*Spoilers ahead*
After the incredible detour we took last week it’s right back into the thick of things with Jimmy McGill and his new foray into elder law. It’d be tough for any episode to try and follow what “Five-O” gave us but this episode does an admirable job.
We open up with Jimmy and Mike planning on giving the notepad they stole last week back to the police. The young officer isn’t happy and threatens Mike that they’re going to get him eventually. Despite what he says the older of the two “philly cheese steaks,” as Jimmy puts it, reassures Mike that most of the people on the force aren’t really too invested in finding out who killed Hoffman and Fenske. I’m not entirely convinced that this is the end of the story with Mike’s past but it ends up being a nice closing scene for the story if it is.
Jimmy is busy elsewhere, as well, as he shows Kim what will, hopefully, be the new offices of James M. McGill. He even offers Kim a position as his partner, which she declines. It takes Jimmy a few seconds to take the look of defeat off his face but things are going good for him. He even plans on getting an actual secretary. No longer will he have to answer the phone with a fake British accent.
Even Chuck is attempting to better himself. Jimmy pays him a visit and finds him outside attempting to tolerate the electro-magnetic fields outside more and more each day. Jimmy is thrilled, partially, I assume, because it means he won’t have to feel responsible for his brothers condition every time he visits. Jimmy has something else up his sleeve though as he leaves some case files in Chuck’s house and mistakenly refers to having to file “413s” baiting his brother into looking at the files. Jimmy might just be angling for a Brothers McGill team-up and I imagine we’ll find out exactly what he’s planning next week.
The big story this week though is the return of the Kettlemans. The would-be criminals, namely Betsy, are appalled at the idea of having to take a plea deal wherein they would return the money and Craig would face up to sixteen months in jail, as opposed to the maximum penalty of Craig going away for thirty years. They refuse to admit guilt and storm out of the offices of HHM. Kim is the one who takes the brunt of the punishment for this as her offices are moved to the east wing, or as Jimmy calls them, “the cornfields.”
With nowhere else to go the Kettlemans find their way back to Jimmy and, essentially, threaten him into taking their case. The Kettlemans money is the main reason Jimmy is hanging out at bingo halls and charming his client base. It’s also the only reason he can even think about getting that new office. He’s in quite the jam.
Cue Mike Ehrmantraut. Mike is tasked with tricking the Kettlemans into revealing where they stored their treasure trove. In a beautiful montage, we get to see the boring part of Mike’s job as he waits for hours before finally getting to make his move. It’s a great sequence and while the show’s love of montages might seem a little tedious it’s hard to argue when they’re done this well.
The money is given to Jimmy who puts in what is left of his and entrusts Mike with giving it over to the police. Mike is a little surprised, honestly Jimmy seems to be too, but he’s fine with it if it means they’re even now. Jimmy sets up a meeting with the Kettlemans and brings reality crashing down around them. In the end, they’re criminals and Jimmy insists that he can’t help them but Kim certainly can. Betsy seems determined to resist taking the plea deal but Craig finally gets a chance to get a word in over his wife and agrees to take the deal.
Jimmy does possibly his most selfless act ever, certainly the most selfless we’ve seen of him, and in the episode’s final moments he spends one last time going through what could have been his office. Kicking a door and taking out his frustrations, it’s back to business for him though, right back at the bottom.
The show seems determined to make Jimmy’s moral journey less of a straight path into depravity, as Walter White’s was, and throw in a couple bends. I’m not entirely sure how we’ll get from the Jimmy we see here to Saul Goodman and that is the thing I’ve come to love most about this show.
Bits ‘n Pieces
- Mike seems eager to wrap things up with Jimmy this week but something tells me they’ll be teaming up again very soon.
- This seems to be it for the Kettlemans and while I enjoyed their story in terms of how it related to Jimmy, the part I enjoyed the most were the constant hints that Craig really only stole the money because Betsy told him to.
- “A deal is what they got OJ.”
- “Picture The 25th Hour, starring Ned and Maude Flanders.”
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