#this flashback is gonna take a while but i promise the payoff is worth it

[bluegiragi]

diplomacy.

early access + nsfw on patreon

[enbouton]

Better Call Saul Rewatch, Part 3/30: Reasonable Doubt Type Stuff

Nacho (Season 1, Episode 3)

Written by Thomas Schnauz / Directed by Terry McDonough

A metal container hinges open; someone tosses in two sets of keys, a pen, and then an enormous brick-type cellphone, signalling that this is the show’s first flashback. There’s a distinctive cool blue tint to this scene that’s consistent through all but a couple of the other flashbacks, and the lighting is even more polarised than usual. (Writing this, I just remembered the one time Breaking Bad used this specific flavour of colour and lighting: the early flashback to young Walt and Gretchen.)

It’s the early nineties. Chuck wears a three-piece suit (of course he does) and Jimmy, ostensibly about 28 or 29 here, sports jailhouse scrubs and an awful shag mullet. Credit to Bob Odenkirk for animating Jimmy in such a way that he does come across as much younger; he fidgets on the edge of his seat like a restless teenager, his emotions spilling everywhere.

Chuck informs us that Jimmy is not only facing property damage and assault charges but a potential place on the sex offender registry. (They did a good job holding back the payoff— what Jimmy actually did— until the end of the season.) Jimmy admits to being in “a bit of a pickle”, but insists that the charges are trumped up. It’s telling that while Jimmy clearly does admire and respect Chuck for his standing as a lawyer, he talks of the law solely in terms of “tricks”, “loopholes”, “technicalities”— as if all he needs to get out of trouble is for Chuck to apply the right cheat code.

As Jimmy squirms, Chuck mentions that it’s been five years since they last saw each other. According to Chuck, their mom called him after Jimmy called her from jail, crying and begging for help (Jimmy strenuously denies that last part). “I know I’m a lousy brother,” Jimmy says. “I’m a lousy brother, I’m a big screw-up... and if I was just a better person, I would not only stop letting you down, you know what? I’d stop letting me down. And it’s about time that I start to make both of us proud. Am I right?” 

Looking at Chuck’s face here, you get the sense that it barely matters what Jimmy does from this point on; even if Chuck did once have the capacity to feel proud of him, that ship has sailed.

Back in the present, Jimmy, not actively suffering for a change, helps himself to some cucumber water, which is both pleasing to look at and makes nice underwater sounds. 

He wears white in this scene, maybe indicating his attempt to make a fresh start and do the right thing. Credit where it’s due: Jimmy’s desire to warn the Kettlemans is genuinely altruistic, and he doesn’t stand to benefit from it at all.

Jimmy considers calling Nacho, then calls Kim, whose first instinct is to ask him if Chuck’s all right:

Jimmy: Yeah, Chuck... Chuck is Chuck. All right? Everything’s all right. I just wanted to call you. So, uh... hey. Whatcha doing?

Kim: Jimmy... no. I’m not talking dirty to you.

I love them and I love this conversation. This is how you establish intimacy! Jimmy promises nothing but “quality PG phone conversation, PG-13 at worst” and then steers the talk towards the Kettlemans; he gets all “gee, it sure would be bad if something were to happen to them!” with her, laying it on just thick enough to weird her out but not to make her concerned for their immediate safety. Plan A having failed, Jimmy tries Plan B, section I, “Warn The Kettlemans While Disguising My Voice”, then section II, “Just Tell Them They’re In Danger Then Hang Up Very Fast”, and in the end they get the message (it helps that Nacho’s van is indeed lurking outside their house).

(Aside: the Kettlemans’ awful voicemail message is amazing. You just know they dress up in matching outfits for the annual family Christmas card.)

Next morning, Kim calls: the Kettlemans have gone missing, and Jimmy has neither the cash nor the stickers to leave the courthouse parking lot. Mike won’t budge, so Jimmy reaches into the booth, raises the boom himself, and drives off yelling “screw you, geezer!”; ah, the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

At the Kettleman home, Kim implores Jimmy to tell her why he said what he did; he looks torn, but tells her that he doesn’t know what happened. He drives to a payphone and leaves several breathless, desperate messages for Nacho, framed effectively in a mixture of tight close-ups and expansive wide shots (they make good use of that big blank wall behind him). There’s such a good long beat after Jimmy takes the hang-up call: high angle, city noise.

It turns out that the cops were already tracking Nacho, whose license plate was reported by one of the Kettlemans’ neighbours, so the scene culminates in Jimmy getting chased down an alley and arrested. Nacho assumes that Jimmy set him up (this episode is just rife with misunderstandings) and orders him to get him out, “or you’re a dead man”. Kim, Jimmy and the detectives head back to the Kettlemans’ house, where Kim pointedly tells Jimmy the names and ages of Craig and Betsy’s kids. Jimmy infers from the missing doll that Jojo wasn’t kidnapped, but the show doesn’t present the detectives as incompetent— they already noted that the doll was missing, and they’ve verified that the Kettlemans haven’t travelled. “If you run, everyone knows you’re guilty,” Jimmy insists, foreshadowing what will happen to him seven or eight years down the line.

Jimmy finally admits that he gave the Kettlemans an “anonymous” warning call, whereupon Kim delivers the deathless line, “Oh God, you didn’t… you didn’t do the sex robot voice, did you?” There is, as they say, a lot to unpack there, but the Kettlemans are still missing, so the conversation quickly moves on. Jimmy speeds back to the courthouse and gets arrested again after assaulting Mike, who has decided he doesn’t want his parking business any more.

There’s a glint of interest in Mike’s eye as Jimmy insists that the Kettlemans “took themselves”. He may not like Jimmy very much at this point, but he sees something in him worth paying attention to. Declining to press charges, he tells Jimmy a story about a man back home who disappeared and was found hiding two doors down from where he lived. “Nobody wants to leave home,” Mike says. Yet he’s very far from home; so is Jimmy; so is Kim. (So is Gus, more so than any other character.) The multiple meanings of home, and what it means to be alienated from a place you are tied to in the past or the present, are some of the most interesting themes explored in BrBa and BCS.

Jimmy goes back to the Kettleman home, deduces that they’ve gone camping, and plunges into the Sandia foothills to track them down. The shots in this montage do well to establish just how far he’s hiking and how sweaty and miserable he is in his suit and loafers. 

Around nightfall, his efforts are rewarded: the family are right where he guessed they’d be, and so is their loot. Jimmy and Betsy tussle over the bag, a seam splits, and hundreds of stacks of cash come tumbling out. For a moment, it looks like Craig and Betsy will be forced to reckon with reality.

Misc.

Jimmy corners DDA Oakley in the men’s room and browbeats him into accepting a deal for a client who “assaulted a cashier with a bottle of Kahlua”.

The “JPi” tag on the payphone also appears in Jesse’s house.

“I refuse to believe [you let me off because] you have something resembling a heart inside your body,” Jimmy tells Mike. “You’re not gonna have a heart inside your body in about five seconds,” Mike counters.

Anyone else get a very strong True Detective season 1 energy from these shots of Jimmy’s hike?

Timeframe: a single day in the first week of June, 2002. The flashback most likely takes place in the spring or summer of 1993 (in season 3, Howard says he’s known Jimmy almost ten years).

Music

“Find Out What’s Happening” by Bobby Bare (1968), as Jimmy tracks down the Kettlemans

References

“I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque” is an old Bugs Bunny catchphrase.

The Donner Party was a group of frontier travellers who set off for California from Wyoming in 1846 and got stranded in the Sierra Nevada after an ill-advised shortcut. Over half of the travellers died en route; some resorted to cannibalism to survive. 

Jimmy compares the detectives to Cagney and Lacey, the titular characters in the 1980s police procedural.

Mike talks about a Philadelphia bookie disappearing after the Super Bowl (Dallas Cowboys v. Pittsburgh Steelers). The Steelers won against the Cowboys in 1976 and 1979; the Cowboys won against the Steelers in 1996.

“Here’s Johnny!” is from Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining (1980).

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[gojaimas]

Chapter 35 Comment Replies

csgt: “Oh, I forgot to mention it in the past chapter, but I definitely got the feeling that Ben having a new normal watch and Gwen replacing the charm with a normal locket means the definitive end of the ‘hero’ part of their story”

Yeah, pretty much. They’re moving on to new stages in their lives as they grow up.

csgt: “So Lucy is now developing real feelings for both Ben and Gwen? Ohhh, that complicates things… Maybe she will find someone else and get over them? Even though now I’m seeing the chances of ‘Bwenucy’ happening raise a little (maybe 5 percent now instead of 1 percent?)”

Things are a little more complicated now. People have been noticing for a while that there is a chance of the story going in the Bwency direction, so this probably made it seem more likely to everyone. You’ll just have to see how it plays out over the rest of the year.

Davidscrazy234: “If this was made into a live action show, like Arrow and The Flash which cast person would u choose for Ben, Gwen, and Lucy?”

Ooh, there’s a fun question! Let’s see…

For Ben, I’d go with David Mazouz, AKA young Bruce Wayne in Gotham. The scenes where he’s partying and pretending to be a spoiled rich kid makes me think he could totally pull off Ben, plus beating the crap out of bad guys is right up his alley.

For Gwen, I’d say Sadie Sink, AKA Max from the second season of Stranger Things. I’ll admit it’s mostly because she’s a fierce redhead, but she seems talented enough to pull off a character who’s pretty much the exact opposite of Max as well.

And then for Lucy, I’d pick Elsie Fisher, AKA the voice of Agnes in the Despicable Me movies. She did a live action film with Bo Burnham recently too. She’s such a sweet girl and just seems like a constant ray of sunshine, I think she’d be perfect for Lucy.

These actors are 15-17 years old now, so I guess it could only work as a sequel to my story at this point, but they would’ve been perfect for it if the series had started like 4 or 5 years ago.

Guest: “I have a question- is Gwen shorter than Ben in this story? Otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to lean into his chest without having her butt stick out awkwardly.”

Haha, yes, Ben is the taller one now. Gwen used to be taller than him, but he hit his growth spurt and surpassed her, which I sort of eluded to a couple times in Year 3. I remember Ben Ten Thousand being really tall, so I figured this was how they would turn out. The drawing I did of them for the story image is a little closer to what I imagine their current relative heights are now.

Guest: “I’m like the track you’re heading with. Lucy was only featured in one episode in the original and she had so much potential, I always kept an eye out for her. Her characteristics stood out. The wedding when Ben danced with Gwen and then Lucy were really sweet moments. Came for a Bwen fanfic but I’m also in love with Lucy.”

You and me both, my friend. Lucy wasn’t even in the character list for Ben 10 fanfictions until I started this story. If nothing else comes from it, I hope people start to like her a bit more.

Jagcity: “Just a little side inquiry, it seems that Frank loves his daughter (or at least checks up on her) more than Natalie does; I guess Gwen’s mom is simply the stern and frowny type.”

Gwen’s dad is a softie, sort of a typical doting father. Her mom is much more strict, but she’s definitely the one who pushes her to succeed more, which Gwen is mature enough to be thankful for. Ben still finds Natalie mean and scary, and it confuses him that Gwen doesn’t seem to see her that way at all.

Guest: “that bathroom scene was the first time we’ve seen Lucy expressing her true intentions and emotions behind her cherrful happy go lucky mask and she seems to be conflicted… she cares for others which is why she wants Ben and Gwen to be there for each other but at the same, even though I can’t say she’s human, she’s got emotions. She’s just better at hiding it like Ben.”

We have seen her “mask” slip before, which I think is a good way to put it. Back in the summer of Year 2, she broke down because Joel and Camille were missing. That was an unrelated matter, but I hope it effectively foreshadowed how Lucy might not always be the cheerful, happy go lucky girl she appears to be.

Guest: “This was a really effective chapter and it only was that way because of the events and progression leading up to it.”

THANK YOU! Yes! Now you all know why I had to write a story the length of a Harry Potter book before reaching this point. I hope the payoff was worth the wait.

Guest: “I don’t know how to root for right now, it’s like Toradora all over again.”

I’m really glad you brought up Toradora, which is hands down one of the best romance anime out there. It wasn’t one of the biggest inspirations for my story (which would probably be Oreimo in addition to Little Moments), but I can definitely see the similarities.

Guest: “Since you mentioned you’re in college, what’re your aspirations and plans for the future? You’d do great as a author, writer for animes, characters and novels judging by what I’ve seen from you. You seem to have an interest in gaming so you could have a certain paths on that or just take it as a way to kill time. Whatever you’re gonna be in the future you sure as hell are gonna be successful”

Thank you for saying so! I actually graduated about a year ago, but I started writing this story while I was still in college. I’m currently working as an engineer at a medical device company. I have no real training or experience as an author, so I’ll probably just stick with fanfiction as a hobby for now. I’m also learning to draw in the anime art style, so maybe I’ll try making a fan manga at some point as well. In the past, I’ve competed in really low level Super Smash Bros and Magic the Gathering tournaments, but I couldn’t see myself making a career out of it. In about a year or two, I plan to decide if I wanna stick with what I’m doing or go back to school for a bit to transition into something else. I have a friend who got into the game design industry after he graduated, which is something I would love to do as well. Becoming a teacher is another option since I like working with kids and I used to tutor other students in math, science, and programming, plus my aunt is a middle school math teacher. I also have a friend who got into writing for television after he graduated. I was mostly joking, but I already made him promise that if he ever somehow makes it big and gets his own cartoon, he’ll let me voice the villain since I’m “basically already the villain in his life.” I know a lot of my readers are in college, so I just wanna say to all of you that life can be pretty cool after you graduate, and I hope you all do as well as my friends and I have.

Guest: “Do you think Joel is dead in the Last of Us Part 2”

I don’t think so. Wasn’t he in the trailer? Either way, I know I’m gonna play the shit out of that game the second it comes out.

Guest: “God. Been reading from December and this story’s at the TOP of the Ben 10 fanfic section, well deserved. Gosh bless”

Is it really? Awesome! Also, I thought it was funny how you start the comment with “God” and then switch to “Gosh bless” at the end. Lucy prefers “Glob” because she’s a fan of Adventure Time.

Guest: “‘Shut up and put your hands around me’ Gwen is such a tsundere lmao”

Haha, absolutely! I love tsunderes. Totally my type.

Guest: “Since you haven’t seen Alien Force... did you by any chance check out Omniverse since some flashbacks involve the friendship Gwen, Lucy and Ben.”

I only watched a few episodes of Omniverse. I even specifically sought out the episodes that had Lucy in them because I wanted more of her. The show didn’t really appeal to me, but I enjoyed the episodes I saw and the Lucy ones were helpful for crafting her character in my story.

Guest: “We all know Ben and Gwen are gonna end up together and you also mentioned you might write epilogue one shots would it be possible to also write a optionn B) alternative ending where Ben and Lucy got together or would that not fit with the course of the story you’re taking in? Just like how they did Amigami SS, in each 5 episodes, they pair the MC with a girl in alternative ways and timelines of course to see how it would’ve played out. I feel bad for Lucy to be left out and as much as I love Bwen as she does, wish she had her chance too.”

The Bwen ending and the Bwency ending are the only ones that are really on the table right now. I will say that the ending is one of those two options, but I am willing to write an alternate ending for the other one. It’s hard to imagine a Ben/Lucy ending that wouldn’t be completely soul-crushing for Gwen, but I might consider giving it a shot.

Guest: “‘Beeeeeeeen! You...you...You're doing it wrong!’ ‘Give it a rest Dweeb, I'm doing the best I can.’ ‘Ahhhhhhh...Ouch! Wrong hole, Doofus! Do you even know what you're doing down there!?’ ‘Maybe I should've just asked Lucy for help...’”

Hey! How did you get my manuscript for Year 5?? I mean, uh...get this filth out of my Christian Minecraft server.

Guest: “Just wondering, but is this a purely Bwen fic? It seems kinda sad that I read 200K words thinking that Lucy doesn't really stand a chance. I was wondering how much of a jump it would take for all three of them to get together but it doesn't really matter anyways since you already finished writing this work. I just found this piece about 3 days ago and I gotta say I'm enjoying it quite a bit. I look forward to reading what kind of ending you have in store for these characters.”

It’s not purely a Bwen fic. It was my intention for everyone to know Ben and Gwen were going to end up together from the start, but for it to be unclear at this point if Lucy will be involved with them as well. Some of my readers are more convinced it will happen than others, but like I said earlier, I am willing to write both endings. Only one of them is written right now though.