In the latest Better Call Saul recap, Kim reconnects with Jimmy while pondering a job offer and Mike finds out what kind of man Hector Salamanca really is…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Jimmy McGill really wants to be the guy who drives around in a grey Mercedes, lives in a plush apartment and collects a steady paycheck for being an upstanding lawyer, but deep down he’s beginning to realize that’s not who he is or probably will ever be.
Jimmy’s current life is like the cup holder in that Mercedes — it just doesn’t fit the ‘World’s Second Best Lawyer’ coffee mug that he totes around and after weeks of fruitless effort to jam a square peg into round hole he’s finally had enough. Like the man who will soon become Saul Goodman, Jimmy grabs a tire iron and smashes through that cup holder to finally make his mug fit just the way he likes it.
See, Jimmy is unconventional and he’s definitely his own man. He sleeps better in the back rooms of nail parlors stealing cucumber-mint water rather a pre-furnished apartment with cable and wicker balls that serve no other purpose than a distraction when he’s burdened with a bad case of insomnia.
Of course it doesn’t help matters much that Jimmy’s best work — a commercial he created to drum up business for the Sandpiper Crossing lawsuit — has been repackaged with a very bland, boring message and put out all over New Mexico. It’s his bosses’ way of saying ‘we liked the idea but this is even better’ and there’s little chance Jimmy is getting any credit for it.
It won’t be long before Jimmy McGill has finally had enough and Saul Goodman comes to the rescue.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of Better Call Saul titled ‘Bali Ha’I’…
I’m Sorry, So Sorry
As Jimmy fends off insomnia and more scrutiny at Davis and Main, Kim is back in her office at HHM but it’s clear from the cold shoulder she gets from Howard that her move from the basement back to the top floor was thanks to Chuck. Howard won’t even utter a word on the long walk from the upstairs offices to the first meeting with the Mesa Verde bank people. Kim may have her old job back, but she’s not very welcome there.
It only gets worse when she goes to a pre-trial hearing in the Sandpiper Crossing case and argues to have a defense motion thrown out. As much as she battles, it’s clear the judge is going to render a verdict going the other way but as she exits the courtroom, Kim is asked out to lunch by Rick Schweikart — the lead attorney representing Sandpiper.
After ordering a Moscow Mule and an iced tea, Rick finally reveals why he’s having this meeting with Kim. You see he went through a similar situation just out of college when he was thrown to the wolves at a hearing and no one from his firm bothered to show up to lend a hand. They told him it was a learning experience, but Rick didn’t appreciate that he was left out to dry in a case his firm knew was unwinnable. Before too long, he struck out on his own and never looked back.
Witnessing what Kim went through just minutes earlier — without a single attorney from HHM or Davis and Main by her side — Rick saw the same trick being pulled. They were hanging her out to dry.
So he makes her a very lucrative offer — come to work for him, they’ll pay off all her student loan debt that was incurred by HHM and she’ll be on the fast track to a partnership. Of course, Rick is secretly just sticking it to HHM by potentially stealing away a secret weapon in the upcoming trial but he might also be gaining a valuable asset as well. Either way, it gives Kim plenty to think about after she goes back to work and Howard is still jabbing her at every turn without saying a word.
This time he has her doing paperwork during her lunch break so that she can’t leave the building and Kim’s finally had enough — so she just gets up from her desk, side stepping the babysitter from HHM that’s akin to that goddamn pixie ninja Erin currently standing over Jimmy’s right shoulder and she walks out to get some food. It’s a small level of rebellion but it’s what Kim can muster for now.
Trouble Is Coming
Mike knew after meeting with Hector Salamanca a week ago that it was a problem that wouldn’t soon go away and after finding one of his goons waiting on his doorstep with the same $5,000 offer to drop the gun charge so his nephew Tuco could avoid a lengthy jail sentence, it was only going to escalate from here.
Mike politely turned the man down but he knew Hector wasn’t the kind of man who accepted a ‘no thank you’ as an answer.
So Mike goes MacGuyver with a welcome mat and some carbon paper (remember that trick if you ever want to look for home intruders) and discovers two more of Hector’s thugs broke into his place and were waiting inside a closet to surprise him. Instead he pistol whips both thugs and sends them packing.
“Try harder next time. Get out.”
~ Mike
Mike my have a steely resolve on the surface but as he’s cleaning the blood of the butt of his gun, his hands start to shake. Even the unflappable Mike Ehrmantraut isn’t above being rattled.
The next day while taking care of his granddaughter Kaylee at the pool, he spots two more of Hector’s thugs — his nephews you might recognize from Breaking Bad — and they are standing just a few hundred yards away from his family. One of Hector’s nephews makes his hand into a gun and points it directly at Kaylee before dropping his thumb. A cold chill runs down Mike’s spine and he knows this isn’t a problem that’s going to go away without direct confrontation.
So Mike sets a meeting and shows up to sit down with Hector to discuss how they can resolve this issue.
Hector says Mike will go to the police, claim the gun was his and Tuco will get out sooner rather than later. Because Mike balked at the original offer and then pistol whipped two of his guys, the $5,000 is no longer on the table either.
Mike has a counter offer — pay him $50,000, he’ll eat the gun charge and everybody goes their separate ways.
Rather than kill Mike or threaten his family again, Hector actually applauds him for having balls big enough to fit into a dump truck and he agrees to the terms.
“$50,000 and the gun is yours”
~ Hector
Later that night, Nacho shows up to deliver the money with an ulterior motive to talk to Mike about the plan that unfolded that ultimately didn’t work with Tuco now expected to get out of jail in a matter of months rather than years. Before Nacho can show much concern, Mike explains that the plan they put together never existed in the first place and he hands him $25,000 out of the $50,000 he just collected from Hector.
“We made a deal, I didn’t hold up my end. Your problem is coming back sooner than we expected.”
~ Mike
Mike is nothing if not a man of his word, although he just managed to land in the crosshairs of a very dangerous gangster who was willing to target his family just to ensure his cooperation. It makes you wonder if Mike doesn’t eventually seek out an even bigger threat to back him up and back Hector off.
The Return of Viktor and Giselle
After skipping out on her lunch duties at HHM, Kim goes back to the same bar where she hung out with Jimmy at the start of the season as she enjoys a Moscow Mule all by her lonesome. She ponders her next move while staring at her phone wondering if it was finally time to call Jimmy back. After all, he’s been calling her daily and singing every song he can muster from the ‘South Pacific’ soundtrack and before long he’s going to move onto The Carpenters catalog.
Kim finally decides to give Jimmy a ring but only after she witnesses some useless shit bag kiss his girlfriend/mistress goodbye, walk back into the bar and then offer to buy her a drink. This guy is just begging to be fleeced.
So Kim calls Jimmy and rescues him from his Erin-hovering-hell and invites him to join her at the bar — she’s got a live one on the wire.
When he shows up, Jimmy introduces himself as ‘Viktor’ where he joins his sister ‘Giselle’ for a drink with this hapless, cheating idiot. A few hours and drinks later, they’ve convinced this guy to hand them a check for $10,000 written out to ‘Ice Station Zebra Associates’ — the movie they watched together several weeks back — and then head back to Kim’s place to reconnect with a romp in the sack.
The next morning, Kim admires her handiwork while putting the check up on her mirror as a sign of success. She then tells Jimmy about her job offer but she’s unsure about accepting the position. Kim is convinced she’d be taking the job for all the wrong reasons — the same way Jimmy took the job at Davis and Main just to appease her.
“I took that job because it was the right decision. A steady paycheck — done. A place to live that’s more than five square feet — boom. A car that’s all one color — nailed it. I’m good. I got what I wanted and you with this Schweikart thing, you could have everything you ever wanted.”
~ Jimmy
Except we all know the job at Davis and Main is like a waking nightmare for Jimmy that he can’t escape except in those moments when he flees from his one bedroom prison and jams back into the five-square foot storage room at the nail salon. Jimmy really is the ‘World’s Second Best Lawyer’ mug trying to squeeze into that goddamn misshapen cup holder in the Mercedes.
He’s convinced he’ll eventually fit — but chances are he’ll soon pry himself loose with a tire iron.
Better Call Saul returns next Monday night at 10pm ET on AMC — take a look at a sneak preview from the episode below:
