Anyway, Better Call Saul is back this year and I'd like to try to review these episodes as they come out. They will be spoilerific, so please don't read if you haven't seen the episodes. While I'm aware that the amount of comments that have been posted here is....well...not huge, I'll ask that spoilers for episodes beyond the one being reviewed stay off here, as I may not be able to keep up sometimes. I'll try my best though.
Anyway, I'll post this block text to keep people from reading more than they'd like.
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When we last left Jimmy McGill, he was driving away from Mike Ehrmantraut humming "Smoke on the Water", seemingly vowing to never sacrifice personal gain for the sake of "doing the right thing" again. The conclusion of Season One left it a little vague as to just what caused Jimmy to have this change of heart. He's looking at Marco's pinky ring when he seemingly makes up his mind, but Marco never made a whole load of sense as the underlying cause. It was all pretty confusing, but we don't have to get too far in the first episode of Season Two to realize that there was more to it than we got to see last spring.
Jimmy greets the partners of Davis & Main and promptly asks Kim for a sidebar, which turns into a deliciously awkward scene delivered very well by Bob Odenkirk. He tries to put himself out there to see if there's a future between himself and Kim if he takes the job, stumbling through it horribly until she very correctly points out that "one thing has absolutely nothing to do with another". Jimmy often says that he's been trying to get his act together to please his brother, Chuck, but Kim is very clearly at minimum a secondary reason, as her relatively negative response prompts Jimmy to punt on the job opportunity. We then seen the familiar scene of Jimmy leaving the parking lot after talking to Mike with new context.
While one might have thought this would immediately lead to the creation of "Saul Goodman", Jimmy's next stop is to some resort, where he sunbathes and drinks in the pool. Kim confronts him and Jimmy explains that doing the right thing had never gotten him anywhere, and that the skills that made him a good lawyer are applicable outside the legal realm. Kim doesn't understand, so Jimmy decides to demonstrate his talents on a loud, arrogant stock trader across the room. He approaches the man with Kim claiming to have a small fortune to invest and playing dumb about how to do it. Just like that, Slippin' Jimmy is back in his element.
What makes the scene interesting is Kim's changing reaction to the grift. At first, she stands back wanting basically no piece of it, but gradually the thrill of the idea and watching Jimmy work the man gets her into the act. Before long, she's playing into it just as much as Jimmy and sees it through to the end as the trader buys them what had to be over a thousand dollars' worth of food and alcohol to sell them his services. Feeling the rush of the alcohol and the excitement of the con, Jimmy and Kim wind up hooking up.
Of course, Kim was never going to up and abandon her life over one exhilarating night and she flatly explains this to Jimmy the next morning. Before long, Jimmy's back in the pool begging Kim to return and join him. The sun's not shining as much as it did the first time, which I thought was a nod to how much less glamorous the lifestyle seemed with Kim having departed. Alone, Jimmy decides enough is enough and goes back to Davis & Main, who accept him back into the proposed partnership.
The scene at the law firm is instrumentals-only and looks like my worst nightmare as Jimmy shakes hands and introduces himself to dozens of nondescript faces (I can't be the only person who would dread this, right? They're all going to know your name the next time you see them because they had to learn one name that day, while you have to learn about thirty during your navigation of a completely new environment). It's obvious though that Jimmy's not here to play it straight given how much attention Marco's ring gets during the montage. The episode ends by focusing on a light switch with a sign that says, "Always leave ON, never turn OFF". If there was ever any question whether Jimmy was making a second attempt at playing it straight, it's firmly answered when he plays with the switch.
Meanwhile, in the world of Ehrmantraut, Mike has been taking further protection jobs from a.k.a. "Price", who has splurged on a flamboyant Hummer. Mike refuses to ride in the ridiculous car to the deal with Nacho, which leads to Price dumping Mike's services prior to the meet, as the deals with Nacho have been going peacefully anyway. Without Mike, Price carelessly shows off his vehicle to Nacho and allows the latter to acquire his name ("Daniel Wormald") and address from the registration in the glovebox. Robbery ensues, and Wormald gets the police involved for some reason, who get suspicious of him quickly. There's no way this guy is gonna last long, right?
Bullet Points
- "Daniel Wormald". Seriously? The guy's already a walking Type-B dork stereotype and we need to give him a last name like "Wormald"?
- "Please do me a favor. Take a pillow, put it over that stock's face until you hear the death bed queef."
- Admit it, you probably really want to know what a $50 shot of tequila tastes like.
- I wonder when we're going to meet Huell Babineaux.
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