Fun and Games

Last time, I wondered how the writers would manage to orchestrate Jimmy’s transformation into Saul with a mere five episodes remaining. Their solution, catching me completely off-guard, is the jump forward in time.

It’s so elegant. The show professes that Jimmy becomes Saul because Kim is no longer with him. Kim knows that together they’re “poison”, but without her, Jimmy’s abrasiveness and cynicism have no counterpoise. Since the beginning of the show, Kim has motivated JimmyElder law was her suggestion. He joins Davis & Main at her urging. He preemptively prints business cards for their law partnership. He sabotages Chuck so that Mesa Verde stays on as Kim’s first client., and now she’s gone. Ultimately, we don’t need to see the transformation play out for it to feel perfectly natural.

The scene at Howard’s memorial is overflowing with tension because we still haven’t seen Kim and Jimmy openly address the role they played in Howard’s death. Jimmy seems to believe it will all disappear on its ownIn an unconvincing attempt to comfort Kim, he delivers a poor man’s version of Mike’s advice on trauma (“At some point we’ll suddenly realize that we haven’t thought about it at all, none of it. And that’s when we’ll know, we’ll know we can forget.”), but as with the titular message of “Bad Choice Road”, he completely misses the point., but everything we glean about how Kim is processing things is based on uncertain glances and guarded reactions. Jimmy shamelessly maneuvers around Cheryl’s accusations, and Kim looks away with discomfortThis is familiar: Kim discovering that Jimmy’s grief for Chuck in front of the bar association wasn’t genuine.. To my surprise, Kim ups the ante when Cheryl refuses to back down, and now Jimmy is the one to look on in astonishmentThis, too, is familiar: Kim backing Jimmy up in front of Lalo.. Kim builds upon Jimmy’s lies as if by impulseThis is the episode’s frightening revelation. and finds herself manipulating an innocent, grieving woman into questioning whether she really knew her husband. As Kim realizes later, the problem isn’t her, nor is it Jimmy. It’s the way they feed off of each other when they’re together.

Gus’s conversation with the sommelier and especially Mike’s meeting with Nacho’s father felt extraneous to me. They’re both character moments that mostly replay what we already know about these characters. It makes for an asymmetrically-paced episode, because the back half is as propulsive as Better Call Saul gets.

The end of Jimmy and Kim’s relationship is devastating, beautifully written and acted. Unlike their near-break-up in “Wexler v. Goodman”, Kim is resigned from the beginning because this time it’s not Jimmy who she’s angry at; she’s appalled at herself.

I had nearly recovered by the time Kim starts to explain why she didn’t tell Jimmy about Lalo. Little did I know that her explanation wasn’t a reprieve but the kicker itself: “And then… we’d break up. And I didn’t want that. Because I was having too much… fun.” Rhea Seehorn’s explosive utterance of the word “fun” carries all of Kim’s guilt and self-loathing.

It would make me very happy to see Kim and Jimmy reunited in Omaha in the present day.