Last night’s episode of Better Call Saul was all about schemes. Cons, grifts, flim flams. They started small and in the past and ended big and in the slightly less distant past, and there was another one in the middle depending how loose you’re will to get with the concept. And from all these schemes we learned two important things about Jimmy McGill:
- “Saul Goodman” was apparently a thing for him before it became the thing. I’m not sure if it was an ad lib in the moment in that alley when Jimmy was asked his name or if that was his go-to pseudonym for all of his nefarious Illinois-based trickery, but either way, it was fun to hear the words coming out of his mouth. And if the trouble he’s having with his name/likeness/logo keeps progressing, we might see that change to Saul sooner than later.
- The “rock” he’s building his “church” on involved hiring college students to film a fake commercial protesting a judge’s ruling that he illegally copied another lawyer’s style and logo on a billboard that he paid for with a bribe he received for keeping quiet about stolen money and which a brave associate of his tumbled off while the camera was rolling so he could run up and save the day in an attempt to get free publicity via the local media. I’ve seen it a million times.
The tricky thing about that second one is where we go from here. Jimmy’s got some clients rolling in now that he’s the big fancy hero lawyer, but Hamlin immediately suspected it was all a ruse, and Chuck knows it was a ruse both because of his intimate knowledge of Mullet Jimmy’s — this is what I’ve been calling Flashback Jimmy, for simplicity — propensity for shenanigans and because Jimmy went to great lengths to hide it from him. (Provided you consider “stealing your brother’s newspaper” to be great lengths for a cover-up, which I do.) Things are looking up for Jimmy temporarily, but there are lots of shoes still capable of dropping, in addition to the unrelated future trouble he’s perfectly capable of getting himself into.
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Schemes from last night’s episode, ranked:
1) Billboard scheme. Most important to the continuing arc of the show, most elaborate and thought-out, involved wires. Number one with a bullet.
2) Rolex scheme. Fun, but flawed. What if the target doesn’t recognize the value of the watch and wants to split the cash? Or what if he only has, like, $20 on him after a night of boozing? Then all of you’ve got is some breakfast money and the joy of calling someone you don’t know a butthole. I mean, sure, it’s still worth it. But it’s a grind, not a potential windfall.
3) Accounting scheme(s). A scheme within a scheme, as Jimmy/Saul used fraudulent accounting to clean the money the Kettlemans acquired themselves from fraudulent accounting. My favorite part of this one was that he billed himself out at $950/hr while pounding figures into an old school adding machine in a dingy one-room office hidden away in the back of a beauty salon. Nothing shady about that!
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A few odds and ends:
– Big shoutout to Mrs. Kettleman for comparing sometimes having to work late without robbing taxpayers of a low seven-figure sum to slavery. She’s completely bonkers. I adore her.
– If you look at it from an angle, there’s a nice symmetry between Jimmy’s old grifting accomplice saying “Help yourself to some of this, butthole” and giving him the finger and Mrs. Kettleman saying “You’re the kind of lawyer guilty people hire” and shoving hush money in his face. Kind of like an SAT analogy.
– One perk of working out of the back of a beauty salon: Inviting dates over to sit in massage chairs and drink bottomless glasses of cucumber water at like 2 a.m. after the shop closes. WHAT WOMAN ALIVE COULD RESIST IT? (Besides the associate of your personal nemesis, I guess.)
– As much as I was disappointed that Saul’s high-fashion spending spree after getting the Kettleman’s money wasn’t a three-minute montage set to, like, “Got My Mind Set on You” by George Harrison, I did appreciate the little “Is he gonna be Saul now? Huh? Is he? Is that why he grabbing a Saul-esque brightly colored dress shirt? IS HE?” winks at the audience. Too many of these misdirects could get a little infuriating, but it’s still plenty of fun at this point. We all know why we’re here and where we’re headed. Let’s have a blast on the way.
– Awww, Saul’s first billboard!
– Jimmy’s still got Nacho problems, as Nacho figured out it was Jimmy who tipped off the Kettleman’s about the kidnapping plan. But he’s also standing up to Nacho by pointing out all the flaws in the plan and how Nacho should be thanking him. It reminded me a little of the way he interacted with Walt and Jesse.
– My favorite shot of the night was the one from the neighbor’s perspective while Chuck was stealing the newspaper in his space blanket. I was just jotting down a note that said “Imagine how weird it must be to watch your famous lawyer hermit neighbor scurry across the street to steal a newspaper while covered with tin foil” and boom. They gave it to me. Much appreciated, guys.
– Hey, let’s check in with Mik-
Fair enough. Your thoughts below.
