selenak

If Rhea Seehorn doesn't win an Emmy this year, there really is no justice in the (tv) world left. That was so brilliant and heartbreaking all over again.

Kim's equivalent of a Gene-in-Omaha existence turns out to have become a woman determined not to voice any opinion on anything, not even salad sauce or ice cream flavor, in a dull job and a loveless marriage. As self flaggelations go, it's a horrible one, BUT it is also running away. (Hence it being an equivalent to Gene, because Jimmy/Saul did not want to do penance, he wanted to hide and survive.) It is not atonement because it changes nothing for the victims of the guilt Kim carries with her - dead Howard, and live Cheryl. And that's why, when Jimmy angrily flings her "you should turn yourself in" back at her, challenging her to do it first, she actually does it. (BTW, at first I thought the woman Kim was visiting in Albuquerque was her old friend Paige because having confessed to the police, she needed a lawyer, until I realized it was Cheryl Hamlin, and this was Kim completing her confession.)

Regarding said phonecall, I was wrong as to what it was about last episode, but otoh I think it's still true Gene didn't suddenly reconnect with Jeff and invent a new scam because he misses the thrill so much. Jimmy McGill is constitutionally (ahem) incapable of turning himself in, but between Gene hammering the piano as soon as he enters and sees his mark is actually still asleep and going upstairs to steal some instantly to be missed watches instead of making his getaway with Jeff when he still can, he clearly does want to be caught, which is the next best thing. That he tries to talk Marian out of reporting him later doesn't contradict that - he also wants to keep running and is caught between both impulses. But I think that phonecall with Kim, which is the most emotionally visceral in this 'verse since the Walt and Skyler one in Ozymandias, settles it: he can't continue as Gene, one way or the other. (Kim ending the phonecall with "I'm glad you're still alive" has to be worse than if she'd reviled him.)

Meanwhile in the Breaking Bad era flashbacks, we get to see Saul signing his divorce papers and pretending unconvincingly not to care while Kim meets Jesse Pinkman. (Aaron Paul, still not looking anything like in his early 20s, but delivering on the Jesse-ness. Jesse asking Kim whether Saul really is a good lawyer is the kind of thing tying Kim to the BB developments that is not strictly necessary, narrative irony not withstanding, but effective fanservice nonetheless.)

In the black and white present, the last we see of Kim is when after her confession to Cheryl and driving away, she unfreezes and explodes into crying. Which works on so many levels. As the long repressed grief for everything, but also, I think, as liberation. Just as Gene in Omaha's existence is ended by the time the episode ends, so, I'd guess, is Kim's as the colorless silent doormat in Florida. Whether she will end up in prison as the result of her confession or not, I think she's done with that life.