Better Call Saul Season 4, Episode 7, “Something Stupid”

Season four of Better Call Saul has found its stride. “Something Stupid” marks the third strong episode in a row, this time by showing substantial developments in the deterioration of Jimmy and Kim’s relationship. It’s aided in no small part by an outstanding split screen montage sequence at the start of the episode (perhaps the best of many on this series), which not only shows us various ways in which Jimmy and Kim’s evolving careers push them apart, but also advances the story clock, moving past the uneventful passages of Jimmy’s suspension and landing us a month before he can resume his law practice (various date indicators suggest that the montage covers roughly seven to eight months, ending in January of 2004).

It’s an efficient little device, artfully conveying to us the gist of what’s significant about this period of time, namely Jimmy and Kim’s slow waltz toward estrangement. We see them performing seemingly parallel actions in split screen, conveyed through symmetrical shot compositions, but the narrative contexts inflects these image pairings with opposite meanings: Kim gets a new nameplate on her Schweikart & Cokely office door (she’s moving up in the law world), while Jimmy gets new Saul Goodman business cards (he’s investing even more heavily in pandering to criminals). Likewise, Kim moves boxes of Mesa Verde files into her new office, while Jimmy moves boxes of burner phones out of his office.

The split in the screen’s image stands in for both a literal and an abstract barrier between them, the latter conveyed most elegantly in images where the split screen’s line bisects an otherwise single image of Jimmy and Kim sharing a space, like when Jimmy reaches across the line to pour Kim wine, or when Kim’s foot juts onto Jimmy’s side of the bed. Even when they’re together, their routines and professional lives separate them. Overall, it’s an elegant rendering of their growing distance, even if it gilds the lily at the very end by having Kim’s side of the split screen fade to black as Jimmy lies awake in bed beside her. This last image is a bit on the nose, but the rest of the sequence makes up for it in its elegance.

In addition to this montage, the plot of “Something Stupid” actively works to dismantle Jimmy and Kim’s relationship as well. The trouble brewing on the horizon is visible from a long distance away, starting with a scene where Jimmy uses Huell to practice his pitch for a new shared office location, a residential space which he hopes to sell to Kim. Evidently Jimmy had been holding out hope that he could still convince Kim to move her office to a shared location, even if she’s still working for Schweikart & Cokely. However, much to Jimmy’s chagrin, even Huell recognizes that it’s a lousy space for a high powered lawyer like Kim, since it creates the wrong image. He simply isn't making enough from his burner phone business for anything nicer.

Later, we see Jimmy realize how far out of his league Kim’s actual office is when he surreptitiously explores it during a Schweikart & Cokely office party. It’s a nice little moment in the episode, one strengthened by the earlier montage sequence, which did such a good job of conveying Jimmy’s isolation from Kim that it makes his attendance at her office party feel like trespassing (even though Kim is initially very happy to have him there).

Jimmy’s dejection boils over into hostility toward Schweikart when he enters into a conversation about possibilities for the firm’s company vacation destination and suggests a series of increasingly outlandish and expensive options, loudly, in front of the entire office. He’s deliberately raising the other partygoers’ hopes for a vacation that will never happen in order to make Schweikart look cheap when he inevitably chooses something less lavish. It’s Jimmy’s petty revenge on Schweikart for stealing Kim away from him, but his ire is also directed at Kim, whom he resents for taking the job, as evidenced by their icy car ride back from the party, where Jimmy turns on the radio to avoid talking to Kim about his outburst.

All of this is merely prelude to the episode’s biggest development, however: Huell is arrested for unwittingly assaulting a police officer in the course of defending Jimmy’s cell phone business, and Jimmy turns to Kim for help in mounting Huell’s defense. A lot of dominoes fall in the scene where Jimmy asks for Kim’s help: not only does Kim learn about Jimmy’s side business selling burner phones, but she also gets her first taste of what will become Saul’s underhanded approach to the law when he proposes a dirty strategy for Huell’s defense. Kim is surprised by the cell phone news, but is disgusted by Jimmy’s plan to smear the cop to exonerate Huell. She’s so taken aback that she’s at a loss for words (Rhea Seehorn is fantastic here, as usual). There's no split screen dividing them in the image of them on the couch together, but there might as well be.

Kim agrees to look into Huell’s case, but on her terms, flatly rejecting Jimmy’s plan to take down the cop, and clearly distressed that Jimmy would even think to ask this of her in the first place. The air between them is thick with tension as Jimmy thanks her and leaves. It’s a great scene that reveals the cracks in the foundation of their romance. Kim’s always known Jimmy is willing to play dirty, but he’s never asked her to play along with him. The entire premise of their separate law practices was predicated on this mutual understanding; she wanted to practice law her way, and leave him to practice it his way, operating under a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward Jimmy’s behavior. It’s bad enough that Jimmy is violating that unspoken agreement in asking her to play dirty, but it’s even worse in light of their slowly drifting apart over the course of the past eight months. The emotional barriers he’s erected in the wake of Chuck’s death have made it harder for her to love him, and his asking her to compromise her moral standards makes it harder still.

We can see these tensions pulling at Kim throughout the rest of the episode, most notably when the opposing council in Huell’s case, Suzanne, cuts Kim to the core by describing Jimmy as “a scumbag disbarred lawyer who pedals drop phones to criminals.” Kim isn’t willing to accept this description quite yet, but she’s close, and this point, we know that Suzanne is probably more right than wrong about Jimmy (after all, Jimmy is in peak Saul form when arguing with the cop who wants him to stop selling phones to criminals).

When Kim breaks the news to Jimmy that she couldn’t negotiate a more lenient sentence for Huell, it’s abundantly clear both to her and us that Jimmy is going to attempt some sort of extra-legal tactic to sway things in Huell’s favor. Here, Jimmy sticks to their unspoken agreement, cagily implying he has something up his sleeve, but inspiration strikes Kim before Jimmy can act on his plans, and she sets in motion a new, mysterious line of defense that somehow involves a bunch of colored makers and note paper.

Whatever Kim’s new tack is, it will probably be successful – Kim kicks ass, after all – but I strongly suspect that ultimately, it will come at the cost of Kim’s trust in Jimmy. Kim has never been one for denial, and sooner or later, by her hand or by Jimmy’s, she will be forced to confront the uncomfortable truth she’s unwilling to face here about who Jimmy is becoming, hopefully providing us with many more moments of dramatically satisfying heartbreak along the way.
 

In Gus’s corner of the show, the eight months that pass during the montage sequence is enough time for Hector to recover his health to where it was when he first appeared on Breaking Bad, effectively illustrated by his knocking over a glass of water just to get a view of his nurse bending over to clean it up. This behavior does not escape Gus’s hawkeyed attention either; he spots Hector’s lecherousness in a videotape of his therapy session with Dr. Bruckner.

It’s all the confirmation Gus needs that his plans for torturing Hector will have their full effect, so he puts an end to Bruckner’s treatment, which is itself a component of Hector’s torment, since Bruckner suggests that with further therapy, Hector could recover more movement and even the power of speech. Rather than just take advantage of Hector’s stroke, Gus actively ensures that Hector remains just the way he is.

It’s a particularly cruel act of villainy, even if it’s directed at another loathsome character, and it really expands our understanding of the depths of Gus’s hatred, which has been made more powerful by festering for so long (just look at the chilling, churlish rictus on Gus's face when he realizes Hector has regained his senses -- Giancarlo Esposito is wonderful, as always). Ultimately, though, his hatred is a weakness, one Walt will eventually exploit on Breaking Bad. A truly ruthless mastermind would simply kill Hector and be rid of a dangerous foe, but Gus can’t resist playing with his food, an urge we understand better thanks to his monologue last week. It's simply who he is, a man who will be undone by his need to inflict pain, much like Walt will be undone by his own pride.

Other thoughts:

- Kim and Jimmy’s conflict in this episode also makes clear a big difference between how Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad each make use of their lead female characters. On Breaking Bad, in order to keep Skyler around once she learned of Walt’s meth cooking, the writers decided to make her story about how her relentlessly manipulative husband slowly compromised her morality. Skyler became imprisoned by Walt’s narcissistic emotional abuse. On Better Call Saul, however, Kim can be much more resistant to Jimmy’s corruption because their eventual split seems like it will be a key turning point in Jimmy’s transformation into Saul. Thus Kim’s moral fortitude is baked into Better Call Saul’s premise, and becomes a strength the show can lean on to yield dramatic dividends, as it does here. Kim knows Jimmy will operate on the edges of the law (she has few illusions about him), but she also has lines she will not cross, and as Jimmy gets closer and closer to becoming Saul, it seems increasingly likely that he will eventually cross them, forcing Kim to choose between Jimmy and her own standards. At this point it seems pretty clear what she’ll choose.

- Why is Jimmy so adamant about preventing Huell from fleeing? Is it because if Huell fled it would jeopardize Jimmy’s probation (he’s not supposed to be associating with criminals)? This seems unlikely, as he’s already associating with criminals when he sells them phones. Perhaps there’s some plausible deniability involved with his cell phone business. Perhaps Jimmy is just being loyal to Huell because he’s good to his partners in crime (as we saw with Marco). I would have liked Jimmy’s stake in Huell’s fate to be a bit clearer here.

- Ziegler’s construction crew has made significant progress on the super lab, but the need for secrecy also means they haven’t seen sunlight for the past eight months. Even if Mike accounted for their vitamin D intake in preparing their accommodations, the crew is still desperate for this job to end, as indicated when they start fighting after a minor accident at the construction site sets the timeframe back further. The dreariness of the job is aided in no small part by a nice stylistic touch: the hanger housing the workers’ living quarters features noticeably dimmer lighting than in the previous episode, effectively conveying their weariness. Let no one say that Better Call Saul doesn’t teach life lessons: be wary of any job that offers seemingly nice amenities, as misery might be lurking underneath the veneer. I fully expect to see the construction crew at one of Jesse’s frequented strip clubs in the next episode.

- It would seem that the super lab was cursed from start to finish, given Walt's own disgruntled employment there. No happy workplace memories for anyone.
 

- Now out of her cast, Kim can return to styling her hair in a power ponytail, rather than the relaxed, one-handed ponytail she’s sported for the first six episodes this season.

- Third week in a row with no Nacho. Previews for next time tell us he’ll be back next week (and fully healed, given the time jump). Yes, please.

- Jimmy’s business cards are an early play on the “Better call Saul!” slogan Saul will later use in his TV ads, here reading “Need to Call? Buy from Saul!” His business cards raise another question: should we start referring to Jimmy as Saul now, at least in his professional capacities? I'll probably hold off until he starts up his law practice again (or changes his name).

- Jimmy’s practice tour of the office he’d like to share with Kim was nicely stylized, shot almost entirely from Huell’s silent point of view, so that we’re in the dark about the identity of Jimmy's audience until the very end.

- Another reason to suspect Kim’s mysterious defense strategy will work: her and Jimmy’s defense of Huell can then serve as motivation for Huell’s loyalty to Jimmy throughout his tenure on Breaking Bad.