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Kim and Jimmy each did their separate things to save Huell in Monday's new Better Call Saul, resulting in an entertaining if somewhat implausible episode. Nacho's story continues to have nothing worth mentioning while Mike's was almost interesting. But, as usual, Saul is the reason for watching.

Spoilers after the screenshot



At what must be some considerable expense, Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) buys a bunch of greeting cards, goes to Louisiana to ride around Huell's home town, and pays people on the bus to write heartfelt messages. Then he sets up a bunch of drop phones, brings in the student film crew, and sets up a phoney community web site for Huell. And miraculously it all works and fools the D.A.



Meanwhile, Kim (Rhea Seehorn) works her more credible magic, intimidating the D.A. with a group of assistants. Jimmy politely downplays his role but Kim knows its because of his shenanigans justice was served for Huell. And in a satisfying if somewhat cliche dramatic turn, the experience belays and reverses her drift away from him and we get one of those dramatic, sudden kisses, the kind I don't think we'll be seeing guys give on television again for a very long time.



Was it justice for Huell that turned Kim on, though? The danger? Or just the cool efficacy of it all? The episode ends with her surprising Jimmy by telling him she wants to do something like this again; I suspect it has something to do with the idea she shot down at the Mesa Verde conference in an earlier scene. This isn't completely out of the blue--obviously Kim has diverged a great deal from Jimmy at this point but there was a time when she played along with some minor cons at the beginning of season 2. Now she's in a much more respectable position so maybe the desire to rebel is even stronger.



At bottom, I think Kim is tempted by the idea of getting things done faster and better than anyone else, even if it means taking risks. That could be the ultimate lesson from her car accident.



In standard plot trajectory, if you're going to break up two characters, you make them seem to suddenly get fabulously back together first. So here's what I think's going to happen in the last two episodes, between some Mike and Nacho padding: Jimmy's going to try some kind of scheme to help with the Mesa Verde thing; it fails spectacularly; Kim takes all the blame so Jimmy can safely get his law licence back but then she walks away from him. She'll say something about how he's her addiction or he enables some addiction of hers--for reckless efficacy--and how, for her own mental health, she has to stay away from him. This finally turns Jimmy into Saul because the loss of Kim makes him decide there's no reason to hold onto his soul anymore.

I'm not sure if I want to be right nor not. We'll see.

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.

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Better Call Saul continued on a very good, solid streak with Monday's new episode, which finds Jimmy in the aftermath of a victory that turns out to have been a bit Pyrrhic.

Spoilers after the screenshot.



I really love the way the show is slowly cooking Jimmy's (Bob Odenkirk) slow decent. For some reason Kim (Rhea Seehorn) is keen to shed the extra expense of the law offices she shares with Jimmy so now he's faced with the hopeless endeavour of holding up his half of the rent when he was barely making ends meet as it was. His scheme to make money by making commercials for people doesn't seem like it's going to pan out and he has to deal with community service at the same time. By the time he breaks down in the insurance office, it does feel like he's having a death from a thousand cuts.



But how real was that break down? My guess is Jimmy was using his real emotions as a tool to get back at Chuck in some little way. Though the ugliness of what actually happened emphasises that Jimmy's not terribly justified in revenge. Kim, who can afford the introspection with her cushy Mesa Verde job, is accruing feelings in the opposite direction of Jimmy's.



It's harder to enjoy this show now after Twin Peaks since the minor characters are so important in Better Call Saul and Twin Peaks outshines it so totally. I thought the makeup girl trying to give her money back to Jimmy was sweet but no-one has that peculiar roundedness that every minor character seems to have on Twin Peaks. Anyway, I have to stop, I need to tell myself I'll be able to talk about Twin Peaks again in two weeks, one if Showtime puts up episode five on its web site a week early.



Where was I? I love the balancing act they're playing with Jimmy. You can see his heart dying under the weight of cynicism and resentment piling up. It's a much more delicate and complex moral dilemma than Walter White had though it is fundamentally similar. I'm both looking forward to and dreading Jimmy's downfall.

I'm not sure I can begin to tell you how much I loved last night's new Better Call Saul. Satisfying and cruel, its simple cleverness only half concealing a much thornier reality. Bob Odenkirk and Michael McKean deserve great praise for this one.

Spoilers after the screenshot



On the one hand, this is a story about how Jimmy (Odenkirk) escapes from and claims victory over the seemingly inescapable and petty machinations of Chuck (McKean). On that level, it feels good. Chuck manipulates the situation in order to humiliate Jimmy because of the lifelong axe Chuck's had to grind against him, Jimmy's obvious affection never being enough to satisfy Chuck's need.



On the other hand, this is a story about how Jimmy sabotaged Chuck's business and reputation and then gets away with it by publicly humiliating Chuck in a way Chuck could never have been prepared for, exposing Chuck to a truth about his own psychological state about which Chuck was firmly unaware. Whatever else may have happened, there are few things crueller than what Jimmy did to Chuck at the end of this episode, and yet what choice did Jimmy have?



The courtroom drama has all the structure of a satisfying hero versus villain story. It looks like Chuck and Howard (Patrick Fabian) have an iron-clad case and Jimmy's going to get disbarred, probably eventually dragging Kim (Rhea Seehorn) down with him, and she's clearly not ready to face directly her own complicity in Jimmy's crime. So the effect on her would be professionally and psychologically devastating. So the sudden reversal thanks to a plan Jimmy and Kim hatched to have a battery planted on Chuck has the feeling of a dramatic, last minute heroic act. Yet . . .

Theoretically, suffering professional and psychological repercussions are what should happen to people who commit fraud for personal gain. It's only that Chuck and Howard had been such dicks to Jimmy and Kim that gives us pause. This is where the show hits the same grey area as Breaking Bad with Walter's built up resentment over the success of his former business partner.



I honestly thought they'd made all the hay they could from the Chuck storyline in season one but this episode shows I was definitely wrong. Now I want to see the fallout. But I still want Jimmy to start wearing the cool suits.

On a side note, what happened to the attorney played by Kimberly Herbert Gregory, I thought she was representing Howard and Chuck?