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OT: Movies/TV Shows

LeafGm said:
Saul spoilers:

EDIT---the stupid spoiler tag thingy doesn't seem to work from me.

So, DO NOT READ ON IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ SAUL SPOILERS (though if you're worried about Saul spoilers, what are you even doing in this thread right now?):




There's a lot about the ending to Saul that was good.

Him being able to continue living as "Gene" long-term wouldn't have made any sense. Of course he was going to slide back into his slippin' Jimmy/Saul cons. Of course it makes sense that eventually someone would recognize someone with his notoriety. And of course he'd eventually get caught as a result of those two things.

The final few episodes of Saul being kind of a slow-burn makes sense too, because it wouldn't have been true to character at all for him to go down in some hail-of-gunfire blaze of glory like Walter White. It also makes sense that he wasn't able to cross the line to murder and kill that old lady in order to keep his secret. And it makes sense that he was a shitty fugitive and got caught once the police started converging on him.

I also thought it was a fitting end for the show to end up with him in prison.

The only thing I didn't understand at all was the complete about-face after he finished negotiating his sweetheart plea deal. Instead of getting out after seven years served in relative comfort, he threw away the rest of his life. And for what? A sudden sense of guilt? Wanting to impress Kim? And it's not like there was even an element of self-sacrifice to it, since he didn't in any way get Kim out of her own legal jeopardy with that move.
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Yeah, I mean I was just skipping over any Saul post before I’d watched the last one.

Agree with most of the first few paragraphs except that they could’ve easily ramped things up instead of down at the end. Gene gets recognized, cops are after him, but cartels are too. Some kind of suspense building on suspense thing. Instead it was just Gene running some scams until getting caught and then just giving up when he showed zero desire or inclination to do that. He clung to winning and weaseling out of things but then just dropped it - after succeeding at it again - to trade 7 for 86??

Even if I was expecting something different in the last few episodes, I was fine with everything up to the abrupt Jimmy awakening that causes him to pointlessly throw the rest of his life away. Who does he help there? Why would he fight hard to get 7 years, hear Kim sold him out, and then go and just tear up a plea deal in favor of a life plus term? I don’t think he saved Kim from anything, if anything he provided corroboration of much of her story. The feds will believe she just knew all that and wasn’t involved like she herself confessed? Now you have this guy repeating the same facts but conveniently leaving her out of it. The worst is that she was the obsessive architect of the Howard scheme. He tried to get her off of it a few times but she forced them down that road. She had a rotten Sally to his Saul in her that was more callous and cold than any anything he ever wanted to do.

His decision to force 86 instead of 7 literally had no impact on her. It would’ve been the same thing regardless of the length of his sentence. All he did was do something that literally no one would ever do, and that was to intentionally multiply his sentence for no reason. He confessed to all of the BB stuff which had nothing to do with Kim, and he brought up the Chuck stuff just to completely obliterate things. For what, to accept his rightful punishment?
 
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zeke said:
Direct quotes:

“Oh,” he says, “I lied to the government about Kim Wexler … I just wanted her to be here today, to hear this.”
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In this first “direct quote”, you conveniently leave out the part where he specifically refers to Howard being murdered.


“Bill, please,” Saul says, “just let me get through this. Instead, when I saw a chance to hurt him, I took it. I got his malpractice insurance canceled. I took away the one thing he lived for — the law. After that, he killed himself. And I’ll live with that.”
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…and in this “direct quote”, you leave out the part at the beginning of it where he says this statement is about his brother Chuck. Has nothing to do with Howard.

Though even with the missing bit you’ve left out, the mention of getting his malpractice insurance cancelled is also a give-away. He did that to Chuck. He never got Howard’s malpractice insurance cancelled.
 
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zeke said:
Direct quotes:

“Oh,” he says, “I lied to the government about Kim Wexler … I just wanted her to be here today, to hear this.”

...

“Bill, please,” Saul says, “just let me get through this. Instead, when I saw a chance to hurt him, I took it. I got his malpractice insurance canceled. I took away the one thing he lived for — the law. After that, he killed himself. And I’ll live with that.”
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Uh, he’s talking about Chuck there, bud.
 
zeke said:
oh and he preceded that by telling a story about how Kim was guilty as sin for Howard's death, which got her to come to court....and then says he lied about that just to get her to court, and that howard killed himself.

p.s. for LoF - as dissappointing as it was to see Jimmy end that way, in the end life in prison was no different than life as Gene. he was even baking bread in prison just like cinnabons as Gene. Hell, prison was probably even better than life as Gene - at least he was able to be the famous Saul Goodman again, and had the respect of all the other prisoners. In the end he chose to be Saul Goodman rather than Gene... and Saul Goodman deserved to be in prison.
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I
f he chose to be Saul, Saul would never allow himself to accept that fate. He brought the deal down to 7 years and had a plan to take it down even further before he learned Kim already gave them the Howard story. The Saul thing to do would be to find another angle or take the best result he could get, which was the 7. Even Jimmy would’ve failed to see the logic or fairness of trading 7 for 86.

Every episode of the show displayed the gradual evolution into Saul, and the inability to suppress him once he was out. Even this episode showed how he had no regrets about anything well into the BB timeline and clearly as Gene who insisted on robbing a guy with cancer. He pulls Kim over there to put on a good guy display and take a life sentence for no reason. Jimmy, Saul, and Gene would’ve thought that to be pure idiocy, just like anyone else in that situation. You take the 7 years punishment, you work on yourself in prison, and you get out and either take the right path or find it irresistible to pick up old habits again. You don’t basically take the sentence they’d give a serial killer just to assuage the guilt and regret that you’ve never at any point ever shown you had.
 
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LeafGm said:
In this first “direct quote”, you conveniently leave out the part where he specifically refers to Howard being murdered.




…and in this “direct quote”, you leave out the part at the beginning of it where he says this statement is about his brother Chuck. Has nothing to do with Howard.

Though even with the missing bit you’ve left out, the mention of getting his malpractice insurance cancelled is also a give-away. He did that to Chuck. He never got Howard’s malpractice insurance cancelled.
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hm. fair enough. i forgot he got Chuck's malpractice insurance cancelled. but then again i never thought it was clear chuck killed himself. Though maybe Jimmy blamed himself.

so ok - Kim is still open to the lawsuit. but she's not in danger of prison. and it's not like she has any money anymore anyways. so she still has to face that music. which is fair.
 
zeke said:
hm. fair enough. i forgot he got Chuck's malpractice insurance cancelled. but then again i never thought it was clear chuck killed himself. Though maybe Jimmy blamed himself.

so ok - Kim is still open to the lawsuit. but she's not in danger of prison. and it's not like she has any money anymore anyways. so she still has to face that music. which is fair.
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It’s fair she gets off with no punishment for orchestrating H’s demise?

And the Chuck thing is clear and established. He kicked the lantern off his desk and just sat there.
 
LeafOfFaith said:
If he chose to be Saul, Saul would never allow himself to accept that fate. He brought the deal down to 7 years and had a plan to take it down even further before he learned Kim already gave them the Howard story. The Saul thing to do would be to find another angle or take the best result he could get, which was the 7. Even Jimmy would’ve failed to see the logic or fairness of trading 7 for 86.

Every episode of the show displayed the gradual evolution into Saul, and the inability to suppress him once he was out. Even this episode showed how he had no regrets about anything well into the BB timeline and clearly as Gene who insisted on robbing a guy with cancer. He pulls Kim over there to put on a good guy display and take a life sentence for no reason. Jimmy, Saul, and Gene would’ve thought that to be pure idiocy, just like anyone else in that situation. You take the 7 years punishment, you work on yourself in prison, and you get out and either take the right path or find it irresistible to pick up old habits again. You don’t basically take the sentence they’d give a serial killer just to assuage the guilt and regret that you’ve never at any point ever shown you had.
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They could have easily gone that way. He could have got away with 7 years and been pure Saul, with zero redemption. It would have been a good ending too. They chose to give him some redemption - in the end he showed that he cared about what Kim thought and still cared about big bro. I think either ending would have worked.
 
LeafOfFaith said:
It’s fair she gets off with no punishment for orchestrating H’s demise?

And the Chuck thing is clear and established. He kicked the lantern off his desk and just sat there.
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yeah and as you guys pointed out - she's on the hook for a civil suit from howard's wife. she doesn't get away with no punishment.

but it's not like she murdered howard, or did any criminal stuff other than helping jimmy. Jimmy was the epic criminal, not Kim.
 
Preston said:
I could have fired off spoilers before you watched it, LOF. But I didn't. Let's be respectful.
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People did post stuff. I read the first few words and saw I should skip it. No one should be actually reading through these pages if they haven’t seen it. But anyway, nothing else to really say on it. That was my takeaway from it. I still really like the series (again not a GOT level disaster), but I really disagree with the ending, which was forced and unrealistic.
 
zeke said:
They could have easily gone that way. He could have got away with 7 years and been pure Saul, with zero redemption. It would have been a good ending too. They chose to give him some redemption - in the end he showed that he cared about what Kim thought and still cared about big bro. I think either ending would have worked.
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That’s the thing. The lead up could only logically result in that ending. That’s the way it had to go for everything that came before to matter or make sense. It was an abrupt turn the way they did it.
 
zeke said:
yeah and as you guys pointed out - she's on the hook for a civil suit from howard's wife. she doesn't get away with no punishment.

but it's not like she murdered howard, or did any criminal stuff other than helping jimmy. Jimmy was the epic criminal, not Kim.
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Rewatch the episodes where the Howard plan initially gets formed. I think because you saw them weekly you may not remember the role Kim played in it. It was all her, and Saul tried to get her off of it a few times but can’t, so he goes along with it for her. I put 100% of the responsibility for Howard on her.
 
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LeafOfFaith said:
My man, today is obviously not the day to be reading this thread if you haven’t watched it. Just like I wasn’t looking at any Saul post before I watched it.
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Or you can just follow the rest of them and use the spoiler.

I mean if you like I can be a real asshole about it but hopefully you see this is about more people than just me.
 
If I knew how to do the spoiler tag I would comment in more details. But I don't. And no one wants to hear from me anyway. I am with zeke and LGM though.
 
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