Better Call Saul and the Plans and Schemes that Rule the Day in “Wexler v. Goodman”

Better Call Saul’s major players are always making plans. It’s one of the features that makes this show (and its predecessor) so engrossing. In between the committed character work and gorgeous desert styling, there’s intersecting schemes that either merge together or crash into one another, until our champions and villains are left to pick up the pieces.

“Wexler v. Goodman” gives us snootfuls of this type of clash of the uber-prepared titans. As the title promises, it shows Kim’s sober plan succumbing to Saul’s wilder one. It depicts Lalo’s surprisingly solid plot to unleash the might of the DEA upon Gus Fring disrupted by Lalo suddenly having to deal with Mike’s equal and opposite machinations. And at the same time, it gives us a glimpse into how the personalities of all these schemers plays into the outcomes of their grand plans.

Kim’s plan plainly reflects who she is. After edging so close to playing dirty with Kevin and Mesa Verde, she pulls back and decides she’d rather just fix everything, even if it means self-sacrifice. After Rich called her out for last week’s skullduggery, she’s had second thoughts about the whole thing. Now, she wants to reach a settlement with Mr. Acker, at whatever figure he’ll accept and Mesa Verde will pay, and cover the difference out of her own pocket. She even apologizes to Rich (for the yelling, not the scheming) and figures out a way to make that right too.

It’s the classic Kim Wexler play. She nearly resorts to using total amoral gamesmanship to win. Then, her conscience and/or fear of getting caught flare up and persuade her to use those same planning skills to restore things to an even keel. As the cold open shows, in the end, Kim does the safe thing, the right thing, even if it means taking on extra burdens and strains.

"It's not a call center. It's a time machine."

She’s just partnered with the wrong guy for that approach. Jimmy enjoys the hunt as much, if not more than, the prize. Sure, he likes to win, something that Kim calls him out for in their closing blow-up. But that often has less to do with whatever he hopes to gain and more to do with the simple joy he derives from using his gift for grift to come out on top.

That’s the point of his plan to use a pair of sex workers to embarrass Howard Hamlin in public (in front of Clifford Main, no less). Sure, part of Jimmy’s routine here is exacting revenge on Howard, because it’s not otherwise possible to inflict it on Chuck. But part of the reason it’s in the episode is to remind the audience that Saul can’t let a good idea go to waste, even if it might hurt people, even if it would mean tricking someone he loves. The scheming is just too much fun for him, the rush of victory too great, and the hubris that tells him there’s no scrape Saul Goodman can’t con his way out of (or into), is too inescapable.

So is the meticulous wrath of Mike Ehrmantraut. Separate and apart from the moral complexities that erupt when Kim’s scheme runs aground on Jimmy’s, part of the fun and excitement of Better Call Saul comes from the chance to see people simply doing what they do best. That’s certainly true with Mike here. Most of his portion of “Wexler v. Goodman” involves him slowly tightening the noose around Lalo, through his knowledge of what strings to pull to point law enforcement in Lalo’s direction.

The one exception to that is his brief conversation with Nacho, who’s framed beautifully in the lead-up to his meeting with Gus. That sequence establishes a few plot basics: Mike was persuaded by Gus’s speech last week and is in Fring’s employ once more. Nacho answers to Mike now. And Lalo is stepping up his plans to chip away at Gus’s business until Don Eladio and the cartel decide he’s not worth the trouble, thereby necessitating Mike’s counterattack.

"We simply have to stop meeting so symmetrically."

But it also features the one non-plan-related moment in Mike’s half of the episode. Nacho challenges the venerable Mr. Ehrmantraut over who he’s working for. Mike responds in kind by reminding Nacho of Mike’s warning over the muck Nacho would descend into as he brought himself deeper into the world of these crime bosses. And yet, despite his characteristically gruff demeanor about the whole thing, Mike expresses sympathy for Nacho in his usual, grumbly way, using nothing but a look and two words: “we’ll talk.”

We know Mike’s fate. We don’t yet know Nacho’s. But if there’s anyone with the resourcefulness to get Nacho out of the life he was warned away from, it’s the man who gave him that admonition in the first place.

We see that resourcefulness in action as Mike springs his trap on Lalo. It’s a queasy thrill to see him posing as a private investigator, supposedly representing the family of the clerk Lalo killed and coaxing a witness into feeding the police another salient detail. It’s fun to see him dress down a low-level rookie at the local precinct in order to connect the dots of Lalo’s hit and run for the investigating officers. It’s a joy to see him use a jury-rigged police radio to sic the cops on Lalo once the charges and evidence have been properly baited for investigators. The whole thing is a symphony of well-planned Machiavellian excellence and helps make up for the underwhelming elements of Mike and Lalo’s prior encounter.

One of the frustrating things about Lalo’s actions last season is the way his “leap through the ceiling, kill a civilian, and crash a car” routine felt too reckless for an antagonist on this show to be able to get away with. By contrast, Lalo’s thoughtfulness, his attention to Gus’s moves, and his sharp plan to put pressure on Fring’s operations, has been one of this season’s pleasant surprises. It’s satisfying, then, to see Mike bridge those two points, bringing Lalo to task for his earlier sloppiness to help short-circuit the Salamanca boss du jour’s bigger, smarter scheme.

"The family also asked if you'd wipe away my fees for overdue library books."

Oddly enough, that’s essentially what Jimmy does to Kim in their portion of the episode. Kim has a plan, but Jimmy thinks he has a better one. As a result, he doesn’t care that Kim is waving the white flag, that she doesn’t want to unleash their secret weapon on Kevin, or that she wouldn’t want to put her job or the relationship with her most important client at risk. More accurately, he does care, but only enough to think he can overcome these impediments to deliver the outcome he desires and, taken most charitably, thinks will provide best outcome for Kim.

In that vein, the most revealing and fun part of the episode comes when Saul lays out his idea for a series of Mesa Verde attack ads to his usual camera crew. The young director shoots him down, declaring that it can’t be done the way Jimmy wants, at least not in the timeframe that he wants it. But Saul Goodman won’t be deterred, even if he has to come up with his own spray-painted green screen, micro-manage every step of the production, and corral a host of community theater actors into a nail salon to see it through. No matter what other people say, when Jimmy is in his element, he insists on doing things his way, and damn the consequences.

So when it comes time to agree to the settlement that Kim and Jimmy pre-arranged, Jimmy calls an audible. Instead of the $45,000 he and Kim agreed on as a settlement figure, Saul shocks the room with a demand for four million dollars. He kicks Kevin Wachtell in the teeth with a disc full of ads that slander Kevin’s father (played by Bob Odenkirk’s former Mr. Show scene partner Jay Johnston!). And he goes nuclear in the exact way that Kim hoped to avoid, by leveraging the discovery that the Mesa Verde logo infringes on the copyright to a photo taken by an indigenous photographer.

Saul’s ploy infuriates Kim. It spurs outbursts of incredulity in the room. But ultimately, it gets Kevin to make a deal. The CEO of Mesa Verde agrees to move the call center, pay Mr. Acker and the photographer due compensation, and even offer public apologies. What’s more, this result (theoretically) helps protect Kim, because her disbelief, frustration, and anger at Saul’s ploy are genuine, giving her the perfect emotional alibi for Rich’s suspicion that she and Jimmy are in cahoots.

In an alternate universe, Jimmy is the second coming of Harvey Korman.

In theory, everybody wins here. Kim gets her way and a piece of her soul back, while staying above suspicion from Rich or anyone else. Mr. Acker gets to stay in his home and enjoy a nice payday. An indigenous photographer will receive proper credit and compensation for having her art co-opted by a commercial cowboy. Even Kevin, who’s out some cash and a little bit of dignity, still gets his call center and bring this insanity to an end.

But Kim knows Jimmy too well to think that beneficial end game provided his reasons for doing all of this. He did it because he likes to win. He did it because he knows he’s a conman savant. He did it because he loves to ply his trade, his art, wherever he can. And Kim knows that Jimmy doesn’t care whether or not she would consent to all of this. These sorts of schemes are always an absolute joyride for the audience, but when Jimmy involves people he cares about in them, those people often get hurt. Kim’s seen that close enough secondhand to be concerned and done with it.

We see in the cold open that a young Kim refuses to get into the car with her drunken mom. The scene shows that Kim knows how to see trouble on the horizon, how to recognize someone adept at sidestepping blame, papering over their misdeeds, and trying to talk a person they care about into making a bad decision. That flashback suggests that part of Kim’s sympathy and affection for Jimmy may come from pieces of her mom in him. But it also tells us that she knows better than to get into a car with someone who could make a crazy swerve halfway down the road.

Or does she? The crazy cliffhanger that “Wexler v. Goodman” leaves us with is Kim’s suggestion that she and Jimmy should either break up or…get married. It’s a strange suggestion, one that nevertheless comports with Saul’s off-hand comment in Breaking Bad that he’s twice divorced. Still, maybe it’s an effort to double-down on something treacherous but important rather than admit that it’s a problem. There’s the sense of Kim as a moth to the flame here, occasionally flitting just far away from Jimmy to almost break orbit, or coming just close enough to being burned to try to flutter away, only to keep returning to all of his light and heat.

That’s the opposite of a plan. It’s an impulse, a reaction, a reflex that could bind her to someone, however temporarily, who thinks he can scheme his way out of any jam he might himself, or her, into. Hopefully, the next stop for the couple won’t leave Kim, once again, walking home alone, carrying all that weight by herself.