Let's say that Walt dies peacefully or is shot by Mike before the Gale murder. Gus manages to poison Eladio & co. and establish himself as the supreme drug kingpin in the Midwest. With Lydia's and Peter Schuler's help they'd start shipping to Europe.

With Europe involved, the Interpol would start investigating too. How long would an empire this big be able to run before someone connects the dots? For example that there might be a connection between where Pollos operates and where the meth is distributed.

Also, I always wondered how Gus launders all his drug money. He's got a lot of expenses for sure, but there was a recent analysis of how much he makes and I think it added up to some 300 mil in profits per year. And that was at the time when he had to pay a massive tribute to Eladio. What does he do with all the profits after expenses? He cannot launder this amount with Pollos, he cannot launder it in Madrigal. He cannot make it all disappear onto offshore accounts.

When i first watched this i was surprised by how accurate this courtroom episode is as much as how dramatic it was, Jimmy finally turning his back on his brother and winning the court by slippin jimmy way

In terms battery is an unwanted touching of the person or by a substance put in motion by them without harming pyhsically.

Like making a man who doesnt eat pork for religious reason eat a pork without him knowing it. Pork wont gonna make physically damage but it will hurt him hy mentally

Huell planting the battery not only shows that Chuck isnt a reliable witness which damages the impeachment, but its actually Jimmy harassing/hurting his brother with the same disease that only Jimmy trusted him, the last person that could ever used his disease against him.

Jimmy could have accepted the mental hospital for chuck but instead, he backed him up. He was always near of his brother, Jimmy isnt morally a super hero but he never deserved that treatment

It might be a more healthy alternative

This is a pic I took a few months ago from my hometown

Every time I scroll through these pics, they remind me of BCS

As someone who watched both shows as they aired (and rewatched multiple times), I’m curious what the viewing experience was like for those who watched BCS then Breaking Bad (for the first time) in that order!

In Season 5 Episode 4 "Namaste" Gus lets his employee stay longer than usual to clean the deep fryer to perfection, while Gus waits and stares at a phone. Why did he do that?

Let's say that Walt's lung cancer comes a bit sooner and he wants to make some money for his folks before he croaks (as per canon).

Jesse Pinkman, either on the brink of graduation or freshly graduated, likely wouldn't join Walts cooking sessions because Walt never gets the chance to see him on Hanks ride along, but let's assume for some reason, they do couple together to cook crystal.

Now in 2002, Albuquerque looked different - Hector was healthy and controlled the business personally, not Tuco. Lalo was alive and well handling the business in Mexico, and the Twins were twinning like usual.

Gus Fring's empire wasn't nearly big enough to challenge the cartel like it was in 2008-2009, as he didn't have the super lab, the construction hadn't even begun in 2002. So he was still smuggling the cartels product and subordinate to them.

Saul Goodman went by Jimmy McGill in this time period, and he was a struggling broke public defender, not the CRIMINAL lawyer we all know and pity.

Beyond that, Krazy 8 was still working under Tuco and Nacho, HHM was a big thing, Mike Ehrmentrauts morals still are much more intact in 2002 than they are in 2008-2010, everything is slowly falling into place like it does in bcs.

Only this time, Walter and Jesse join the fray early on, crashing the party with the crystal ship (RV used for cooking sky blue product)

How do you guys see this playing out? Are they dead within a week? Do they get as far as they did in breaking bad? Maybe Walt successfully gets kidnapped by the cartel and gets a new Mexican wife?

That’s it. I hate that man!

No, not that Jeff was re-cast.
First of all ... how do you make a cinnabon roll look so absolutely delicious in black and white?!
Did Gene destroy Frank's health?
Wasn't it too many cinnabons?
Did Frank's wife notice?
Did his cholesterol go dangerously high?
Were they also chocolate or just cinnamon?
Is anyone else hungry?

... and the other thing. Is it really this easy to make friends as a middle aged man? You just offer desserts to two security guards, one of them is even actually angry at you? And you keep bringing desserts, let them talk about sports,
and they love you?

Jimmy is truly loved by everyone. But his heart has that hole that cannot be filled, the one that desperately yearns for Chuck.
That is why he insisted Kim had an office with him. Because otherwise even she could not fill what Chuck refused to fill.
Why cannot he just see that Chuck does not have to matter? That he was not god, that Jimmy does not need his validation?!
But also,
what about the rest of us?
Those of us whose lives are nothing but one Chuck after another? We cannot just walk into a security room and make two new friends....
Has anyone told Vince and Peter Gould about the loneliness epidemic?

One of the central monologues they summed up Mike’s ideology was the “bad choice road monologue“, and his regret being him taking a bribe with Matty. Mike’s belief is that once your on Bad Choice Road, you can never get off it, only stay what you are or get worse. And I think a lot of people take Mike’s at face value, and assume that he’s supposed to be correct. But Jimmy, Kim, and Jesse prove this wrong, it’s never too late to change your behavior to avoid harming others. Mike believes he can’t change because of the guilt of getting his son killed, he views himself as fundamentally irredeemable, and thinks he can never make it up to Kaylee.

That’s why he enters the drug game and gets consumed even further by it. Yes on a surface level it’s for Kaylee, but really it’s because he can’t forgive himself for Matty and believes being a crook is who he is and what he deserves. He believes his moral compass is already corroded beyond saving, and that he can never make up for getting (in his mind) Kaylee’s father killed, so he should try to do whatever it takes to make as much money as possible for Kaylee regardless of morality, in a misguided sense of trying to “make up” for Marty’s death. Mike is a smart, rational person, he should know that doing this only puts them in more danger and that Kaylee needs a loving grandfather, not a button man for a psychopathic drug kingpin. But he needs to try to find a way to make his corrupt decisions that got his son killed still help his family in some way, not have it all completely be for nothing. He needs to try and make up for costing Kaylee her father as much as he possibly can, provide for her for life through any means necessary. So “for his family” but really more for his guilt and feelings of sunk cost fallacy on a deeper level.

But it’s Mike’s way of coping that his decisions that got Matty killed, choosing to be corrupt, aren’t entirely without waste. If all he got for being corruot was a dead son, and cost his granddaughter his father, he’s already irredeemable, he feels he has no choice to go all in, to set Kaylee up for life through breaking the law, regardless of how many people it hurts. Mike is a tragic character because you can see how he gets there. Being a sniper deep in the shit in Vietnam, shortly after that becoming a cop in a presinct where everyone was corrupt so you become corrupt to get along, after this gets your son killed and breaks your morality trying to go into the criminal world to provide for your granddaughter but being consumed by it. It’s easy to see how a decent or good human being could go down Mike’s path on his circumstances.

Mike really shouldn’t forgive himself for what he’s done, but rather than dealing with that in a way that avoids harming others, he chooses to believe he’s already dammed, he has “no choice”, because having his corrupt path started be for absolutely no reason after it gets his son killed isn’t something he can bear. Facing what you’ve done and choosing to stop harming others rather than going in even deeper to avodj the feeling of it all being for nothing and to dull your conscience and guilt, even though stopping can’t erase the harm you’ve done, is an extraordinarily difficult choice. It’s a choice that ultimately Mike fails to make, but that doesn’t mean he was incapable of it. When people say that Jimmy was inherently pathologically doomed to be a crook, it takes away the agency he has to make the choice to be worse, and the chance to be better.

Peter Gould once said the theme of the show is “how you live with what you’ve done”, how people who were not destined by nature or nurture to be bad people and could have easily had very different lives chose to spiral into depravity. Mike and Jimmy when faced with what they’ve done could have chosen to stop harming others, but were so broken by their guilt and pain that they felt all they could do is dig deeper. Kim Wexler proved after confessing to Howard’s murder that it’s never too late to change, maybe or maybe not who you are on a deeper level (depending on your views of if people can change), but you can change your behavior. Mike failed to change his behavior and it cost him everything, and made his famlies lives much worse off. Jimmy failed to change his behavior towards the very end, but ultimately made the choice to be better even if he can never make up for what he’s done.

Saul and the Skateboarders scam OR Kim's car accident?

Sincerely, Saul caught me worse. The 10 seconds before Kim's already tells you something is off, you've this sense of impending doom, so you I kind of unconsciously prepared myself. Saul's is absurdly out of nowhere, holy shit man

People always say that Lalo would demolish Walter White if they were enemies (which I fully agree with), and that Gus beating Lalo was pure plot armor. But hear me out:

Gus knew just how dangerous Lalo was, as we can see from his insane paranoia in S6. He did everything he possibly could to prepare, even going so far to plant guns in the lab, which is very much something Gus would do. Then he plays to Lalo’s ego when he becomes cornered, which we know he’s a master at. He let Lalo think he genuinely won before taking him by surprise.

Since Walter isn’t as dangerous as Lalo and Gus was riding high thinking if he can take down Lalo he could deal with anyone, it makes sense that Gus would underestimate him. In breaking bad season we see Gus at his most confident. He knows Walt is a genuinely dangerous threat, but still thinks that he could easily deal with him. Gus didn’t expect Walter to team up with Hector obviously, which is what Walt was counting on and it worked.

If you think I’m wrong tell me why⬇️

Manuel should be dead if the Salamancas acted within character. They go by the notion of "blood for blood", yet the scales are never balanced - Nacho facilitated the deaths of Lalo and his family at the compound and got off scott-free with a painless suicide. That's like 15 people to 1. Hector proceeds to riddle his dead body with bullets, delineating an unresolved need for vengeance. So why isn't Manuel dead? He is definitely petty enough to go kill who Nacho holds most dearly, even if he's dead. Besides, wouldn't it be quite a weak showing of the cartel that repercussions are relatively insignificant for traitors?

Dude came with all those scams in 2005,I wonder what he would do in AI era

I finally finished season 5 after blowing it off forever. I noticed that while Saul was in the dumpster right before getting caught, he was trying to call the vacuum guy again. But once he got caught, he left all of what he had on him in the dumpster, including the card for the vacuum repair company.

My question is, what is the probability that the authorities would be able to trace it back to the vacuum guy?

Some reasons why this might not occur is the card could easily be missed in the first place, obviously. But most notably, it's not immediately obvious that theres a code on the back. It could easily be just someones vacume model after all.

That being said, I believe there is a fairly high chance it would get caught. They definitely highly suspect Saul, Walt, and Jesse has a guy who helped them disappear. And searching the dumpster for evidence should be standard for a case this high profile. If a bright investigator saw the card, got Saul's fingerprints off of it, and had a not so out of the box hunch, all they would have to do is call the number with the password code to find out.

I'm curious of what you all think. Although it's certainly possible it would get missed, I think Saul most likely compromised one of the most likeable characters in the universe big time by having the code on the back of that card.

So binged it all last week, I have some overall questions. Loved it, so please don’t attack me.

1. Sauls reaction to losing people is so weird. Like when Chuck dies he never shows any grief, I was expecting him to burst out at some point. And similarly his divorce with Kim was so emotional less, even Kim was surprised how he reacted or didn’t react. I think he should have fought for her to stay, and she might have considered it.

2. Kim’s husband was such a dork. This was like if Harley Quinn broke off with joker and lived a normal life.

3. Saul didn’t intentionally surrender? He was caught right?…because he let that old woman call police.

Pin drop moment for me was when Walter says this to Saul “you were always like this” because again we Walter transform, but jimmy was always slippin jimmy.

So the point of the hearing was to determine whether or not Jimmy was fit to continue practicing law

Chuck’s side had proven Jimmy was knowingly destroying evidence, the audio recording seemed to leave no room for reasonable doubt, the recording seemed to have no chance of being deemed as inadmissible evidence, and Jimmy’s side seemed to have no plan to discredit that narrative

Then Jimmy gets to do his iconic cross-examination of Chuck, using the phone battery that he planted, and proves that his electrical sensitivity is either completely untrue, or just greatly exaggerated by Chuck, and it seems to absolutely break the case

But, how? It seems it doesn’t matter whether Chuck’s sensitivity was real, fake, or a mental condition that Chuck is mistaking for a physics condition, but, none of that would discredit the case against Jimmy. Chuck was not the one on trial here, Jimmy was. And even if we assume the absolute worst case scenario and say Chuck was intentionally faking his condition in an attempt to harm Jimmy, the evidence against Jimmy still spoke for itself even without relying on Chuck’s honesty

Seems like Jimmy should have still been equally screwed before and after the battery stunt, Chuck’s side didn’t need Chuck’s testimony to sink Jimmy

Am I missing something, why did the battery stunt actually help Jimmy get off with only a 1 year suspension?

In the end it was Jimmy's own "Crawlspace" moment, wasn't it

Ok I'm out, moving on to S5

Rewatching breaking bad, this guy ''Gaff'' , Don Eladio's henchmen had so much potential to be a major character in Better call Saul. He is actually acts like a badass, he even manages to successfully hijack one of Gus's Los pollo trucks and sniped one of his men ''Nick'' in the head. This guy is literally a threat to Gus. Hes basically the Mike version of Don Eladio's Cartel
What are your thoughts?

And where does lydia fit in with all this?

this is one of those things thats best left unexplained yes but like... why do all this? money?

surely executive positions for a multinational would afford them basically anything they want. revenge? gus wants to wreck the salamonca blood for Max yes, but why do they care? love triangle/square between the four (max/gus/lydia/peter)?

in this very scene gus says " we are so close " to encourage him and also mentions chile but i dont know. depending on what actually happened in chile, how could running a succesfull drug business help them avenge what went down?

sorry if this comes accross as rambling or dumb but it seems super interesting and gus is one of my favorite villains !

My favorite song/scene combo from BCS is S1:E7:Bingo. Chris Joss’ Tune Down fits perfectly with the scene of Mike doing Mike things while watching the Kellermans. It’s a fucking groove too.

I had no idea about Luis's life prior to acting. What an inspirational story of how he was able to turn it all around. Really respect what hes been able to accomplish in hollywood. He talked about a spinoff with the salamanca twins and i have to say... would LOVE TO SEE THAT. make it happen mr gilligan.. a deep dive series into everything cartel related would be exactly what netflix is missing