Speaking of everything being explicitly or not explicitly written on the page, tell me about the writers room process of constructing Mike's elaborate Rube Goldbergian plan with the shoes and the truck and what the conversations are regarding "too complicated" and "just complicated enough."
With Mike's schemes like these, and he does these a lot, our usual rule-of-thumb is to try to go with the most low-tech version possible that still makes sense and doesn't feel silly, basically. Mike is someone who will use technology when he needs to, but if he doesn't have to go super high-tech, he's not going to. So that is where we start every one of those conversations like, "What's the most basic version of this?"
So we just liked the idea of, "He sprinkles some meth on the truck and gets them busted at the border," but then it was really about, "Well, how do you sprinkle meth on a truck without getting caught?" He didn't want it known that the truck had been interfered with in any way. He wanted it to seem like a normal accident. We had all of these elaborate, silly ideas about paintball pellets filled with meth being shot at the truck. But someone would hear that! Or having somebody else in the lineup walk by the truck. But that would mean bringing someone else in! Then the idea of having something dangling above the truck started to come up in conversation and I think it might have been Vince who brought up shoes and how they're so ubiquitous and everybody knows them and they're not inherently suspicious because everybody's really used to seeing shoes dangling from power lines. So what would be the best way to make that work using all of Mike's skills, including his sniper skills which we're already familiar with.
And nobody ever stops and says, "This is a really hard way to do what he's doing"?
It is. It is! But for Mike, it kind of makes sense. It's the most distant possible way that he could do it.
The pacing and build-up to that is so counter-intuitive to the pacing of television in general, where everything is, "We're going to explain as we go along. We're gonna hold your hand. It's gonna be easy." You guys don't do that at all. Do you actively talk yourselves away from explanations while things are in process? Or is it instinctive at this point?
We still talk about how much to explain. We want stuff to be mysterious, but we don't want it to be confusing. We're never trying to intentionally confuse the audience to the extent where they have no idea of what's happening or how something was done. We're always talking about, "What's the perfect amount of information where it doesn't feel like spoon-feeding, but it also makes sense in hindsight when you go back through the episode?"
Mike tossing the shoes onto the wire ended up being either intentionally or unintentionally an homage to Walter throwing the pizza onto the roof. Do you talk about those linkages in the writing process? Is it a directing decision?
We always knew he was gonna toss those shoes. I don't know if we ever actually brought up the pizza tossing. Some of that stuff really comes to us in hindsight. It's not necessarily there intentionally when we're doing it. John Shiban, who directed the episode, had a really specific idea of how to sell that, because those wires are exceptionally high, much higher than a roof. It's difficult for anyone to land those shoes over the wire, so it was definitely heavily technical in the conversation, making sure it was effective, but also something that could be pulled off at the same time without having to do too much trickery.
What trickery had to be done finally?
There's stunt work, there's Jonathan tossing, there's his stunt double tossing and there's a little CG marrying of shots in there.
