Doing the right thing didn't lead him to a bad place, it lead him to an impoverished place, where everybody else benefited from his efforts more than he did and then looked on him as garbage.
I think ending the season on his brother's betrayal would have been a more powerful send-off. I get that you have to show the beginning of his journey to become Saul, but it just felt like kind of an anticlimactic episode after the dramatic high points of Five-O and Chuck stabbing him in the back. It's a good standalone, but it just didn't feel meaty enough for a season finale to me.
I read that the episode where Jimmy\Saul put his logo on the bottom of the Jello cups was supposed to be called "Jello". The Jello people did not want to be associated with the show and said no to the request. All of the episode end in "O" as a FU to the Jello people.
Agree 100%. It made for a rather frustrating hour, the first and only one of season 1, IMO. Maybe they should have combined the two episodes. It might have at least extended the momentum from Five-0.
Eh, I don't necessarily need a big, blow-out of an episode for a season finale. For me, the way it ended was good. It shows how far he's come since the first episode and I really liked his talk with Mike. It showed he is not totally without morals, but he's recognizing that he gets further when he doesn't care.
An impoverished place isn't necessarily a bad place, if you are a person who is content just living and doing good work. I think he came to a nihilist catharsis that morals really don't matter or maybe don't exist, and shouldn't stop him from taking his deserved piece. Of course we all know where that leads him. Working at a Cinnabon eyeing every stranger like he's going to be waiting for you in a dark alley.
His regret about giving the money back, not to mention his hope that he'd get rich off the Sandpiper case point to him not wanting to be impoverished. Hell, he even got the Cadillac as Saul that Marco mentioned. I do think you're right about the nihilist catharsis, though.
That's exactly what I'm saying though. Some people could be happy with what Saul has and what he is capable of getting through moral means, but Saul can't be.
Watched through the final episodes and highly enjoyed them. Look forward to this series' return. Came as a shocker in how Chuck played Jimmy to get him kept off the case and that Hamlin may actually have been supportive of Saul in some way, but Chuck was preventing anything from happening. Great episode with Mike as the heavy for the guy selling drugs to Tuco's guy. I knew sooner or later Mike would come out and show the other two thugs he didn't need a gun to be threatening, was just waiting for him to take down that one punk and disarm him before he knew what was happening! McKean is great but, yeah, Fuck Chuck. Jimmy was doing so much for him and supporting him, and defending his "illness" in so many ways and then Chuck turns around and stabs Jimmy in the back. I do think that's the "turning point" from Jimmy to what will become Saul. If Jimmy hadn't been betrayed and was eventually brought into the case by this other law firm on the class-action/RICO case as what happened (with Jimmy side-lined, the elders still would have been asking for him, HHM still would have been overwhelmed by the work-load and needed to partner with another firm and that firm still would have sought Jimmy out) and he'd been on a partner track, or at least had more respectable job on a big-paying case, he could've gone down a very different path where he needed to take less and less shortcuts. The shortcuts he was taking could have been to get him a foundation built so that he's not working out of and sleeping out of a nail salon boiler room while driving a shitty high-mileage import. Once he was on solid ground and earning a decent living he'd need to take less and less shortcuts or suffer with morality in order to make decisions. Keep in mind, by and large he has made good decisions and passed up a lot of opportunities to get a windfall. And it certainly seems he was trying to help these elders and wasn't trying to scam them. Yeah, he was going about it in sort of a manipulative way but that's just marketing. He still was helping people and taking partial payments for his work. He didn't have to go back to that woman and dig to find the problems in this nursing home, but he did it out of some level of concern over the issue but, yeah, mostly he saw opportunity. But, that's being a lawyer. He was trying to do good, he just got kicked to the gutter every time tried thanks in large-part to his brother. Screw Chuck. I'm sure something of a reconciliation is forth-coming but in th end, Jimmy is now on this path to Saul because of his brother's distrust and partial jealous over Jimmy's accomplishments.
All "Saul" had to do was walk in and take the partnership with the new firm. To me--that's the second time he has thrown away a sure thing.
Yeah, but at that point he had an understanding that his skillset didn't apply to legitimate lawyerdom.
Eh, that's assuming that he was savvy enough in the new firm to keep up with new case and see it through to an ending (which would take years and years.) We know he's a fast-talker, we've seen it plenty of times in the series and during BB, but a good lawyer at this point? By BB's time he's much more savvy with the law and it's cracks and how to exploit them to the gains of his clients and to CYA, but, I'm not sure all of that's enough for him to be a useful attorney at a prestigious lawfirm. Unless that lawfirm is Crane, Poole and Schmidt and they needed another "Alan Shore" type lawyer who wasn't afraid to be a bit shady and under-handed when things called for it in order to get things done. But I'm not sure Jimmy has it in him to totally improvise soap boxian closing arguments to nullify a jury without disbarring himself. As much as Jimmy may have wanted to do things as right as possible and as much as it seems events and even his own brother conspired against him to turn him into the shady ambulance chaser working out of a strip-mall Saul which, largely worked out for him better than this partnership likely would have. Where his inexperience and his e-law-school degree would have betrayed him. Now, granted in 10-15 years or so when Breaking Bad ends and Saul finds himself working in a Cinnabon in Nebraska constantly looking over his shoulder he'll have regrets but, through it all, it's probably the path he was always meant to take.
I took that last scene to be less about him not thinking himself "good enough", and more about him simply wanting to do his own thing and not be part of another big stuffy law firm like the one his brother belonged to (and that gave him so much shit all season). As to the first season overall, I thought it was pretty damn good. Obviously the story being told doesn't have nearly the same sense or urgency as Breaking Bad did, but it was still really well written and managed to make Saul's journey a lot more compelling to watch than I ever would have expected.
Got around to watching the final episode now. I was thinking I would give up on the show early on but when Mike came center stage I was hooked. It's no breaking bad and being a prequel I don't see how it ever can be. But it's a very good show.
Four more days. Anyone else psyched up? Some people are speculating Saul meets Gus but in Breaking Bad it was pretty clear he knew of Gus through Mike but didn't know who he was. I hope they don't go the Star Wars route of having people meet in the prequel who shouldn't know each other yet. I'd love if there were a scene where Gus invites Saul to Los Pollos Hermanos, introduces himself as the manager, then decides Saul is not worthy of dealing with directly. (Failing the same test Walt initially failed).
I love Better Call Saul, and can't wait for this to start up again. It's funny, my parents finally decided to watch Breaking Bad, and are only through season 3, but decided to start watching BCS when it came available on Netflix. Despite my pleas, they watched it anyway, and don't care for it. You can't watch BCS without completing BB or it ruins the context.
That's almost the definition of a bad television show, one that can't be enjoyed without the crutch of another? Or at the very least, shoddy storytelling. Sure, you'll miss the nuances and the little things, but that shouldn't affect the overall enjoyment. That should just be the icing on an enjoyable cake.
I disagree with that, in the case of a prequel. It's fair to assume familiarity with the source material if you're expanding on existing characters in an existing universe. By assuming familiarity they're able to tell a higher level story without the obligatory starting hooks, and it pays off hugely toward the end of the first season. Though the first season of Better Call Saul is the sort of show that comes off better when you've seen the full season and understand what's going on. For example, there are interactions between James and Charles at the start of the season which look completely different once you understand what Charles is thinking. The first time you watch it, it doesn't get great until Mike takes the spotlight. The second time, you notice things from the start.
It may be fair to make that assumption but if you allow that assumption to influrnce the writing of your current show, then you've likely failed Screennwriting 101. Your show needs to be written so that it stands on it's own, regardless of the fact that it may be a prequel, sequel, or spinoff. Vince Gilligan is too good a writer to allow Saul to fall into this trap. The show definitely stands on it's own, but it isn't BB (it's not supposed to be) and if you go into Saul thinking that it is going to feel like BB, you are likely going to feel disappointed.