Welcome back to our weekly breakdown of the minutia of Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s Better Call Saul. While Brian Grubb provides his always excellent coverage of the series (here’s his write-up of the most recent episode), here we will look at some of the details viewers may have missed, callbacks to Breaking Bad, references to other shows or movies, and theories on the direction the series is heading. We scour Reddit threads, Twitter, listen each week to the phenomenal Better Call Saul Insider Podcast, and attempt to curate the best intel about each episode.
In this week’s episode, both Jimmy and Mike get a new job, and Nacho goes home.
1. Let’s just start with the most obvious Breaking Bad callback this week. Jimmy got a new job at a cell phone store, and after talking with Ira, came up with an idea to market those cell phones to those who most fear having their privacy invaded, i.e., criminals. This isn’t just a job selling cell phones; it’s a job designed to help Jimmy build a clientele for the future Saul Goodman. It also illustrates why Saul Goodman was so obsessed with cell phones, as we see from his office drawer in Breaking Bad.
2. For those who don’t remember it, way back in the sixth episode of the third season, “Off Brand,” Stacey recounts a story to her support group about how her husband — as a kid — used to help his Dad (Mike) pour concrete in his garage. That story was turned into this week’s cold open, shown from little Matty’s perspective. One neat detail — which again illustrates the pains this show goes to in order to be exact — is that they cast a Young Mike for the montage based on photos of young Jonathan Banks, even though his face is never seen (he’s apparently a dead ringer).
3. Luis and Daniel Moncada, who play Marco and Leonel Salamanca, i.e., The Cousins, were on this week’s episode of the Insider podcast, and they talked about one of their favorite scenes from Breaking Bad, which was the truck explosion in their very first episode. For the scene, they recount, the crew told them that there was only one truck so it had to be done in one take. But right before the scene began shooting, the entire crew vacated, leaving the two alone with a truck that was about to explode. They were basically given only one piece of direction: Don’t flinch. Luis told Daniel — who had never done an acting job before — that no matter what, if your leg or your arm catches on fire, just keep walking. “If something hits you, if it doesn’t knock you out, just keep f–king walking.”
Here’s the raw footage from that scene, and it is impressive how they manage not to flinch despite an actual truck exploding behind them.
4. Fun Fact: Daniel Moncada — who plays one of the Cousins — has spent some time in prison, which I wouldn’t have known but for this great exchange during the podcast this week:
Luis: “This motherf–ker [Daniel] got star struck. When we got on the Breaking Bad set, and this motherf–ker’s reaction was, when we get out of the van, Bryan [Cranston] is directing the episode and he’s about 20 feet away from us and we got out, and we’re on set, and Danny is like, Boom! He looks at Bryan and taps me on the shoulder, ‘Look! Look! That’s the guy from Malcolm in the Middle!”
…
Daniel: Funny thing about it, I watched Malcolm in the Middle when I was in prison.
Luis: We don’t call it prison! We call it this five-star hotel. Sorry guys!
5. Here’s some interesting inside baseball. In that early scene where a guy is dropping off a bag at the Espinosas hotel, the way it’s filmed, everyone is quiet — they’re mimicking words but they’re not actually speaking. All of those sounds — conversations, people have sex, etc. — is piped in during post-production, which also allows the producers to avoid the need to pay the extras SAG rates for speaking lines.
6. The hotel where the shootout took place had to be made to look like a war zone, but in reality, it’s actually a motel where people live. In fact, it’s a Route 66 Attraction called “The Westward Ho Motel.” We don’t have the rights to the photos to reprint them here, but you can see images of the actual motel here. It looks nothing like what we see in the episode.
7. It’s hard to tell without blowing the image up, but the nametag here shows that Anita works at Cradock Marine Bank, which is where Dan Wachsberger deposited money for Mike’s “nine guys” and Kaylee Ehrementraut. It also happens to be where Fox Mulder banks on The X-Files (it appeared in two episodes written by Vince Gilligan).
8. It makes so much sense that Kim would return to court to find inspiration for the rest of her career. She is an idealist, and it’s exactly in keeping with what we learned in the season three finale when she watched To Kill a Mockingbird twice in one day. Kim doesn’t want to be a lawyer for Mesa Verde. She wants to be Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird, but Judge Munsinger wants to disabuse her of any such romantic notions about the law.
9. I didn’t catch this, but it is straight-up brilliant!
10. Finally, this has nothing to do with the episode itself, but Bob Odenkirk led Wrigley Field in “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” on Monday, which you can watch right here. He seems absolutely elated!
This is not Odenkirk’s first time, either. The Cubs fan also sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and threw out the first pitch in August 2016. He talked about the experience and what a terrible singer he is on Conan.
