Better Call Saul, Season Two, Episode Three: "Amarillo"

Last week, Jimmy crafted an extremely creative and effective solution to a problem that Kim found to be fascinating and brilliant, but then he pissed Kim off when he crossed the line. This week is much the same, only Kim is left in the dark about the unethical parts.

Amarillo opens with Jimmy "indirectly" making a pitch to a bus full of Sandpiper residents. One of them, Alma Mae Urbano, replied to a letter from Davis & Main explaining the overcharging situation. When her bus breaks down, Jimmy slips on board and starts explaining in his usually charming manner what's going on using the analogy of a diner getting a bill wrong. Naturally, the other passengers just happen to hear about the situation and BOOM, 24 new clients for Davis & Main.

At the subsequent meeting back at HHM, Chuck sees right through what Jimmy did and calls it out for what it is -- solicitation. Technically, all Jimmy did was talk to the person who replied to the letter, but he orchestrated a situation in which there'd be others present. In response to Chuck, Jimmy flat out lies and explains that pure word-of-mouth got them the extra clients. But wait! Kim's not giving him any ankle-lovin' under the table, so he makes a show of agreeing to backtrack and find a way to get clients on the straight and narrow.

That alone doesn't win back Kim's good graces and it shouldn't. She put her neck out there to get Jimmy where he is and Jimmy's doing stuff that could get him disbarred at every turn. She again affirms her confidence in Jimmy's abilities but all but demands he put a stop to his funny business. For what feels like the seventeenth time already this season, Kim pulls Jimmy back on the honest side of the line. Obviously, that's temporary. It's going to be heartbreaking when we have to watch Kim give up on Jimmy completely, because we know it's coming.

To circumvent apparent efforts on the part of Sandpiper to prevent residents from contacting Davis & Main, Jimmy proposes an idea that's flat-out brilliant -- a commercial during Murder She Wrote, a TV show which is informally a scheduled event at Sandpiper facilities across America. Cliff says he's open to the idea, but that they should revisit the issue next week.

Jimmy proceeds to at the very least shoot the commercial in the interim and shows it to Kim, who finds it to be very compelling. Having shown that his charisma and creative mind can be put to good use in an ethical way, Jimmy falls back into Kim's good graces, and the two get cuddly again. Yet, there's just one tiny, miniscule, unimportant detail -- Cliff hasn't okay'd this yet. But that's a mere formality, right?

Well, Jimmy seems to think it's a more significant hurdle. He sits in his office and ponders what to do next while the camera focuses in on the alluring "Nest Egg" commercial tape. Jimmy walks the tape over to Cliff's office but stops short of going in. What have we learned, Jimmy? Oh yeah, that doing the right thing gets us nowhere. Cliff can wait. You need to send that commercial to the TV station right away.

Obviously, despite a very-well shot scene showing Jimmy's tension waiting for the phone to ring, the commercial is a rousing success and it inks Davis & Main over 100 new clients. Armed with his methods already having succeeded, Jimmy will be better able to spin his strategy when it's pitched to Cliff, but Cliff gets wind of it first and scolds Jimmy over the phone, even calling him an "arsonist" for using the name of his firm in a commercial without his permission. Poor Kim is left in the dark, as Jimmy keeps her believing that Davis & Main was a-ok with his methods.

The Mike storyline is so disjoint from Jimmy's at this point so I don't think it makes much sense to interweave them here. Mike's daughter-in-law is scared for her and her daughter's lives because she says she's hearing gunshots at night. To scope out the situation, Mike sits in his car all night, but other than a paperboy making a "plop" sound when tossing a newspaper on driveways, all is calm. The next day, she calls him frantically about hearing shots in the night and shows him what she believes to be a bullet hole. Mike begins to realize that she's crazytown bananapants, but he says he'll help move her out of the house anyway.

To do that, Mike needs money, so he goes to his favorite criminally-connected veterinarian to seek work. As it turns out, someone asks for him by name for a job. Just before the final credits, it's revealed to be Nacho.

If I have a complaint about Better Call Saul thus far, it's that the character work has been pretty straightforward aside from the two primary protagonists. For the most part, the only character viewpoints we get are those of Jimmy and Mike and they don't overlap all that much. Breaking Bad created a rich tapestry of characters and as a result, scenes could be centered around any of Walter, Hank, Skyler, Jesse, etc. We don't know all that much about the surrounding players in this story except how they relate to either Jimmy or Mike. This is why I loved that piano scene at the beginning of last week's episode so much; it was good to see Chuck being Chuck on his own. The show needs more moments like that.

Bullet Points

• Perhaps someone with a legal mind can explain what's wrong with solicitation in this form? Would Jimmy actually get disbarred for explaining to a bus full of old people that they're getting ripped off and offering to help them with the situation? I understand that in many cases someone doing this could be an annoyance, particularly when they're coming from a place less genuine than Jimmy is here, but it seems to me that he's doing the world a favor here.

• This Kim/Jimmy situation shows some of my worst fears in recommending someone for a job. I've never been put in this situation before, and it's not like I would recommend someone I know to be as ethically questionable (generous!) as Jimmy, but it'd be a little scary to attach my reputation to someone else's level of effort unless I'd actually seen them in the workplace before.  I feel like doing a favor for a friend I've never seen operate in a professional capacity in this manner could get pretty dicey. But again, I've never had to cross this bridge.

• "You gotta ask, dude, dolly's extra."

• "Does anybody like you?"

• "Hey, don't be jealous of my big bowl of balls; it's unbecoming."

• "For you, I could make any chair in this place vibrate."