Troubles with 2D character anims with multiple states

Hello, very new to Unity: 2nd day in. As practise I am trying to recreate Samus (Metroid) movements from the SNES sprite-sheets within Unity.

My problem currently lies with falling and jumping. It's difficult to explain everything without posting a screenshot of my Animator state machine as there are lots of animations depending on where the player is facing.

My questions are

1) How do you determine when a 2D character "jump" animation should stop, before a "fall" animation begins? Currently I am measuring rigidbody2D.velocity.y; with some bools on the animator to differentiate the direction of the player:

     float vSpeed = rigidbody2D.velocity.y;

     if (!falling) {
         // Check if we're in the air.
         if (!grounded && vSpeed > 0.2) {
             // Set the jump animation.
             if(facingRight) {
                 animator.SetBool("JumpLeft", false);
                 animator.SetBool("JumpRight", true);
             }
             else {
                 animator.SetBool("JumpLeft", true);
                 animator.SetBool("JumpRight", false);
             }
         }
     }

     // Check if we're falling.
     if (!grounded && vSpeed < 0) {
         // Set the fall animation.
         if(facingRight) {
             animator.SetBool("FallLeft", false);
             animator.SetBool("FallRight", true);
         }
         else {
             animator.SetBool("FallLeft", true);
             animator.SetBool("FallRight", false);
         }
     }

This may be a schoolboy error but my "fall" code doesn't seem to run when a jump animation has finished.

2) My code is already becoming cluttered with "SetBool" calls to the Animator to trigger the various states. Is this normal for complex 2D character animations? I would like to tidy things up a bit.

3) Is there a better way of handling multiple states for 2D characters? Think: look left, gun triggered left, gun triggered up, gun triggered diagonally down, gun triggered down, falling gun triggered down, etc. etc. I would potentially have to handle quite a few states; is there a way to compartmentalise those, yet have them remain in the same... thing? :)

Thank you!