Hey, everybody! It's time for part two of our breakdown of the season five
premiere of Better Call Saul. We are calling it Lalo-palooza! Join me as I
have a bonus Basement Breakdown!
Do we love Lalo? I love Lalo. I think that Lalo is the perfect foil for Gus Fring
here in season five. You know, one sort of storytelling problem with the Gus Fring
character in Better Call Saul is that we know that Gus outclasses his rivals. We
know that Gus has a grander vision, that he's more patient. He's less emotional
than the Salamanca rivals we've seen so far—in particular, Hector's who I'm
talking about, but Lalo is clearly here to give Fring a
run for his money, and this episode sets him up as a really formidable foil,
mainly by showing us that Lalo can see so deeply into the world around him. And
that's what makes him an even match for Fring. So let's go to this scene at the
meth house. This scene comes about when Lalo detects that there's something
wrong. There's some disturbance in the force of the Salamanca meth empire, right?
He hears that there's some trouble with the supply, and he says,
(LALO) Show me!
He wants to see it with his own eyes. And we see why pretty quickly. When this scene
starts out, watch how all the shots are obstructed. We see things through a car
window. Through a barely open window in the house. There's this great shot of the
meth baggies sort of making their way down a pipe to the eager customer. This
is a shot that doesn't make a whole lot of physical sense—we can see there's
a bend at the end of the pipe, so there isn't really this long line of sight—but
who cares. It's such a fun shot, and it works from a storytelling point of view
because it's showing us how everybody on the street is really viewing this
operation through a very narrow lens. They only see what pertains to their
part of the process. Then Lalo arrives, and we get our first unobstructed wide
shot of the scene. And it's a really wide shot. We're taking in the whole of this
meth house because that's what Lalo is going to do. He's going to see the whole
picture, right? But—this is crucial—Lalo can
see the tiny details, too. Because when he gets inside the house, the focal
point is these tiny little baggies of meth, right? And two things happen while
he's looking at the meth. One, the kid from
downstairs is up there sort of looking over Lalo's shoulder, wondering what's
going on. He's in a panic. Calm Lalo, without even turning around, says,
(LALO) If you're holding my cash…
what are you doing up here with my stuff?
"Hey, if you've got my money, you shouldn't be up here with the drugs," basically,
right? It's giving us, the audience, a picture of how Lalo maintains this
mental image of the whole operation even when he's fixated on this tiny baggie.
It's like he has eyes in the back of his head, right? And then we get the payoff of
this inspection, with him looking so close and flicking the baggies. He ends
up with two piles. One that he says are legitimate, from their supply. And then he says,
(LALO) This shit's not ours, man.
Well, the baggies look exactly the same
to us, right? And Nacho seems pretty struck by this feat, too. The title of this
episode is "Magic Man," and that's a title that applies most directly to Saul
Goodman, right? As we talked about in the last breakdown, and as Saul says himself
in this episode. But I think "Magic Man" also applies to Lalo, an his magic is
that he can see details that other people don't see. Okay? So, we've
established Lalo as someone who can see really deeply into the world around him
and then it's time for him to go to the Los Pollos Hermanos facility and face
off face-to-face against Gus. I love this opening shot of the scene where, again, we
have Lalo just looking. Taking in the whole of the operation. And we know by
now how much power there is behind that gaze. This is a really striking shot, and
you can see Lalo's wheels turning. More on that in a second. Then we sit
down for this meeting. I love the contrast between the wardrobes here
because, look—Lalo, who can see really deeply into the world around him, is
going up against Gus, who's the master of concealing what he doesn't want people
to see, right? What a great contrast, these two guys. And the sequence here at the
chicken facility also establishes a stylistic contrast between the two men.
Gus's style is to present himself as buttoned-up, conservative,
careful. Always concealing his true criminal intentions. When Juan Bolsa
talks to Lalo after this meeting, he says to Lalo,
Juan Bolsa has bought into the story that Gus is
telling about himself. Lalo thinks that he sees more. At this meeting, because Gus
is so vulnerable, he's playing things especially close to the vest. His
wardrobe here is, like, ridiculously conservative. It couldn't be more gray.
Gray all the way through. It's an outfit that insists, "nothing to see here."
Now here's Lalo in his gold shirt, as if he's an open book on display. He has
nothing to hide from anyone. Of course he's not an open book, but this is his
style. I think of these guys as like two poker players. Gus is the guy at the
table who, he just looks down at his cards. He doesn't say much. He doesn't
react. All-business, never changes his expression, Mr. Poker Face. Lalo is the
guy who plays dumb, shoots his mouth off. He's always poking and prodding and
annoying his opponents around the table because that's what he does to try to
get information. Try to make people react and then get information from those
reactions. So these are the two forces going up against each other at this
meeting, and then Gus says, you want to know what the construction project is?
(GUS) It would be simple for me to show you
An echo of Lalo's line from earlier, when he
says, "Show me." Now Gus is saying, I'll show you. Okay? And Lalo's gonna take a
pretty close look, as he does. First off, how perfect is it that this is a chicken
cooler—that that is the lie that Gus Fring decided to tell? Because of course
it is. That's the front that Gus always presents, isn't it? Cool, calm, orderly. So
the fact that he chose a chicken cooler as his lie is a little indication to the
audience that Gus is feeling the heat, right? But more to the point I want to
call your attention to this recurring images that's in this scene and this sound of
spinning blades grinding against metal. It's the first thing we see and hear in
this scene. It's the last thing we see and hear in this scene. And the image is just
peppered throughout. This is giving us another metaphor for the Lalo and Gus
conflict because I really see Gus as the steel here. Cold, hard, unmovable. And Lalo
is the spinning blade. Loud, shooting off sparks, and grinding through the hard
facade of that steel, right? The spinning blade against the metal is such a great
image because it gives this potent physicality to the
tension between Gus and Lalo right now, and it echoes the delightful performance
that Tony Dalton is giving here as Lalo. Even when Lalo is still, there's still
this liveliness in his eyes, this animation about his being. It's like we
can see his wheels turning, right? And we have literally spinning wheels grinding
against the metal here. This is an image to keep in mind throughout the season.
I think it really evokes the dynamic between these two characters. One last
thing I want to mention as we wrap up Lalo-palooza here. The final line of this
scene. Lalo says with a little wink to Gus Fring,
(LALO) South wall is gonna look beautiful.
Lalo keeps bringing up this south wall detail. Why does it keep coming up? Why do
we hear that line so many times, in so many different versions? Well, it applies in
a literal sense, right? Lalo wants to know what's the construction project here, but
"south wall"— it speaks to Lalo's sense, his correct sense,
that Gus is building a wall to wall off his cartel partners to the south, right?
That's the real south wall that Lalo feels is being built here. He doesn't
have the evidence yet, but he can smell it, right? So that remark to Gus is his
way of indicating that maybe he knows more than he's letting on.
So Gus is left to wonder, well how much does Lalo really know? For that matter,
the viewers are left to wonder, how much does Lalo know? A question we'll continue
to ask as the season evolves. Okay, that's Lalo-palooza! Thanks so much for watching.
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