Summary: In flashbacks, a young Kim refuses to get a ride home from her tardy, drunk mother. In the present, Jimmy works on filming various commercials but Kim comes to him, telling him she changed her mind about their plan. Jimmy is hesitant but relents in the end. However, after humiliating Howard using some hookers he represented, Jimmy decides to go through with it anyways. Kim gets Kevin and Paige to meets with Jimmy to discuss terms, but Jimmy goes against Kim's wishes and shows Kevin commercials that will tarnish the reputation of Mesa Verde and also brings up that he will set up a copyright infringement case against them. Jimmy leaves and Kim and Rich get hard to work in an attempt to fix this. Kevin leaves and meets with Jimmy, Jimmy offers Kevin terms and he accepts. Later, Kim returns home and lashes out at Jimmy for conning her like that. She is prepared to break up, but then suddenly suggests that they get married. Meanwhile, Nacho gives Gus more intel and Gus assigns Nacho to report to Mike from now on. Mike goes back to Lalo's attack at TravelWire and gets Lalo's car to be identified as a prime suspect. He arranges it so Lalo is discovered by the police and is arrested.
The Good: This episode knew how to build intrigue the way "Better Call Saul" does best. We're often treated to scenes of characters working on a project, but we're often missing a few key details to fully understand what they are doing. This episode utilizes that to its fullest effect in the Jimmy/Kim storyline. We start the episode by seeing Jimmy filming various commercials, though we don't know what he plans to do with them or what his approach is to stick it to Mesa Verde. This intrigue is immediately established early in the episode, and it's very important that it is established. Since we know that there needs to be a pay-off down the line, we know not to buy into the idea of Jimmy shutting down the operation just because Kim says so. We know that these commercials have to be shown at some point, and so we can anticipate that Jimmy isn't going to back down. But in this case, it isn't bad to know where the story is going. Knowing that Jimmy isn't going to adhere to Kim's wishes allows the episode to overflow with tension as we wait for Jimmy's game to be revealed and for the inevitable impact that it's going to have on Kim. Everything boils over at the meeting, which ended up being one of the episode's two incredible scenes. Everything is fine early on, but we are just waiting for the ball to drop. And when it does, it is awesome. The look on Kim's face when Jimmy drops the 4 million on Mesa Verde tells the whole story. Jimmy absolutely dials it up in this episode, embracing Saul Goodman to his very core. He's charismatic, unyielding and a complete asshole throughout the entire sequence. And Kim looks shellshocked when she realizes the storm that she's caught in. She tries to usher Kevin out of the room, but Saul can't be stopped and he says all of the right things to ensure Kevin stays and that he can take complete control of the meetings. Then we get the reveal of what he was working on. The slanderous commercials and Jimmy's "smoking gun" of copyright infringement are tremendous, and the episode lays on how significant this is with expert performances and even better cinematography and editing. The slow zoom on Kevin's face as he festers in his own frustration was such a powerful shot that truly captured how much chaos Saul left in his wake. Kevin's decision to just cut a deal with Saul and end it all was completely understandable, and it was the perfect end to another perfect con. But while executing a perfect con is enough for Jimmy to be happy, it's nowhere near enough for the flabbergasted Kim, who looks like she has been through a trauma by the episode's end. She returns home to Jimmy, horrified and confused by what just happened. For the second time, Jimmy played her and unlike the last time, this one was intentional. Jimmy's moral flexibility has gradually gotten worse and worse as the show has gone on and now Kim gets to see firsthand that the man she loves is never going to fix this. He has been spiraling rapidly ever since Chuck's death and now he has taken it too far. So Kim lashes out hard at the end of the episode, having had enough of Jimmy's lies and deceptions, having had enough of this relationship that has done nothing food for her. She seems like she is ready to storm away from him no matter what he says to her, the same way she refused to get into the car with her mother at the start of the episode. But there's just something about this relationship. Something that makes it so Kim just can't walk away, no matter how many reasons she has to do so. And so when she tries to put her foot down, she says something completely unexpected that causes the story to make a complete u-turn. What if she and Jimmy get married? What makes this episode's story so damn effective is how the characters don't have to spell out their motives to us. There are so many ways to interpret the scenes in this episode (especially that stunning final line) and that's shown by how many unique takes there are on this episode. It's an episode that is open for interpretation which allows it to have extra depth that other episodes of the show don't have. all of thsi combined, the unpredictability, emotion, suspense and deep character development ensure that this is one of the show's finest episodes, one that will have a profound impact on the story as a whole. And I haven't even talked about the other subplots in the episode yet. First up is Jimmy's continued sabotage of Howard. These scenes manage to be both hilarious and hard to watch. It's funny because the ideas that Jimmy cooks up to attack Howard are excellent, and sending some hookers to meet him in order to embarrass him and hurt his reputation is a hilarious idea. Even funnier is when we see him relishing what he's done to Howard. But it's still hard to watch. It's painful because this petty asshole is not who Jimmy is supposed to be. Jimmy is a con man, but this outright unnecessary sabotage is pure Saul Goodman. Howard doesn't deserve to have this happen to him, but Jimmy does it anyways. It's certainly one of the worst things he has done in the whole series, up there with the stunt he pulled with poor Irene back in "Fall". And the episode clearly paints to us that the glee he got out of conning Howard here was one of the deciding factors to him choosing to go through with the Mesa Verde plan anyways. Jimmy can be a good man, but whenever he dips his toes into the sweet illegal territory, he just can't help himself. Lastly, we get to the Mike storyline where there are some very big happenings. For one, Mike is reunited with Nacho, finally giving Nacho a little glimmer of hope. With Mike's help, he does have a genuine chance to escape, and I'm excited to see what will come of their alliance. The rest of the episode focuses on Mike's plan to get Lalo arrested, which was another big twist that completely reshapes the direction of this season. I've been critical of Mike's storyline (see: The Bad), but he is always at his best whenever he has a job to work on. It's a blast seeing Mike pose as a private investigator, worker in the police office, and even as a police officer himself in order to secure Lalo's arrest. Furthermore, I absolutely love that the logistics that brought Lalo down were his irrational actions back in "Winner". I was harsh on Lalo's chaotic actions in my review of "Winner" (an episode I actually love even more now) because I thought that they were small instances of sloppy writing. But I'm extremely impressed that Lalo's actions ended up bouncing back on him, and it was these reckless maneuvers that have resulted in him being taken off the streets. This was such intelligent writing, and it made the story much more satisfying than it had any right to be. The cameos from detective Tim Roberts from "Breaking Bad" and Cliff Main were very welcome. The Bad: Mike's character arc in the first 5 episodes of this season ended up being quite the disappointment. This episode feels like it jumped ahead to a point where Mike is now loyal to Gus without actually giving us any good reason for him to actually be loyal to him. It makes Nacho's comments about why Mike is working for him feel like they hit the mark. We're supposed to believe that Mike has good reason to work for Gus, but we aren't given anything more than revenge. I'm disappointed that there wasn't more to Mike's journey towards working for Gus, and I honestly think that showing Mike spiraling downwards was a waste of time that could have been used to develop their relationship more. The Unknown: Why did Kim suggest getting married? Is it because she can't bring herself to end their relationship and has resigned to sticking by him? Or are there more reasons for this? What happens now that Lalo is busted? Will the Salamancas send more men into America? Will Lalo go to Jimmy in an attempt to free himself? Best Moment: It's a real toss-up between the meeting scene and Kim's outburst at the end of the episode. I think I'll go with Kim's outburst because that ending was so unexpected, but both scenes were equally fantastic in my eyes. Character of the Episode: Kim, though Jimmy is a very close second. Conclusion: What a wonderful episode. This was exciting and emotional, and completely changed the direction of the show multiple times with some spectacular twists. I'm genuinely unsure how the story will proceed from here, and the uncertainty really excited me. This is a game-changer of an episode to throw out halfway through a season, and I really appreciate the ambition for the writers to do something like this. Score: 80
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
February 2024
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