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Tag Archives: Howard Hamlin
Better Call Saul and the Hidden Descent of Kim Wexler in “Something Unforgivable”
Chuck McGill once described his brother with a law degree as like “a chimp with a machine gun.” That conjures a particular image, one of extreme recklessness and likely harm from a device far beyond the comprehension or abilities of its user. As Lalo showed us here, you don’t need to have perfect aim or a good line of sight to do some serious damage with one of those at your disposal. That’s why Chuck, in his own mind at least, worried so much about his brother entering his hallowed profession.
Better Call Saul Veers Ever Closer to Breaking Bad in “Quite a Ride”
Better Call Saul has never been closer to Breaking Bad. That’s not just because this episode opens with this show’s first glimpse of our hero during the Walter White era. It’s not just because Gus Fring seems to nail down his plans for the facility that will one day become Heisenberg’s lab. And it’s not just because Jimmy visits The Dog House, the fast food restaurant and seedy hangout where Jesse Pinkman once sold his drug of choice.
It’s because “Quite a Ride” is about people who are almost peerless at what they do, unable to walk away from it, and the different directions those superlative skills take them. That was the larger story of Breaking Bad, a show devoted to a man who had an undeniable talent, but who could not let it go in the face of the money and long-awaited recognition he thought he was due, even when it came with a side of peril and human misery. Breaking Bad lived on the conflicted thrills of watching someone as talented as Walter White operate at the top of his game in a terrible industry, and earned its emotional resonance from the uncertain but foreboding sense of where those talents would lead him.
Better Call Saul Leaves Its Audience to Wonder in “Smoke”
Jimmy McGill’s part in “Smoke” begins and ends with normalcy. In his first appearance in the episode, he gets up, feeds his fish, and makes coffee — the regular, mundane tasks of his new life. And in his last scene, he does the same things: joking about his fish’s appetite, tossing out coffee grounds, and seeming like a man very much returned to his routine.
Better Call Saul: Everyone Takes an Extra Step in “Slip”
The opening of “Slip” is a little more direct than episodes of Better Call Saul usually are when filling in some gaps Jimmy’s backstory and philosophy. When Marco presses Jimmy about his parents’ shop, about how they worked hard and everyone liked them, Jimmy admits that’s true, but questions the value of it. He protests that it got them nowhere; he characterizes his own dad as a sucker, and he takes the coin his father once planned to put in the poor box for use in yet another scam.
With that, Jimmy’s perspective on life becomes a little clearer, aligning with the prior flashback to his parents’ store. Papa McGill was someone who refused to bend the rules even a little, who wouldn’t take so much as a moderately-valuable coin for himself, let alone sell cigarettes to the kids from the local religious school to make ends meet. In Jimmy’s eyes, that approach got him nowhere. It’s a little too tidy and pat to account for Jimmy’s actions in the present day, but the man himself sums it up nicely — Papa McGill wasn’t willing to “do what he had to do,” and Jimmy assuredly is.
That’s the thrust of “Slip,” which is as much of an ensemble piece as any episode of Better Call Saul so far. Not only Jimmy, but also Mike, Chuck, Kim, and Nacho, are each willing to go the extra mile, to do the difficult or painful thing, not because they wish to or because it’s easy, but because each believe it’s what they simply need to do to go on. It’s what unites these disparate individuals and their very different challenges here — each of them strains a bit more, goes a little farther, in the name of biting the bullet and doing what needs doing.
Better Call Saul: It’s McGill vs. McGill in “Chicanery” – the Series’ New Best Episode
One of the ways you can tell a show is great, not just good, is if it’s engrossing even when there’s nothing particularly exciting or noteworthy happening. It’s easy to be compelled by Better Call Saul when it’s featuring McGill-on-McGill courtroom combat, or deep into a bit of Mike’s trap-setting, or when another little Breaking Bad easter egg pops up. But the mark of a great show is the ability to be just as transfixing, just as mesmerizing, with something as plain as a man having dinner with his ex-wife, each moment laden with hopes and expectations, with little happening beyond a conversation between old friends.
That flashback to a time when Jimmy and Chuck were working in concert and not against one another isn’t simply a flight of fancy to contrast their antagonism later in the episode, or a mere pleasing vignette from the early onset of Chuck’s condition. It’s a character study, a set of scenes that never say anything explicitly about Chuck McGill, but which tell the audience so much about who he is, how he reacts to obstacles and difficulties, and quietly set up the bigger fireworks at the end of the episode.
Better Call Saul: “Rebecca” – A Dissenting View of Jimmy McGill
Jimmy doesn’t have a bad heart. He never really means to hurt anyone. It’s just how he is. It’s in his nature. He takes advantage of people. Time and again, he leaves the folks that he claims to care about holding the bag. It may come in dribs and drabs, and it may be infused with that old McGill charm, but it’s what he does.
That’s how Chuck sees his brother, and maybe it’s how Kim is starting to see him too.
