‘Better Call Saul’ Goes On ‘Quite A Ride’ (TV RECAP)

[rating=9.00] “Quite A Ride”

They did it, the finally broke bad.

The farther Better Call Saul gets in its own timeline, the closer they get to crossing over into the Walter White era of Breaking Bad. It’s been tantalizing to watch as they’ve teased and suggested the coming of Hurricane Walter but, so far, they’ve managed to stay within their own boundaries. Last night, however, we got a crossover. Of a sort, anyway.

This week’s cold open took us back to the final hours of Saul Goodman, as the heat rose and the jig was more apparently up. We see the old familiar office, bedecked in the constitution and Greek pillars to suggest the utmost commitment to justice. Only the pillars had fallen, and the roof was caving in.

In the case of the roof, Saul was looking for a stash of money hidden for just such an occasion. Makes sense; as we know from Breaking Bad, it ain’t cheap to have your identity erased and a new one created from thin air. And Saul (nee: Jimmy) will definitely need a bit of financial cushioning as he begins his life as Gene. We see that process begin as Saul makes a call the vacuum repair man we first met in Breaking Bad.

More than just a mere callback, this scene more acutely made the connection between Saul Goodman and Jimmy’s current situation as cellphone salesman. As the cold open ends we see Saul snap his burner phone in two; as the episode continues, we see where this habit began to take form. Thus we see the placing of yet another cobblestone that leads us on the path to Breaking Bad and Walter White.

Better Call Saul has always done a remarkable job at focusing on its central thesis, which is a character study in moral ambiguity. Largely, it’s not dissimilar from Breaking Bad but with a bit more subtlety in its approach. Looking back on season one, it was almost hard to imagine that Jimmy McGill would or could one day evolve into the sleazy lawyer we loved to hate. Just as we witnessed with Walt’s descent into villainy, Jimmy’s descent into Saul has been slow and methodical. Though now it seems to be ramping up.

We’ve seen Jimmy’s willingness to dive deeper into the criminal world already this season with the Hummel heist. This week we saw him dipping his toes in even more—albeit in a more legal way—with his cellphone caper. Jimmy, unable to relax while Kim worked on a case one night, decided to go back to his store and purchase a trunkload of phones to sell on the street, promising the shady denizens of Albuquerque a way to circumvent the machinations of The Man.

Here we see him hone the types of salesman techniques that made Saul Goodman the go to choice when you need a good criminal lawyer. He’s the lawyer to trust when you need a lawyer you can’t trust, and the way he works the crowd at The Dog House is reminiscent to the way he works his clients in the future.

Interestingly, Jimmy also gets a warning to stay off his current path, though we know it’s one he won’t heed. After a night of hustling, Jimmy is rolled by a group of teenage punks, who beat him and take his hard-earned, pseudo-ill gotten gains and leaving him bloodied in the parking lot. Like Walter White (and Jimmy’s story works as a parallel to his), he’s given repeated warnings from the universe to stay off his path, but compulsion moves him forward. We know where he’s going, but we can’t help but recoil at the missteps along the way.

As Jimmy descends deeper into criminality, Kim leans heavier into the law. Her single-client-experiment with Mesa Verde might be giving her financial satisfaction, but Kim need something more tangible to keep her sharp. So she’s started moonlighting as a public defender. It’s fascinating to watch Kim in her natural state. She is, and always has been, a legal warrior, doing battle with the opposition with a tenacious fury that leaves foes trembling.

We witnessed this last night as she took on Deputy District Attorney Oakley, the same foe who so frequently served as a roadblock to Jimmy in the first season. Our experience with Oakley thus far has been seeing him roll over Jimmy with ease. “Petty with a prior,” was sort of his catchphrase back in season one, the killing blow for Jimmy’s offers. He had no such luck with Kim, who stood firm until he crumbled.

The juxtaposition between her and Jimmy has always been fascinating to watch, but now more than ever, with their paths diverging so hard, it’s becoming almost painful. As I’ve stated earlier, Kim’s best case scenario is she’s irrevocably heartbroken by Jimmy’s fall from grace; her courtroom scenes last night only hammer this home. It’s difficult to imagine a way the two of them remain together after this season, especially if Jimmy keeps doing what he’s doing.

While the divergent paths of Kim and Jimmy formed the bulk of this week’s episode, more clues about the impending arrival of the Breaking Bad timeline were given as they revealed what job Gus had for Mike in the closing moments of last week’s episode. Gus, ever considering the long term, has begun the process of setting up his meth superlab beneath the industrial cleaners. He’s brought in several contractors from around the world to hear their take on how to dig what would become Walter’s laboratory by the third season of Breaking Bad.

As with the Saul scene in the cold open, this could’ve been treated with a nod and a wink but was instead treated as a moment of character. On the one hand, we get to see just how Mike earned the trust of Gus Fring—his methods may have been convoluted, but we’re left with no doubt that these less-than-ethical contractors could have nothing to say should they be picked up in the future—but also how methodical Gus Fring can be. We already knew that, of course, but the depths of his meticulousness have been explored with care in Better Call Saul.

Somehow, his appearances in this series have only deepened his terrifying presence in Breaking Bad, contextualizing his plans and showcasing the bitter depths of his fury. As with everything in the series, they’re using him to deepen their themes, not just to nod and wink. In this way, Better Call Saul offers a masterclass in how to deepen a world without resorting to wry references and unsubtle rib pokes.

With that, we’ve officially crossed the halfway mark on season four of Better Call Saul. Traditionally, the seasons have begun ramping up after this point and there is still plenty left to explore before the year long break. Nacho was left in the dark this week, and so far we’ve been given hints that Jimmy’s yearlong probation from the law will be one of the final blows that solidifies his full transition into Saul. The tension is definitely mounting, but where will it go from here?

Better Call Saul airs Monday nights at 9/8 central on AMC.

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