Summary: Kim chooses not to tell Jimmy about Lalo being alive. Jimmy goes to work and hires Francesca at the new office. Kim meets with Viola and learns about the judge in the Sandpiper case. Cliff confronts Howard and Howard realizes that Jimmy is damaging his reputation. Howard tricks Jimmy into meeting him at a boxing ring where Howard convinces him to have a match which Howard wins. Howards gets a PI to follow Jimmy. Jimmy returns home to find Kim and they reflect on their next moves. Gus continues to panic in his daily life, unaware of where Lalo is. He visits the superlab and plants a gun inside. Lalo is in Germany and he meets with Werner's wife Margarethe. He quickly charms her and takes her to her house. When she leaves for work the next morning, Lalo sneaks inside hunting for a connection to Werner's workers. He finds a trophy. Margarethe returns home but Lalo is able to sneak out without having to kill her.
The Good: This episode continues those themes of paranoia that were present in the last, especially in this opening few minutes. It's great seeing the Jimmy/Kim storyline and the Gus/Mike storyline united by the characters all being terrified of Lalo's re-emergence in the early scenes. Even though he isn't on-screen, Lalo is the main focus here and it's fascinating to see how the different characters are dealing with his impending arrival. Gus continues to panic, and it's a great bit of continuity with the anxiety we saw him suffer from back in "Namaste" last season. Gus is unable to focus even at work (shown through another great long-take), and every second is spent worrying about when Lalo will show up. Gus makes sure to check the face of everyone in the kitchen to ensure that none of them are a disguised Lalo. By the end of the episode, Gus has overthought everything and that leads to him setting up an interesting trap for Lalo (see: The Unknown). Jimmy and Kim dealing with paranoia is even more interesting. Having learned about Lalo's return, Kim consciously chooses not to tell Jimmy about it, which is pretty surprising. Usually it's Jimmy who is hiding things from Kim, but now the opposite is true. Kim is in deeper than Jimmy is now, and so she has started to take things further than him. Another interesting bit of depth is that Kim barricades the door with a chair and then immediately removes it after speaking with Jimmy. Did she manipulate him into talking about Lalo by putting the chair on the door? If so, then that's a perfect indicator of how far Kim has gone, that she is now manipulating Jimmy with ease in the same way that he does. A sad reflection of Kim's fraying morality comes later when she meets with Viola, who is so sweet with how she looks up to Kim in ways that simply aren't true anymore. Rhea Seehorn conveys the discomfort that Kim feels to perfection, understanding that she is no longer the legally pure being that she used to be. Where Kim and Viola have a wholesome working relationship, we get it paralleled with Jimmy working with Francesca. It's great to have Francesca back and we begin to see the origin of the Saul/Francesca dynamic which was so entertaining back in "Breaking Bad". Jimmy's new operation is beneath what Francesca wants to do, but she initially goes along with it because Jimmy promises her lots of money and an escape from the DMV. And of course, we know that Francesca will continue to work for Jimmy for these same reasons. Howard has a stand-out episode, possibly Patrick Fabian's best work in the series, only contested by his excellent scenes with Michael McKean in the back half of season 3. We open with an excellent scene as Howard saves the Sandpiper case by selling the reasoning for continuing it to the senior citizens who are upset that the case is continuing. After a good laugh from Cliff's assuming Howard's anxious fidgeting is related to an addiction, we get to see Howard in his element. Funnily enough, the way he talks and sells so flamboyantly is very reminiscent of the Jimmy McGill that we saw back in the early seasons of the show. This connection between Howard and Jimmy caught me off guard and it is exactly why Howard liked Jimmy so much: he saw a bit of himself in Jimmy. There's an air of tragedy to that because in another world Jimmy and Howard would have been a perfect pairing at HHM. But Chuck had to get in the way, and then once Chuck was out of the picture, it was Jimmy himself getting in the way. These parallels between Howard and Jimmy are an effective reminder that Howard is a good person and that we should not be cheering on Jimmy and Kim for what they are doing to him. I ended up cheering on Howard in his next moves. Cliff confronting him about his problems was fun, and the scene had a terrific conclusion as Howard cancels everything to resolve his "Jimmy McGill problem". The boxing ring meet-up was exciting, and I got a good chuckle out of Howard's alias of Mr. Ward. There was something so satisfying from seeing Howard being relentlessly real with Jimmy, while Jimmy deflects and tries to act aloof. The boxing match was a total blast. The filming was inspiring, and it was immensely satisfying seeing these two sloppily throw punches at each other, with Howard ending up on top and delivering a scathing line to Jimmy ("don't mistake my kindness for weakness"). Howard is totally hell bent on stopping Jimmy, and he has gone as far as to hire a PI to follow Jimmy too, which may be something that Jimmy did not expect (see: The Unknown). Ordinarily I would be unhappy with straight-laced Howard having the connections and confidence to hire a PI, but we know that he has done it before for Chuck back in "Witness", so it is perfectly reasonable. But Howard is missing one thing: Jimmy is not the mastermind here. He assumes that Jimmy is responsible for everything, but in reality it is Kim who is behind it all. And Kim hasn't even crossed Howard's radar at this point, which is indicative of how shocking and disappointing Kim's fall from grace was. Even Jimmy isn't at the same level as she is and he feels immensely guilty about what he's doing. Jimmy didn't have to fight Howard, but he did, knowing he was going to lose, because he felt bad about what he was doing to Howard. It's painfully clear that Kim is the real one that Howard needs to go after, and so long as he doesn't see the bigger picture, he's never going to escape what they have planned for him. The episode ends with an exciting twist, finally showing us where Lalo has been. The Germany reveal caught me entirely by surprise, but it makes perfect sense because Werner was the only lead that Lalo found. It's a chilling moment when you realize that Lalo has Werner's wife in his sights. Margarethe was only just introduced in this episode, but because we cared about Werner, and because Margarethe embodies that same loveable friendliness in her (helping the Germans playing the quiz game), we immediately care for her. It's an impressive bit of character writing and acting that we are immediately terrified for the life of this woman who we only just met. Lalo is an exciting terror in this episode. He has dialed up the charm to 11 in his conversations with Margarethe, and he is so so impressive at it. It's no wonder that Margarethe is enchanted by him, and a number of horrible thoughts enter your mind: is Lalo going to sleep with Werner's wife? Is he going to kill her? Thankfully, Margarethe doesn't let him in, so Lalo simply waits until the next day when she leaves for work to get the proof that he needs to track down why Werner was working for Gus. But of course it isn't that easy, and the end of the episode teases one final bit of brutality as Margarethe returns and becomes suspicious of somebody being in her house. Unfortunately, she's too smart for her own good, and that intelligence had a very real chance of getting her killed. Kudos to the writers for making me afraid about the potential death of a character I had only just met. Thankfully, she was okay, and I wonder if Lalo choosing not to kill her was a sign that he genuinely did connect with her and feel bad for her. Or perhaps, Lalo simply learned from the TravelWire incident and has decided to limit the number of casualties in his wake. I always appreciate how "Better Call Saul" subtly illuminates more about its characters through small decisions like Lalo's decision to escape rather than kill. The Bad: There's nothing outright bad about this, but I did find this episode to run a bit too long. It's a slow episode, even by "Better Call Saul" standards, and I'm not sure that it needed to be quite as long as it was. Having multiple episodes of Gus being paranoid for example was a bit too much. The scenes were all good, but it took a long while to get to Lalo's return, and not a whole lot was done in that time. The slow pacing is especially felt because this episode is a transitional episode. I suspect the final two episodes of the half-season will be much more exciting and this episode's set-up will certainly have been necessary. However, future events being good does not make this episode more exciting. The Unknown: What did Lalo find on that trophy? Will it lead him to Werner's boys? He made note of the company that made the trophy. Is that where he will be heading next? What is Howard going to do about Jimmy? He has sent a PI after Jimmy. Is Jimmy expecting this? Or will it catch him off guard? Will Howard's PI get found out by Mike's men? That could put Howard into a lot of trouble. What is the next step in the Howard plan? How is it going to be so much worse for him? Why did Gus leave the gun in his lab? Has he figured out that Lalo will be going after the superlab? Does he expect that his next meeting with Lalo will take place inside the lab? What is Gus planning? Best Moment: It's tough to choose. There are lots of great moments but none that really stand out. I'll go with the cathartic conversation between Howard and Jimmy before their boxing match. There's something so satisfying about seeing Howard standing up to Jimmy, even if it was all part of the plan. Character of the Episode: Howard. Conclusion: This was more set-up and build-up, but as expected of "Better Call Saul", there are several storytelling flourishes that make this more engaging. A good episode. Score: 67
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
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