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, Jimmy melts down; Werner disappears; and Lalo gives Hector a ring.
1. I love this detail from the Insider podcast: When Rhea Seahorn was doing her ADR (automated dialogue replacement) for the teaser sequence, she had to hop on one foot the entire time to duplicate the sound out of running out breath. The only thing harder, she said, was “not laughing” while she was watching Jimmy “flip-flopping.”
2. Fun detail number two from the teaser sequence: Vince Gilligan (who directed the episode) had to call Jimmy Buffet personally and ask for permission to use the shirt that Jimmy wore in the teaser. Buffet clearly said yes, and it was a fun call for Gilligan to make.
3. The original version of that teaser is also different from the one they ultimately used. In the original version of the opening scam, Kim is not on crutches. Jimmy plays a sleazy guy who hits on Kim. She elbows Jimmy, which causes him to bleed all over the plans. Writer Gennifer Hutchison, however, felt it wasn’t as fun to do because Jimmy was playing a douchebag. It was better to have a hapless, washed-out brother type. Considering the T-shirt and flip flops Jimmy ended up wearing, I have to agree.
4. When I watched the pivotal fight scene between Jimmy and Kim, there was no question in my mind that Kim had won that argument. She was right on every point: She does come running to bail him out in every situation, and the only person in that relationship that sees Jimmy as “Slippin’ Jimmy” is Jimmy himself.
However, both Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk strongly believed their characters had won the argument, and I couldn’t see how anyone might believe that Jimmy had won that argument until I watched it for the third time. Odenkirk is absolutely right in that the way Kim looked at him suggested that she didn’t believe he was sincere. And that’s really the heart of the argument, isn’t it? Jimmy was angry with Kim because he felt like she didn’t believe him, and she didn’t. “We’ll find a way to make you look sincere,” she says to Jimmy, which implies that she believes he didn’t look sincere. And that’s why Jimmy blew up. Because Kim didn’t believe he was being sincere in the first place.
5. One other quick note about that scene: Dave Porter gave some thought to adding a piece of musical scoring before the big fight scene, but realized that there was no way to do it because no matter how the music was played, it would have invariably favored one person over the other in the argument. While Odenkirk and Seehorn both clearly thought they had the winning argument, it was important to Gilligan that the direction, the editing, and the music not favor one argument over the other. Gilligan directed it from the vantage point of God’s eye.
6. So, the trick that Werner pulled off with the laser pointer, where he burned out the lens in the cameras? That would not have passed the Mythbusters test. The laser trick would not have worked on any camera produced after 1964, and lasers weren’t a thing before 1964, so that was a situation where the viewer just had to go with it.
7. The most obvious Easter Egg from the episode is Hector’s bell, which he rigs to an explosive in Breaking Bad to kill Gus Fring. We learn here that the bell was a gift from Lalo, who pulled it from the smoldering rubbling of a hotel Hector once burned down after the owner crossed him. Hector is also in the same nursing home here as the one Breaking Bad where he kills Gus.
8. Though Jimmy never mentions Chuck during his bar hearing, Chuck was clearly on his mind. As one Redditor points out, there’s a reason Jimmy said that he wishes his diploma had said “Georgetown or Northwestern” on it instead of America Samoa. Those were precisely the two schools where Chuck got his degrees.
9. A Redditor caught this possible nod to Breaking Bad, too. Similar lettering, same color, and both words are German.
10. Finally, this may be nothing. It may be a total coincidence. However, Gilligan directed the episode, and where he is involved, there is seldom coincidence. Did anyone notice that there were an unusually large number of exit signs in this episode?
This one was reflected onto the glass door at the nursing home.
There were lined up behind Jimmy at the diner.
There was one in the shot with Gus and Lalo.
You can spot one outside of Jimmy’s hearing room.
There’s one in the background while Jimmy and Kim are arguing.
But the reason I think all of these exit signs might be intentional is because of this exit sign, reflected onto the table at Jimmy’s hearing.
Perhaps it was all foreshadowing Werner’s exit, or maybe it’s foreshadowing someone else’s exist in the season finale?
