Waterworks

I always wondered whether Jimmy would genuinely become as cynical as Breaking Bad Saul or whether some of that callousness would be revealed to be an act. His show of indifference when signing the divorce papers is enough to appall Kim, but there’s real effort behind his performative delay with the bouncy ball. Saul’s strategy to deal with Kim leaving is the same one he adopted after Chuck’s death: make such a show of not caring that eventually it must become true. Yet as Kim makes her exit, Saul’s blinking earpiece lies unworn on the desk in the foreground, the one flaw in his veneer of disaffectedness.

When I wrote about “Carrot and Stick”, I made a comment suggesting some unlikely pairings in the Better Call Saul universe. None of them would be as satisfying as the one we got this week between Kim and Jesse. Kim digests Saul’s new persona speechlessly, but when Jesse asks her if Saul is a good lawyer, her condemnation is scathing: “When I knew him, he was.”

In Kim and Jimmy’s arguments, I’ve usually found Kim to be the voice of reason against Jimmy’s impulsive and self-centered behavior. But when Kim demands that Saul turn himself in, he’s not unjustified when he tears into Kim’s hypocrisy; Kim’s list of crimes is no match for Saul’s, but her concealment and self-exile differ mostly in degree. Her initial instinct to lay blame on Saul speaks to the magnitude of the guilt she’s carried with her, enough for her to erase all of her desires and opinions lest she allow herself to repeat what she did with Jimmy.

Kim forces herself to reckon with the truth behind Saul’s viciousness, and you have to admire her bravery as she sets off on a quest to make things right, inasmuch as she can. The silent tension in the room as Cheryl reads Kim’s attestation is agonizing. It’s an effective touch to zoom in, down to the indentations on the surface of the paper, as the camera scans across Kim’s words“cocaine addiction”, “died instantly”, “staged as a suicide”. The starkness of the formal language somehow makes the reality of what happened feel just as horrific as watching it unfold.

I love that Marion is the one who ends up blowing the whistle on Saul. It comes as a surprise because she’s ancillary to the main threat, but it works because of her sharp, no-nonsense attitude and her dread upon picturing her son relapsing into a life of crime. Plus, she’s getting really good with that new computer.

Saul’s commercial reflected on his glasses is an absolutely stunning image. It combines the shock of discovering that he’s finally been found out with the technicolor wonder of a portal back to Saul Goodman.