Talk:Five-O (Better Call Saul)

Philly sub-plot

   IMO, the summary is grossly inadequate for failing (AFAI so far have found) to describe a crucial plot point: Mike has finessed the door locks on the dirty cops' patrol car before going into the bar. We don't see what his purpose was. But when the blow-off comes, it should be clear to each viewer that what he did in the car was to hide an (untraceable, loaded) handgun between the rear-seat cushions. The two think they've disarmed him (whether they pat him down or not -- do they?), but he's successfully anticipated the essentials of their response to his effectively announcing that he's a danger to them: they think he's as helplessly drunk as he's pretending, and unarmed, so in fact it is he who has ambused them. And perhaps he chose some of the details not just to save himself and/or get even over his son-in-law(?) (Mattie?), but also to be sure about their having done the murder and/or that they were corrupt enuf to kill not just a relatively green outsider, but also Mike, who has probably been on the force longer than they have. I.e., Mike is not just a rogue cop like them, but one who, in cleaning out some (corrupt) cops (1) bcz they've done acts forbidden to even secretly corrupt cops (not clear whether Mike was rogue, or corrupt, before the kid was killed) and/or (2) bcz they've given him cause for personal revenge on behalf of his biological family and/or (3) bcz they deserve it for their tradecraft skills being too weak to be worthy of the uniform.
   (I'm abt to take a shot at answering some of my questions above.)
--Jerzy•t 03:53, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

He avenged Mattie's death, and he was dirty. Any other theories are nothing but fan speculation. EauZenCashHaveIt (I'm All Ears) 08:32, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

   Well, that's plain nonsense. The action and dialogue presented are matters of fact that we describe. And while any work could warp reality (think The Matrix, i suppose), unless a work of fiction goes out of its way to establish an unreliable narrator, or fails to provide "reference points" that tie scenes together, things like Mike breaking into a patrol car and later finding a gun in the back of a patrol car are not matters of speculation, but obvious narrative devices that require us to provide the facts of what was presented that any fool will draw conclusions from as long as attention is drawn to them. I'm not arguing for us to read Mikes's mind as to his motivations, but we are obligated to present facts of what the work presents that put our readers in a position to do their own speculating about subjective issues like emotional motivations.
   There's a world of difference between the events a work presents and the theories the audience will concoct from the events, but we are obligated to pay attention to the plausible theories the events might be hinting at, and be sure we cover the events that our readers will find relevant to their construction of plausible theories. So far, the accompanying article has failed to do that, and we need editors more alert to such relevancy issues to bring our coverage from haphazard to useful.
--Jerzy•t 11:13, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Real-(viewer's-)time timeline

   This helps my research, and perhaps that of colleagues. The timings, in whole minutes, reflect my cable provider's version shown on AMC.
   23 The coffee spill
   24 Mike and "Sol" discuss the spill and depart
   25 Mike reviews notebook & calls dau-in-law about their needing to talk
   26 They meet face to face
   27 ..., Mike terminates discussion w/ dau-in-law, and walks out angry, by night,
   28 from her suburban house to his car. Fade to city street by night. Mike looks thru front window of bar, turns to his left twd probably alley, and right, to walk into it
   29 walks toward two cars, one a police cruiser, parked side by side in apparent dead end of alley, takes several feet of sturdy looking string out of his pocket, ties some kind of famcy knot, gets part of the string hooked in the gap between the upper-rear corner of cruiser's passenger-side door and the junction of its roof and the door-post, and starts manipulating one end of the hooked portion with each hand, getting more of its length inside that gap, and his hands further apart, one further forward by the top-of-door gap and one further down by the back-of-door gap. Point of view changes, with camera now facing him from inside car. He's outside, but some kind of loop-and-knot combination is close to lassoing the mushroom-shaped head of the door's lock actuator. (Hey, they stopped putting that bulb at the top, didn't they!) He gets loop around it, pulls left hand end down the back edge of the door, right end diagonally down the front edge, and then uses both hands to pull the slip knot tight around the actuator. Then both ends are together so he can pull straight up; actuator rises, he opens the car door, puts the string in his pocket, looks as if to see if anyone else is in the alley, and leans his upper body into the interior. Cut to him sitting at a bar, drinking from a smallish glass as if it were bitter medicine.
   30 Looks up and down the bar, spots a pair of uniforms at a table, who raise their beer bottles as if toasting him. He takes a last pull from his glass and walks back to their table; they notice him on the move, and acknowledge his approach.
   31 He wraps one arm around each of their heads, bends down between them in sort of a unilateral 3-way hug, and says "Brothers!", grinning at them both. He says "I knew it was you", still grinning, and their faces turn to shocked, worried expressions. He lets go of them and walks back to the bar as they watch him. Fade to black. Fade back to Mike and the bartender in the empty bar. "Closing time, Mikey." "Yeah." Bartender offers him a lift, Mike refuses, bartender doesn't want him driving, but he clarifies that he sold his car and is walking. Standing up, he worries his jacket on and says "Albuquerque, New Mexico...."
   32 "... You ever been?" etc. He goes past where the uniforms were and out what is probably the back entrance by the alley, walking unsteadily. He doesn't get far before being hailed, "Hey, Mike;..."
   33 "... Mikey." Ride offered, turned down, the two uniforms look at each other, and one says "Pull over here." Mike gestures them away, and weakly pushes one away; they seat him in the back seat, and one pats him down for his handgun and pockets it. "That's mine." "We know. We don't want you to shoot your foot off, do we."
   34 They drive off; small talk about drinking. "Back there, you were talking out your ass. 'I know it was you.' What's that mean? You think you know something? Is there something you wanna say to us?" "You killed him. You killed Matty. You killed him for nothin'."
   35 "You killed him becuz you were scared. Of what you thot he might do." (Details about the circumstances of his death.) "But it was you. I know it was you. And I'm gonna prove it." Uniforms look grimly at each other.
   36 They pull to a stop flanked by chain-link fences, where blacktop pavement and tie-less railroad tracks define the same lanes. "Help me get him outa the car." They get out both sides of the car, and turn toward the back-seat doors. Mike makes his first well-coordinated motion since he was sitting at the bar, and takes a handgun out from between the back-seat cushions, quickly putting it in his right coat pocket. "What?" "Here you go, watch your head. Come on, Mikey, one two, one two." "There, you just stand there. We're gonna work this whole thing out, Mikey, OK?" The uniforms go off to one side: Short cop: "What are we gonna do?" Tall, beefier one: "Grief, it's a bitch. [He takes out a handgun] He couldn't live with it, not dyin' the way he did, so Mikey, he decided to eat his gun...."
   37 "... We're doin' him a favor." Camera cuts away, to Mike, standing, gun in hand, aimed right where they're standing. "Smart. That's what I'd have done, if I were you." Reaction shots. Tall cop takes aim on Mike, pulls trigger, click, he looks, shocked, at the weapon. Mike fires three rounds at him and he goes down. Pause. Mike shifts aim to the short cop, they fire at each other nearly simultaneously, and the short cop goes down. The tall cop is dragging his legs but trying to use his arms to crawl away. Mike walks toward him, stops his motion by stepping on one of his feet, and he rolls onto his back, reaching out as if to plead for his life.
   38 Mike finishes him off with a head or upper body shot. By now he seems to have the left-shoulder wound. [I'm not sure it's unclear whose shot winged him, but i didn't catch it.] He pockets his gun, and picks up another gun lying near the tall cop's right hand, pockets it, and walks away from the scene, headed toward the direction they had arrived from. Cut to Mike at the wheel of a car; he's not speaking but there's voice-over, ...
   39-44 ... of him talking about police corruption. The image cuts away while his speech continues unbroken; now we see that it is again Matty's widow he was talking to (and continues to) about the corruption, universal in that precinct except for Matty; they shift into dialog.
   45 That speech continues, with her asking some questions, including asking if he killed them, to which he answers that she knows the answer.
   46 The titles roll.
--Jerzy•t 10:29, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

   I'm pretty sure i saw an actual shot gotten off by the tall cop (i think between Mike shooting the short one and the tall one starting to crawl away), but failed to get it into the list above ... perhaps partly bcz i was vague abt whether he got his service weapon out, after trying to shoot Mike with the weapon Mike had slyly left empty, or with the chamber following the empty first active chamber, Mike having for some reason not emptied all the chambers. (How much lighter is a completely unloaded handgun? And is it practical to load it with powderless rounds, that would avoid being light enuf to betray its dud status?) I would expect Mike to have shot them with an untraceable weapon that he'd leave behind, and to take his service weapon back since it could be traced to him. Maybe more careful examination will support that, or a continuity error, but it's also possible that they relied on ambiguity of the visual evidence to substitute for perfect continuity. Oh, or perhaps Mike went to the bar with two throwaways (and no service weapon), and what we saw him retrieve was an incompletely loaded throwaway that had injured only him).
--Jerzy•t 11:46 & 12:18, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

"Matty's partners [sic], Hoffman and Fenske"

    I don't recall where it came in the episode, and even if i'm right i'd probably go off the rails if i watched it again any time soon. I'm pretty confident i heard it said (perhaps by one of the detectives who questioned Mike), but someone should guard against my just inferring it from my experience with cop shows and the behavior of these cop characters among themselves. (More on this at end.)
   IMO at least, the two cops Mike killed are Matty's partner and their common superior. The short cop defers in all ways to the tall one, and doesn't get a shot off even tho Mike at first focuses his attention and fire on the tall cop alone.
   And in my viewing experience, cops generally work in pairs ("This is my partner, Mike Michaels") not only bcz "two heads [and a 2nd shooter] are better than one" but also bcz the back seat is by default reserved for a perp. Perhaps the tall cop (the sergeant or lieutenant?) is temporarily paired with the short one now that Matty's dead, but they're surely off duty, and may be together at that bar only bcz it's Mike's favorite, and he's already given hints in an effort force their hand: I think he may be at least hesitant to kill them without being sure they're corrupt enuf to kill him rather than, say, make him an offer (that they think) he can't refuse, in which he'd leave town & let them carry on business as usual: yes, he's sharp enuf to take them down in any number of ways, but he may feel the need to rule out their being prepared for killing only rookie trash. (Oh, and it may be that Mike wouldha' let the short cop live, if he hadn't tried to draw on Mike.)
--Jerzy•t 00:51, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

   The same apparent "partners" error appears in the episode's coverage in the series' "Episodes" section.
--Jerzy•t 02:32, 7 April 2015 (UTC)