Tag Archives: Better Call Saul S04E04

Better Call Saul Uses its Timeline to Show Us What’s Bothering Mike in “Talk”

Despite a few similarities (trunk shots for example), Better Call Saul rarely goes for the non-linear storytelling tricks that you might see in a Quentin Tarantino movie. Sure, you may get the periodic flash forward to Cinnabon Gene, or the occasional flashback to some illuminating incident from Jimmy McGill’s old life, but it’s rare that the show depicts the events of the present in something other than chronological order.

It’s noteworthy, then, that in this is episode, we see the end of Mike’s speech in group therapy before we see its beginning. The episode opens with a scene from his past, where Mike is meticulously laying down a slab of concrete and letting his son write his name in the wet cement. It’s a sweet moment, but one tinged with melancholy, and a dissonance when the episode then quickly cuts to Mike in the present, looking out at a stunned room and gruffly remarking that, hey, they wanted him to talk.

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