? Yeah. But he puts it back in, but he pockets the dad's ID. So somewhat protecting the father. That's what I thought. So I was kind of, one thing that was sort of breaking my brain was like basically watching, like, Hector, Gus, Balsa, they're referring to a lottoe as like, you know, ultimately we all work for a lottoe. Yeah. And I had to like kind of like, I did not feel.

finished my scholarship yet, but like, I had to kind of start to reassemble the Breaking Bad Salamanca Fring Aladio Wars in my head to be like, where does this wind up going? But what happens when so that we know like Gus? Obviously there's like enough of a, I don't know, is it a, in the beginning of Breaking Bad or throughout Breaking Bad, like for a while there's just like Salamanka hates Gus, but they work together, correct? Right. Right. Okay. So I'm just trying, I'm not trying to like kind of basically reverse engineer what happens here. It's more just like, I'm like, okay, but they wind up still, this isn't going to end now. Right. And then like, the, the Lalo question is so interesting because like when Saul gets kidnapped by Walt and

Jesse in Breaking Bad, he's like, did Lalo send you? That's season two, right? So then you're like, okay, is Lalo still alive? I mean, this, this is such the fascinating, again classic like Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, can under the set of themselves because Lolo is both alive and dead right now. Yes. Right? So like that could maybe paste over some questions. Also, Breaking Bad could start the day after Better Call stall ends. Do you know what I mean?

Like it might not be there's years in between. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like that, like it could be like the next day is the day he meets Walt and Jesse. So it could be that Lalo, he doesn't even know if Lalo is alive or dead. Can I tell you this is slightly off topic? But one time, way back of the day, I was freelancing for Vulture. And they asked me to do a thing where they were like, hey, we've got this timeline of Breaking Bad.

Every single time that the timeline has been mentioned, we want you to update it and figure out exactly how much time has passed on Breaking Bad. So I did a complete Breaking Bad rewatch. And every time someone said, it's been a week or it's been a day or whatever, I wrote it down. Real, real sweat work. And at the end of the day, I came back to my editor. I was like, it doesn't add up. Like, it doesn't make sense. And then my editor went to Peter Gould and he's like, hey, this doesn't make sense.

And Peter Gould's like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The time of this show is completely aft. So what you have to do. Yeah, now we know, before we engage in any long-term project mapping out, breaking bad or better call solid, just call Peter Gould first. Yeah, and he'll be like, don't, Joanna, no, get your life back. Anyway, that's, they, Volter very nicely killed me, paid me a kill fee for that work. But anyway.

I think of gold should have paid you a careful. But like mapping up the timeline, I'm just one of, as a cautionary tale for people listening, is like a, you know, is fruitless for you to do that. But you're absolutely right. Yes. We don't know when the app overlap is going to happen. But Lalo, Saul, Jimmy seems to think Lalo is alive in season two. And by season four of Breaking Bad, Fring taunts Hector and he says like all the other Salaamakas are dead, right? Right.

Right. So when does Lalo die between season two and four, Breaking Bad? Is Gus lying? Is Sallo uninformed? Like, we don't know. Lalo's pretty good at faking his own death. I would love for Lalo to survive all the way into the black and white gene years. Lalo comes for a Cinnabon.

Oh, yeah. Lalo at the Cinnamon is all I want, honestly. Yeah. I guess I wanted to end by just asking whether or not you felt like... So the thing is I was going to ask, like, do you see any big themes or big questions? you have for going into next week. But I feel like this show is so contained and like everything that we've talked about already, like the sort of descent of Kim into this kind of underworld operator. There's obviously this kinetic visceral cat and mouse game going to happen between Lalo and Nacho.

I was going to ask, it seems Lalo when he takes the coyote's truck when he kills those guys at the border, is driving away from the border, correct? Like he sort of turns. it's like the United States border is 28 miles like to the north and it seems like he goes south did you catch that? Maybe, but I think I think he's driving the car at the end of carrot stick.

I think he's following Kim and Jimmy. Oh, Joanne, are you serious? I do. I didn't even think of that. I thought that was just like a cool random car going by. I don't know. And listeners might be like, of course, we've seen him drive that car before.

I couldn't pin it down that much. But here's how I tracked it. He tells, like, he has that great conversation with Hector using purely Bells where he's like, oh, you need proof? Yeah. I don't know how to get proof. He's like, oh, wait, I do know how to get proof. And it's Jimmy and Kim. And the reason he knows, he knows that Jimmy is connected to, like, Nacho and everything like that.

And he knows the big thing that happened in season five with, like, Lalo and all of them is that Kim, when Jimmy's missing, Kim goes to Lalo. And it's like, where is he? Yeah. And then he comes and visits them and it's so scary in their apartment and stuff like that and Kim. Best scene in television. So good. But what Lalo then knows is that Kim is like a big vulnerability point for Jimmy. So I do, I don't know.

But I think that. I hadn't really thought about that. It's so scary. I'm so scared for everyone. I care about everyone. So, yeah. Well, Joanna, thank you so much for talking about these episodes with me. We can wrap it up here.

And you're going to be doing a deep dive with Ben Lindberg on the Prestige TV podcast every week. So just like we kind of did with Succession, Andy and I will have a pretty immediate reaction on Mondays. And then you and Ben are going to dive deep on the show in the middle of the week, right? That's it. We will not have any, like, Albuquerque restaurant recommendations, which I hope and pray, Andy will. But I loved, I loved listening to you guys cover Succession. It was so good. So I'm really excited to listening.

You and Sean were amazing, too. it's fun to kind of like make these shows and to like really like stretch them out and like think about them in so many different ways. It's really cool. I did today create an email account for that prestige feed, which is Kim Wexler lives at gmail.com. So if any thoughts or theories or questions or quandaries, I'm just putting that those, that positive energy out into the universe. I also wonder what kind of spam that email account will get. Joanna, thank you so much for joining me. We were produced by Kaya McMullen and we will be back on Thursday. Hey Mama, thanks for making all my favorite recipes. Hi, Ma. Thanks for your unfiltered

advice. Hi, Mom. Thanks for always being by the phone. Hey, Mom. Happy Mother's Day. When you ship UPS Air at the UPS store, your items arrive on time or your money back. Guaranteed at no extra cost, exclusively at the UPS store UPS store U.S. retail locations. Visit the UPS store.com slash air shipping for full details. Terms and conditions apply. Send your Mother's Day gifts at the UPS store and we'll get your gratitude there on time. Thank you.