Better Call Saul 5.04
As one great example of how much character thought goes into the details in this show, take the business with the broken glass.
The last episode had ended with Jimmy and Kim, after a day that made them feel rotten for different reasons, cheering each other up by, among other things, throwing bottles from the balcony of their flat. This episode starts with them leaving the flat and going to work the next morning. They notice all the broken glass in the inner court. Jimmy shrugs it off; someone else will clean it up, that's their job, and he doesn't give it another thought. Kim, once he's left, cleans up the mess she's made herself and doesn't leave the court until the glass is safely put away.
Cleaning up messes is on Kim's agenda for the episode anyway. First, she tries to find another way to make both her paying client Mesa Verde and the about-to-be-ejected-from-his-move cranky old man happy by presenting Mesa Verda with another piece of ground they could use just as well for their project. But going being both ethical and a good capitalist this week is out, so her next move is to ask Jimmy to take on Mesa Verda's cranky opponent as a client. Which Jimmy does.
Jimmy has a meeting with Howard in this episode where Howard asks him what Saul Goodman is all about. Whereupon Jimmy launches into an impassioned speech about how Saul is the little guy's last line of defense. And you can tell in this moment, this is exactly what he believes. Which is also why he does take Mesa Verda's opponent as a client - it seems tailor-suited for him, a chance to piss off a big company by representing a cranky old man in their way. However, if you take a step back and look at Jimmy's actual clients since he's officially changed his practicing name to Saul: they're ever small scale criminals, like the two idiots (previously seen in previous episodes) who went on a rampage precisely because they had just learned he'd bail them out after, or they are, for the first time, a big scale drug lord, Lalo Salamanca, who made "Saul" use his attorney client privilege to carry messages into prison. And that's a difference between Jimmy McGill and Saul Goodman. Jimmy McGill may have been told by Beth in the first season that "you're the kind of lawyer criminals hire", but he mostly represented not the kind of actual economic criminals like Beth and her husband, he did represent clients like the old people at Sandpiper. Saul Goodman, even in these early days? Not so much. He's still kidding himself that he does, but the gap between how he sees himself and what he actually does is widening.
The opening and closing scenes, with Jimmy buying items in the teaser which he in the tag scene uses to wreck Howard's NAMASTE-sign car with at first felt disconnected to the rest for me, other than as a random additional and not really needed example of Jimmy sabotaging himself. (Given that Howard offers him a job at HHM in this episode with the praising words Jimmy had always wanted to hear.) I.e. something along the lines of Walt refusing the chance that would have allowed him to get the money for his cancer therapy and for Skyler and the kids legally because of his vendetta against Gretchen and Elliot. Which I thought was superfluous, because we have already seen Jimmy in season 2 get the equivalent of that when he has the job at a prestigious lawfirm (though not HHM) which until then he'd said he wanted, was bored to tears and did everything to get himself fired). But thinking of the Howard scenes as a commentary of how Jimmy sees being Saul vs what being Saul actually is like, it works.
Meanwhile, in gangster world: Gus arranging for the DEA agents to at the same time get their goods (so they and Lalo don't suspect Lalo's guy is his mole) while preventing his employee from getting caught and thus enabling his business to proceed) is a very Gus thing, but as with all things Gus on this show, it doesn't really tell us anything about him BB didn't before. Then again, I'm a hypocrite with double standards, because I did like the Hank and Steve scene, complete with their banter and Hank after the seemingly successful raid still smelling a rat. Which is also something we've seen in BB before, but this time, I'm all for it.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1388728.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
The last episode had ended with Jimmy and Kim, after a day that made them feel rotten for different reasons, cheering each other up by, among other things, throwing bottles from the balcony of their flat. This episode starts with them leaving the flat and going to work the next morning. They notice all the broken glass in the inner court. Jimmy shrugs it off; someone else will clean it up, that's their job, and he doesn't give it another thought. Kim, once he's left, cleans up the mess she's made herself and doesn't leave the court until the glass is safely put away.
Cleaning up messes is on Kim's agenda for the episode anyway. First, she tries to find another way to make both her paying client Mesa Verde and the about-to-be-ejected-from-his-move cranky old man happy by presenting Mesa Verda with another piece of ground they could use just as well for their project. But going being both ethical and a good capitalist this week is out, so her next move is to ask Jimmy to take on Mesa Verda's cranky opponent as a client. Which Jimmy does.
Jimmy has a meeting with Howard in this episode where Howard asks him what Saul Goodman is all about. Whereupon Jimmy launches into an impassioned speech about how Saul is the little guy's last line of defense. And you can tell in this moment, this is exactly what he believes. Which is also why he does take Mesa Verda's opponent as a client - it seems tailor-suited for him, a chance to piss off a big company by representing a cranky old man in their way. However, if you take a step back and look at Jimmy's actual clients since he's officially changed his practicing name to Saul: they're ever small scale criminals, like the two idiots (previously seen in previous episodes) who went on a rampage precisely because they had just learned he'd bail them out after, or they are, for the first time, a big scale drug lord, Lalo Salamanca, who made "Saul" use his attorney client privilege to carry messages into prison. And that's a difference between Jimmy McGill and Saul Goodman. Jimmy McGill may have been told by Beth in the first season that "you're the kind of lawyer criminals hire", but he mostly represented not the kind of actual economic criminals like Beth and her husband, he did represent clients like the old people at Sandpiper. Saul Goodman, even in these early days? Not so much. He's still kidding himself that he does, but the gap between how he sees himself and what he actually does is widening.
The opening and closing scenes, with Jimmy buying items in the teaser which he in the tag scene uses to wreck Howard's NAMASTE-sign car with at first felt disconnected to the rest for me, other than as a random additional and not really needed example of Jimmy sabotaging himself. (Given that Howard offers him a job at HHM in this episode with the praising words Jimmy had always wanted to hear.) I.e. something along the lines of Walt refusing the chance that would have allowed him to get the money for his cancer therapy and for Skyler and the kids legally because of his vendetta against Gretchen and Elliot. Which I thought was superfluous, because we have already seen Jimmy in season 2 get the equivalent of that when he has the job at a prestigious lawfirm (though not HHM) which until then he'd said he wanted, was bored to tears and did everything to get himself fired). But thinking of the Howard scenes as a commentary of how Jimmy sees being Saul vs what being Saul actually is like, it works.
Meanwhile, in gangster world: Gus arranging for the DEA agents to at the same time get their goods (so they and Lalo don't suspect Lalo's guy is his mole) while preventing his employee from getting caught and thus enabling his business to proceed) is a very Gus thing, but as with all things Gus on this show, it doesn't really tell us anything about him BB didn't before. Then again, I'm a hypocrite with double standards, because I did like the Hank and Steve scene, complete with their banter and Hank after the seemingly successful raid still smelling a rat. Which is also something we've seen in BB before, but this time, I'm all for it.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1388728.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.