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Tag Archives: Kim Wexler
Better Call Saul: Why His Girl Friday Speaks to Kim Wexler’s Fate in “Bad Choice Road”
I’ve always thought of His Girl Friday as a tragedy. When Kim and Jimmy sit down to watch the film in “Bad Choice Road”, they’re watching the story of someone who nearly breaks free of a life and a job she excels at, but which doesn’t make her happy. But then she’s lured back into it through the dirty tricks of her conniving former paramour and the inexorable pull it has over her. (The movie is also, not coincidentally, the story of a talented and dogged female professional who ends up hitched to a manipulative, morally-dubious huckster.) That subtle call out to the 1940 classic carries meaning for both Jimmy and Kim.
Better Call Saul: The Clash of the Personal and the Professional in “JMM”
It’s supposed to just be business. You come in. You sign the forms. You check the boxes. You pay the fine. What you don’t do is get sentimental. There are practical reasons to take this step — reasons that, not coincidentally, help preserve your ongoing safety and non-incarceration.
But then you look at the person standing across from you, someone whose joy and pain matters to you, and all of a sudden, it’s impossible to pretend that this is just a ministerial act or some necessary concession to the gods of legal privilege and bureaucracy. Instead, it becomes something more, something meaningful, something personal, with an emotional charge and an attendant importance that elevates it above business as usual.
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.
Better Call Saul: When Something Means More Than Just Business in “Dedicado a Max”
We’re used to Jimmy McGill pushing limits and crossing lines. Time after time, Better Call Saul serves up scenarios where its title character faces two options: do things the safe and expected way, or do them the Saul Goodman way. The latter might gain Jimmy a little more, but it’s also riskier and sometimes even dangerous.
For once, though, it’s Kim taking that type of risk. She’s obviously no stranger to participating in Jimmy’s schemes and even concocting some of her own. But she’s also always had a limit, a certain line she refused to cross, even if doing so would get her what she wanted. It’s in Jimmy’s nature to cheat and finagle and squeeze the last bit of juice out of everything. It’s in Kim’s to dabble in those conman ways, even excel at them, but to ultimately come back to the light.
Better Call Saul: The Good Guys and Bad Guys Fight the Same Fight in “Namaste”
If there’s a persistent thematic undercurrent that touches each part of Better Call Saul (and maybe even Breaking Bad), it’s that people from very different walks of life are not all that different. Respected and superficially decent men like Chuck McGill and Walter White can be cruel and self-serving. Those on the margins of society like Nacho Varga and Jesse Pinkman can be intelligent and empathetic. And crime bosses and young attorneys can be equally determined, equally dogged, and equally committed to doing what they must to win the long game.
Better Call Saul: Misdirected Anger, Urban Antpiles, and Broken Glass in “The Guy for This”
I could write an entire review just trying to decode all the little images that “The Guy for This” parcels out for the viewer. One of the things that sets Better Call Saul (and its predecessor) apart is a penchant for that type of symbolism. The visual conveys as much of what the audience is supposed to take away as the dialogue. So when an episode begins with ants slowly but surely descending on Jimmy’s ice cream cone, and ends with the aftermath of that miniature invasion, it’s clear that Peter Gould and company are trying to tell us something.
Better Call Saul and the Lines We Cross for Those We Love in “50% Off”
People will go to incredible lengths if something really matters. When someone or something important hangs in the balance, it stirs the blood, pushes us to take chances we wouldn’t otherwise take, and cross lines we wouldn’t normally transgress.
That’s certainly true for Nacho here. If he’s had one consistent character trait over the course of Better Call, it’s that he’s apt to keep things stable and not rock the boat unless he has to. He’s more thoughtful and more calculating than the hot-blooded Salamancas he answers to. But his other consistent throughline is how much he loves his father. That means Nacho will take chances and put himself at risk in ways that he wouldn’t normally do, if it allows him to protect the man who raised him.
Better Call Saul: The Beginning and End of Saul Goodman in “Magic Man”
Five seasons in, and I still don’t know what to make of the flash-forwards to Cinnabon Gene. I always think of The Wire’s approach to these opening vignettes, with the idea that they’re meant to be microcosms of the themes of the season. But that doesn’t seem to fit here, since Gene’s choices largely track with Jimmy’s in the show to date. The cold open shows Gene panicking, worrying that he’s in too deep and looking for a way out, only to decide to take matters into his own hands. That’s been Jimmy’s M.O. for basically the whole series, most recently and notably overcoming his disciplinary suspension despite some serious headwinds.
Better Call Saul Waits for the Other Shoe to Drop in “Wiedersehen”
I miss the approach — popularized by The Wire and used by series as distinct as BoJack Horseman — of series putting their major fireworks in the penultimate episode of the season rather than the finale. It gives the show and the audience a full episode to recover and process all the major events of the season. And it helps avoid the sense in that second-to-last episode that you’re getting more setup than payoff ahead of the series pulling the trigger on its biggest developments.
That’s the problem with “Wiedersehen”, a perfectly good but not outstanding episode of Better Call Saul. It’s not as though there’s nothing happening in the episode. Lalo Salamanca makes overtures to Gus. Werner makes a daring escape from his gilded cage. And Jimmy not only faces a denial of his application reinstatement, but in his anger and disbelief, manages to sabotage his relationship with Kim, which had finally seemed to be on the mend. But all of this feels more like setting the table for bigger resolutions to come in the finale than anything full or complete in the episode itself.
Better Call Saul Still Manages to Surprise and Delight Us in “Coushatta”
Better Call Saul is a show that zigs when you expect it to zag. The series makes its bones as a tragedy, where the events are all the more sad, all the more pitiable, because (most of) the audience knows the unfortunate ends waiting for the show’s main characters. And yet, the series still has an impressive ability to surprise, to delight, to lead you down one path and make you think you know where things are headed, only to take a sudden left turn toward something you might never have expected.
