Better Call Saul 1.03
Feb. 17th, 2015 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which I suddenly want the AU where Mike and Jimmy/Saul remained legit and opened a cranky detective agency.
The opening flashback is divorced from the rest episode, except to set up the "here's Johnny" gag, but it delivers on character development and backstory, as it shows us Chuck before his phobia/whatever happened, in his formidable lawyer days, coming to the aide of litte brother Jimmy who not for the first time has screwed massively. This not only lays the foundation for Jimmy's show-current day loyalty to Chuck but also makes the important point, previously only hinted at in dialogue, that as opposed to Walter White, who starts out the show as an honest citizen (albeit one with a massive chip on his shoulder and hidden Grey Matter related grudges) before he starts the road to villainy, Jimmy actually already was a shady customer before the show starts (let's handwave the post-Felina prologue here) and is actually currently on a binge of trying to live the (mostly) honest life, i.e. trying to be better than he used to be. This is prequel-doomed, of course.
The main plot of the episode concerns Jimmy having to solve the question of what happened to the Kettlemans in order to keep Nacho's men from killing him. Since the road to hell is paved with good intentions, it figures that this situation only arose because Jimmy, after Nacho's visit last episode, was afraid the Kettlemans would not survive Nacho's robbing and was driven to warn them. As the episode goes on, we get to know the secretly smoking tall blonde better, whose name turns out to be Kim and who works as a lawyer and assistant to Jimmy's bete noir Howard at Chuck's old firm, which is good, since other than her this show so far has no recurring female characters (unless you count the women in the pedicure store). So far, she comes across as sensibe, matter-of-factly, and an old friend who probably did have a fling or one night stand at some point with Jimmy back in the day but mainly has an old buddy vibe with him. And a far better career.
In terms of inherited-from-Breaking-Bad characters, this is where the running gag of Mike and the parking stickers finally pays off and we get the first character scenes with him, as his old cop instincts make him the sole person convinced by Jimmy's theory as to what happened to the Kettlemans, and he even provides a shrewd idea as to what happened next. This whole sequence was in turn hilarious and golden, and made me wish for the above mentioned AU; would have been less profitable but far better for Mike and Saul in the long run, too, if Mike had become the Kalinda to Jimmy's Alicia, no?
As it is, Jimmy tracking down the Kettlemans was more black satire, complete with them wholesomely singing songs with their kids while hording their stolen money. Case solved, though my guess is that all that money is a reminder to Jimmy that you don't have to be a drug dealer like Nacho to be unabashedly greedy; it's more that types like Nacho are honest about it. Since tracking down the Kettlemans fulfills Nacho's demand to get him out within 24 hours, or else, this is probably also the corner stone of future Saul's reputation within the criminal world as the go-to lawyer. Otoh I doubt Nacho forgets his conclusion that Jimmy must have somehow ratted him out; things look still tricky for our antihero.
Ongoing mystery: what happened to Chuck to transform him from firm owning successful lawyer to phobia ridden jobless hermit; I assume that's a seasonal arc, and we won't find out the exact answer until the season finale.
Trivia: social commentary of the week is Jimmy seeing the two Hispanic men walking towards him and immediately concluding they must be Nacho's people, i.e. criminals, whereas they're actually cops. Which is all very well, but it reminds me that the non-criminal recurring Hispanics in BB were very rare. Steve Gomez, Andrea & Brock, and I think that was it. Then again, if your show's main character is busy being a criminal, most characters he regularly has interaction with are bound to do the same.
The opening flashback is divorced from the rest episode, except to set up the "here's Johnny" gag, but it delivers on character development and backstory, as it shows us Chuck before his phobia/whatever happened, in his formidable lawyer days, coming to the aide of litte brother Jimmy who not for the first time has screwed massively. This not only lays the foundation for Jimmy's show-current day loyalty to Chuck but also makes the important point, previously only hinted at in dialogue, that as opposed to Walter White, who starts out the show as an honest citizen (albeit one with a massive chip on his shoulder and hidden Grey Matter related grudges) before he starts the road to villainy, Jimmy actually already was a shady customer before the show starts (let's handwave the post-Felina prologue here) and is actually currently on a binge of trying to live the (mostly) honest life, i.e. trying to be better than he used to be. This is prequel-doomed, of course.
The main plot of the episode concerns Jimmy having to solve the question of what happened to the Kettlemans in order to keep Nacho's men from killing him. Since the road to hell is paved with good intentions, it figures that this situation only arose because Jimmy, after Nacho's visit last episode, was afraid the Kettlemans would not survive Nacho's robbing and was driven to warn them. As the episode goes on, we get to know the secretly smoking tall blonde better, whose name turns out to be Kim and who works as a lawyer and assistant to Jimmy's bete noir Howard at Chuck's old firm, which is good, since other than her this show so far has no recurring female characters (unless you count the women in the pedicure store). So far, she comes across as sensibe, matter-of-factly, and an old friend who probably did have a fling or one night stand at some point with Jimmy back in the day but mainly has an old buddy vibe with him. And a far better career.
In terms of inherited-from-Breaking-Bad characters, this is where the running gag of Mike and the parking stickers finally pays off and we get the first character scenes with him, as his old cop instincts make him the sole person convinced by Jimmy's theory as to what happened to the Kettlemans, and he even provides a shrewd idea as to what happened next. This whole sequence was in turn hilarious and golden, and made me wish for the above mentioned AU; would have been less profitable but far better for Mike and Saul in the long run, too, if Mike had become the Kalinda to Jimmy's Alicia, no?
As it is, Jimmy tracking down the Kettlemans was more black satire, complete with them wholesomely singing songs with their kids while hording their stolen money. Case solved, though my guess is that all that money is a reminder to Jimmy that you don't have to be a drug dealer like Nacho to be unabashedly greedy; it's more that types like Nacho are honest about it. Since tracking down the Kettlemans fulfills Nacho's demand to get him out within 24 hours, or else, this is probably also the corner stone of future Saul's reputation within the criminal world as the go-to lawyer. Otoh I doubt Nacho forgets his conclusion that Jimmy must have somehow ratted him out; things look still tricky for our antihero.
Ongoing mystery: what happened to Chuck to transform him from firm owning successful lawyer to phobia ridden jobless hermit; I assume that's a seasonal arc, and we won't find out the exact answer until the season finale.
Trivia: social commentary of the week is Jimmy seeing the two Hispanic men walking towards him and immediately concluding they must be Nacho's people, i.e. criminals, whereas they're actually cops. Which is all very well, but it reminds me that the non-criminal recurring Hispanics in BB were very rare. Steve Gomez, Andrea & Brock, and I think that was it. Then again, if your show's main character is busy being a criminal, most characters he regularly has interaction with are bound to do the same.
