Better Call Saul Season 4, Episode 10, “Winner”

The season four finale of Better Call Saul, “Winner,” is aptly named, as it offers up a great finale to another ultimately strong season of television. This season has had lagging moments, but when firing on all cylinders like it is here, even previously lackluster or mixed bag plots like the construction of the super lab come to life in new and exciting ways.

Let’s begin with the construction of the super lab, a plot that often struggled to hold my interest throughout the year. The writers made it moderately compelling through their usual storytelling tactic of withholding information to generate curiosity (like when Mike conducts clandestine architect interviews), or through providing Mike with another opportunity to demonstrate his foresight and contingency planning, or through interjecting a modicum of suspense over whether or not Kai would pose a security risk. Ultimately, though, this plot felt like an answer to an unnecessary question about the origin of the lab.

Part of the problem here was that this plot failed to tell us anything new about Mike. Ziegler’s friendship with Mike was clearly designed to test Mike’s professionalism, but the outcome of this test was never really in question. Mike’s unwavering professionalism is one of his most fundamental traits, and his bond with Ziegler was never so powerful that it cast doubt over Mike’s character. Had Mike bonded with one of the younger construction crew members, seeing him as a surrogate son to replace the one he lost, then there might have been more meat on these story bones, but Ziegler never amounted to more than a work friend, and Mike was never going to cross Gus no matter how Mike felt about the situation. (I suppose we see something new from Mike insofar as he winds up killing someone for Gus, which is a criminal depth to which he hadn't stooped thus far, but this is only a shade darker than his criminal exploits in previous seasons, particularly his desire to kill Hector at the end of season two, so it seems like less of a point of no return than all of the steps Jimmy took toward Saul this season).

However, Lalo’s interjection into Mike’s search for Ziegler breathed new life into this plot, as it provided a great showcase for Lalo’s character. Lalo’s first two appearances hinted that he was different from the other Salamancas we’ve seen, and this episode makes good on those hints, and then some. He quickly proves himself to be the smartest and most dynamic of any of Gus’s previous (and future) cartel foils. Take his first appearance this episode: he’s staking out Gus’s operation at the chicken farm and taking detailed notes, demonstrating patience, dedication, and planning unlike anything we’ve seen from a Salamanca previously. When he spots unusual activity from Gus’s men, rather than puzzle over it or shrug it off, he springs into action, following Gus to Mike, and then having the wherewithal to stick to Mike once Gus departs.

Pitting Lalo against Mike is a smart move, as it allows Lalo to further demonstrate his mettle. If Lalo can measure up to Mike, then we’ll have even more confirmation of how formidable an antagonist he’ll be. We know from Breaking Bad that Mike knows how to spot and shake a tail, so it would be a disservice to Mike’s character if he were to fail to detect Lalo, and sure enough, Mike spots him almost immediately. What follows is a nice little suspense sequence where, once again, we become curious about the purpose of Mike’s actions and are gratified when the results reveal his logic: he lures Lalo into a gated parking lot and then uses chewing gum to jam the gate upon leaving, delaying Lalo long enough to shake him. Score: Mike 1, Lalo 0.*

* This scene is not without grace notes. Particularly smooth: it appears as though Mike is reaching for his gun when he opens his glove compartment, but then he moves it aside to access his chewing gum. Different jobs require different tools. Another layer of complication adds further intrigue: Mike figures that he’ll need more than just a jammed gate to delay Lalo, so he waits until another car is about to leave, giving himself a buffer. His tail would barge through the gate, but Joe Schmoe would not. It’s yet another instance of Mike’s powers of observation and foresight. Were Mike not in a hurry to reach Ziegler before Gus, I can easily envision Mike going a step further, trying to turn the tables on Lalo by simultaneously losing him and identifying him without letting Lalo realize it. But in this instance, he doesn’t have time for this shit.

Lalo isn’t done yet though. Demonstrating further gumshoe instincts, he returns to the store where Mike first caught Ziegler’s trail, and figures out where Mike went. It’s a great scene, because in addition to demonstrating Lalo’s intelligence, it also illustrates his differences from Mike. Mike put on an act to get the info he needed from an innocent store clerk, whom Mike was unwilling to kill, but Lalo lacks such reservations, killing the clerk when his own attempt at a similar act fails. Lalo is smart, but he’s also a Salamanca, and like the Cousins he can be deadly and merciless.

Lalo soon evens the score with Mike, calling Ziegler and tricking him into divulging information about the super lab. Lalo is all kinds of formidable here: he’s smooth in tricking Ziegler, prescient in realizing Mike will get there first, and savvy enough to realize Mike has pulled Ziegler off the phone mid-conversation. Score: Mike 1, Lalo 1. Lalo is deliciously smug here, and by proving himself to be a capable opponent, he gives the super lab construction story more juice than it has had all season.

A part of me wishes Lalo had been introduced even earlier, as his presence also would have likely enlivened earlier episodes, possibly more so than the fan-service appearance of the Cousins (although reintroducing the Cousins also laid some groundwork for preparing us to compare Lalo favorably with them). Lalo is interesting because like Nacho, he presumably survives into and/or past Breaking Bad, leaving his role in the story open. Saul will know him, or know of him, by the time he meets Walt and Jesse on Breaking Bad (Lalo is his second guess about who sent them, after Nacho). Thus he has the potential to serve as a foil for Jimmy/Saul as well, and to play a role in whatever story there might be to tell with Cinnabon Gene.

Ultimately, Lalo’s exploits put the final nail in Ziegler’s coffin, because Ziegler now represents a security risk to Gus not just in terms of law enforcement, but also in terms of Gus’s relationship with the cartel. Were Zielger to live, Lalo would get to him eventually, and one way or another he’d learn of the super lab, which would be almost as bad as having the DEA learn of it. Thus there’s never any question over what Gus will make Mike do when he finally catches up to Ziegler.

Jonathan Banks does a nice job with the scene as Mike goes from being upset with Ziegler for being so foolish, to being pained that he will have to kill his friend. Ziegler, for his part, displays the same soft-heartedness that got him in such hot water in the first place. Once he finally understands his deadly peril and the futility of resisting it, he decides to make it as easy as possible for Mike because Zielger looks out for his intimates, even when one of them has to kill him. Ziegler’s story often felt perfunctory, but he receives a nicely rendered sendoff, one full of as much dignity and compassion as a drug-related murder can be.

As revelatory as Lalo’s introduction to the super lab construction plot is, by far the most enlightening story material of “Winner” involves Jimmy’s law license appeal. Finally, we get explicit insight into exactly what’s been going through Jimmy’s mind all season, explaining not only his largely nonchalant reaction to Chuck’s suicide, but also crystallizing the ethos that will become central to Saul’s worldview. Here we see Saul finally emerge nearly fully formed from beneath Jimmy’s goodhearted demeanor.

We’re reminded in the episode’s prologue of what Chuck and Jimmy used to mean to each other when Chuck celebrates Jimmy passing the New Mexico Bar and sees him home safely. The scenes paint a touching picture of brotherly love, one that is made bittersweet by our knowledge of how things will end between them (although even here, Chuck seems more concerned about Jimmy than he is happy for him).

Jimmy’s relatively innocent demeanor in the flashback sets up a stark contrast for his introduction in the present, where he fakes his grief as he mumbles “watermelon pickles” to himself over Chuck’s grave, putting on a good show for anyone who might stop by on the anniversary of Chuck’s death. It’s part one of the long-term con he and Kim have devised to make Jimmy seem more sincere ahead of his appeal, trusting that word will eventually get back to the Bar Association. It’s one of many performances Jimmy will make before the episode ends.

In part two of the con, Jimmy dedicates a university law library reading room in Chuck’s name, care of a hefty donation to the university (perhaps paid for with Jimmy’s burner phone money). Lest it seem too obvious, he makes the donation anonymously, but during the commemoration Kim and his film crew casually spread word that he is the donor. Part three of the con is his participation in the scholarship committee bequeathed to him in Chuck’s will, and it’s here where Jimmy’s feelings about Chuck (and Saul’s raison d’etre) are fully revealed.

After interviewing the candidates and tallying the votes, Jimmy argues in favor of a candidate for whom only he voted, and it becomes clear he sees himself in this candidate: she’s had a brush with the law – another committee member refers to her as “the shoplifter” – but she shouldn’t be dismissed just because she made a bad decision in the past. Jimmy is talking about himself when he describes her as someone doing a pretty good job at trying to turn her life around, even if she isn’t perfect, and that she’s worth consideration because facing adversity gives her something the other candidates lack. This might be a part of the con – he’s trying to get the others on the committee to think of him more sympathetically as well – but it’s also something Jimmy genuinely believes about himself.

When the committee still votes to give scholarships to candidates with spotless records, Jimmy rushes out to give his surrogate, Kristy, a pep talk, which starts out as a good motivational speech, but quickly becomes twisted by Jimmy’s own personal demons, laying bare not only the Saul Goodman ethos we’re familiar with from Breaking Bad, but also his lingering animosity for Chuck.

Jimmy sees the established law community – represented, in his mind, by Chuck and others like him – as prejudiced. For Jimmy, Chuck is someone who could not see Jimmy as anything other than the mistakes Jimmy once made; he’ll always be Slippin’ Jimmy (and Chuck ensured as much by committing suicide without letting Jimmy prove him wrong). This goes double for the established legal community, which doesn’t know him intimately (as Chuck had). We need look no further than assistant D.A. Suzanne’s description of Jimmy as a disbarred scumbag a few episodes ago. Whatever Jimmy’s feelings for Chuck once were – and the prologue reminds us they were once very different, desperately seeking approval that would never come – they’ve now curdled into hatred. We see as much when Jimmy looks at a portrait of Chuck in the HHM conference room with nothing but malice in his eyes. It’s no wonder Jimmy stopped grieving for Chuck almost as soon as he got over the shock of his death. Jimmy’s broiling resentment of Chuck’s prejudice left no room for grief.

In his pep talk to Kristy, Jimmy reveals that he’s projecting his hatred of Chuck’s prejudice back onto the rest of the law community. He’s determined to make them pay for it by succeeding despite them, and to vindictively rub their noses in it by taking advantage of the system they hold so dear. Jimmy’s motivation creates layers of complexity previously absent from Saul’s characterization. Breaking the rules and cutting corners isn’t just the modus operandi of a lazy and immoral lawyer; instead it’s revenge on a brother – and by extension a community – prejudiced against him. Jimmy will spitefully abuse what was most sacred to Chuck because Chuck wouldn’t believe in him.* Moreover, he’ll do it while being an advocate for people who are perpetually overlooked and stereotyped: the Kristys, Huells, Badgers, Skinny Petes, and Jesse Pinkmans of the world. These people's guilt or innocence is immaterial because they deserve another judgment-free chance, just like him, and he’ll gleefully abuse an already-biased system to see that they get it.

* Of course, one might argue that Jimmy’s turn toward Saul proves that this prejudice was justified. However, this overlooks the role Chuck and the law community played in motivating Jimmy. It’s not that Chuck was right to doubt Jimmy in the first place, but that Chuck ironically had a hand in actualizing his greatest fear by letting that fear prejudice him.

On the way back to his car in the HHM lot, Jimmy passes by the trash bin he beat up in the pilot episode, still bearing the dents of his frustration, and he gives it a passing look. Even if Jimmy has changed a lot since the pilot, his circumstances are similar: things still aren’t going his way. When his car won’t start, he breaks down and sobs.

There’s a lot one could read into this, as Jimmy has a lot to be upset over: perhaps he’s upset over the unfairness of the world, and the prejudice through which the haves view the have-nots. Or perhaps his crying is a moment of self-awareness, upset over how others’ prejudices have so thoroughly contorted his own goals and motivations, or over how his lot in life hasn’t changed much since he first beat up the trash bin. Or perhaps seeing the trash bin reminded him that the frustration that led him to assault it initially was partly a product of his love for Chuck (he went to HHM to protest Howard trying to cheat Chuck out of Chuck’s severance). His tears, then, are grief not for Chuck, but for how he used to feel about Chuck before he learned of Chuck’s prejudice. One final possibility I like best: being on the scholarship committee has put him in a position to effect change in the life of someone who has made a mistake (perhaps the way he’d hoped someone might have helped him), and he still can’t do anything for them. He’s sobbing for what he sees as his own tragic fate, and for his awareness that at his upcoming appeal, he’ll still be a “scumbag,” just like Kristy was still “the shoplifter.”

Of course, he still has to try. He and Kim plan on having Jimmy read the letter Chuck wrote to Jimmy in his will, but when the moment comes, Jimmy reads the room, decides it won’t play, and appears to speak from the heart, telling the committee what they want to hear about what Chuck meant to him. He speaks eloquently – and often honestly – about what Chuck thought of Jimmy as a lawyer, and how impossible it would be to live up to Chuck’s standards, admitting that he can’t meet them, but promising to try. The pièce de résistance: he tells them he’ll try to be a good person even if he doesn’t get to be a lawyer.

It’s a great speech full of truths, especially how hard it was to make Chuck proud. However, it’s a speech fit for the humble approval-seeker that Jimmy used to be (i.e., prologue Jimmy), not the resentful and jaded man he’s become (i.e., Saul). Particularly telling is Jimmy’s description of how great it felt to make Chuck proud, and how comparably awful it felt to fall short of that pride. Jimmy trails off before finishing the thought, letting the committee come to their own benign conclusions, but we know from Jimmy's speech to Kristy, and from watching the series as a whole, that Chuck’s disdain for Jimmy as a lawyer is ultimately the first in a long line of dominoes leading to Saul.

It’s a foregone conclusion that Jimmy will win his appeal given the needs of the series, but the season’s final scene returns us to one of its most prominent plots: Jimmy and Kim’s relationship. When Jimmy debriefs with Kim after the appeal, the spiteful con artist in him emerges, revealing that it was all a calculated improvisation meant to manipulate the committee, whom he calls suckers and assholes. Kim is utterly shocked. Not only was she one of those suckers, as evidenced by cutaways showing her surprise, concern, and pride during Jimmy’s speech, but it also undermines what she thought she knew about Jimmy.

After his initial hearing, Jimmy was outraged that the committee denied his reinstatement because they found him insincere. He protested to Kim that he was sincere, and then leapt down her throat when he thought she also doubted his sincerity. Thus she’s totally blindsided here when he reveals his performance before the appeal committee was actually insincere. Jimmy’s glee makes her wonder if she would have been right to doubt him in the previous episode, and perhaps whether he had been playing her all along too.

The last shot of the season lingers on Kim standing alone in the hallway, thunderstruck by the emotional whiplash of Jimmy’s revelation. Lots of possible thoughts could be rushing through her head: maybe she’s suddenly remembering everything bad Chuck ever said about Jimmy; maybe she’s having second thoughts about continuing to run law cons with Jimmy now that she’s felt like a mark herself, or maybe she’s wondering how she can trust Jimmy again. Or perhaps these are all thoughts she’ll have later on, after the initial shock wears off. Regardless of whether or not Kim fully realizes it, the man she thought she knew is gone, replaced by the pernicious force she’s just helped to unleash, and whose last words to her this season are the new name under which he’ll be practicing law: “S’all good, man.”

Other thoughts:

- I suppose this episode makes Mike stretch a little in one regard: he puts on a good distressed brother-in-law act for the money wire clerk. It’s one of the rare times we’ve seen Mike perform anything other than his usual gruff self. So this situation with Ziegler has made him stretch a little too, albeit it too little too late for my tastes.

- Despite the problems with its overall season-long plots, Better Call Saul still receives top marks for being true to its characters. The plan of action for finding Ziegler that Mike dictates to his men is sound and well thought-out. He really is a master of contingency planning.

- Perhaps Gus’s experience with Ziegler makes him think that Walt would be similarly easy to wrangle should Walt get out of hand. Both Ziegler and Walt – people with only one foot in the criminal world – end up costing him or complicating things.

- Why does Gus bring Gale to the unfinished super lab, only to get angry with him when Gale gets excited about the possibility of cooking there, even in its unfinished state? He had to have known Gale would react this way. The point of this scene seems to be for Mike and Gus stare at one another, Mike upset about having to kill Ziegler, and Gus upset about Mike letting it come to that. There is some poetic unity in having it take place in the space Ziegler created, but it could have taken place anywhere, and the motivation for having it take place here (Gale visiting) seems flimsy. Better would have been for Gus to ask Gale about the feasibility of the space as it now stands, and Gale noting all the drawbacks (contaminants, ventilation, etc.).

- Gale telling Gus that it feels like they’ve been talking about the super lab forever further muddies my understanding of when, precisely, Gus raised the idea of having Gale cook for him. If it was early on in their relationship, then it makes sense for Gale feel like it’s been forever. On the other hand, if their earlier meeting this season was the first time they had discussed the possibility, then it makes less sense. Although if Gus had been working on Gale to get him fully on board with being his meth cook over the past eight months, then it could be that Gale is just exaggerating when he says it feels like they’ve been talking about the super lab forever. For Gale, forever is roughly eight months.

- I laughed to myself when Chuck takes the microphone from Jimmy in the prologue, suddenly remembering that Michael McKean is actually a talented musician (star of This Is Spinal Tap).

- Evidently Jimmy’s performance at Chuck’s grave is the first time he’s visited, which we learn when he and Kim discuss what Chuck’s headstone looks like.

- Jimmy’s pseudo-anonymous donation in Chuck’s name is like a dramatic version of a similar plot from Curb Your Enthusiasm, where Larry does the same thing, but is too obvious about wanting to be a non-anonymous anonymous donor, irritating everyone by insisting on taking credit. It’s a fine line to walk.

- Lalo’s scenes do a great service to his character, but a part of me also wonders if they slightly undermine the effectiveness of the final scene between Mike and Ziegler by making Mike’s actions a foregone conclusion. Perhaps there would have been more room for doubt had Ziegler not been so thoroughly compromised.

- Even in the midst of pulling off a successful con about his grief, Jimmy is still pitching Kim on alternative grandiose cons that resemble ideas Saul might have, like a lazy and dubious idea to rescue a judge from a burning building. The patient and subtle plan they’re executing is likely Kim’s, as Jimmy seems to be Saul in all but name at this point.

- Loved the editing of the scholarship candidate interviews. Cutting them off mid-sentence effectively conveys that for the purposes of this story, it really doesn’t matter who they are. What matters is how they reveal information about Jimmy.

- Given how Jimmy felt about Chuck, we can also better understand the wedge that grew between Jimmy and Kim this season. He saw how sad Kim was for him in her reaction to Chuck’s letter, so perhaps Jimmy was concerned that telling her how he really felt would have pushed her further away by making him seem heartless.

- Perhaps the ultimate irony of Jimmy’s speech at the appeal is the part where he says he’ll do everything he can to be worthy of the name “McGill.” In a way, this was also a true statement, as it's the last time he'll do anything law-related using his given name.

- Jimmy’s anger seems to tell Kristy more about Jimmy than it does the lesson Jimmy is trying to impart to her, as she walks away from him wearily.

- During Jimmy’s graveside con, he asks Kim how it looks, and she responds by asking – somewhat genuinely – about how it feels. She’s still probing Jimmy’s grief process, having never really understood it. This lack of understanding contributes to her shock at the end of the episode.

- I hope Kim is willing to give Jimmy a bit more leash, as I’m still intrigued by the tragedy of her being ruined by chasing the thrill of the con.