Better Call Saul season 2

Starts tonight !!  I happened to be in that area of town this morning with a friend so drove past the beauty parlor where Jimmy McGills 'office' is, and explained its cultural significance. She was baffled of course.

Bob Odenkirk was on a talk show last week and said that on his first episode on Breaking Bad, the crew was talking 'spin-off' right then. Then later during season 2 Vince Gilligan stopped him in the hall and talked spin-off with him. So they were talking about it way back then.

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That was a good premire. I was a little surprised that Jimmy and Kim 'hooked up' so soon but then learned on 'Talking Saul' that they had known each other for 10 years, according to Vince Gilligan. That was about the best guest visit that they will ever have on Talking Saul, the two chief writers/exec producers, Bob Odenkirk, and Rhea Seehorn. Bob had the best, most detailed explanation of how he approaches acting and his roles of any I've heard, even on the 5 years of "Talking Dead" although Danai Gurira does the best job of explanation on that show.

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There are several high profile "ambulance chasing" law firms here that advertize on TV a lot. Jimmy's commercial would fit right in, although most of the local commercials are about traffic accident 'recompense'.

I finally confirmed where the 'Santa Fe' law firm actually is. It's in the professional park , 1 1/2 miles south of me, right along I-25 on the east and Jefferson St. on the west. The offices are near the south end of the pro. park. A lot of lawyers and national companies have their local offices there.

So Mike decides to get beat up by Tuco to earn $25 K, rather than kill him for $50 K. I guess that's a 'moral' decision.

If Tuco gets 5 to 10 years , under NM statutes typically that means he got out in 4 years and showed up in Breaking Bad.

But he bought the farm in season 2, episode 2 when he got in the gun fight with Hank out at the old house on the West Mesa where his sick uncle lived.

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I'm beginning to wonder when Jimmy will 'morph' into Saul. I suspect that it won't happen until the last episode of S2.

So Tuco's father tries to get Mike to take the fall for Tuco and say that the gun was his rather than Tuco's and wants to pay him $5 K to do it. Of course Mike will turn him down. The interesting thing is that his father is walking and talking normally whereas in Breaking Bad he was in a wheelchair and couldn't talk. He must have had a stroke sometime ......

Kim is really being abused by HHM. Even after bringing in the big account she is still relegated to the basement doing whatever it is that all those clerks or jr. partners do with those files....

Since Mike took the $50K from Tuco's uncle I guess that means he'll tell the police that he owns the gun.  This is no big deal in NM as long as he isn't a convicted felon, and hasn't used it to shoot someone in a non-self defense situation, or has discharged it within the city limits, which is a 4th degree misdemeanor, and otherwise there would be no charges pending against him just because he supposedly owned the gun in the fight with Tuco.

The two thug brothers threatening his grand daughter and d-i-l, are the same ones that Hank killed in the shootout in the west parking lot of the Home Depot in Breaking Bad.

I recognized them from BB.

Several interesting "research" items raised in last nights ep.

We see that Kim's home address is 2334 Harper Dr. There is a Harper Dr. but of course the addr. is fictitious. Harper is a short E-W street, about .9 miles long starting on the west at I-25 and going east, dead-ending at a T-intersection with Burlison st. The addresses run from the 5600 block on the west to the 6800 block on the east. There can be no 2300 block. I lived near Harper in an apt. complex in the 80's and it runs about 3/4ths mile south of the La Quinta motel.

Mike's d-i-l's new house is in the 8600 block of an unidentified st., so it's not possible to tell where it is except that it's on the east side, north of I-40 and not near downtown. That much can be deduced by the house style and 'maturity' of the landscaping/lawn.

The glass block, privacy windows in Jimmy's 'office' in the beauty parlor storage room raises some interesting questions. Until proven otherwise I think his office is actually a set in the Albq. Studios. They couldn't very well take over the Vietnamese lady's actual storage room, where would she put her supplies ? Also, notice that the camera angles require the camera and camera man, sound man, lighting man to all be over on the east side of the 'office'. There just isn't enough room in there for all that. But....the glass block windows are interesting because IF the real storage room has them (easily checked because a street runs right along that side of the building) then we have to wonder if they reproduced them on the set just to mystify us geeks who might go check....which I will later I assure you.

Also, when the law clerk drove the U-Haul to the beauty shop from Santa Fe, to help Jimmy deliver his fancy desk, he approached the shop from the east through the parking lot, not a normal way to arrive. It can be done but it would require a knowledge of the side streets, where to turn off from Juan Tabo Bl., coming from I-40, etc. Would a guy working and presumably living in Santa Fe have the knowledge of the streets to do that ? Anything is possible, but it just looked odd.

Okay, I've proven that Jimmy's office is a set at Albq. Studios. Here's the north wall of the beauty shop. There is a back door into the storage room but not a glass cube window in sight !

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The U-Haul truck turned in here from the street that goes past the rear of the parlor :

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Then he turned west in the parking lot and we first see the truck driving toward the beauty shop at the west end of the building. An unusual way to come in. Why not just turn into the parking lot from Juan Tabo Bl. ?

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That was interesting that they got Brendan to play the AF Captain. That scene was filmed last year in the winter, at the Double Eagle Airport on the west mesa, around Feb., when "Fifi" was here. You could see it was late afternoon in the winter by the angle of the sun. I don't remember if Night Shift was shooting at that time but if it was he could have run over there on his 'day off' and shot those scenes which probably took only one day.

Also in the opening scenes with all the trucks lined up at the "Santa Teresa" Mexican border entry (an actual place that is much more built up and congested than portrayed) they were out on the west mesa again but exactly where , I'm still trying to figure out because of the first camera angle where we could see the three volcanoes on the west mesa which are just east of the access road to Double Eagle, but the camera angle seemed to be looking from the s.e. side of the volcanoes but the Sandias could be seen in the background. This is not physically possible, there could have been some sort of 'compositing' going on, but I don't think so.
That opening , continuous scene without pause or retakes, presumably, was really something and very hard to pull off.

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What Mike intends to do with the garden hose spiked with nails remains to be seen but it doesn't look good for the 'recipent'.  Telling his d-i-l that he was making a soaker hose was a little bogus since he could have gone to Lowes and bought a 25ft,  for $10 as I did last week.

So we see how the "soaker hose" worked.  

This place seems to be Mike's favorite place for breakfast and using the few clues seen out the front window it wasn't hard to find it with Google Earth.

The first clue was the Adams St, sign seen out the window , and knowing that most productions like to film up and down Central Ave., it wasn't hard to pinpoint where Adams St. Tees into  Central.

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The second clue was the big sign across the street, also seen out the window. It is on the corner of the vacant lot where the old American Motel used to stand. It was one of many derelict motels along Central torn down by the city over the years, all havens for druggies, prostitute, etc.

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The restaurant itself is just a little place, surviving for many years in a neighborhood gradually declining.

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I might check it out some Saturday, although it's further away than my favorite, similar place, Papa Felipes.

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That was a great season finale. As soon as they gave the address of the print shop it was easy to find, although they didn't add the SW, which is necessary to pinpoint Albq. addresses because of the four quadrant system..  It's just south of the main, downtown area.

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On "Talking Saul" they revealed several "Easter Eggs" as they call plot hints, etc. that fans can use to deduce future events. One of them is an anagram of each episodes title which this season spelled out "Fring's back". Gilligan and Gould thought that that would be too obscure for anyone to figure out, but no, a fan figured it out and now we know that it was Fring that left the "don't" note on Mike's car.  During that scene I thought that Mike might take the shot even though Salamanca was partially hidden and he was only wounded, resulting in his later confinement to the wheel chair and being unable to speak. But no, season 3 will be more complicated than that....

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They got a pretty high powered actress to play Chuck's doctor. I was surprised.

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I might buy one of those "Hoboken" t-shirts if I can find an online source. Chris said it is at BettercallSaul.com but I don't see it there....