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canyonwalkerWow, it's been two weeks since I've written about Better Call Saul. Well, I haven't watched it in at least that long, but I'd like to resume soon with season 4— so I'd better get caught on blogging about Season 3.
I've remarked many times that BCS is as much about its supporting characters as it is about Jimmy. I've already written about Jimmy's arc in season 3. Among other things, we see his first use of alter ego Saul Goodman, in ep. 3.06, though he hasn't yet connected it to shady lawyering. (In fact he creates "Saul" as a gimmick to separate a short-lived side gig from his lawyering.) So now I'd like to catch up on what happens with the main supporting characters. There are a lot of them, though, so I'll cover a few of them here and the rest in another blog.
Mike kind of fades into the background across the last several episodes of Season 3. That's kind of unfortunate as Mike is a really intriguing supporting character. The episodes where the writers have given basically an entire episode over to him have been among the show's best so far. But it's also a good thing because taking Mike out of the spotlight allows other storylines to move to the fore.
Mike's story has long been tied in with drug gang members Hector Salamanca and Nacho Vargas. Nacho's been working to take over the gang by pushing out the bosses. In season 2 he landed his boss, Tuco, in jail for several years. Now he's gunning for gang leader Hector.
Nacho plots to replace Hector's heart medication with a painkiller placebo. Hector pops these pills in emergencies when he feels heart palpitations. Sure enough, he has palpitations during a tense standoff with rival drug gang leader Gus Fring, and collapses when the fake pills don't help.
Seeing this backstory on Hector and Nacho is interesting because they're both characters in Breaking Bad— which, though it aired earlier, portrays events that happened a few years later. In BB Nacho is still not the gang leader. Tuco is out of jail. And Hector is still around— though he's incapacitated due to a stroke. The stroke Hector suffers in ep. 3.10 of BCS could be what leaves him confined to a wheelchair and unable to talk. There are still 3 more seasons of BCS, though, so it'll be interesting to see how the Hector/Tuco/Nacho story develops from here.
I've remarked many times that BCS is as much about its supporting characters as it is about Jimmy. I've already written about Jimmy's arc in season 3. Among other things, we see his first use of alter ego Saul Goodman, in ep. 3.06, though he hasn't yet connected it to shady lawyering. (In fact he creates "Saul" as a gimmick to separate a short-lived side gig from his lawyering.) So now I'd like to catch up on what happens with the main supporting characters. There are a lot of them, though, so I'll cover a few of them here and the rest in another blog.
Mike kind of fades into the background across the last several episodes of Season 3. That's kind of unfortunate as Mike is a really intriguing supporting character. The episodes where the writers have given basically an entire episode over to him have been among the show's best so far. But it's also a good thing because taking Mike out of the spotlight allows other storylines to move to the fore.
Mike's story has long been tied in with drug gang members Hector Salamanca and Nacho Vargas. Nacho's been working to take over the gang by pushing out the bosses. In season 2 he landed his boss, Tuco, in jail for several years. Now he's gunning for gang leader Hector.
Nacho plots to replace Hector's heart medication with a painkiller placebo. Hector pops these pills in emergencies when he feels heart palpitations. Sure enough, he has palpitations during a tense standoff with rival drug gang leader Gus Fring, and collapses when the fake pills don't help.
Seeing this backstory on Hector and Nacho is interesting because they're both characters in Breaking Bad— which, though it aired earlier, portrays events that happened a few years later. In BB Nacho is still not the gang leader. Tuco is out of jail. And Hector is still around— though he's incapacitated due to a stroke. The stroke Hector suffers in ep. 3.10 of BCS could be what leaves him confined to a wheelchair and unable to talk. There are still 3 more seasons of BCS, though, so it'll be interesting to see how the Hector/Tuco/Nacho story develops from here.
