History Headscratchers / BetterCallSaul

[[folder: Would Kim really allowed to practice again and not be disbarred over Howard and Lalo?]]
In the finale, Kim she said something to the effect that bar membership is permanent so her voluntarily stepping down didn't matter and that she still could be a lawyer in New Mexico. But wouldn't her elaborate hoax/fraud against Howard (which she explicitly came clean on) be enough to disbar her? And it seems likely upon doing that that her actions around that time would be closely scrutinized and it would be discovered that she checked in at the jail as an attorney for one "Jorge de Guzman"... Lalo Salamanca. It's hard to believe that bar wouldn't want to talk to her about that.

** It had to be some time in episode 8 or 9. When Mike met with Nacho to warn him about the risks of taking out Hector by tampering with his medication, he inspected Nacho's gas cap just to be sure Gus didn't have a tracker installed there. And it's very likely Gus still had someone surveilling Mike and/or Nacho, seeing as at the end of "Talk," Gus confronts Mike about not telling him that Nacho was plotting a move against Hector, in a tone that suggests he knew about Nacho meeting Mike and Daniel Wormald.

** It also seemed that Jimmy could have just ''talked'' with Irene and simply persuaded her. She cares for her friends and for Jimmy, and they have a good rapport. He could have taken the quite-plausible tack of, e.g., 'I know you want to hold out for more, but your friends aren't as well off and need the money badly right now (or some variation thereof) and it could have ''worked''. He could have continued working in Elder Law that way, too. Chalk it up to Jimmy's self-sabotaging and in-character [[CutLexLuthorACheck Cut Lex Luthor A Check]] tendencies, perhaps.

[[folder: Was there any other way Jimmy could've got Irene to settle]]

** It also seemed that Jimmy could have just talked with Irene and simply persuaded her. She cares for her friends and for Jimmy, and they have a good rapport. He could have taken the quite-plausible tack of, e.g., 'I know you want to hold out for more, but your friends aren't as well off and need the money badly right now (or some variation thereof) and it could have worked.

** It's just continuity. The black and white is symbolic of Gene's depression, but that doesn't mean that literally everyone everywhere in the world is depressed at that particular time as well. The black and white is also meant to establish when events are happening in the "Gene" part of the timeline, as opposed to the "Jimmy" / "Saul" parts of the timeline. We're not supposed to assume Ed is down in the dumps as well, it's just to make sure that the viewer isn't getting confused by the phone call apparently jumping backwards and forwards through time from Gene's time (black-and-white) to the Jimmy / Saul era (colour) by making it clear that Ed is occupying the same temporal part of the narrative as Gene when the phone call is made.

** Let's be totally fair to Lalo here; he's standing with both a gun and a video recorder on Gus inside the secret lab Gus has been building with ample proof that Gus has been plotting to betray the cartel, with none of Gus's men there to intervene. Gus is, so far as Lalo knows, totally unarmed, and the only gun in the vicinity that Gus has access to is at least ten feet or so away from the two, and Gus getting it requires him to knock out the lights and run over to it in the dark before Lalo can plug him. By any reasonable metric Lalo clearly has the upper hand in the situation, so if Gus wants to dig his own grave further, why not give him a minute and let him? It's overconfidence, but it's far from unjustified given the circumstances. Frankly, the fact that Gus ''was'' able to nevertheless get the drop on Lalo was a minor miracle given the position he was in.

** Let's be totally fair to Lalo here; he's standing with both a gun and a video recorder on Gus inside the secret lab Gus has been building with ample proof that Gus has been plotting to betray the cartel, with none of Gus's men there to intervene. Gus is totally unarmed, and while Lalo doesn't know this the only gun Gus has access to is at least ten feet or so away from the two, and Gus getting it requires him to knock out the lights and run over to it in the dark before Lalo can plug him. By any reasonable metric Lalo clearly has the upper hand in the situation, so if Gus wants to dig his own grave further, why not give him a minute and let him? It's overconfidence, but it's far from unjustified given the circumstances. Frankly, the fact that Gus ''was'' able to nevertheless get the drop on Lalo was a minor miracle given the position he was in.

** It's not the insurance premiums reveal in and of itself that he regrets; it's the fact that his doing so was pretty much the last straw that led Chuck to kill himself. Jimmy is basically using this as a stand-in for "I'm sorry that my pettiness and my grudge directly contributed to my brother's suicide, and that we ended up having such a terrible relationship, and that despite everything I loved him and deeply regret that I never got to mend bridges with him."

** Also, in total fairness, Omaha is almost 1000 miles away from Albuquerque, and he's working in what appears to be a fairly low-key suburban mall. The chances of someone going through suburban Omaha who happens to stop off at that particular Cinnabon who is also be familiar with local Albuquerque celebrities and is able to recognise him through his disguise at a glance must be fairly negligible. Worth noting, the one person who does manage to recognise him doesn't see him at the Cinnabon, it's after he has a random medical crisis and has to go to a hospital.

*** Lalo wants to avoid ''any'' possible ambiguity about what Gus has been up to. Revealing the existence of the lab just proves that ''someone'' built the lab, not that the someone who built it was necessarily Gus. Anonymous tips and Gus just suddenly disappearing off the face of the planet or winding up dead lead to the possibility that he was somehow set up, which is not impossible considering that there is obvious bad blood between Gus and the Salamancas. It could be possible for someone who wanted to to argue that it was actually the ''Salamancas'' who have been planning to start up their own production, and that they murdered Gus and tried to set him up when he found out. Lalo wants there to be no doubt whatsoever about what Gus has been up to when he explains himself to the cartel, and ultimately the only way for him to get that is to get footage of Gus actually standing in the lab outright admitting that yep, I did all this, and I'd do it all again, and I hate all of you, and I'm eagerly looking forward to the day when you all die horribly. It's a gamble Lalo has to take, and unfortunately it backfires on him.