Fantasy football strategy, rankings, and podcasts

We pick up right where the last episode left off, with a neighborhood newspaper heist, pulled off by criminal mastermind Chuck McGill. We’re confronted with two cops, who are about as dumb as all the cops in Vince Gilligan’s world. I don’t know why cops in his shows can’t be smart, reasonable people, but clearly, these guys heard “No Tasers please”, their immediate reaction was to kick down the door and fire a taser at the first person they saw.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Gilligan’s world that he creates, but for some reason, police officers, and to a lesser extent, random people inside his world (i.e. Non-named characters) are just dumb. If kicking down Chuck’s door isn’t an example of no probable cause and use of excessive force, then I think we need to talk to some new lawyers.

Tune into the TV Soup Podcast (Better Call Saul, "Alpine Shepherd Boy" Review)

Stuff like this going on in a world that normally exhibits super realism can take me out of the show. Even goofy potential clients like the guy who wants to secede or Mr. Talking Toilet make more sense than the cops who kicked down Chuck’s door.

Jimmy finds himself a niche in “elder law”, which, while boring and tedious, is probably better than defending idiots who have intimate relations with a corpses dismembered head (seriously, what a way to start the series). So, Jimmy gets done with 2 wills and a future trust, which is a decent start after his first two stops turned out to be proper kooks.

This show plays around with shadows a lot, more than most shows in recent memory. There are lots of scenes in dark places where the lighting is only on very specific things. In the scene with the lady with all of the figurines (including Alpine Shepherd Boy) as well as the following scene in the salon, only the left side of Jimmy’s face is illuminated. This side is the side with the hair part in it and the higher forehead. This is Jimmy’s exposed, real side. The other half of his face is partially covered by his hair, and we tend to only see that side stressed when he’s doing something questionable. I’m certain that this will come up later on.

So, Chuck is finally in a hospital and as a viewer, I’m hoping for some answers about his allergy to electricity. Jimmy is frantic to remove/turn off all electronic devices in the room, but one thing we realize by the end of the scene is that, in that room, that’s all but impossible. There’s batteries in most medical devices that use power (for backup), there’s power in every room on every side of him, and of course, there’s power being used by the very bed he’s lying on.

While there are a few insights gleaned in to Chuck’s illness, more questions are raised. Shouldn’t he still be in lots of pain being out in the world? Won’t living in the suburbs cause most of these problems to continue? Why didn’t he notice when the bed was turned on?

We’ve finally got a doctor saying that this “illness” is fake and is being caused by something else in Chuck’s life. Of course, if you just tased someone who was allergic to electricity, I assume that would be plenty to put them in the hospital. It’s like mainlining peanut butter to someone with a peanut allergy. Perhaps the fact that this doesn’t kill Chuck is the biggest indication that this isn’t an actual physical illness (as Howard Hamlin is afraid of at the hospital).

Back at Chuck’s house, (how did they get home, bikes?), Jimmy sees the newspaper on the floor and immediately connects the dots. He thinks that whenever he does something wrong, it makes Chuck sick. Again, we see only part of Jimmy’s face illuminated. This time, it’s the right side of the face, even from a far angle, that is lit up.

Throughout this scene, we get parts of Chuck’s face (left side) illuminated when he’s making his argument, and Jimmy, when he is being somewhat truthful, has most of his face illuminated, but when he has something questionable to bring up, it’s back to just the right side of his face being lit up. By the end, Chuck is satisfied (didn’t even ask for an explanation) and sheds his space blanket and goes and makes coffee.

We’ve gotten this far, so where’s our montage? Well, Jimmy, knowing how to pander like the best of them, gets some fashion tips from Matlock and heads into the retirement home with some complimentary jello. We wind up with a montage of old people eating jello (snack time!). We don’t get a badass song this time around, but there is a surprise at the end of the cup. Need a Will? Call McGill! Jimmy, dressed like Matlock, is going around the rec room shaking hands like some kind of local politician. No shadows on his face this time – he appears to be trying to drum up some legit business helping the elderly.

Finally we get another encounter with Mike and this time, Jimmy has the right amount of stickers (finally!). Jimmy passes him a business card, you know, in case Mike knows any old people. We go through a night and a morning of Mike’s life, boring and quiet as it is. Mike eats at a diner which we saw previously in Breaking Bad (but this show’s future…this could get confusing). He’s then parked outside of a suburban house and waits for a young lady to drive by – my guess is that this is his daughter, but that’s mostly based on what I know from Breaking Bad.

Ultimately, we get one hell of a cliffhanger when Mike gets a visit from, presumably, a few guys he used to work with back in Philadelphia. This end of episode cliffhanger is perhaps the only thing that Gilligan does better than the shadow playing, and of course, the ability of this show to make every scene they shoot look like some kind of incredibly deliberate painting.

Halfway down the stretch, this show is really starting to heat up. We’re seeing the development of Jimmy from a struggling lawyer into a guy who is getting his act together. Chuck’s conflict with electricity (or Jimmy) has finished its first act, and Mike has finally found some conflict to his story that doesn’t involve parking validation stickers. I expect the final half of this season to go at a faster pace, and to also feature another little treat for Breaking Bad fans that they won’t expect.

Ah, back to the naming convention that we all got comfortable with. I looked ahead and - no spoilers - that pattern remains through the rest of the season. Maybe season 2 will be named after Beatles songs.

We start the episode, like many of them this season, in a flashback. This is taking place in the relatively recent past, 3-6 months earlier. This episode jumps back and forth between the present day (Mike being questioned with Saul by the Philly cops) and into the past, either in Mike's last days in Philly or his first days in Albuquerque. It's pretty obvious in the show which is which due to a matrix-like blue filter. I think they have used this filter in previous episodes' flashbacks (chuck bailing out jimmy maybe?), so it's probably no big revelation.

Tune into the TV Soup Podcast (Better Call Saul, "Five-O" Review)

This episode's story is told like an old cop drama. He's got a tough exterior, made a few mistakes, but is generally a good guy. It's the tale of Mike Ehrmantraut, which might not be terribly relevant to people who have only seen BCS, but for those of us who watched all of Breaking Bad, this was some back story that was a looong time coming.

Back to present day and Mike is in an interrogation room and won't say anything until his lawyer gets there, now, apparently, Jimmy McGill. Mike has a plan, as he always does, and tries to get Jimmy to help him steal the detective's notebook. Jimmy instantly rejects the idea - he's trying to be on the straight and narrow, but of course goes along with the plan when push comes to shove. During this interview, we're finally given some insight into things that actually happened in Philadelphia.

Mike gets the notebook and gets a good look at what the cops have on him (interesting side note - the AMC story sync has some great images of the notebook so you can see what they have) and realizes that his daughter-in-law called the Philly detectives after Fenske and Hoffman were killed. She thought there could be a connection, and presumably, told them that Mike was now in Albuquerque. Mike goes to confront Stacey about her calling the cops, and while he winds up admitting the phone call Matt had that she was worried about was actually with Mike, you don't get much else. Mike just stubbornly says "My boy wasn't dirty".

We move into a flashback as smooth as silk, and Mike is walking down the street back in Philly. He niftily breaks into a police car and proceeds into the bar and Mike appears to be really deep in his cups when we see Fenske and Hoffman for the first time. Mike's already put his plan into action (breaking into the car to plant a gun) but it really gets into motion when he walks up to them and tells them that he knows it was them (who killed Matty).

The plan comes together perfectly (as most of his plans in BB did), and it's great watching it for a second time, seeing how everything falls exactly into place. Getting picked up by the cops after the bar closed, giving them the ringer gun, waiting until they did decide to kill him.

Back in the present, Mike is back at Stacey's house and ready to pour his heart out. This is one of the best scenes that Jonathan Banks has had in both shows, and showcases his talent - he's not just grumpy and rough on the exterior. Mike explains everything that happened around Mikey's death, "breaking his boy" and finishes it with "you know what happened. the question is - can you live with it?"

Better Call Saul is back for another week of the misadventures of James McGill. Last week, it was a “Jimmy lite” episode, focusing on Mike’s backstory, but this week we’re back with Jimmy firmly in focus. Of course, we do wind up starting off with a little unfinished business from last week, the return of the notebook.

On their way to talk to the detectives, Jimmy claims that he and Mike “found” the notebook in the parking lot. Sure, guys. The real meat of this scene is the discussion that Mike has with the older cop. It’s made as clear as it can be (with some cryptic words) that Hoffman and Fenske deserved what they got. It’s also made clear to Mike that if his daughter-in-law doesn’t rat on him, the case is going to end right there.

Mike decides that he’s no longer going to require Jimmy’s services, as he’s fairly certain that his daughter-in-law will not tell on him, and his business with Philadelphia is finally behind him. Mike tells him to send him a bill, and of course, knowing the relationship these guys have in Breaking Bad, we know it won’t be a typical invoice for billable hours.

Tune into the TV Soup Podcast (Better Call Saul, "Bingo" Review)

Jimmy heads over for his daily delivery of ice and bacon to Chuck, and even though they were out of bacon that day, how awesome is Jimmy as a brother to bring him bacon on a daily basis. Jimmy wants to get Chuck back into the swing of just doing something and has his own plan, but seems pleasantly surprised that Chuck is taking his own initiative, spending a solid 120 seconds outside of his house (only 200 meters away from a 60 kilovolt transformer). Jimmy leaves a big stack of paperwork to “store” at Chuck’s house, purposely dropping the wrong form name in order to get Chuck’s legal juices flowing.

Kim and Jimmy go checking out a new office for the James M McGill law firm, and it's a pretty swank place. I have trouble believing that Jimmy can afford this after such a short time in elder law, though to his credit, he has been hitting the bingo circuit pretty hard. He offers a partnership to Kim (in hindsight, he may only be able to afford this place if she works with him and steals a few HHM clients), who turns it down in favor of continuing at HHM, where she's put in a lot of time. Jimmy is clearly disappointed, but stays supportive. Could Kim be one of the ex-wives he mentions in Breaking Bad?

Over at HHM, Kim is explaining the deal that she worked out for Craig Kettleman. Of course, his wife Betsy is having none of it, insisting on not using the word "deal" ("a deal is what they got O.J."), insisting that there is no money, and finally insisting on being found not guilty after a trial. Betsy is almost full on nuts at this point, completely detaching herself from reality with the thoughts of what she wants to do with the $1.6 million. It seems to me at this point, she would send Craig to jail for the full 30 years if it meant that she could keep the money.

The Kettlemans go crawling back to Jimmy, which would have made him thrilled a week or two prior to this, but now he's got his elder law gig rolling and doesn't really want to take the case. In fact, they interrupt Jimmy while being a bingo caller - proving nobody can pander quite like Jimmy. At Jimmy's conference room - aka the cafe - the bribe from the Kettlemans once again becomes a 'retainer' and Jimmy is roped into representing them for the time being.

There were two funny moments in the cafe - first, Craig can't get any coffee and doesn't say anything about it. He's definitely the weaker one in the relationship (probably pressured into robbing the money!), and they show it with their clothes. In this scene, Betsy is wearing a very bright red/pink, and Craig has a muted pink shirt. In the previous meeting, the same thing happened, but with Blue. The other moment is at the end of the meeting when Jimmy insists on talking like they all know the money exists, which nearly pops a blood vessel in Betsy's head.

This show continues to have a lot of fun with shadows. Jimmy and Kim are standing in the shadows while Kim waxes on about just how fucked the Kettlemans are. Earlier in the episode, faces had their now familiar half shadows, with the right half generally being "good" and the left being whatever was opposing that.

Jimmy, stressing out in his office over just what to do, comes up with a plan, but by the looks on his face, he's not thrilled with it. This cues an awesome and rather long montage. We see the whole plan play out, executed by Mike (Jimmy sent him his bill). Spanning what feels like forever, they are able to tell a whole story with no dialogue, while keeping everyone intrigued and revealing just one piece of the plan at a time. This montage is some of the finest work we've seen thus far in Better Call Saul. The ratings have remained relatively steady, which is a good sign that we can go beyond the second season, already under contract.

The shadow play continues after the money is stolen. Jimmy's left side is brightly illuminated, (the bad side), but now the right side of his face has just a little light cast on it (usually it's a clear 50/50). Jimmy is doing "the right thing" - insert finger quotes here. Mike is going to return the money, and Jimmy is going to be able to force the Kettlemans to return to HHM and accept the plea deal. This gets Kim back in the good graces of her boss, but Jimmy really isn't sure how to feel after all of this. He goes to the new office again, probably to say goodbye to it and lets his frustrations out on a door. He's definitely not going to be able to afford that place now.

This episode starts off like a lot of the series – blue filtered flashback! I love the way that this show is laying out its backstory, doing a lot of showing, rather than telling. (They can show that Howard Hamlin is a dick – nobody needs to say that in the show at all). This filter gets so much use, they’ve even used it a few times in the “previously on” clips at the beginning of the show. This is fun in a technical sense, but we’re not here to talk about filters, are we?

We learn about the day that Jimmy finally became an attorney. He passed the bar exam (kept secret from his brother no less) and is very excited to finally go to work WITH his big brother, not just for him passing out everyone’s mail. While celebrating later that day, Howard Hamlin (one of Chuck’s partners) just can’t wait to tell Jimmy that he won’t be working as an attorney for them, and that they’ll “revisit” the thought in six months. Maybe he’s just not impressed by a correspondence degree from the University of American Samoa, but I think it’s really about Hamlin’s power within the law firm and him not wanting the balance to slide back towards the McGill side of things.

Throughout the series, I have to remind myself that we’re watching the life of Jimmy McGill, not Saul Goodman. This means that every time I assume that he’s out to cheat somebody or be a generally shady lawyer, this is not likely to be the case. The lady he visits at the Sandpiper Crossing home is a prime example. She seems like someone who is very vulnerable, but instead of acting on it, he actually looks out for her interests (albeit because his own are not tended to – she does not have the money to pay him for the will).

This leads to Jimmy finally getting a big break on all the hard work he’s been doing. He discovers that there is fraud within the Sandpiper system, and gathers more information from a few residents before heading back to Chuck’s house to see what he thinks of the paperwork he’s managed to rustle up during the visit.

Tune in to the TV Soup Podcast - (Better Call Saul - "RICO" Review)

At the house, we learn just a couple of things about Chuck and Jimmy. First – Chuck thinks that Jimmy left all the paperwork at the house because he didn’t have time to take care of it, but last week I theorized that Jimmy left it there in order to get Chuck going again. I think the latter is still the case, as evidenced by Jimmy later in the episode, stating that working on a case is great for Chuck. Second, Chuck asks if these inconsistencies were present in the paperwork that he was doing. Yes, they were, Jimmy informs him, but hey, Jimmy got lucky just to stumble into this case. This is another example of people underestimating Jimmy’s abilities. He clearly came across this through his own hard work, but nobody will acknowledge this. I expect this to become a bigger issue later on.

Jimmy returns to Sandpiper, only to discover that they no longer allow solicitors (not gigolos) on their property. They also installed a few security guards, just in case he didn’t get the message. Frantically, he pens one of the best legal documents I’ve seen on TV. A demand letter is presented to the receptionist as he leaves the bathroom, written on the back of a legal pad and an indeterminate amount of toilet paper. Jimmy gets an A for creativity and improvisation, but a D on penmanship.

Mike’s scenes in this show have been few and far between thus far, save for an episode that was entirely about him. They still don’t merge very well with the show, and I suspect that people new to the Vince Gilligan universe are getting annoyed with this. Perhaps the writers are leaning too much on our familiarity with Mike from a different show – though they are also doing that with Jimmy/Saul, so it goes both ways.

Mike is thrilled to be back, in any way, in his granddaughter’s life, and is ready to take off work in order to babysit her. After Stacey (his daughter-in-law) gets home, she asks him what she should do with the money that she found (the money that Matty had taken which ultimately got him killed). Mike tells her to spend it so that some good might come from it. She then mentions that while it will help, it won’t be enough – cue Mike back at the vet’s office, asking if there’s some “work” to be done.

I’ve gone on and on about how much I like the montages in this show, but I suppose it’s always best to be careful what you wish for. This episode featured one of the grossest montages I’ve seen – Jimmy dumpster diving looking for the documents that Sandpiper was shredding earlier that day. While in the muck (seriously, this made me squirm a bit), he receives a call from Sandpiper’s lawyers, and even in his ridiculous position, he at least knows that they’re going to take this semi-seriously.

This scene is followed up with a good, short montage (ok, maybe the dumpster scene isn’t technically a montage, but it’s still nasty). Jimmy is trying to put together the shredded documents and Chuck walks in, assuming the worst. Jimmy’s defense is that it was in a public place – “You can’t say it’s private if a hobo can use it as a wigwam. That’s the standard, right?” After Chuck’s begrudging agreement that he didn’t steal it, he sets to helping Jimmy put together one hell of a word search. This is the perfect job for a guy who is a borderline nutcase.

So, it turns out that Chuck is awesome at putting together shredded documents and has a smoking gun ready for Jimmy when he wakes up. More importantly, Chuck wants to work on the case with Jimmy, as long as Jimmy is ok with it (Chuck knows its Jimmy’s case). Jimmy has all of the sudden realized one of his dreams and is working on a big time case with his brother. Not only does he finally get to do this (he’s been working a long time to do so), but this can be good for Chuck too, keeping busy with work is a good way for him to try to “get better”.

Chuck gives Jimmy his printing code (probably not been used in a year or more) in order to get background from Westlaw (an online legal research service). This has to become relevant later on, as this now means that HHM is being billed for work done on Jimmy’s case. Kim brings up an objection to this, but Jimmy insists that this is going to be fine, and besides, Kim definitely owes him one.

Jimmy and Chuck fax a copy of the reconstructed documents to Sandpiper's lawyers, thus netting some serious consideration and a meeting. Rich Schweikart and the rest of the lawyers for Sandpiper roll up to Chuck's house for the big meeting, because, after all, Chuck isn't "currently" going anywhere. There's the expected nerves before the meeting, but Jimmy is the lead here, Chuck is there for muscle.

Jimmy laughs off the weak offer from Sandpiper and turns in a great performance for him (the character) personally. He's able to shine, as a lawyer, right there in front of his big brother. That may even snap Chuck out of his funk, because as soon as they're asked how much money they want, he's back. Chuck speaks up (clearly not planned) and tells them $20 million or you'll see them in court.

The case is really rolling now, both Jimmy and Chuck a really getting sucked into the case. Jimmy gets back from chasing old people in the mall and leaves some documents in the car. A perfect opportunity for Chuck to mindlessly go out to the car to retrieve them. We're left wondering what happened as a result, but I think that the ambient distraction fading away to the sounds of the outside is a fantastic sign for Chuck's mental state.