In Jimmy’s case, “The Guy For This” picks up where “50% Off” left off, with Nacho driving Jimmy to meet Lalo. As expected, Lalo hires Jimmy to be Krazy-8’s lawyer, but it’s only a pretense: he wants to use Jimmy to instruct Krazy-8 to reveal information to the police about Gus’s operation, hurting Gus’s income and making him less untouchable in Don Eladio’s eyes. Jimmy’s response to Lalo’s plan nicely illustrates how Jimmy is hovering between Saul and Jimmy, because it’s exactly the kind of low-risk, crime-abetting plan with which Saul will later be completely comfortable, but here, Jimmy is hesitant to agree to it.
Lalo insists Jimmy is “the guy for this,” and while he certainly will be, he isn’t quite yet. We see this clearest when Jimmy hems and haws when giving Lalo his fee, ultimately quoting him a ludicrously specific $7,925. Jimmy’s behavior here could be read two ways, one corresponding to a Jimmy-like motivation, the other a Saul-like motivation. The Jimmy-like motivation: he doesn’t want to work for Lalo so he tries to make himself too expensive, failing to understand Lalo’s lofty position in the cartel hierarchy, and that eight grand is chump change for him (he even has that much on him). The Saul-like motivation: Jimmy is trying to bilk Lalo, quoting him an exorbitant fee to see how much he can get away with. Jimmy’s flop sweat throughout the scene, and his subtle dismay when Lalo fishes the money out of his pocket, suggests the first of these motivations, but the scene’s writing treads the line perfectly. Even just a slightly different performance from Bob Odenkirk (who is magnificent here) could easily change the implication of Jimmy’s behavior, and it’s perfect for this moment in the series, where Jimmy is precariously balanced between who he used to be and who he’ll become.
However, in accepting Lalo’s offer, Jimmy is teetering ever closer toward Saul. After he executes Lalo’s plan (more on that below), Jimmy tries to extricate himself from further association with the cartel, but Lalo casually dismisses Jimmy’s attempts, and when Jimmy is returned to the exact spot where Nacho picked him up at the end of “50% Off,” he spots the remnants of his discarded ice cream cone, now swarming with ants. Much like the precariously perched beer bottle, it’s an apt metaphor for Jimmy’s situation. Ants might consume an ice cream cone slowly, but soon it’s overwhelmed with them, just as Jimmy will eventually become so deeply entangled in criminal enterprises that it will be impossible for him to extricate himself. Or as Nacho (who knows all too well) puts it, “When you’re in, you’re in.”
Kim also fails to balance aspects of her career when she’s called away from her public defender work to help Mesa Verde force a stubborn tenant off his property. The tenant, Mr. Acker, criticizes Kim for thinking that her meager charitable contributions to society (or his imagined versions of them) counterbalance the hatchet job she’s doing for Mesa Verde. He successfully pushes Kim’s buttons in the process, because his criticisms can easily be mapped onto Kim’s public defender work, which she does partly because it’s how she rationalizes being Mesa Verde’s pet shark in a suit. So when Acker attacks her, she unleashes her (always potent) fury on him, albeit in a way where she might as well be talking to herself about her need to perform Mesa Verde’s dirty work: “Listen, you do not get to make up your own rules. Put on your big boy pants and face reality…. Do you think you’re special? A contract means something. It’s the law, and it’s enforceable. Deal with it.”
Later though, Kim has a change of heart, returning to Acker after having done research on affordable housing for him, even offering to help him move at her own expense. She explains her change of heart by telling him – and us – about her poor upbringing, where her family always seemed only one step ahead of destitution. It’s a painfully heartfelt story, and entirely new information about Kim’s background that helps to explain both why she’s so rigorous in her professional duties and why she’s drawn to public defender work. However, it has no effect on Acker, who thinks it’s just another story Kim is making up to get what she wants.
Acker’s disbelief in Kim’s genuine sympathy is disheartening to say the least, and it eats away at Kim. The episode ends with her returning home to Jimmy, in a scene deliberately shot to parallel an earlier scene where Jimmy returned home to Kim. Just as Jimmy joined Kim for a beer on the balcony in the earlier scene, Kim does the same here, but this time, rather than save a beer from tipping over the balcony’s edge, she furiously chucks her beer – and then another, and another – into the parking lot, with Jimmy joining in the fun.
It’s a wonderful scene, because its contrast with the earlier scene says a lot without having the characters exchange any dialogue. It effectively illustrates Kim’s frustration over her inability to get through to Acker, and her frustration over her job more generally. It’s hard to help people in need when the very nature of your job makes people less likely to accept your help, and where social institutions seemed designed to perpetuate the kind of instability Kim endured growing up. Indulging in mildly risqué behavior like throwing glass bottles into the parking lot is her way of raging against the world’s injustices, and rather than question her or try to stop her, instead Jimmy is happy to abet her. It’s easy to map this behavior onto our serial concerns about Kim and Jimmy’s future, where Jimmy has long pushed for Kim to join him in the moral gray area he loves to inhabit. Perhaps all it will take are a few more pushes in this direction to tip Kim over into what will become Saul’s world.
One of Better Call Saul’s strengths is that the writers honor the characters by making them smart enough to devise ways out of their jams, but never making it too easy for them. We can see this clearly in a great scene between Nacho and his father, Manuel, where Manuel suspects that Nacho paid for a family friend to offer to buy Manuel’s upholstery shop for more than it’s worth. We don’t see Nacho arrange this deal, but it seems like the exact kind of thing Nacho would try in order to protect his father from Gus and relieve some of the pressure Nacho is under. However, Manuel is too smart – and too stubborn – for it, wanting nothing to do with Nacho’s tainted drug money. It’s good writing, because just like on Breaking Bad, a character’s refusal to take an easy way out is motivated through their traits. Walt had plenty of opportunities to stop making meth, but didn’t because of his crippling sense of pride, just like how Manuel won’t take Nacho’s money because of his disgust with Nacho’s profession. Thus even though it’s bad for Nacho, it’s good for viewers, because keeping Manuel around yields greater dramatic dividends by increasing the stakes of the conflict and making it more expedient (Gus would likely still be able to get to Manuel should he leave, it would just be clumsier to write it into the plot).
Also good writing: making Hank and Gomez into the DEA agents Jimmy needs to con in order to execute Lalo’s plan. Bringing Hank and Gomez in from Breaking Bad is more than just fan service. Anyone familiar with Breaking Bad knows these two are tough to deceive (Walt’s ability to deceive Hank notwithstanding), thus motivating Jimmy's need to improvise when they don't buy his initial song-and-dance. This improvisation in turn makes it more impressive when Jimmy eventually convinces them to agree to the premise of Lalo’s plan, and it makes the later scene between Jimmy and Lalo more suspenseful, because we’re unsure of how Lalo will react to the concessions Jimmy makes. It’s another well-written scene in episode full of not only excellent writing, but also excellent direction. A good television show would be content to stop after having created a metaphorical ice cream cone, but a great one layers a beer bottle motif on top of it. Better Call Saul is in peak form.
It’s a wonderful scene, because its contrast with the earlier scene says a lot without having the characters exchange any dialogue. It effectively illustrates Kim’s frustration over her inability to get through to Acker, and her frustration over her job more generally. It’s hard to help people in need when the very nature of your job makes people less likely to accept your help, and where social institutions seemed designed to perpetuate the kind of instability Kim endured growing up. Indulging in mildly risqué behavior like throwing glass bottles into the parking lot is her way of raging against the world’s injustices, and rather than question her or try to stop her, instead Jimmy is happy to abet her. It’s easy to map this behavior onto our serial concerns about Kim and Jimmy’s future, where Jimmy has long pushed for Kim to join him in the moral gray area he loves to inhabit. Perhaps all it will take are a few more pushes in this direction to tip Kim over into what will become Saul’s world.
Other thoughts:
- Jimmy and Lalo’s exchange is an interesting way to kick off their relationship. Before his appearance last season, all we knew of Lalo was that on Breaking Bad, Saul was more terrified of him than of Nacho. Here, Jimmy begins their relationship similarly intimidated by Lalo (nicely illustrated even before Jimmy arrives at Lalo’s garage via POV editing showing Jimmy's discomfort during the car ride there). Perhaps Lalo will give Jimmy further cause to fear him down the line. In any case, their interaction is very different from the confident swagger Saul will have later whenever he interacts with elements of the underworld (even when they’re beating the shit out of him).
- Lalo did his homework on Jimmy, recalling the scene from season one where Jimmy negotiated for Tuco to just break the twins’ legs rather than kill them. Lalo rightly marvels at Jimmy’s silver tongue, and also shows that he knows Tuco is a psychopath.
- In the first Jimmy/Kim balcony scene, Jimmy weighs how much to tell Kim about his meeting with Lalo, wisely opting for vagueness. I wonder if Kim would have been more open to Jimmy’s proposition had his meeting with Lalo come just before the second balcony scene.
- This episode featured a familiar Better Call Saul narrational tactic: keep viewers in the dark about a character’s goals in order to make us curious about them. In this case, it’s applied to Lalo’s plan for what he wants Krazy-8 to tell the police. However, it’s easy to assume it has something to do with messing up Gus’s operation, based on Lalo’s interactions with Hector last week. It’s a little more transparent than when Better Call Saul applies this kind of restricted narration to Mike’s episodic endeavors (sabotaging Hector’s drug trucks, dismantling his car to look for a tracker, etc.)
- Mike remains in a holding pattern, still torn up about Ziegler and venting his malaise in self-destructive ways. I liked his intimidation of some young toughs, but it’s getting a little repetitive at this point.
- Gus is always looking at the big picture. When Nacho dutifully tells Gus of Lalo’s plan, Gus opts to keep the dead drops as is, in order to preserve his line of intel.
- Hank immediately gets the joke of Saul’s name, and I think he’s the first character to do so. Evidently they have an affinity for the same corny sense of humor.
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