Quiet Intensity Begins to Boil on ‘Better Call Saul’ (TV REVIEW)

[rating=9.00] “Sabrosito”

Never before has so much drama been milked from so little action. The glacially slow pace of this season of Better Call Saul—which matches that of previous seasons—is alternately the most frustrating and rewarding of television experiences. Week by week, plots and characters move only by fractions of a degree, but within those fractions lies the world, and what a rich world it’s turning out to be.

The problem with spinoffs is the desire to compare them from the show that birthed them, and, boy, does this one ever have one mother of a mother. By this point in Better Call Saul’s parent series, Breaking Bad, things were getting intense. Murder, mayhem, and meth ran rampant, taking viewers on a wild horse race of intrigue and action. Here, the moves are more deliberate and calculated—a chess match, where the real action is taking place between the moves, and the moves themselves only serving the heighten the intellectual battle taking place by the grandmasters.

More than any other episode so far this season, the most recent Better Call Saul seemed to serve as a portent. Only a pawn or two was moved, but they moved in such a way as to promise big strikes in the near future, and the waiting bolstering the intensity that seems to lurk just behind the next bend.

“Sabrosito” gave us our most Gus-heavy episode of Better Call Saul yet, digging deeper into the motivations of the greatest antagonists in television history. Not the least of which was the apparent confirmation of long running speculation regarding the sexuality of Gustavo Fring. The cold open brought us to a familiar pool, being enjoyed by a familiar face, Don Eladio, last seen in Breaking Bad taking an ill-fortuned shot of tequila courtesy of Gus.

 

The pool plays setting to an impromptu party, of sorts, as Hector Salamanca brings in a bag full of money—as well as the news of his purchase of an ice cream manufacturer in Mexico and ice cream store in Albuquerque. All the better to traffic drugs. Hector’s good news is quickly overshadowed by the appearance of another familiar face, Juan Bolsa (victim of Fring’s first surreptitious strike against the cartel in Breaking Bad). Juan Bolsa brings with him two bags of money, embarrassing poor Hector in front of his boss.

Bolsa’s good fortunes are, of course, the result of Gustavo’s meticulous distribution tactics. Hector dismisses Gustavo with a snide, derogatory remark that all but confirms theories that Gus is, in fact, gay. Normally, this wouldn’t matter except that it adds considerable weight to the backstory of Fring. Fans have long theorized that Gus’s business partner—murdered by Hector and Don Eladio prior to the events of Breaking Bad, but seen in a flashback—were, in fact, romantic partners. Why else would Gus wait so long to strike so hard against the cartel who brought him such success and riches if not for love?

Vague though it was, this seeming confirmation throws new light on the whole of Gus Fring’s character, turning his entire arc into a tragedy of love and revenge. Every move made by Fring that we saw in Breaking Bad was the end result of a years-long ploy to retaliate against the loss of the love of his life, which makes his gruesome end at the hands of Walter White resonate with pain and heartache. (Just who was he adjusting that tie for, I wonder?)

It also explains Gus’s cold calculation through the rest of this episode, which brought him on a collision course with Hector, who’s jealous of Juan Bolsa’s favor with Don Eladio. Hector and his henchmen—including Nacho, who makes his first appearance this season—hold a Los Pollos Hermanos hostage in an attempt to shakedown Gus so Hector can reap the rewards now held by Juan Bolsa.

This gives Better Call Saul the chance to explore Fring’s relationship to his employees—and theirs to him. They buy his story about the attempted shakedown hook, line, and sinker, which makes sense given that they have no reason to doubt his version of the events. But from our perspective we’re taken deeper into just how complex Fring’s deceptions truly go. No small feat, considering all we saw in Breaking Bad, but this was truly a new side to his character, and the kindly, caring façade he puts on only increases the terror we know he’s capable of inspiring.

Fring’s story is paralleled in this episode by Mike’s, who’s still flying high off his successful subterfuge of Salamanca from last week’s episode. It’s interesting to see Mike still battling himself, his former cop brain keeping him from breaking entirely bad just yet. All episode Fring attempts to pay him for the services rendered in disrupting Salamanca’s operation. For Mike, it wasn’t about making money or increasing his presence within “the game,” it was simple payback for his threats against his family.

Mike is a man of principle, and it’s a principle that Fring can respect. By the time the two meet at Mike’s parking lot job, you can sense the burgeoning respect between the two which eventually leads to their relationship in Breaking Bad. It also gives the chance for Gus to drop one of the coldest lines yet delivered in either of the two shows, as he explains to Mike why he stopped him from killing Hector at the end of last season:

“A bullet to the head would have been far too humane.”

As seen in Breaking Bad, Gus spends much of his time quietly tormenting Hector, ripping away the last of his family and leaving him crippled by a stroke in a retirement home. One wonders now, however, whether Gus somehow caused Hector’s stroke that left him voiceless and infirm. This line and its delivery suggests huge developments in the (hopefully) near future.

As to the eventual namesake of the series, this episode was light on Jimmy, but what we got leaves you desperate to know more. Jimmy and Kim busy themselves trying to protect Jimmy from disbarment, which doesn’t look too good on the surface. Jimmy agrees to plea out, acquiescing to Chuck’s requirement of submitting himself to a bar hearing and, Chuck hopes, finally removing Jimmy’s stain off his chosen profession.

But there’s an ace up their sleeves, it seems, though nothing has been revealed as of yet. Kim and Jimmy went to great lengths to cancel Chuck’s repairman, in order to send Mike in their stead. Mike, in turn, takes pictures of Chuck’s house, making sure to catch all the disarray caused by Chuck’s disorder. To what end? We’ll have to wait, but that’s not all they’ve got planned. After the hearing, Kim confronts Chuck and Howard, informing them of her plans to suppress the recording Chuck made at the upcoming hearing, in the process getting Chuck to admit that he’d made a copy of the tape Jimmy destroyed.

Though she walks away semi-sullen, when she meets up with Jimmy at the exit her mood changes to ecstatic. They’ve got him, they proclaim, as they head out into the sunset on the way to apparently finally defeating Chuck. The hows and the whys of their impending victory will have to wait—and surely, there’ll be a wrench or two thrown along the way—but you can taste the success, tainted though it may be by everything else we know about Jimmy/Saul Goodman.

But what a ride it’ll be—what a ride it has been. Never before has a show—let alone a spinoff—gone so out of its way to justify its existence and keep you hungry for more. This, despite its often frustratingly slow pace. We’re still a long way from Saul Goodman, and even farther away from Breaking Bad. As frustrating as that may be for fans who long for Walter and Jesse, the space between the two (and the pace that sustains it) has allowed Better Call Saul to blossom into one of the finest shows currently on the air. What else can you say except gimme Jimmy?

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