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Last night's Better Call Saul brilliantly twisted the tragedy knife. We're all eager to see the finale next week which goes to show what masochists we are, I guess. Is there any way out for Saul?

We finally learned what happened to Kim (Rhea Seehorn) and about what she was up to during the events of Breaking Bad. It turns out her life was even more depressing than Saul's. She's become an ordinary office worker, writing copy for a sprinkler company's web site.



The big decisions in her life involve choosing between Miracle Whip and mayonnaise and between vanilla or strawberry ice cream. She seems desperately repressed and almost seems to have a panic attack when Gene/Saul (Bob Odenkirk) calls her. As I suspected, she rebukes him on a moral level and it leads to her going all the way back to Albuquerque and confessing her crimes.



Rhea Seehorn has a tremendous scene when she breaks out crying on a bus. It hits hard because of her performance and because it's easy to see exactly what she's feeling and why, facing the inexcapable reality of who and what she and Saul are, based on the evidence of what they've done. But they're both more complicated than the worst of their actions, of course, and even their actions were more complicated than the results make them appear.

Imagine if Howard hadn't been killed. In his confrontation with Kim and Saul, all three acknowledged that he would very likely "bounce back" from the prank they pulled on him. And the goal of the prank was to resolve the Sandpiper case early so it would be within the lifetimes of the elderly residence of the retirement home. Kim and Saul did enjoy the con but there was more too it than just assassinating Howard's character. It was horribly bad luck that Lalo stepped in and Kim and Saul's machinations took on monstrous new connotations.



Last night's episode was directed and written by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan. I liked how the background score started to sound like the Breaking Bad theme when Saul came close to physically assaulting an innocent man at home. But when he was really tested, later in the episode, with Carol Burnett in a role that has gotten a lot jucier, he pulls back. He's really not a killer.

Better Call Saul has been an incredible show with well written complicated characters and I couldn't imagine a more fitting final season. Series co-creator Peter Gould writes and directs next week, an episode called "Saul Gone". Now that's ominous. But I'm looking forward to it.

I was so busy on Tuesday I forgot to watch the new Better Call Saul. And what an episode to miss!

It did two things I really liked. It brought to fruition a subplot from the first season and did so in a way that completely changed the viewer's perspective on the characters. Suddenly there's another dimension to this prank Kim and Jimmy are pulling on Howard. It's not just mischief for mischief's sake.



The episode was written and directed by Thomas Schnauz whose credit comes up at the exact moment when a film student is talking about the importance of the auteur. That was pretty funny.

But funnier was the moment Howard realised he had photos of Saul handing a frisbee to someone. It was such a perfectly delicious moment.



I still wasn't interested in the Lalo plot until he turned up unexpectedly at the end. That was good. The whole thing would've worked perfectly if Lalo's inexplicable trip to Europe had just been left out of it. But, oh, well. However we got here, we're here, and it's good.

Now we just have to wait for July to see the second part of this beautiful piece of television.

Sometimes Better Call Saul is a bit insubstantial. I seriously thought about skipping past the Gus stuff in last night's new episode. I saw his picture in the thumbnail on Netflix and thought, "Gee, I sure hope we get to watch Gus stand around with a blank expression again." Actually this time we got to watch him scrub bathroom grout with a toothbrush.



Like Bob Odenkirk, Giancarlo Esposito is visibly much older than the character he's playing now. And he's put on some pounds, visually working against that fastidiousness we're supposed to be seeing. Which doesn't help his scenes feel like they have any more of a point. I think there's supposed to be tension around the possibility of Lalo showing up but we already know Gus survives. So it's not there.

I may sound like a hypocrite after I've gushed so many times about Twin Peaks and I suspect the makers of Better Call Saul are quite consciously influenced by Twin Peaks. But every episode of Twin Peaks season three felt like a feast while episodes like this of Better Call Saul feel like thin soup. It reminds me of a bowl of ramen I ordered back in San Diego once that was mostly just hot water. I tell that story to people here in Japan to illustrate how much better the ramen is here. Even that infamous scene where a guy sweeps the floor for a minute at the roadhouse on Twin Peaks felt more substantial than watching Better Call Saul once again show us that big underground structure to remind us that Gus has a big underground structure.



I'm afraid there was only one moment I really liked last night, the scene where Kim wakes up at 3:17am and sits smoking on the couch. And we see the bedroom light click on and we see little signs of her frustration that Jimmy's woken up. That was nice and felt like an authentic relationship. But, come on, this is the last season, let's use time a little more economically.

I found the ending to last night's Better Call Saul very satisfying though it mainly involved the Nacho subplot. Mostly I find Nacho intensely dull and for the most part that held true last night.

The episode began with his continued escape from Mexico which continues to be shot through a yellow filter. I'm not even the only one complaining about productions doing that anymore. Why are they still doing this?



There were about a hundred logistical problems in Nacho's (Michael Mando) hiding in that old oil tanker. It doesn't even seem possible he could've climbed back out of there.



But the Saul (Bob Odenkirk) plot was great as usual. It featured another intriguing scam, this one involving a valet and Huell (Lavell Crawford).

I also liked Kim's (Rhea Seahorn) confrontation with the DA (Julie Pearl) and Kim's insistence on using the name Saul. Damn, I want to know what happened to her.

It is getting increasingly difficult to think of Better Call Saul as a prequel. Everyone looks so much older now than they did on Breaking Bad, I have to admit it's a little distracting. Particularly when it comes to Bob Odenkirk, whose face has a lot more lines and his eyebags a lot more weight than when his character was introduced on Breaking Bad eleven years ago. On the one hand, I'm all for suspension of disbelief but, on the other, there's something kind of bittersweet about this older Saul. There's a sense of weary compassion in Odenkirk's performance here that seems to suggest someone much more experienced with life.

I watched a bit of the first episode of Breaking Bad to feature Saul last night, which I've done before when it seemed like the spin-off was going in a very different direction. I was surprised to find the difference made more sense now.



"JMM", last night's episode, featured the courthouse wedding between Saul and Kim (Rhea Seehorn), her peculiar solution to being blind-sided by his strategy in the previous episode. Now she wants no more secrets between them and, at an oddly chosen time during some passionate foreplay, Saul confesses he's taken as a client a prominent figure in a Mexican cartel. It takes some visible effort for Kim to swallow that with a smile, especially after Saul brags about how much money he could make if he's in good with a cartel.



Rarely has it been shown so clearly that Kim is the biggest restraint on Saul's worser instincts. We know something causes them to part eventually and now the shape of the tragedy may be a little clearer. I still suspect that the real cause of their sundering will be some high crime committed by Kim, not Saul. The show deliberately called back to her bad girl inclinations a couple episodes ago. The difference between Kim and Saul may not be that she's the straight arrow and he's the crook--it may be simply that she's more repressed than he is so when she acts out she does so with less moderation and tact. I suppose we'll see. I do hope the show eventually goes to a post-Breaking Bad setting full time at some point so Odenkirk's visible age can be more of a strength.

No, you can't go back to Jimmy McGill because this is now a show about Saul Goodman. Sunday night saw the fifth season premiere of Better Call Saul and Bob Odenkirk's protagonist getting his name officially changed. As he explains it to Kim, he sees it as a fresh start but she clearly worries it's a sign he's giving in to his worst instincts. Written by series co-creator Peter Gould, it's a good start to a season that promises to bring an illuminating clash between Saul and Kim.

In fact, the season episode titles paint a pretty clear arc already:



No Gennifer Hutchison episodes this season? Unless she wrote one of those TBA episodes. I hope so, she was my favourite writer on the show.

Kim (Rhea Seehorn) is having to work a little harder not to see the Saul in Jimmy. Though we have seen her, in seasons past, getting turned on by his conman antics and even participating a little. She reluctantly even takes his suggestion when dealing with a client in this episode but she really doesn't seem to like it.

It's nice to see the return of the gaudy suits.



Like every season premiere of the series this one began with a lengthy flashforoward to Saul in hiding, now as Gene, the manager of a Cinnebon. This time there was a pleasant surprise cameo from Robert Forster who apparently shot his scene while working on El Camino.



Saul has to call him because someone recognised him from his Albuquerque days. And I loved how that went down. Some might mistake it for bad writing that the guy manages to coax Gene into admitting he's Saul. It seems like Saul would be too smart to ever think he would have to give in. But intelligence wasn't in play here. It was the need to be recognised as who he was, the identity that he establishes in the same episode, years earlier. It's not intellectual, it's pure, maybe unstoppable, emotional need. It's another layer to his tragedy.

Last night's new Better Call Saul, the penultimate episode of the season, was about deceptions, some successful, some not. Written by Gennifer Hutchison, it featured some particularly nice drama between Kim and Jimmy. And it was decently directed by Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul's co-creator.

Spoilers after the screenshot



I like this shot where we see Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) speeding out from the lower level of the parking garage before coming around and parking in front of a calmly waiting Kim (Rhea Seehorn). I wonder if Odenkirk was driving the whole time or if the car was swapped out when it went off screen. The driving was definitely part of the performance.



You can't blame Jimmy for being angry. After all the work he put into that hearing, they wouldn't give him his law license back because he didn't seem "sincere". It's a nice, subtle point--even though we saw Jimmy practising facial expressions before the meeting, I do believe he believes he was sincere. There's some difficult ambiguity there because, obviously, in that situation, some finesse is required and expected so it's not quite so easy to know where the line is. Then throw in the fact that Jimmy does not want to confront his feelings about his brother and it is plausible that the people interviewing him do think there's something off about him.



Kim seems to think it's obvious he should've talked about his brother. It seems unfair, to me, that this would be expected; surely if a man doesn't want to discuss his deceased brother, that should be his right. I felt the sense of insincerity came in when he credited the University of Samoa as his inspiration to get into law. I thought he was going to say Kim. Maybe, starting with Chuck, he's getting into a habit of not acknowledging his own feelings, which one could imagine is an occupational hazard for a con man.



Just as I thought last week, the idea for a con Kim had was related to the Mesa Verde thing and the first scene from last night's episode was a bit of wicked fun. Kim and Jimmy pretend to be siblings and he's the irresponsible brother who accidentally spills milk on the documents Kim wants replaced--they perfectly create a scenario to generate sympathy from the woman working at the facility where the documents are processed. The Jimmy Buffet t-shirt was a great touch.



And it seems Jimmy (McGill) has a point about Kim seeing herself as superior to him. It's convenient how easily she can forget this con from the beginning of the episode and go back to admiring her new briefcase while in a conference call.



The Nacho and Mike plots also involved deception though, once again, it's mainly just more needless set-up for Breaking Bad. There's a ridiculously overwrought explanation for Hector Salamanca's bell. Werner, the German contractor working for Mike, ingeniously engineers his escape though, in the end, considering what he sacrifices to do it--not only his well paying job but his future safety--he just seems phenomenally dumb. Hopefully next week will focus mainly on Kim and Jimmy. We obviously know he gets his law license back somehow so this new obstacle and the tension that goes with it are intriguing. How's he gonna get out of this one?

Better Call Saul took some surprisingly big leaps forward last night, bringing it much closer to Breaking Bad. But the leaps were done in such a way that writer Alison Tatlock and director Deborah Chow clearly showed evolutions in character relationships to make the tipping points very effective.

Spoilers after the screenshot



The months pass in split screen and we see Kim (Rhea Seehorn) and Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) diverge in careers and lifestyle even as they continue to live and sleep together. It's nicely done, like watching Kane and his wife gradually sitting further apart at the breakfast table in Citizen Kane. Jimmy goes from putting the paste on Kim's toothbrush to not even eating with her.



So then it makes sense that there's suddenly a culture clash between them. They grew apart so gradually that Jimmy springing the news that he'd been selling drop phones is a severe shock. I love how uncomfortable Kim looks in that scene, you can tell she's absolutely repulsed and wants to be a million miles away from Jimmy.



Who'd have thought Huell (Lavel Crawford) would have such an important role. The scene where he hits that cop over the head with a bag of sandwiches is just the right mixture of sad, funny, and credible. And then, against all odds, Kim does find a point of interest in the case; it seems Huell is facing "unequal justice", the prosecutor aiming for an unusual amount of jail time, the implication being that institutional racism is at work. The episode ends with a tease that Kim has cooked up something clever but the real axe hanging over the episode is the sense that, rather than drawing Jimmy and Kim back together, it'll be the final wake-up call that drives them apart. It's a testament to how well done this show is that you understand both points of view--Kim wanting to help people and have a stable career and Jimmy wanting respect and a job that challenges him. These two simple differences in motive are exacerbated by the characters belonging to two different cultures now, as highlighted in the office party at the beginning where Jimmy embarrasses Kim.



And he has business cards now that rhyme "call" with "Saul", an omen of the fate the show's promised from the beginning. The inevitability nicely plays off the complexity of the characters so that you feel how deeply sad it is that Jimmy is trapped.

Work ethic was the star of last night's new Better Call Saul. Jimmy and Mike both demonstrated a commitment to getting the job done, whatever job that might be, over dealing with their own issues. It was a good episode.

Spoilers after the screenshot



Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) takes a job at the slowest cell phone shop in the world just to have an excuse not to see the psychiatrist Kim (Rhea Seehorn) wants him to. I liked the way the decision is built up to. When Jimmy first turns down the cell phone job, it feels like the wrong decision because he's being lazy or stuck on his self-image as a lawyer. Then when he takes the job, it seems like the wrong decision because he's avoiding attending to himself. It kind of reminds me of The Phantom Menace sometimes (in a good way). I remember watching the kid and thinking, is it this or that decision that puts him on the path to being Darth Vader? Whatever he does invites you to find the angle where it looks like the wrong decision.



What kind of world do we live in where intelligent guys with active minds like Jimmy's are placed in a position where they're obliged to bounce a ball against the window all day just to pass time? This taps into some of the same tension as Breaking Bad--part of the reason that show worked so well is that you agreed with Walter White that he deserved something more in life than the kinds of jobs he was doing in the first episode.



I liked the stuff with Mike (Jonathan Banks) last night. Like Jimmy, he hasn't got much use for therapy and his compulsive detective work is prompted by a commitment to self-denial. We can see he's upset that Stacy (Kerry Condon) would speak about her anxiety over the fading memories of her deceased husband, Mike's son. That prompts him to take revenge on this institution that encourages this kind of emotional self-indulgence. The scene also reminded me of Jesse's group therapy sessions on Breaking Bad and, like Mike, Jesse finds a flaw in the very premise of the group therapy session. You may or may not agree with Mike or Jesse's motives but they show there are real flaws in the presumption that sharing feelings should always take priority.

There was also a pretty good shoot-out involving Nacho (Michael Mando) last night but I still can't muster any interest in his character.

In last night's new Better Call Saul the MVP was definitely Kim. But the nice new episode had other good scenes having to do with Jimmy though all the drug dealing business still feels like a screensaver.

Spoilers after the screenshot



I can't get myself invested in the Nacho (Michael Mando) plot. I appreciate all the trouble the show goes to to establish his father as this guy who can't countenance his son's business and the attempt at quiet tension in that garage scene where the old man refuses the ill-gotten cash without a word. There's ambition there leaping out of the water but it just falls back in the drink. I guess the actors are okay, the sound design is pretty boring. Maybe it's the latter that leads to the flat feeling of so many scenes of people just hanging around. Though primarily I'd say it's that the characters aren't complex enough.



They suffer by comparison to the Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) plot. The scene where he interviews at the Neff company--nice Double Indemnity reference--is dazzling, first with Jimmy demonstrating his not surprising knowledge of copiers, then in the subtle dialogue where he manoeuvres around discussing why he stopped being a lawyer to make it sound like a really good thing. When the guy says, "What happened?" the response we might expect is, "I'm prohibited from practising for a period but I can assure you my character is . . ." etc, etc. Instead, Jimmy deliberately mischaracterises the motive of the question in a plausible way--he acts like the guy's asking because he doesn't know how useful a lawyer could be in sales. I believed every moment of it, too: Bob Odenkirk sold Jimmy's salesmanship perfectly. And I believed when he sabotaged himself at the end with a misapplication of righteousness.

It's almost like his brother possessed him, a deranged moment of conscience, where Jimmy was right at what he had to know was the wrong time. It's a moment that makes clear the moral tightrope Jimmy compulsively walks, the kind of self flagellation that'll make his inevitable turn feel very credible.



But as I said, this episode goes to Kim (Rhea Seehorn), and not just because I'm impressed her sling matches her blouse. Her confrontation with Howard (Patrick Fabian) was great for two character revelations--of course she's right about Howard, it was selfish of him to tell Jimmy about Chuck's suicide at that moment, but Howard himself probably was unaware of how selfish he was being. He clearly feels even worse than he did before.

The other great revelation in the scene is in how much it shows Kim really loves Jimmy. She is so keyed into him, accurately understanding his feelings and willing to cast his motives in the best possible light, she has no hesitation in going passionately to bat for him.



And this leads to one of the best kisses I've seen on television. When the two are sitting down to watch White Heat neither of them brings up the meeting. But from how they look at each other we know they're both thinking about it. The mildly plaintive look on Jimmy's face is met with just exactly the reassurance he needs in Kim's--we can see, with all the dialogue being about the remote control and Jaws 3D, he knows she went to bat for him and she knows he needed it and they're both aware of just how far she's willing to go to be supportive of him. It's a brilliant, intensely sweet scene. It makes the anxiety of wondering what happened to Kim between now and Breaking Bad all the more poignant, too.

Twitter Sonnet #1144

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