I always have high expectations, unlike you my friend.
If the 1st season of BB was rubbish, I'd hate to know what you think of other shows. You must positively loathe almost everything else.
They're incomparable to be fair. Better Call Saul was good, as I said I enjoyed it. But it was... I don't know... Spurs good. Maybe Everton or West Ham good. Breaking Bad was United good.
Tbh I did mean rubbish in comparison to the rest of the show.
I originally thought this program would be pretty much a comedy. having watched this season, it was a lot more brooding than I had anticipated.
Yeah it doesn't really make any sense unless he has some kind of plan in mind to cream more money than he'd get for taking the job with the other firm. I hope so because otherwise it just doesn't wash as a logical character arc. I guess they were trying to push the idea that he's thinking that by working for criminals there will be far more opportunities like the $1.6m Kettleman money.
What's that got to do with the quality of the show?
A much better show?
In fairness the show itself has showed some glimpses of how good it could be with some of the Mike episodes and the second last episode with Chuck v. Saul but on balance there were a few too many slower moving episodes. They are needed to balance the series and anchor it in reality somewhat but I think the ratio of average episodes to great episodes was off. The second last episode was great but the finale was a damp squib.
This was definitely my biggest grip with the episode / finale. His decision when he got into the car park, and his conversation with Mike on the way out, didnt seem believable or rational on any level, really. He might as well have stayed in Chicago with his Slippin Jimmy routine.
Exactly. The whole "I don't need my brothers approval anymore/Marco died happy doing what he loved" arc didn't actually tally with his decision at all. If he'd gone back to being a conman it might have, but all he's done here is turn down one job - the one he thought would make his brother proud - for a lower paid, lower status version of exactly the same job. No one would do that!
It seems like retroactive mythmaking on the part of the writers to me. "If Jimmy turns down success to deliberately become the Saul everyone loves, that makes his Saul-ness even cooler!"..Only it doesn't, because it's weird and illogical. It's always nice to have the main character make some kind of 'choice' so he can be proactive, but they seem to have crow barred it in at the cost of logic.
Exactly. Walt really has no other option so his choice to 'break bad' makes sense. This doesn't.
Sorry, wasn't aware that I had to limit my comments to the "quality" of the show.
Excellent memory!
I'm not sure how I feel about how it ended, but I think Chuck kinda imploded the dream of Jimmy the big time lawyer, that job in the other firm was a poisoned chalice the moment that rant left his lips, even if Jimmy had been a success, he'd have gotten in via the back door and not had to earn it in Chuck's eyes. Which is what it was all about in the first place, Jimmy wanted to prove his brother he'd changed/ make him proud, but no matter what he did it wouldn't have mattered to Chuck because, to him, the methodology is as important as the end goal, which Jimmy fundamentally neither agrees with nor understands.
But all that is assuming being a big time lawyer is devoid of scheming and conning, when it's not. It's the same job. This show seems to have mistaken lawyers for aid workers. Most of the big firm peeps he encountered in the show itself where just as slimy and conniving, only in slightly nicer suits. So the main thing he seems to get out of this decision is a laxer dress code.
Weirdo.The writing itself is good (although I think it's a level below BB and other great shows), but the problem is - as you say - that there's practically nothing to back it up. There's a good line here and there, but almost every scene is dragged out so far that it sort of drowns in nothingness. The bingo scene is a great example with the Chicago Sunroof (which he actually mentions in the 3rd episode when he needs Chuck to defend him for doing just that) - it's a pretty funny sequence, but the problem is it's one of very few (if not the only) in a scene that's almost 8 minutes long. And by the time it happened, I just wanted that scene to end. The coin-scam in the next scene is pretty decent as well, but that whole scene (from when Jimmy arrives outside the bar in a taxi till the whole scamming-montage starts) is about 12 minutes long. That's 20 minutes of a season finale spent on two scenes. As I've said before, it honestly feels like they just didn't have enough ideas, which is why every scene seems to be dragged out as far as possible and there's very little overall plot progression.
Agree with you. Especially on the last bit, I completely got it wrong in terms of what I expected from this show, in retrospect I dont know why as it is quite similar to Breaking Bad and that makes a lot of sense, but I thought it would be quite different, I was expecting a completely different structure, half hour episodes, each one about a different case, much more explicitly comic, almost like My Name Is Earl or something like that... looking back I have no idea why I thought that. Im not disappointed though, I feel like I enjoyed this show more than a lot of people on here did despite the lack of anything of note happening.
Actually within the context of the character, I think it's less illogical than it seems; he had already 'broke bad' before even becoming a lawyer and is sole objective of becoming a lawyer was to achieve his brother's praise and acknowledgement. After all that, when his brother still does not accept him as an equal he decides to go back to what he knows. That being said, he's still cutting his nose off to spite his face so it's still pretty dumb.
I'm guessing this is his mindset. As well, the job with the other law firm wasn't guaranteed (unless I'm mistaken,) so perhaps he was wary of having to jump through hoops again, only to face last-minute letdown like he did at HHM.
Only two good episodes throughout the season imo, the rest were completely forgettable.