In the Better Call Saul recap for the season 2 debut, Jimmy contemplates a change in careers while Mike loses a client who finds out what it’s like when he’s not around…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
And we are back at the local Cinnabon in Omaha, Nebraska.
Just like a year ago when the journey to find out how Saul Goodman got his start, the new season of Better Call Saul kicked off in a very similar manner. It’s there we meet Gene — the manager of the establishment — who is cleaning up and putting away dishes from the day’s business. He says goodbye to his employees and prepares to take out the last two bags of trash.
Gene dumps the bags while letting out a sigh — how did Walter White’s money man and attorney go from million dollar drug deals to dumping trash at a Cinnabon? Where did it all go wrong? Why did the door just slam shut locking him in the trash dumpster area?
This is Saul Goodman’s life now.
And it’s ending one frosted, cinnamon treat at a time.
Ever since Heisenberg’s identity was revealed and Walt was forced to make a run for it, Saul had to do the same. A life spent inside a mall cinnamon bun stand was still better than jail and it was certainly better than death, but there are days like these were “Gene” can’t even walk out of the emergency door out of fear that the cops will actually arrive on the scene as the warning claims next to the handle.
Gene can’t risk being discovered so he steps back from the door, sits on a milk crate and waits until somebody finally arrives to let him out. This is Saul Goodman’s life now. He can’t ruffle feathers and he needs to be the least noticeable man in all of Nebraska. He can’t risk being caught. Not now. Not after all he did to get away.
But deep down, Saul still exists. He won’t be extinguished and we get proof of that when “Gene” quickly escapes from the trash room without a word and there’s a scribble on the side of the wall where he once sat. It’s small and it’s faint but it’s like a heartbeat clinging to life.
“SG was here”.
Saul Goodman still breathes — it may be faint and he may be hidden beneath some bad glasses, a 1970’s-esque porn mustache but he’s there. He might even open that emergency door one day.
With that said, let’s recap the Better Call Saul season 2 debut titled ‘Switch’….
Good Man No More
At the end of Better Call Saul season one, Jimmy McGill was able to earn his way into a meeting with a prestigious law firm about a job — granted it wasn’t the same firm that his brother Chuck founded and that he desperately wanted to join — but it was a great offer nonetheless. The final scenes from last season showed Jimmy’s meeting coming to an abrupt end as he left the courthouse and quickly questioned his new “friend” Mike Ehrmantraut why he didn’t steal over a million dollars when he had the chance last year?
Jimmy’s resolution was that the mistake he made back then — catering to the whims of his brother’s wishes that he would walk the straight and narrow and give up a life of crime where he grifted people out of their money as a con man in Chicago — were no more. That fake was dead and now “Slippin” Jimmy was back while he hummed the tunes of “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple and rubbed the pinky ring that once belonged to his running partner Marco before he died.
Now in the season two premiere, we find out what happened in that meeting inside the courthouse when Jimmy skipped out on a lucrative job at a law firm that appeared to be his dream come true.
It seems just when he was about to land the plush gig at Davis and Main after being credited for getting the ball rolling on the now famous Sandpiper Crossing lawsuit, Jimmy had a question that forced him to make a hard decision. But it wasn’t about money or the perks of being a lawyer at this new firm. Jimmy wanted to know right then and there that if joined this firm would that somehow sour the chances that he would be able to finally get together with Kim?
She was flustered and flummoxed by his question while giving him no real answer but that’s all Jimmy needed to hear. He quickly turned down the offer and thanked the partners for their time before his interaction with Mike where he asked him about the decision to forgo a payday worth $1.6 million dollars. Why didn’t they just take the money? Why did Jimmy try to do ‘the right thing’?
Mike: “Me personally, I was hired to do a job. I did it. That’s as far as it goes.”
Jimmy: “Well, I know what stopped me and you know what? It’s never stopping me again.”
Jimmy is putting Chuck McGill in his rearview mirror just like that job offer that was nothing more than a payoff to get rid of him so he would no longer darken the doorstep of Hamlin, Hamlin and McGill again.
Hello, Mr. Cumstain
The next we see Jimmy he’s hanging out in a pool at a local hotel where he’s staying under the name ‘Mr. Cumstain’, sipping away at drinks and enjoying the good life in water that’s heated at a perfect 82 degrees. When Kim shows up to ask him why the hell he turned down a posh job practicing law, Jimmy tells her the hard truth — he’s not cut out to be a lawyer.
Jimmy proclaims that his entire reason for becoming an attorney in the first place was to prove to his brother Chuck that he was not only giving up his former life as a con man but he was capable of a profession that would make him proud. But it all backfired because while he was treading water as an attorney, Chuck was secretly pressing his head back under the waves just waiting for Jimmy to drown.
Jimmy: “Ever since I got here, all I’ve done is try to make Chuck happy. Bend over backwards to please Chuck. Chuck, Chuck, Chuck. Well no more.”
So instead of being a lawyer, Jimmy decides that he’s going to just see what the universe brings him.
Kim: “OK so no plan. Just walk the Earth like Jules at the end of “Pulp Fiction”?”
Jimmy decides to give Kim some insight into his former life as ‘Slippin’ Jimmy when he finds a douchebag day trader, who can’t even begin to keep his voice down low enough so that everybody around him knows he’s wheeling and dealing with other people’s money. As Canada Bill Jones once said — ‘it’s immoral to let a sucker keep his money’ — so Jimmy concocts a plan on the spot filled with wild tales of family inheritance and a desire to invest that money that the day trader is immediately hooked.
Kim even plays along as his ‘sister’ and the two of them end up at a table where they quietly order $50 shots of tequila until the bottle is dry. When it’s all said and done, “Viktor” and “Jazelle” sign the forms to give this stock hound access to their family fortune and they walk out of the bar. Little does the broker know that he just drank about $2000 worth of tequila that he’s paying for while there’s absolutely zero chance that this brother and sister combo actually gave him access to their “fortune”.
Jimmy and Kim are exhilarated from the boost and end up falling into each other’s embrace before retiring back to her apartment for the night. Jimmy got the girl — at least for now.
A Level of Restraint
When he’s not guarding the gate at the local courthouse, Mike has been quietly keeping an eye on Daniel Warmald — the IT specialist at a pharmaceutical company who has been ripping off pills for quite some time and selling them to Nacho Varga for profit.
If you remember from last season, Mike took out his competition and ended up as Daniel’s sole bodyguard when the jittery computer specialist first brokered the deal to sell the stolen pills. Mike has still been doing his job — with his lunch bag in tow — but the money has gone to Daniel’s head. In fact, he’s gone as far as buying the gaudiest Hummer complete with flames streaming down the side with shoes to match.
No seriously, this idiot bought shoes to match his car.
Mike: “This business requires restraint. That is the opposite of restraint.”
Well, Mike clearly doesn’t dig the new ride — in fact he thinks it’s ridiculous and this is exactly the kind of car that you don’t take to a drug deal with somebody working inside the cartel. But Daniel doesn’t listen and ultimately fires Mike on the spot when he refuses to join him in the flamed out Hummer. Daniel thinks at this point he can handle the exchange himself — after all everything has gone smooth the last few times and really he’s just been paying Mike to stand there.
Right?
Well, Daniel finds out the hard way what Mike was worth when he casually allows Nacho to climb in the Hummer and proceeds to find his home address. It’s no shock when Daniel returns home from work for lunch and his place has been ransacked.
Daniel then decides to call the cops — to help him find a very expensive baseball card collection that was stolen from his house. Now it doesn’t take the cops long to figure out that Daniel is driving a seriously expensive vehicle and talking about owning some of the rarest baseball cards in the world yet he continues to live in a shit hole of a house. It’s like the guy driving a Dodge Neon with $2000 rims and a $5000 stereo — something doesn’t fit.
While Daniel is clueless to basically implicating himself in some kind of wrong doing, the cops figure out that the couch has been moved in exactly the spot where the trash from the house is no longer laying. As if somebody moved that couch to get to something behind it — and sure enough there is a loose wall tile and a giant open space behind it. There’s nothing hidden there now but Daniel sure was keeping something secret down there and he didn’t buy that Hummer or those baseball cards with his good looks.
In one fell swoop, Daniel just gave up his protection and his lucrative side business because he had to drive around in a Hummer built for a real asshole.
Way to go.
Do Not Turn Off
The morning after Jimmy finally got with Kim, he watches as she gets ready for work while he prepares for another day spent laying in the pool. But Jimmy realizes that for a girl like Kim, being a worthless lay-about or even a part time con man isn’t going to cut it. She’s going to want someone a little more worthwhile to let into her bed on a regular basis.
So Jimmy makes the call to Davis and Main — and one moment later he’s meeting his new co-workers, shaking hands and being introduced around the office as the new lawyer at the firm. Jimmy needs respectability if he’s going to keep a woman like Kim on his arm.
Inside his new office, Jimmy is a little shocked about how he’s instantaneously transformed from lawyer-living-in-the-back-of-a-salon to a bona fide attorney working at a very reputable firm. His new assistant bludgeons him with questions on the first day — what would he like in his refrigerator? Would he like new art on the walls? Or how about a new desk?
Do they have cocobolo?
Remember last season, Jimmy told Kim that he wanted a cocobolo desk — and he didn’t even know what it was, but he liked saying cocobolo. Well, when he asked his new assistant for a cocobolo desk, Davis and Main was more than happy to foot the bill for the luxury expense.
A smile crept across Jimmy’s face as he took a look out of the window and noticed a light switch with a sign taped underneath it that said ‘always leave on, do not turn off’. There’s no indication what this light switch is attached to or why you can’t turn it off. Jimmy’s curiosity got to him and so he removed the tape and flipped the light switch off and guess what? Nothing happened.
A moment later Jimmy flipped the switch again, replaced the tape and continued to stare back out of the window. Things have come full circle for Jimmy McGill.
In these days, Jimmy was inquisitive and stopped caring what other people thought about him. He flipped that switch because he wanted to see what would happen. Now years later while mopping up floors and slathering frosting on cinnamon buns, he’s afraid to even open the door because a warning says the police will come if he does.
He doesn’t know for sure what will happen if he opens that door but unlike those days as Jimmy McGill he’s no longer willing to find out.
Take a look at the preview for Better Call Saul next Monday night at 10pm ET on AMC
