Jimmy and Kim are on different paths; that’s been clear for a while now. But the cold open in “Piñata” makes it literal. The episode starts with a flashback to the halls of HHM, at a time when Jimmy is a gregarious mailroom clerk and Kim’s a precocious law student. Even then, the two share a rapport, but also have obvious differences.
Then, as now, Kim’s strength lay in her curiosity and understanding. She impresses Chuck (with a welcome, understated return from Michael McKean) with her knowledge of the case law that supported his big courtroom victory. Chuck’s triumph fascinates Kim. She’s amazed that he was able to get justice for his clients based on some obscure legal precedent, because it’s the same sort of talent she has — the ability to squeeze every bit you can out of the finer details to make things right.
But Jimmy’s strength is people. He knows how they work and how to charm them. While he may sometimes use those talents for his own personal gain, often he’s just being his naturally affable self. It’s clear as Jimmy roams the floor, collecting Oscar ballots, that he knows everyone in those cubicles as well as Kim knows those old cases. The two of them represent contrasting approaches, to life and to the law, and “Piñata” opens with the pair literally headed in opposite directions.
It’s a nice primer for what’s happening (more figuratively) in the present. While Jimmy is making plans for a joint future with Kim, scribbling letterheads and logos, she’s having her doubts. The look on her face as she sees his adorable scratchpad says it all. The mostly internal conflict is nicely understated, with Jimmy’s obvious enthusiasm for working alongside the woman he loves running aground on Kim’s growing realization that if she wants to be fulfilled, she just can’t be a part of his dream.
Short Sleeves and Tie vs. Seafoam Sweater: a battle of fashionistas.
There’s something heartening about that epiphany. We don’t want the good and decent Kim to be tarnished or dragged down into the muck that Saul Goodman will one day call home. But there’s also something very sad about it. Jimmy and Kim aren’t particularly high octane as television romances go, but there’s a low key sweetness and affection between them that carries the day. Their relationship may not be built to last, but it’s still warm and sympathetic, which makes its seemingly impending end a melancholy one, even if that’s what’s best for everyone.
To Jimmy, however, it certainly doesn’t feel like what’s best. During lunch at their favorite spot (where, significantly, Kim eschews their former pseudonyms), Kim tells Jimmy that she’s joining Schweikart and Cokely as a partner, building (and heading) their banking division. It’s a boon for Kim. The move will allow her to enlist associates for Mesa Verde and ensure that no balls are dropped, while still giving her enough leeway and freedom to do the pro bono work that’s more meaningful and satisfying to her personally.
But that choice dashes Jimmy’s hopes, and she knows it. Despite his occasional self-serving nature, Jimmy is a good guy (or at least a good enough guy). He puts on a supportive front, but the news gob smacks him. The episode’s director, Andrew Stanton of Pixar fame, frames Jimmy taking a minute to process the news with creative, ever loudening sounds from the bustle of kitchen, conveying the stress and distress of having your grand dream shattered in an instant by the person you love more than anyone else in the world.
It’s hard to watch. But in an episode where people offer words to others that they mean for themselves, Jimmy echoes Kim, and tells her that she has to do what’s best for her, even if that puts them on different trajectories.
I just hope they can avoid a lengthy custody battle over the fish.
That does not, however, seem likely to move either of them closer to Mike or Gus’s orbit anytime soon. Normally, there’s some sort of thematic connection within an episode that unites the two different “lanes” of Better Call Saul. The “How Jimmy Became Saul” portion of the show might not intersect with the “Breaking Bad Prequel” portion in a given episode, but there’s usually something that connects them in terms of a central idea, if not a central plot. But Kim and Jimmy’s diverging paths don’t have much to do with Gus and Mike’s efforts to build the world’s most undetectable meth lab.
The closest thing to thematic unity between the two parts of the episode comes in the idea that you need both attention to detail and people skills to truly make something work. As Mike sets up the living quarters for the contractors who’ll be working in isolation for six months, he’s on top of both ends of the equation. He knows they’ll need creature comforts — recliners, a basketball hoop, even a bar — but he’s also on top of security and surveillance, making sure the workers have everything they need, but also ensuring that if they start “climbing the walls,” he’ll know about it. Mike’s meticulous enough to anticipate both sets of requirements, but also sharp enough to single out Kai, the smart-mouthed, mildly rebellious worker, as a potential trouble spot, in what seems to be a seed the show will harvest sometime later.
But Mike, like Kim, is not cold despite his detail-oriented bent. In one of “Piñata”’s sweeter scenes, Mike comes to Stacey’s door to offer her an apology. It’s a quiet, heartfelt scene. For all of Mike’s police force-honed ability to read people, he isn’t always great at being with them. Seeing him admit fault and, in his own taciturn way, ask Stacey if they can put the unpleasantness behind them so he can be back in her and Kaylee’s life is unsuspectingly sweet from the gruff old guy.
But sweetness is not what Gus has in mind for Hector Salamanca. I’m of two minds about the little parable from his past that Gus offers to his comatose foe in this episode. On the one hand, the monologue is a little too conspicuously writerly and on the nose. The story Gus tells is such an obvious metaphor for his approach to Hector and seems too perfect and obviously calibrated to tell us more about who Gus is, how he views the situation with the Salamancas, and why he’s going to such lengths to sustain the life of someone he hates.
Prestige Television Rule #7: All hushed monologues must be delivered in a dimly-lit room.
On the other hand, as usual, Giancarlo Esposito knocks it out of the park, communicating the sense that Gus is baring his soul, as much for his own benefit as for Hector’s (or the audience’s). You can hear the emotion in the voice of a character who is typically so cool and reserved. Gus softly seethes beneath his calculated effort at righteous retribution. His feelings feel genuine and unvarnished, contrasting with the practiced, genteel face that Gus usually puts on.
In the hands of anyone else, the monologue might be too cheesy, but here, the performance is good enough to rescue it. In Esposito’s hands, the viewer can understand how Gus’s eternal dedication, care, and vigilance will give him a leg up in this war. You wouldn’t necessarily put Gus and Jimmy in the same category, but that is something that nevertheless unites them. Jimmy may not have the discipline or the vision of Gus, but he also knows how to work a situation to his advantage, play the long game, and do the legwork to cover all necessary angles.
That’s the takeaway from the superb sequence that closes “Piñata”. When Jimmy tries to offer the three young punks who “rolled him” in the last episode a deal, they rebuff him once more, this time at the end of a switchblade. So he lures them into a trap. The result is a great set piece from Stanton and the rest of Better Call Saul’s production team. The show captures not only the kinetic exhilaration of Jimmy sprinting away from his attackers, but also the disorientation and sense of intimidation that lingers in the air as Jimmy and his goons hang the boys upside down in a piñata warehouse and make them promise to leave him alone, lest they end up like the rest of the quickly-destroyed goods hanging next to them.
It’s a spectacular set of scenes, both for the creativity in the editing and perspective shots, and for what they tell us about Jimmy. These moments elucidate his basic decency. As Jimmy did with the music store owners who attempted to stiff him last season, Jimmy initially tries to give the hoodlums a fair deal, only turning to subterfuge and threats when they treat him poorly. But he also has a plan for if things get ugly. That is Jimmy to a fault — up for doing things the nice (if not exactly legal) way, but at the ready with an elaborate, well-thought-out plan to guarantee he gets what he needs if things get rough. It’s his way; it’s always been his way.
And if the plan involves Huell, all the better.
It’s telling, then, that Jimmy ends up back where he started in this episode. Jimmy’s operating his phone scheme out of the same tiny office, stuffed into the back of a nail salon, where we first met him on Better Call Saul. Chuck is gone. Kim is moving on without him. And he’s suspended from the legal practice. That means it’s time for Jimmy to roll up his sleeves (literally in this case) and rebuild.
You see that mentality in his speech to Howard Hamlin. “Piñata” draws a parallel of parallels (a parallelogram?) between Chuck and Kim on the one hand and Howard and Jimmy on the other. In each instance, one half of the partnership has a dedicated and sharp-minded jurist, able to move the dial with their sterling intellect and meticulousness. And the other half has the consummate pitchman, able to be the face of the operation and maximize the value of the name and reputation that the other partner provides.
Howard is clearly lost without his better half, as HHM is “right-sizing” and falling apart without Chuck. Jimmy tells Howard to get it together, scolding his onetime rival that he’s “crappy lawyer but a hell of a salesman.” Jimmy practically orders Howard to get out there and do what he does best in order to right the ship. These are, once again, words offered to someone else but meant more for oneself.
Because Jimmy is undeterred. Kim taking her talents to another firm is a body blow for Jimmy, but he doesn’t intend to let it put him down for the count. He is back to scheming, back to hustling, back to doing what he was doing before Chuck and Kim changed the course of his life. The plan with the piñatas is just the beginning. Kim and Jimmy are moving in different directions, but the difference is that while Howard is rudderless without his partner, Jimmy is emboldened renew the hustle, no matter who’s by his side, or who he pushes away in the process.
