Better Call Saul 2.01
Feb. 16th, 2016 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakA mellow opener after the emotional storm which concluded the first season.
Mind you, the lengthy black and white sequence that starts the episode, and season, paralleling the s1 opener by presenting our hero's sucky post-Breaking Bad existence as Gene the Cinnabon man, only in this case with more detail, feels a bit redundant in that it doesn't tell us much we didn't know before. (New information: "Gene" seems to be friendly both with the two ladies who work at his place and with the Mike-resembling cleaning man in the mall - not a surprise, he's always been able to make most people like him if he tried - but painfully aware he's living on borrowed time, which means when he accidentally locks himself into the court with the trash buns he can't risk setting off the alarms because he does not want any contact with the police. Oh, and the "S.G. was here" inscription later indicates he thinks of himself as Saul, not Jimmy (and of course not Gene) at this point.
When we flash back to Jimmy McGill - and the whole show is one lengthy flashback, of course, - the show pulls one of these slightly cheating narrative devices where we find out that there was a missing scene in last season's finale in between Jimmy learning about the new job offer on the phone after Marco's burial and his chat with Mike and announcement of no more letting "what stopped me" from taking advantage stop him anymore. The missing scene being that he did show up on time, pulled Kim aside, asked her "are we going to happen?" and when a non-plussed Kim told him that their relationship had nothing to do with the new job flounced off to have his chat with Mike. On the one hand, this made character sense (after Chuck's approval, the prospect of both a working and private life shared with Kim was certainy a key incentive for Jimmy to keep on the relatively straight and narrow, on the other, I already groaned in advance because I could just see the number of viewers now blaming Kim on Jimmy's future career as Saul. However, turns out the show is smarter than I am (no surprise).
Kim tracks down Jimmy at the pool and has the expected "what the hell?" conversation about not taking the law firm job with him (btw, her counter argument to his statement that him working so hard to be a good lawyer was about Chuck, that now to throw a law career away would also be about Chuck, and would be what Chuck wants, was a good one), but Jimmy's claim that what he likes about law practice he can get in other ways, too, leads us into something I didn't expect to happen. He decides to introduce her to Slippin' Jimmy not the theoretical but the practical way by starting a scam right then and there, and Kim, first looking like a mixture of appalled and fascinated, after some silent observation decides to go along with it and participates. Incidentally: I don't think she would have if the scam had involved doing something that was actually illegal and/or meant stealing from someone else, like, say, a con involving a fake rolex or something like that, because leaving all moral reasons aside, even in reckless mode Kim would be too aware of the danger of this ruining her legal career which she's built her life around. But the scam they are running doesn't do worse than tricking a greedy bastard (Ken the stockbroker, future annoyance of Walter White in season 3 of Breaking Bad) into paying a horrendous bill for drinks which he himself ordered, and there are parallels between being a lawyer and being a conman/woman, plus she does care for Jimmy, and he's just thrown the ultimate I dare you at her.
And here's the smart and heartbreaking part of the storytelling: Jimmy and Kim doing the scam together and then ending up having sex still means complete miscommunication, in a way. For Kim, the scam was a fun, exciting adventure but also something that's very clearly not something she can imagine doing on a regular basis. (The scam, not the sex. BTW, I can't make up my mind whether or not we're supposed to think this was the first time they had sex, but the way the bathroom scene with the toothbrush goes both indicates long term familiarity, the way they're physically comfortable with each other, AND that this particular morning after situation is relatively new, so who knows?) The scam is not something real, it's brief escapism. For Jimmy, it was of course his entire pre Alburquerque life, and the night was the fantasy that he could have this life (instead of the lawyer life) with Kim, which never even occurs to her as an option. Mind you, from Kim's pov that she doesn't bring up the law firm job offer again could indicate she wants give Jimmy time to decide what to do with his life or that she assumes he'll take it up sooner or later (not least because she thinks, and for good reason, that he's great as a lawyer); the possibility that he would want to be a conman for he rest of his life is as alien as the idea that she would want to be to her.
Jimmy in the end deciding to take up the law firm job after all is partly born out of the realisation on the pool that life as a conman with Kim is a fantasy, but it may also be because returning to the conman life alone, back to Slippin' Jimmy that was, is equally unreal. (Saul Goodman may be a criminal lawyer, but he is a lawyer.)
Mike and idiot IT pharmacist subplot, complete with Nacho doing that house raid he never got to do on the Kettlemans: was the kind of "most criminals are entitled idiots" black humor thing both BB and BCS like to do, but I really hope they won't let the guy outstay his welcome as comic relief. Though I suspect Jimmy might end up representing him.
Mind you, the lengthy black and white sequence that starts the episode, and season, paralleling the s1 opener by presenting our hero's sucky post-Breaking Bad existence as Gene the Cinnabon man, only in this case with more detail, feels a bit redundant in that it doesn't tell us much we didn't know before. (New information: "Gene" seems to be friendly both with the two ladies who work at his place and with the Mike-resembling cleaning man in the mall - not a surprise, he's always been able to make most people like him if he tried - but painfully aware he's living on borrowed time, which means when he accidentally locks himself into the court with the trash buns he can't risk setting off the alarms because he does not want any contact with the police. Oh, and the "S.G. was here" inscription later indicates he thinks of himself as Saul, not Jimmy (and of course not Gene) at this point.
When we flash back to Jimmy McGill - and the whole show is one lengthy flashback, of course, - the show pulls one of these slightly cheating narrative devices where we find out that there was a missing scene in last season's finale in between Jimmy learning about the new job offer on the phone after Marco's burial and his chat with Mike and announcement of no more letting "what stopped me" from taking advantage stop him anymore. The missing scene being that he did show up on time, pulled Kim aside, asked her "are we going to happen?" and when a non-plussed Kim told him that their relationship had nothing to do with the new job flounced off to have his chat with Mike. On the one hand, this made character sense (after Chuck's approval, the prospect of both a working and private life shared with Kim was certainy a key incentive for Jimmy to keep on the relatively straight and narrow, on the other, I already groaned in advance because I could just see the number of viewers now blaming Kim on Jimmy's future career as Saul. However, turns out the show is smarter than I am (no surprise).
Kim tracks down Jimmy at the pool and has the expected "what the hell?" conversation about not taking the law firm job with him (btw, her counter argument to his statement that him working so hard to be a good lawyer was about Chuck, that now to throw a law career away would also be about Chuck, and would be what Chuck wants, was a good one), but Jimmy's claim that what he likes about law practice he can get in other ways, too, leads us into something I didn't expect to happen. He decides to introduce her to Slippin' Jimmy not the theoretical but the practical way by starting a scam right then and there, and Kim, first looking like a mixture of appalled and fascinated, after some silent observation decides to go along with it and participates. Incidentally: I don't think she would have if the scam had involved doing something that was actually illegal and/or meant stealing from someone else, like, say, a con involving a fake rolex or something like that, because leaving all moral reasons aside, even in reckless mode Kim would be too aware of the danger of this ruining her legal career which she's built her life around. But the scam they are running doesn't do worse than tricking a greedy bastard (Ken the stockbroker, future annoyance of Walter White in season 3 of Breaking Bad) into paying a horrendous bill for drinks which he himself ordered, and there are parallels between being a lawyer and being a conman/woman, plus she does care for Jimmy, and he's just thrown the ultimate I dare you at her.
And here's the smart and heartbreaking part of the storytelling: Jimmy and Kim doing the scam together and then ending up having sex still means complete miscommunication, in a way. For Kim, the scam was a fun, exciting adventure but also something that's very clearly not something she can imagine doing on a regular basis. (The scam, not the sex. BTW, I can't make up my mind whether or not we're supposed to think this was the first time they had sex, but the way the bathroom scene with the toothbrush goes both indicates long term familiarity, the way they're physically comfortable with each other, AND that this particular morning after situation is relatively new, so who knows?) The scam is not something real, it's brief escapism. For Jimmy, it was of course his entire pre Alburquerque life, and the night was the fantasy that he could have this life (instead of the lawyer life) with Kim, which never even occurs to her as an option. Mind you, from Kim's pov that she doesn't bring up the law firm job offer again could indicate she wants give Jimmy time to decide what to do with his life or that she assumes he'll take it up sooner or later (not least because she thinks, and for good reason, that he's great as a lawyer); the possibility that he would want to be a conman for he rest of his life is as alien as the idea that she would want to be to her.
Jimmy in the end deciding to take up the law firm job after all is partly born out of the realisation on the pool that life as a conman with Kim is a fantasy, but it may also be because returning to the conman life alone, back to Slippin' Jimmy that was, is equally unreal. (Saul Goodman may be a criminal lawyer, but he is a lawyer.)
Mike and idiot IT pharmacist subplot, complete with Nacho doing that house raid he never got to do on the Kettlemans: was the kind of "most criminals are entitled idiots" black humor thing both BB and BCS like to do, but I really hope they won't let the guy outstay his welcome as comic relief. Though I suspect Jimmy might end up representing him.
