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Oct. 23rd, 2019 07:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
between_time_and_42Ever since watching the Breaking Bad movie, El Camino (which was pretty good btw), I've been rewatching Breaking Bad, and recently I checked out the fourth season of the prequel series, Better Call Saul, because I was waiting for it to come out on Netflix to catch up on it but apparently it won't be on Netflix until next year and I can't wait that long. So far I've watched five episodes, so I'm halfway through it, and I had some thoughts.
Mainly: I'm so intrigued by the story they're telling this season and the way it's being told. Both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are the finest examples of "show, don't tell" on television. Characters don't need to say anything aloud for their intentions and emotions to be conveyed. I've read a few scripts for Breaking Bad recently, and I realized this might come from the way the scripts are written. The scripts are incredibly, unusually detailed, laying out every emotion that the character feels and why they're behaving the way they do. Now, I haven't seen any scripts for Better Call Saul, but I can only assume the writing staff took the same approach with them. Because the actors now know everything about their characters and how they're meant to be played, they don't have to work as hard to convey information, instead taking it for granted that the audience will understand. And so... to me, this leads to some rather opaque performances. Several times throughout this season of Better Call Saul, I've yelled at characters onscreen, "What are you DOING??" I know what they're doing, because it's being shown to me, but I don't understand WHY they're doing it. Their motivations confound me.
However, I think I understand what's going on here. Over the first three seasons of Better Call Saul, Jimmy/Saul's brother Chuck frequently opposed him and stood in his way, and their conflicts were the primary source of drama. But the beginning of season 4 opens with Jimmy learning that his brother has died (shown to be a suicide in the season 3 finale), and his inexplicable behavior begins after that episode. I think what the writers/actors are trying to show is that Jimmy's erratic nature comes from his inability to cope after Chuck's death. And let me point out, Jimmy and Chuck had a horribly strained relationship when Chuck was alive. Chuck always undermined Jimmy and never respected him, though Jimmy looked up to him as an older brother, and eventually the last words that Chuck ever said to Jimmy were a claim that Jimmy never mattered much to him (which, for the record, I don't believe for a second). It's no wonder that Jimmy ends the season 4 premiere in strangely high spirits, pleasantly feeding his fish and whistling while he makes coffee. This weight, this disapproving force looming over him is finally gone. But that's when his behavior becomes strange- he goes to a job interview only to turn it down when they offer to hire him because they haven't done a thorough background check, turns down another job offer only to retract his disinterest and call back to accept after a talk with Kim (his girlfriend) about how he should see a psychiatrist to help with his grieving process, and finally ends up scamming people at his new job by advertising features that the company's products lack, and then taking to the streets to sell them by hand (which I'm pretty sure is illegal), all because the store gets practically no foot traffic. (Honestly, I know Jimmy & I are in very different points of our lives, but I was LIVID that he tried to turn down the job and then complained when he ended up with it because I would NEVER do that. A job is a job and you're getting paid to do it, what's the downside? So you're bored at work? At least you CAN work...) I was truly puzzled by all of this when I was watching, but I think it makes sense to take it as a downward spiral. Jimmy doesn't know what to do with himself now. Keep in mind, he's also been through a major crisis with having his license to practice law revoked, and it's clear that he defines himself as a lawyer and has always wanted to be one, so there's another element of not knowing who he is anymore. This is especially seen when he's selling cell phones on the streets and gets mugged when he runs out of product. Jimmy used to be Slippin' Jimmy, known for various scams and frauds he ran when he was younger, and now that he's no longer a lawyer, he tries to go back to this other persona... but he's too old to be in the game anymore and suffers for it. I feel like watching Jimmy's side of the story this season is like watching a slow-motion train wreck, and I can't wait to see where it all ends up.
Then there's Kim's story, which I feel is even more ambiguous and confusing than Jimmy's. I love Kim, but we know very little about her background and I feel like if I understood her a bit better, I might understand why she's acting the way she is. Kim is a lawyer currently working as a consultant to a bank, but in this season, she's been hanging around the courthouse observing cases and also bringing small-time cases to trial, even neglecting her full-time job at the bank for one (this in particular made me cringe HARD. It was so unprofessional and I was so embarrassed that this experienced and talented and older person was making a mistake that I would never in my own life dream of doing). I'm not sure exactly why she's acting this way, but my guess is that she too is spiraling after Chuck's death. The conflict between Jimmy and Chuck took a toll on her as well, and she was shown to have guilt over the way that they treated him when they took their issues to court at one point. So I think that Kim's trying to prove her worth and general goodness as a lawyer by taking on more clients and defending them. But that's just a guess, and it's not a very good one, I don't think. I'm just terrified to see what this does to Jimmy & Kim's relationship. Right now they have one of the best relationships I've seen on a show, simply in terms of how it's portrayed. They're shown to be in a relationship and have feelings for each other, but it's never the focus of any episode and the drama in their lives is never related to that. I just know, since Kim is never mentioned in Breaking Bad, that something terrible is going to happen to them (although I think it'll just be a nasty breakup, I highly, HIGHLY doubt that they'd kill her off, because unless a villain did it- which isn't going to happen, because Kim has no connection whatsoever to the crime world of the show- it would be far too contrived to just have her, say, crash her car or something. Which, by the way, they've already had her crash her car (due to sleeplessness from her new job, and she sustained some bad injuries), so they can't do it again). I'm just so intrigued to see what exactly is going to go down.
To sum it up... Season 4 of Better Call Saul is a study of how loss affects personal relationships, and I'm eating it up. And that's not even getting into the secondary storylines about Mike and Nacho and Gus and the Cartel, but I digress, I'm going to watch more Better Call Saul.
Mainly: I'm so intrigued by the story they're telling this season and the way it's being told. Both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are the finest examples of "show, don't tell" on television. Characters don't need to say anything aloud for their intentions and emotions to be conveyed. I've read a few scripts for Breaking Bad recently, and I realized this might come from the way the scripts are written. The scripts are incredibly, unusually detailed, laying out every emotion that the character feels and why they're behaving the way they do. Now, I haven't seen any scripts for Better Call Saul, but I can only assume the writing staff took the same approach with them. Because the actors now know everything about their characters and how they're meant to be played, they don't have to work as hard to convey information, instead taking it for granted that the audience will understand. And so... to me, this leads to some rather opaque performances. Several times throughout this season of Better Call Saul, I've yelled at characters onscreen, "What are you DOING??" I know what they're doing, because it's being shown to me, but I don't understand WHY they're doing it. Their motivations confound me.
However, I think I understand what's going on here. Over the first three seasons of Better Call Saul, Jimmy/Saul's brother Chuck frequently opposed him and stood in his way, and their conflicts were the primary source of drama. But the beginning of season 4 opens with Jimmy learning that his brother has died (shown to be a suicide in the season 3 finale), and his inexplicable behavior begins after that episode. I think what the writers/actors are trying to show is that Jimmy's erratic nature comes from his inability to cope after Chuck's death. And let me point out, Jimmy and Chuck had a horribly strained relationship when Chuck was alive. Chuck always undermined Jimmy and never respected him, though Jimmy looked up to him as an older brother, and eventually the last words that Chuck ever said to Jimmy were a claim that Jimmy never mattered much to him (which, for the record, I don't believe for a second). It's no wonder that Jimmy ends the season 4 premiere in strangely high spirits, pleasantly feeding his fish and whistling while he makes coffee. This weight, this disapproving force looming over him is finally gone. But that's when his behavior becomes strange- he goes to a job interview only to turn it down when they offer to hire him because they haven't done a thorough background check, turns down another job offer only to retract his disinterest and call back to accept after a talk with Kim (his girlfriend) about how he should see a psychiatrist to help with his grieving process, and finally ends up scamming people at his new job by advertising features that the company's products lack, and then taking to the streets to sell them by hand (which I'm pretty sure is illegal), all because the store gets practically no foot traffic. (Honestly, I know Jimmy & I are in very different points of our lives, but I was LIVID that he tried to turn down the job and then complained when he ended up with it because I would NEVER do that. A job is a job and you're getting paid to do it, what's the downside? So you're bored at work? At least you CAN work...) I was truly puzzled by all of this when I was watching, but I think it makes sense to take it as a downward spiral. Jimmy doesn't know what to do with himself now. Keep in mind, he's also been through a major crisis with having his license to practice law revoked, and it's clear that he defines himself as a lawyer and has always wanted to be one, so there's another element of not knowing who he is anymore. This is especially seen when he's selling cell phones on the streets and gets mugged when he runs out of product. Jimmy used to be Slippin' Jimmy, known for various scams and frauds he ran when he was younger, and now that he's no longer a lawyer, he tries to go back to this other persona... but he's too old to be in the game anymore and suffers for it. I feel like watching Jimmy's side of the story this season is like watching a slow-motion train wreck, and I can't wait to see where it all ends up.
Then there's Kim's story, which I feel is even more ambiguous and confusing than Jimmy's. I love Kim, but we know very little about her background and I feel like if I understood her a bit better, I might understand why she's acting the way she is. Kim is a lawyer currently working as a consultant to a bank, but in this season, she's been hanging around the courthouse observing cases and also bringing small-time cases to trial, even neglecting her full-time job at the bank for one (this in particular made me cringe HARD. It was so unprofessional and I was so embarrassed that this experienced and talented and older person was making a mistake that I would never in my own life dream of doing). I'm not sure exactly why she's acting this way, but my guess is that she too is spiraling after Chuck's death. The conflict between Jimmy and Chuck took a toll on her as well, and she was shown to have guilt over the way that they treated him when they took their issues to court at one point. So I think that Kim's trying to prove her worth and general goodness as a lawyer by taking on more clients and defending them. But that's just a guess, and it's not a very good one, I don't think. I'm just terrified to see what this does to Jimmy & Kim's relationship. Right now they have one of the best relationships I've seen on a show, simply in terms of how it's portrayed. They're shown to be in a relationship and have feelings for each other, but it's never the focus of any episode and the drama in their lives is never related to that. I just know, since Kim is never mentioned in Breaking Bad, that something terrible is going to happen to them (although I think it'll just be a nasty breakup, I highly, HIGHLY doubt that they'd kill her off, because unless a villain did it- which isn't going to happen, because Kim has no connection whatsoever to the crime world of the show- it would be far too contrived to just have her, say, crash her car or something. Which, by the way, they've already had her crash her car (due to sleeplessness from her new job, and she sustained some bad injuries), so they can't do it again). I'm just so intrigued to see what exactly is going to go down.
To sum it up... Season 4 of Better Call Saul is a study of how loss affects personal relationships, and I'm eating it up. And that's not even getting into the secondary storylines about Mike and Nacho and Gus and the Cartel, but I digress, I'm going to watch more Better Call Saul.
