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younglegends) wrote2025-08-19 01:17 pm
younglegends) wrote2025-08-19 01:17 pm
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[tv] top ten doomed moments of better call saul
remember when we used to call saul. rewatched it and wrote up this post like a month ago and never posted it for some reason. also ended up writing fic... oh it's bad for me
1. well, howard. i guess that's just your cross to bear. s4e01
and that's the sound of the first nail being hammered into jimmy's coffin: his cheerful act, the over-the-top touch of WHISTLING, puttering about the kitchen, feeding his goldfish, howard and kim staring at him in horror, his brother dead, his fault.
well ok... maybe not the first. Lmao. but such a pivotal moment. and no fucking coincidence that chuck's death lies neatly at the halfway point of the series, at the end of the s3 finale, heralding the downturn of the show into darker territory. let justice be done though the heavens fall. and i love this moment because it's so... cold and horrifying and real! in the midst of howard confessing that he believes himself responsible for chuck's suicide, he lets slip what he thinks is the minor detail of the malpractice insurance issue that triggered their fallout, and from that moment on it's like a switch is flipped because jimmy knows he's the one who intentionally fucked with chuck's insurance; he knows it's his fault his brother is dead. nothing left to be said, done, explained, understood, forgiven. so put on the act! become it! what else is there to do.
crossing the line... going so far that you can't ever be redeemed so you may as well double down. go all in. commit yourself to this hell forever. call that... SOMETHING UNFORGIVABLE. also the summary of this show!
love jimmy goldfish motif btw... swimming around in your bowl and here's lalo salamanca to tap on the glass! hehe.
2. let's do it again. s4e08
one of my favourite kim/jimmy moments of all time. this entire episode is such a riveting case study of their relationship imo. kim helps jimmy do something bad to keep him from doing something worse; jimmy says he's sorry and he'll never do it again because he thinks that's what she needs from him; he's fucking lying through his teeth. and kim? she [walter white voice] LIKED it. she was GOOD at it. and what she needs from him isn't lies and platitudes and pretending to be someone he isn't: she wants to do it—with him—again.
i love the way they ultimately fail to understand each other at crucial moments. jimmy underestimates how far kim will go, thinking she needs to be the morally righteous arbiter of the law and of him so he has to hide his true self from her; kim underestimates how far jimmy will go, thinking they're in it so they're in it together.
and how perfect that it's the episode of lalo's arrival... the one guy who was namedropped in brba, who's haunted the show in the anticipation of his inevitable arrival, who will ultimately break up kim and jimmy's fantasy like a battering ram.
3. "You win." "Uh, yeah, but I mean... Well, we win. Us." "No. I didn't." "What didn't you get that you wanted?" "I don't trust you." "Why?" "You played ME! You made ME the sucker, AGAIN! [...] Either we end this now and enjoy the time we've had and go our separate ways or..." "Or what?" "Or maybe we get married?" s5e06
hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
4. the truth is, you've never mattered all that much to me. s3e10
the tragedy of chuck's character is that he's often right, he's just so immensely dislikeable because of his way of going about it. his puffed-up pride. his curse to bear, if you will, and his complex, solidified from fucking childhood because his lying little brother was always in the wrong but it never seemed to matter because everybody liked him. because [howard voice] maybe there are more important things... see #10
and it's so horrible and sad that when he gives up on jimmy, neatly severs himself from him—lying about it!—his brother he's pulled out of the shit, his brother who's taken care of him when he had no one else, his brother who let him down and betrayed him, his brother whom he let down and betrayed... he gives up on life, too. on getting better. he gives in to his illness, his worst impulses, he unravels and destroys himself. anyway yeah i watched this with tears streaming down my face
5. what else is there to say? s6e03
so funny that when s6 was airing i really thought nacho was gonna pull a jesse pinkman and live somehow. Like what do u mean... you're watching the dead ppl show. in fact from the beginning he's always been dead. i was fooled and believed in him bc he was doing soooo much to survive... i wanted him to make it :( anyway he really died in episode three. and the moment he picked up the phone to call his father in this episode i knew he was a dead man, he knew it, everyone knew it.
nacho the obvious jesse figure of bcs but like. not the dog but the snake... from day one talking down tuco salamanca cool and collected in the desert, choosing to rob other criminals because they have no recourse, enjoying himself a little irony, a little internal sense of self-satisfaction, dabbling in a little bit of betrayal here and there. the smug superiority, the comeuppance. how long did you think that distance would last. how many inches are there left of your rope.
honestly can't think too much about nacho as a character bc i will black out. his stupid fucking mansion with all that huge ugly art on every wall. it breaks my stupid heart..... and there isn't a single thing left that isn't corrupted, that still stands for what it is. not his relationship with his father, the only thing he has left in his heart, spiralling into hell to protect him and he doesn't even want it, his useless love. not his relationship with mike, the one guy around who seemed to have anything approaching honour in him, and he turned out to be like everyone else, another handler. asking after the innocents living in lalo's house, well what the hell did you expect. they even put their salamanca blood in him so he could live on and poison them from the inside out and it was a vet they got to do it. a dead man cursing a scene full of dead men. a little blue flower in the desert years after everything... i love u alive nacho.....
a plague upon your houses!!! (the plague is walter white)
6. you gangsters and your "justice". you're all the same. s6e09
if i had a nickel for every time mike had a responsibility toward a young man in his line of work and failed him... that's 15 cents babey!!
it's really crazy to think about the nothing that mike is doing all this for. his obsession with amassing a comical amount of wealth for his granddaughter, because, what? it's his fault his son died, and he couldn't just live with it? because he still enjoys petty things like revenge and the satisfaction of a job competently done, never mind what that job is? in s1e05 he says "i made him lesser. i made him like me." and then he KEPT DOING IT! and faced with a father figure who's his exact opposite—morally righteous to the point he refuses to be made lesser by his son—he has to tell him this crock of shit. and we know he goes on to continue working for gus and meet walt and jesse and get shot for no reason and die by some random riverbank. well, that's it. that's all.
love his final scene with gus btw... gus telling him to get back to work on the lab. mike just staring at him. a little bit of hatred in the eyes is okay.
7. i love you, too. but so what? s6e09
it's kind of crazy to think that when kim broke things off with jimmy after howard's death and quit the law, she thought it was some kind of repentance for the unforgivable thing they'd done. she thought they made each other worse. and maybe they did. but jimmy only got into the law because of kim, was inspired to turn to elder law by a passing comment she made. and he was good at it! and then, well, he abused that power. and then in the years without her jimmy doubled down and chose to do way worse than anything they'd ever come up together. and then kim didn't hurt a single other person. but she didn't help anyone either.
well, if there was no justice to be served, somebody still had to suffer the consequences, didn't they? somebody had to be punished. so they both were.
this is why self-punishment doesn't work, my sister said to me when we got to s6e12 waterworks in our rewatch. what does?
8. kim in the stairwell at the end of s5e01
ANGUISH. the utter failings of a system in which people have to be tricked, scammed, sold into believing it can serve them. not even that jimmy suggested it or that she ended up going through with it but that it worked, of course it worked. Kim wexler character of all time.
9. "you'll say anything to get what you want, won't you?" s5e03 / "wouldn't i?" s5e10
Kim wexler character of all time x2
10. well, maybe there are more important things. s06e07
hiiii howard... so funny the first time i watched bcs i hated howard's guts. and for what? he's so much more of a complete character than that. on rewatch it's sooo funny and interesting how when kim leaves hhm—entirely due to his assholery, btw—he has a bit of a moment talking almost to himself about how he'd once wanted to break from the company too, when he was still starting out, before eventually just listening to his father and accepting his mantle. an air of wistfulness to it. like my god... you can't hate him! the man is literally just who he is! he's having thoughts in real time! we're watching him self-actualize like a baby doggedly throwing itself into the task of learning to walk. and it just goes on from there—finally putting his foot down against chuck only to immediately end up having to regret it, blundering through his feelings afterward, babbling his misplaced confession to jimmy, getting chewed out by kim, going to therapy and having marital problems like the most normal person ever and telling an intern on the day of his death in front of the giant portrait of his mentor and friend whose suicide he blames himself for that maybe there are more important things than being the best legal mind ever known. TRAGEDY!
and that's the sound of the first nail being hammered into jimmy's coffin: his cheerful act, the over-the-top touch of WHISTLING, puttering about the kitchen, feeding his goldfish, howard and kim staring at him in horror, his brother dead, his fault.
well ok... maybe not the first. Lmao. but such a pivotal moment. and no fucking coincidence that chuck's death lies neatly at the halfway point of the series, at the end of the s3 finale, heralding the downturn of the show into darker territory. let justice be done though the heavens fall. and i love this moment because it's so... cold and horrifying and real! in the midst of howard confessing that he believes himself responsible for chuck's suicide, he lets slip what he thinks is the minor detail of the malpractice insurance issue that triggered their fallout, and from that moment on it's like a switch is flipped because jimmy knows he's the one who intentionally fucked with chuck's insurance; he knows it's his fault his brother is dead. nothing left to be said, done, explained, understood, forgiven. so put on the act! become it! what else is there to do.
crossing the line... going so far that you can't ever be redeemed so you may as well double down. go all in. commit yourself to this hell forever. call that... SOMETHING UNFORGIVABLE. also the summary of this show!
love jimmy goldfish motif btw... swimming around in your bowl and here's lalo salamanca to tap on the glass! hehe.
2. let's do it again. s4e08
one of my favourite kim/jimmy moments of all time. this entire episode is such a riveting case study of their relationship imo. kim helps jimmy do something bad to keep him from doing something worse; jimmy says he's sorry and he'll never do it again because he thinks that's what she needs from him; he's fucking lying through his teeth. and kim? she [walter white voice] LIKED it. she was GOOD at it. and what she needs from him isn't lies and platitudes and pretending to be someone he isn't: she wants to do it—with him—again.
i love the way they ultimately fail to understand each other at crucial moments. jimmy underestimates how far kim will go, thinking she needs to be the morally righteous arbiter of the law and of him so he has to hide his true self from her; kim underestimates how far jimmy will go, thinking they're in it so they're in it together.
and how perfect that it's the episode of lalo's arrival... the one guy who was namedropped in brba, who's haunted the show in the anticipation of his inevitable arrival, who will ultimately break up kim and jimmy's fantasy like a battering ram.
3. "You win." "Uh, yeah, but I mean... Well, we win. Us." "No. I didn't." "What didn't you get that you wanted?" "I don't trust you." "Why?" "You played ME! You made ME the sucker, AGAIN! [...] Either we end this now and enjoy the time we've had and go our separate ways or..." "Or what?" "Or maybe we get married?" s5e06
hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
4. the truth is, you've never mattered all that much to me. s3e10
the tragedy of chuck's character is that he's often right, he's just so immensely dislikeable because of his way of going about it. his puffed-up pride. his curse to bear, if you will, and his complex, solidified from fucking childhood because his lying little brother was always in the wrong but it never seemed to matter because everybody liked him. because [howard voice] maybe there are more important things... see #10
and it's so horrible and sad that when he gives up on jimmy, neatly severs himself from him—lying about it!—his brother he's pulled out of the shit, his brother who's taken care of him when he had no one else, his brother who let him down and betrayed him, his brother whom he let down and betrayed... he gives up on life, too. on getting better. he gives in to his illness, his worst impulses, he unravels and destroys himself. anyway yeah i watched this with tears streaming down my face
5. what else is there to say? s6e03
so funny that when s6 was airing i really thought nacho was gonna pull a jesse pinkman and live somehow. Like what do u mean... you're watching the dead ppl show. in fact from the beginning he's always been dead. i was fooled and believed in him bc he was doing soooo much to survive... i wanted him to make it :( anyway he really died in episode three. and the moment he picked up the phone to call his father in this episode i knew he was a dead man, he knew it, everyone knew it.
nacho the obvious jesse figure of bcs but like. not the dog but the snake... from day one talking down tuco salamanca cool and collected in the desert, choosing to rob other criminals because they have no recourse, enjoying himself a little irony, a little internal sense of self-satisfaction, dabbling in a little bit of betrayal here and there. the smug superiority, the comeuppance. how long did you think that distance would last. how many inches are there left of your rope.
honestly can't think too much about nacho as a character bc i will black out. his stupid fucking mansion with all that huge ugly art on every wall. it breaks my stupid heart..... and there isn't a single thing left that isn't corrupted, that still stands for what it is. not his relationship with his father, the only thing he has left in his heart, spiralling into hell to protect him and he doesn't even want it, his useless love. not his relationship with mike, the one guy around who seemed to have anything approaching honour in him, and he turned out to be like everyone else, another handler. asking after the innocents living in lalo's house, well what the hell did you expect. they even put their salamanca blood in him so he could live on and poison them from the inside out and it was a vet they got to do it. a dead man cursing a scene full of dead men. a little blue flower in the desert years after everything... i love u alive nacho.....
a plague upon your houses!!! (the plague is walter white)
6. you gangsters and your "justice". you're all the same. s6e09
if i had a nickel for every time mike had a responsibility toward a young man in his line of work and failed him... that's 15 cents babey!!
it's really crazy to think about the nothing that mike is doing all this for. his obsession with amassing a comical amount of wealth for his granddaughter, because, what? it's his fault his son died, and he couldn't just live with it? because he still enjoys petty things like revenge and the satisfaction of a job competently done, never mind what that job is? in s1e05 he says "i made him lesser. i made him like me." and then he KEPT DOING IT! and faced with a father figure who's his exact opposite—morally righteous to the point he refuses to be made lesser by his son—he has to tell him this crock of shit. and we know he goes on to continue working for gus and meet walt and jesse and get shot for no reason and die by some random riverbank. well, that's it. that's all.
love his final scene with gus btw... gus telling him to get back to work on the lab. mike just staring at him. a little bit of hatred in the eyes is okay.
7. i love you, too. but so what? s6e09
it's kind of crazy to think that when kim broke things off with jimmy after howard's death and quit the law, she thought it was some kind of repentance for the unforgivable thing they'd done. she thought they made each other worse. and maybe they did. but jimmy only got into the law because of kim, was inspired to turn to elder law by a passing comment she made. and he was good at it! and then, well, he abused that power. and then in the years without her jimmy doubled down and chose to do way worse than anything they'd ever come up together. and then kim didn't hurt a single other person. but she didn't help anyone either.
well, if there was no justice to be served, somebody still had to suffer the consequences, didn't they? somebody had to be punished. so they both were.
this is why self-punishment doesn't work, my sister said to me when we got to s6e12 waterworks in our rewatch. what does?
8. kim in the stairwell at the end of s5e01
ANGUISH. the utter failings of a system in which people have to be tricked, scammed, sold into believing it can serve them. not even that jimmy suggested it or that she ended up going through with it but that it worked, of course it worked. Kim wexler character of all time.
9. "you'll say anything to get what you want, won't you?" s5e03 / "wouldn't i?" s5e10
Kim wexler character of all time x2
10. well, maybe there are more important things. s06e07
hiiii howard... so funny the first time i watched bcs i hated howard's guts. and for what? he's so much more of a complete character than that. on rewatch it's sooo funny and interesting how when kim leaves hhm—entirely due to his assholery, btw—he has a bit of a moment talking almost to himself about how he'd once wanted to break from the company too, when he was still starting out, before eventually just listening to his father and accepting his mantle. an air of wistfulness to it. like my god... you can't hate him! the man is literally just who he is! he's having thoughts in real time! we're watching him self-actualize like a baby doggedly throwing itself into the task of learning to walk. and it just goes on from there—finally putting his foot down against chuck only to immediately end up having to regret it, blundering through his feelings afterward, babbling his misplaced confession to jimmy, getting chewed out by kim, going to therapy and having marital problems like the most normal person ever and telling an intern on the day of his death in front of the giant portrait of his mentor and friend whose suicide he blames himself for that maybe there are more important things than being the best legal mind ever known. TRAGEDY!