*Spoilers ahead*
It’s no surprise to anyone watching Better Call Saul when I say that the primary story is the transformation of small-time lawyer, Jimmy McGill, into big-time scumbag defender, Saul Goodman. What the show has hinted at in the past few episodes and brings up prominently tonight is that there’s much more of Saul in Jimmy than we are initially led to believe.
This week’s episode opens up with another flashback, this time to Slippin’ Jimmy exiting a bar with a guy he met there. They head into an alley and find a barely conscious guy lying next to a dumpster, having dropped his wallet. They find a nice looking watch on him and the man gives Jimmy the wallet and all of his money for what appears to be an expensive watch. Naturally, it’s a scam and Jimmy and the barely conscious man were working together.
Cut back to the present and Jimmy has just discovered the Kettlemans in the woods, along with their stolen money. The family tries to bribe him but Jimmy wants to offer his services as a lawyer first. Mrs. Kettleman offers back a wounding denial saying that he’s, “the type of lawyer guilty people hire.” So, Jimmy reluctantly accepts the bribe and takes those words to heart, laying the groundwork for his latest scam.
Jimmy decides to make himself into the spitting image of Howard Hamlin, even going so far as to put up a billboard where he has the same hairstyle and uses the same font of the Hamlin Hamlin & McGill logo. When Kim confronts him and delivers a cease and desist Jimmy could care less, this all plays into his plan, even if we’re not aware of it at the time.
What seems like a petty attack turns out to be a clever way for Jimmy to get what he really wants. The lawyer who sees both McGill and Hamlin, hilariously dressed exactly the same, orders the billboard to be taken down but grants Jimmy the right to use his own name. He isn’t done there though, there’s one last part to play, and while Jimmy tries, in vain, to get a news outlet to take his story he decides to construct a video plea.
The video is staged to be filmed right below his billboard as it is being taken down. Jimmy gives his best attempt at a sob story but the real action starts when the worker taking down the billboard falls off and hangs on by his harness. The scene feels authentic, at first, as Jimmy is genuinely afraid of having to climb all the way up to the billboard and save this man. Naturally, he and the guy are working together and the media is quick to spin the story as Jimmy being a good Samaritan and a local hero.
The greatness of this scheme and this episode is that it lets you get taken in just like the news outlets that report Jimmy’s story. It’s hard to piece together where this is all going right until that guy falls off the billboard. In that moment, Jimmy finally sets himself on the path to becoming Saul Goodman.
The episode concludes with Jimmy visiting his brother, business is booming for him since the billboard incident but he’s reluctant to tell him the truth. After all, Chuck is fully aware of his past and this has Slippin’ Jimmy written all over it. Jimmy hides his Albuquerque Journal and gives a lame excuse for where it is, Chuck isn’t fooled. This leads to another great sequence as we see Chuck forced to go outside and retrieve a neighbor’s copy, his clear pain and anguish during this scene is downright heart-breaking, even if it’s clear that this is almost definitely a psychological issue. It doesn’t take long for him to learn the truth as Jimmy’s face is slapped right on the front page.
I’ve been wondering when the show was going to give us a tight knit episode like this and, thankfully, we didn’t have to wait long. Everything is shaping up beautifully and I’m eager to see what Vince Gilligan and company have in store for us now.
Bits ‘n Pieces
- That “‘S all good, man” line was a little on the nose
- Glad to see Marshall from Alias as the guy who gets conned in the opening this week. Weird to see him with a beard.
- Hamlin has even trademarked the color used in the Hamlin Hamlin & McGill logo. “Hamlindigo Blue,” yeah, this guy is kind of an ass.
- “It’s a given you don’t do it in her ear.”
- “Slavery, that used to be legal.” Betsy Kettleman, making a great argument.
If you’d like to give me feedback or just chat about Better Call Saul you can email me at theSuperAlbino@gmail.com or hit me up on Twitter @JesseSwanson