In the latest Better Call Saul recap, Jimmy faces Chuck for the first time in months and Mike has to deal with the fallout from his former business partner doing something very stupid…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer @DamonMartin
A good job, a new car and plans for a possible home alongside Kim still can’t deter Jimmy McGill from sinking back into his natural instincts, especially when the prying eyes of his brother Chuck are still peeking around every corner.
In the latest episode of Better Call Saul, Jimmy is starting to settle into his new life as a lawyer on the fast track to becoming a partner at his new employer Davis & Main and with Kim by his side, he’s got all the confidence to feel like he’s ready to tackle the world or at least the Sandpiper Crossing people he’s going after as part of a massive lawsuit.
All Jimmy ever wanted was to belong — to sit in a room with the highest paid lawyers in New Mexico and feel like he deserved a seat amongst them.
But Jimmy’s one Achilles’ heel remains his older brother Chuck, who not only fed him false doses of confidence only to reveal that he was actually choking him the entire time because he never looked at him as anything more than a common crook, but he can’t even stay out of his life now that he’s finally doing something with himself.
Chuck’s days spent at home playing ‘Sicilienne‘ on the piano just isn’t occupying his mind and when Howard comes to visit and tells him about the Jimmy’s new job at a high ranking law firm, he can’t help but to find a way to inject himself back into his brother’s life.
Maybe there’s a part of Chuck that wants to see his brother succeed, but it certainly looks like he can’t handle the fact that no matter how many times he pushes Jimmy’s head down under the water, he keeps finding a way back up for air. Unfortunately, Jimmy can’t help but to fall back down the rabbit hole every time Chuck is around, and it’s only a matter of time before it happens again.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of Better Call Saul titled ‘Cobbler’….
A Smoker in Corrales
Even Jimmy McGill can’t believe his life these days.
He’s got a gorgeous woman by his side. A high paying gig at a plush law firm while acting as one of the lead counsels in a massive lawsuit that could unravel a huge elderly care facility conglomerate. He’s even planning to look at houses in Corrales while his girlfriend Kim slips into ‘we’ conversations while planning backyard barbecues with the smoker they should really think about buying.
It’s all going so well but it’s clear from the next hour that Jimmy McGill isn’t made for the Mercedes his company gives him as a new car.
The best metaphor for his square peg/round hole persona is the ‘World’s Second Best Lawyer’ joke cup that Kim gives him as a gift and while it fits like a dream in Jimmy’s crappy old lemon yellow Suzuki, it just won’t fit in the brand new Mercedes cup holder that must be measured in metric instead of inches.
Jimmy’s trying awfully hard to walk the straight and narrow. He works his cases for Davis & Main and even impresses Howard and the other attorneys when he reveals how he’s put together a paper trail with the residents at Sandpiper Crossing that will serve as just one more bullet in the gun these law firms are loading up to fire in court.
It’s clear, however, that no matter what Jimmy does day to day at his new firm or how many board rooms he wows with his due diligence, he’s always trying to prove something to the other people in the room.
Thanks to some encouragement from Kim, he even puts on a show at HHM when Chuck shows up to ‘sit in’ on a random meeting when it’s clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’s there to check up on Jimmy.
Jimmy soldiers through but when the meeting comes to an end, he finally talks to his brother for the first time in weeks and he’s curious why Chuck decided today of all days was the perfect occasions for an impromptu visit. Why is he here?
“To bear witness”
~ Chuck
So when Mike Ehrmantraut calls Jimmy for a job while also asking him if he’s still morally flexible, it only takes him a second to accept the offer and head back to his roots, which is exactly where Chuck always felt he belonged anyways.
But why was Mike calling Jimmy for a job?
The Carrot and the Stick
A week ago, Mike was forced to sever his business relationship with Dan Wormald aka the pharmaceutical stealing baseball card enthusiast who drives around in a Hummer that looks like the previous owner was Hulk Hogan. Dan’s need to flash the wealth he’s earned from selling drugs doesn’t sit too well with Mike, who prefers much drabber colors on cars while quietly amassing a lot of green at home.
But Dan is an idiot because when his former partner in crime Nacho double crosses him, breaks into his house and steals the drugs along with his baseball card collection, he actually calls the cops.
Now the first rule of crime — for those curious — is to not involve the cops in anything you’re doing no matter what. So Dan calling the police to investigate his stolen baseball card collection only sends them sniffing around the house considering it looks like a place that belongs to an IT guy at a drug company but the car he’s driving sure seems to look like he’s doing more than fixing those computers.
“I refer you to our previous conversation. In this blinking, neon sign of a vehicle that says drug dealer, they suspect you.”
~ Mike
Mike finally convinces Dan to forgo his meeting with the cops in favor of allowing him to track down the baseball cards in exchange for a hefty sum of money. Otherwise, Dan will be spending his next few nights in jail and it won’t take him long to lead the cops back to Mike and that’s not good for anybody.
Next thing you know, Mike has tracked down Nacho to his family’s place of business — an upholstery company where he works alongside his father.
Mike offers Nacho an easy deal to just give up the cards and they can all go their separate ways. When he scoffs at the negotiation and assumes Mike is there to threaten his family as a tactic to get back the baseball cards, the best fixer in the business offers up an alternative. The old carrot and the stick routine — except this particular stick will hit Nacho so hard that he’ll never get up again.
“I’m not here to threaten your family. And the name of the stick is Tuco Salamanca. Now, you don’t play ball, so to speak, and Tuco finds out about your little side business. That a big enough stick?”
~ Mike
Mike does offer him one piece of compensation for his time — in exchange for returning the cards, Nacho will take possession of Dan’s $60,000 prized painted up behemoth of a car while handing over $10,000 cash for all the trouble.
The money goes to Mike, the car goes to Nacho, the cards go back to their rightful owner and at the end of the transaction everybody stays alive, nobody goes to jail and the drug dealing adventures of Dan Wormald finally come to an end.
But there’s one last problem Mike still needs to deal with and that’s the cops that got called into this case because Dan is an utter moron so that’s where Jimmy’s morally flexible services come in so handy.
Squat Cobbler
Dan arrives at the police station but he’s got Jimmy in tow for assistance. Dan explains to the cops that it was all one big misunderstanding and the cards have been returned so case closed.
Of course the cops want a lot more than that so Jimmy sends Dan out to get some coffee while he explains what was hidden in that crawl space beneath a floor board behind a couch in the looted apartment.
Jimmy tells the cops — in a diatribe that truly harkens back to the best of Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad — that Dan was involved in an ‘art’ exchange with another man that involved him shooting squat cobbling videos.
“Squat cobbler. You know what squat cobbler is.”
~ Jimmy
The cops are clueless.
Jimmy proceeds to reel off a few more names to describe a ‘squat cobbler’ but the cops are still dumbfounded. Finally, Jimmy explains in graphic detail what it is Dan does for extra cash to pay for those expensive, flaming off road vehicles.
“It’s when a man sits in pie. He sits in a pie and he wiggles around.”
~ Jimmy
Cut to Jimmy carrying a stack of pies into Kim’s apartment where he shares with her the spoils of his victory. She’s engrossed by his story about fooling the cops with a tale about a man who makes videos where he sits in a pie, sometimes while crying, and sells them to another person for money. The extra pies, as it turns out, were props that Jimmy purchased after the cops requested to see the videos so of course Dan was forced to actually become a part time squat cobbler for at least one night.
The cops bought it and Dan was no longer a suspect.
But while Jimmy is laughing his ass off about how he put one over on the cops, Kim’s smile has turned upside down because what her boyfriend just did is considered fabricating evidence and that’s a huge no-no in the world of attorneys. She can’t figure out why Jimmy would take a chance like this while he’s got the job of a lifetime working for Davis & Main.
Regardless of his intentions or how much he claimed to be helping a friend, Kim tells Jimmy that if he ever does this again, she can’t know about it. The tension in the room reaches a fevered pitch and we’re starting to see a much clearer picture of how Jimmy eventually becomes Saul Goodman and why Kim was never present on Breaking Bad.
Morally flexible to some is criminal to others.
Check out a preview for the next episode of Better Call Saul below before the show airs Monday night at 10pm ET on AMC
