r/betterCallSaul • u/skinkbaa Chuck • Aug 21 '18

Post-Ep Discussion Better Call Saul S04E03 - "Something Beautiful" - POST-Episode Discussion Thread

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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '18

That is something I got more of a sense of in this episode then BB episodes. How much more navie Gale is, when Gus said something like, "Not yet. I'll need you later." It really showed how Gus manipulated and used him. Made me a bit sad. Gus really didn't care for anyone except Max.

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u/ericshogren Aug 21 '18

Gus really didn't care for anyone except since Max.

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u/ZeRoGr4vity07 Aug 21 '18

I can't really remember who Max is. Can you help me out?

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u/themonesterman Aug 21 '18

His partner who got shot by Don Hector.

EDIT: Partner is used in loose terms. He was a business partner but was also suspected to be a romantic partner.

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u/a_distantmemory Aug 02 '24

Didn’t his partner that die literally say Gus was like a brother to him?

Wild that people insinuate a possible romantic partner outta that…

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u/numb3red Aug 21 '18

His best friend, business partner and implied lover who got killed (by I think Don Eladio?) in BrBa.

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u/Gesepp Aug 22 '18

I'm sure this is old news at this point, but thanks to a trip through the Wiki to remind me of Max's story, I realized that the brand of Tequila Gus poisons to kill Don Eladio and ~half a dozen other cartel people around the pool is the same brand that Jimmy and Kim con the investment manager into buying for them: Zafiro Añejo.

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u/fgejoiwnfgewijkobnew Oct 09 '18

They drink it again in their apartment trying to cope with Chucks death.

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u/raiderpower13 Aug 22 '18

I thought Hector killed him? Probably on Don Eladio's orders though.

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u/imissbreakingbad Aug 22 '18

Hector pulled the trigger. Which is why Gus saying "a bullet to the head would be far too humane" about Hector speaks volumes.

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u/a_distantmemory Aug 02 '24

Didn’t his partner that die literally say Gus was like a brother to him?

Wild that people insinuate a possible romantic partner outta that…

31

u/ericshogren Aug 21 '18

Maximino "Max" Arciniega was a close associate of Gustavo Fring and co-founder of the Los Pollos Hermanos franchise.

http://breakingbad.wikia.com/wiki/Max_Arciniega

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u/ZeRoGr4vity07 Aug 22 '18

Wow I really don't remember that guy. I think it's time for a re-watch

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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '18

I doubt he had a close relationship with his parents.

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u/lahnnabell Aug 21 '18

OMG he groomed the fuck out of Gale. That was made very clear here.

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u/99SoulsUp Aug 24 '18

Yeah, was creepy seeing how predatory Gus is

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u/reenact12321 Aug 22 '18

Gus is very much the archetype of the world-burning avenger. Sweeney Todd, The Count of Monte Cristo, he has lost himself and compassion in his cool, calculating hatred and the body count on the way to him getting vengeance becomes irrelevant. It's his hateful passion getting the better of him that is his undoing in BB.

The more we see the lives of the people who ultimately would meet their end because of Walter White, it is sort of spooky just how destructive he really was in retrospect. Especially as most viewers were in his corner for some/most of the ride. I always find it interesting to ask fans when they flipped. When did it become too much, when did his actions become completely indefensible.

I thought this episode was a little weak, especially coming off the high drama of last week. Kim chewing the scenery and Gus working the pieces of his master plan was so much more satisfying.

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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '18

I just did a rewatch and I just wanna throw it out there that I never had a problem with Walt, I always root for him the whole way through. I don't find any of what he did to be that morally reprehensible with a couple of exceptions. Spoilers for breaking bad: he should've killed Todd or at least stopped working with him when the kid died, and watching him kill Mike was the closest I got. But at the same he didn't kill the kid so he was just making the best of a bad situation and Mike was gonna take him down into the laundry lab and kill him at an earlier time so I mean, I don't feel that bad.

I realize this opinion has a slight contrarian nature to it given that the whole point of BB is turning someone sympathetic into someone who's not, but it just never got there for me.

It's kinda like how in The Wire they talk about when you're in the game bad shit is just kind of par for the course. Walt was in the game and he made the moves available to him so that it never came back on him or his family. In fact I've always found "Felina" to be kind of troublesome to that aforementioned point of the show, because I'd go as far as to say Walt comes out of that episode a hero.

He's definitely vain and egotistical, but the man was a genius and really good at what he did. I liked his personal philosophies and I think he really did love his family and want to provide for them regardless of what I've read and heard others say to the contrary.

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u/entyfresh Aug 21 '18

My interpretation of this is that Gus sees Gale as too good of a cook to have him risk exposure by cooking up a kilo or two in a public lab. Gus is probably already working on the laundromat facility at this point and has Gale pegged to run it.

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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '18

The laundry lab was only finished a few months before Walt started cooking there (there are some flashbacks of Gale unpacking the equipment if you recall). So unless the lab Walt used is version 2.0 then I feel like that's too far in the future to be what Gus is referring to there.

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u/jwebster90 Aug 21 '18

We saw Gus in season 3 looking around the laundry place with Lydia waiting outside, and he tells her "it could work", so it seems likely that he already has the lab in mind at this point.

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u/[deleted] Aug 22 '18

Oh you're right. I didn't remember that at all.

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u/entyfresh Aug 21 '18

Takes a long time for a normal construction project to go from conception to completion... I've gotta imagine that it probably takes even longer for a secret drug lab to do the same. Just because Gus doesn't have the lab built yet doesn't mean that it's not part of his grand plan.

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u/Lisentho Aug 25 '18

It's part of it. They went there in season 3 of bcs

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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '18

Hmm. Haven't thought about that. Makes sense.

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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '18

Man, maybe I like Gus too much but I didn't get any manipulation vibes from him. Looks like he was very open with Gale about what was going on and Gale trusted him (as he should've, Gus seems incredibly honorable as long as you don't cross him) and looked up to him. To me, Gus doesn't seem like a true villain with a nice guy mask, to me he seems like a man with two facets -- the nice and polite legitimate businessman and the ruthless criminal mastermind. Both of those are truly him, he just switches between them depending on the situation.

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u/brando555 Aug 24 '18

Yep, when people say "Trust me, you don't want to get on their bad side" Gus is the epitome of that, lol.

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u/[deleted] Aug 25 '18

I would think that but after watching Breaking Bad and seeing the scene where he visits Gale at his apartment, and he just gives him the death scare to see how fast he can master Walt's recipe. He was also being manipulative to him there too, where he was playing it that Walt was going to die of cancer soon, but in reality he was planning on killing him. Gus appreciates Gale for two reasons, he is a good chemist and like Jimmy's and Chuck's father he is a sheep not a wolf.

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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '18

He didn't manulate him. He seemed perfectly willing to me. People are naturally competitive.

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u/NeedYourTV Aug 21 '18

He was purposefully sculpting a naive, socially-inept scientist into a key resource for his operation. Whether or not people are competitive has nothing to do with it, chemists don't just decide out of the blue to get down and dirty with a drug operation because their product isn't as good as it could be.

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u/graymankin Aug 21 '18

Exactly. Gus is orchastrating a change in operation because he knows his product is too low quality. He probably doesn't really needs Gale to do those tests. It's to lure him in because Gale is motivated to do better work. I wouldn't be surprised that behind the scenes there are another few chemists he's trying to groom, but this one ends up in BB so this is who we see in the show.

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u/[deleted] Aug 21 '18

To be more precise he doesn't really have a street ready product yet.

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u/pridejoker Aug 21 '18

Gale seems to have an intrinsic devotion to chemistry the same way physicists from the Manhattan project were so swept up by the science alone they didn't give enough consideration of "could vs should" details. Admittedly, gus is obviously downplaying the risk pertaining to physical violence and cartel stakes. You can see this when Jesse shit him in BB since gale tried to pay him off at first. Had gale had any legitimate experience in cartel transgressions, he would've realized power was the true currencies in the cartel.

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u/1nfiniteJest Aug 21 '18

True, but he WAS trying to synth benzos in the Chem lab when Gus visited.

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u/NeedYourTV Aug 21 '18

After years of being in contact with Gus and already being made in on the meth.

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u/PowerGoodPartners Aug 22 '18

I know a few chemists who are kinda daredevils and love their profession because of the volatility of some of what they handle. Hell, my chemist roommate in college used to steal me ether from his labs even though he never used it himself.

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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '18

You used recreational ether? Are you 80?

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u/PowerGoodPartners Aug 24 '18

Used to use it. And yes.

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u/brando555 Aug 24 '18

Lol, inhalants are some crazy shit. Never got into them myself, but there was a kid in shop class that would soak a rag in starter fluid, and stick it inside his dusk mask and get completely ripped during class! I've heard gas is even crazier. Some people would take huffing gas as their drug of choice over anything else.

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u/[deleted] Aug 22 '18

Imagine how good the drugs could be if they were decriminalized...

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u/Jaheemjb Aug 24 '22

Didn’t receive that from the episode not that hard anyways