I agree that patriotism for her homeland is part of her motivation, but she's also very much on board with the Marxist-Leninist, anti-capitalist international revolution of the proletariat idea. See her conversation in Paige's room this episode as just the latest example.

A parting gift that Gabriel's also inclined to give because he feels guilty over his role in the Mischa situation.

Well, I think in Philip's mind he can get to "why the hell am I doing all of this?" without going fully to "I think that we might be the bad guys."

Something like that wouldn't shock me, nor would a flash-forward where we see that Henry is a highly successful late '90's dot-com entrepreneur.

So Stan has to eventually face some sort of repercussions for his threat over Vlad's death, right? I can't imagine that the Deputy AG is going to let that pass without doing something.

Yes, my impression is that Stan's threat worked in getting the Deputy AG to somehow force the CIA to stop the operation.

Very good catch on that last point.

Thanks for stating so clearly where you're coming from, so that I can dismiss your viewpoint as illogical nonsense.

The differences between the quality of fake documentation needed to be Gene in Omaha and Cinnabon and needed for Jimmy/Saul to remain a practicing attorney in Albuquerque are one to two orders of magnitude.

Completely irrelevant. I guess by your standard Madoff wasn't so bad because his massive and long-running fraud targeted mainly wealthy people? Your standard neither makes sense nor absolves Jimmy of blame.

"Swindle" is an awfully strong term for what a lot of the conned people were trying to do in dealing with Jimmy. And the whole "Slipping Jimmy" history brings up cons where he didn't do anything except prey on people because he could.

I'd be very disappointed if the show goes there, because that's a wildly implausible and unrealistic way to get around disbarment. The legal procedures for changing a name are designed to prevent exactly that sort of deception.

"Nobody is harmed by jimmy doing his thing."

Several years ago, Jonathan Banks very strongly implied that he agrees with you that Walt shouldn't have bested Mike so easily - http://www.rollingstone.com…

I largely agree with you. Regarding the last point, I don't much like Chuck, but I think that we can also say that, without Chuck, Jimmy would have been in jail at least once and probably a few other times. My inference was that the flashback scene that we saw wasn't the only time that Chuck had helped Jimmy get out…

I think that's fairly common in the last 15-20 years' trend of morally compromised TV protagonists. They're likable on screen until really thinking, would I ever want to have to deal with this person in real-life?

I like that take, but the show also seems to require that Chuck's plan somehow doesn't quite work.

I could see that happening via what Jimmy sees as a clever loophole. Chuck gets Jimmy to agree that "James McGill will no longer practice law". The Saul Goodman name is Jimmy's loophole to honor the letter of his deal. Chuck goes along with it both because he's a stickler for formality and because it resolves for him…

"and points out that Tom Cruise was equally fake and 'look what Top Gun did for you.'"

"Chuck’s overconfidence, after getting Jimmy on tape admitting to altering the Mesa Verde documents, leads him to put that tape in Ernesto’s hands and then flip out when he hears a bit of it."
and
"Oh God, Chuck trying to cover for his panic over Ernesto hearing the tape."