Better Call Saul S4E5 “Quite a Ride” Sept 3 2018 (Breaking Bad Spoilers OK)

Is the idea of rolling up bundles of cash a regular deal for all Americans, or just criminals? It seems inefficient to me.

 

Maybe it's orrificial?

 

I think it's a preference or just hollywood portrayal. Didn't we see Tuco tell the distributors to flatten out the bills (or was it the other way around -- he wanted them all rolled up?) I remember Tuco getting pissed off that one $100 bill was in the stack upside down. They're very particular about how cash is handled. I assume that's how Victor wanted the bills stacked.

 

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BTW, I also loved the intro flash-forward. What great continuity. If it was a scene cut from BB or filmed new, I don't think anyone would be able to tell the difference with the attention to detail this show goes to.

I personally think it was a newly filmed shot for BCS and not a cut from BB. But it would be really cool if it were from BB.

What do people think was in the shoebox Saul pulled from behind the wall? I don't think it was the videotapes of the BCS commercials we saw back in S1, since why would they be hidden behind a wall like that.

 

From this interview with Odenkirk
'Better Call Saul' star Bob Odenkirk breaks down THAT 'Breaking Bad'-era scene

Looks like it was a new shot on a rebuilt set

Trinkets and memories.

 

According to my former USSS contact, while large scale cash crime operations do indeed use bill counters, they don't like banding and stacking money, because that leaves behind an actual paper trail (fingerprints on bands, someone has to purchase bands). To quote "When I've been around the actual duffle bags and suitcases in reality, the cash was almost always rubber-banded. They prefer rubber bands to paper, and that means either folding counted stacks in half and rubber-banding them, or rolling them. Most any time I saw a bag of cash, it was the former. I guess the rolling looks cooler for television, but banded flat stacks weren't that common."

 

According to the AMC.com site where they have short little videos about each episode, the set was the real set from BB that was saved by a line producer. And as already mentioned, that scene from this week was shot on film to mimic the look of BB which was also shot on film, as opposed to digitally as the rest of BCS is.

 

I had noticed that the color balance was definitely different on that segment. Still good to see the old Saul. Wonder if this show will fill in some of the other random details on that shoebox, like the Panamanian passport.

 

I also thought the first shot of the shredder looking up from below was very BB. I don't recall very many shots like that from BCS.

 

I loved that this was the first flash forward scene we've gotten that wasn't of the Gene era. Hopefully there will be more like this. But was the main reason for putting that scene in this episode to show Saul breaking the burner phone after placing the one call, and then him doing the same thing when he was putting on a show for the contractor customer at the phone store? What's the benefit of breaking the phone in half? I would think if the battery is still installed and most of the electronics are in the same half as the battery, the fact that the screen has been broken off isn't going to prevent the phone from being tracked (if someone had any reason to track it).

Actually BCS has taken those cues from BB and has done lots of shots like that. I remember one where the camera was looking up out of the cup holder in Jimmy's car as he put his coffee cup in it. And there have been many other unconventional camera angles like that as well.

 

Howard looked like he had been hit by a truck, didn't he?

And then he tells Jimmy that the therapist is working out well...

 

I think that since Saul relied on burner phones in BB, this shows the origin story of that mindset. What I also thought was brilliant on his part was that he recognized that his obscure store location does not attract the clientele who would agree with the idea of "the man is listening" and that these phones are untraceable, so you absolutely NEED more than just one. And that sorta' clientele is nocturnal. They are not wandering around strip malls during regular business hours. So he just brought the product to them ... just as drug dealers do their business. Brilliant!

In that interview, the interviewer asks Odenkirk: "When Jimmy is knee-deep in this phone scam, you feel bad for him when he gets beat up and his ill-gotten money is stolen. How bad should we feel for Jimmy?"

I thought that it was not "ill-gotten" ... he ran the sales through the cash register before he took the inventory and marked it up for street sales. What's wrong with that? Those potential customers were never going to be exposed to his sales pitch or the product at the store between 9 am and 5 pm.

 

Abby on NCIS would laugh at that feeble attempt to hide data on a cellphone.

Well, if she was still on NCIS........

 

I wasn't sure all the money was stolen. Before he took the last four phones to the bikers, it looked like he stashed what he had at that point away. So I thought maybe the kids just got what he got from the bikers..?

Yeah, that snapping a flip phone in half trope is used a LOT in TV and movies. And it always makes me wonder...do all these people just watch too much TV and movies?

 

I thought so too ... but would you say that his late-night sales were "ill-gotten"? I thought it was legitimate, as he did not steal the inventory from the store before embarking on his street sales routine.

 

I wouldn't...although it was a little shady (he rang up the purchases before he had the money for them).

 

He put several hundred dollars in the drawer, so he did pay for the phones up front.

 

Huh, I missed that. Wonder where he got the money?

 

I assumed he got it from the $5,000 check he got from Chuck's estate.

In any case, the cell-phone sales were not ill gotten. Jimmy bought the phones from the store legitimately and then went and sold them. We don't know if he was selling them at a markup, or if he was just selling them for the purpose of moving product from the store to make his boss realize he's a good salesman. But even if he was selling them for more than he paid, that's his prerogative.

I was a little confused as to why Jimmy removed the paint from the store window. Is he soured on the idea of selling to the criminal element because he got rolled? Is he disillusioned because in the past he feels like people would have known not to come after him while now he is an easy mark? Does he think that he'll have more success selling face-to-face at night rather than in the store? The fact that he sold a whole stack to that contractor proves that the painting on the windows was effective.