‘Better Call Saul’ Hits New Heights in Latest (TV REVIEW)

[rating=9.00] “The Guy for This”

It’s absolutely astounding how Better Call Saul continues to build so much on seemingly so little. For almost five full seasons, Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould have created tension out of thin air and given us some of the more emotionally gut-wrenching moments of television being aired today. Even while nothing much ostensibly happens.

They’re masters of the build, the gentle tease that something major is going to happen that will alter our perceptions of the series and its characters forever. It is of course largely due to the fact that we know how it ends that this is so effective. Every moment of silence, every contemplative shot, every instance of furtive glances and quiet pleasing carries with it the weight of all we know about what’s to come.

Take that opening, for example. Gilligan and Gould have the audacity to spend several minutes on ants. That’s it, just ants. They linger as the number of ants grow, swarming the ice cream that Jimmy/Saul dropped at the end of last week’s episode after being picked up by Nacho. We’re left wondering what’s happening, worrying about whatever plan it is that Nacho and Lalo has cooked up, but the show is in no hurry.

We could make it a metaphorical thing. Perhaps the ice cream is Jimmy’s innate sweetness and the ants are his growing involvement with crime. Or maybe the ants are another symbol of the corruption Jimmy is bringing into the world with the ascent of Saul Goodman. Or maybe it’s just an ice cream cone, and Gilligan and Gould love playing with us, leaving us in a state of suspended animation while they tease the outcome of last week’s cliffhanger.

However you read it it’s brilliant. It’s audacious. It’s bold. It’s the perfect encapsulation of everything Better Call Saul is and everything it does so well. And that’s just the opening.

Last night’s episode played out much the same way as its oddly fascinating cold open. Nothing much happened…except everything happened. And in the midst of all that nothing grew an unbearable tension against which we are helpless.

 

Saul’s involvement with the cartel is becoming more and more solidified thanks to his meeting with Nacho and Lalo. While we’re still a long way from figuring out what it was that had Saul so terrified about Lalo when we first met him in Breaking Bad, the fact that we know something happened magnified the tension of the moment tenfold. Somehow, even knowing what we know, we can’t help but root for Jimmy to stay on the straight and narrow, as if there’s a chance that he could change his fate, that he’ll never meet Walter White and never end up as Gene in Nebraska.

And yet that propels us so much. We can’t help but watch what we know to be bad decision after bad decision that lead’s Jimmy to ruin. Today it’s taking $8000 from Lalo to help out a jailed Krazy-8. Soon it’s Walter White. Who said knowing the ending ruins the fun?

Lalo being Lalo, it’s not just an attempt to get a dealer out of jail. For Lalo, this is an opportunity. Remember back in the first season of Breaking Bad, after Walter killed Krazy-8? Hank revealed that Krazy-8 was, in fact, a DEA snitch. Turns out, he’s there thanks to Lalo. For Lalo, Krazy-8’s arrest is a chance to turn things against Gus. With Jimmy’s help, Krazy-8 agrees to give information about the location of cartel money and several dead drops. These are, of course, Fring’s drops.

The escalating cold war between Lalo and Gus is continuously fascinating, though it does put Nacho in something of a predicament. He of course has to tell Fring about the snitching and Fring of course can’t do anything about it, lest Lalo find out someone is playing both sides of the organization.

On the other hand, it did give Better Call Saul the opportunity to finally introduce Hank and Gomez, the special agents who agree to Jimmy’s terms and set Krazy-8 up as an informant. Hank has one of the wildest arcs in Breaking Bad, going from brash, obnoxious meathead to emotionally nuanced hero over the course of the show’s run. If you haven’t rewatched Breaking Bad recently, give it a try. It’s almost difficult to rectify the character he ends up being with the character he starts out as.

But it was good to see that brash asshole again, if only for a few minutes. But that, too, was a reminder of what makes Saul so great. We know Hank ends up dead and buried in the desert and seeing him like this carried with it all of that weight. Realistically, it was just a single scene in which nothing much really happened. And yet, Gilligan and Gould conveyed so much in those few minutes, reminding us of everything that was on the line and where Jimmy’s decisions as Saul would eventually lead us.

In fact, you could argue that all of Breaking Bad hinged on this moment in Better Call Saul. In that series, we’re led to believe that Krazy-8 was the one who called in the tip about the meth lab Hank busted with his brother in law in the car. Saul never finagles this deal for Krazy-8, Krazy-8 never gives the DEA a tip about a meth lab, Walt never sees Jesse and gets a very bad idea.

We can probably expect more of these moments as Better Call Saul moves closer to the time period of Breaking Bad, but the implications are profound. Gilligan and Gould are cruel gods, toying with their creations and their audiences with fatalistic musings and the inevitability of disaster. It’s so fucking delicious.

And then there’s the Kim question. Kim Wexler remains the biggest question mark that Gilligan and Gould leave dangling over the events of Breaking Bad. Where is she by that point? Is she dead, is she gone? What happened? We know now that she’s getting more and more bogged down by the drudgery of her job and being the sole handler of Mesa Verde. Last night saw her forced to kick an old man out of his house.

Things brings up similar ethical questions as her tricking her client in the second episode. Just as tricking her client was arguably the morally correct thing to do even if it was ethically suspect, kicking this old man out of his was the right thing to do ethically even though it was morally suspect. The shades of grey are blurring too deep for her now, and it’s starting to crush her.

Where can she go from here? None of her options look good. And, yet again, I can’t help but think that Gilligan and Gould gave us our answer in metaphorical form as they closed out the episode. Jimmy, standing on a the balcony, dropping his beer bottle and catching it at the last second, not dissimilar from the moral juggling act on which he’s building his name and career; Kim, saying screw it, and just throwing the bottle as far as she can go.

Either way, something is bound to break, and when it breaks you know it’s gonna be bad.

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

Related Content

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

New to Glide

Keep up-to-date with Glide

Twitter