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Better Call Saul “Fifi” Review

Spoilers ahead
tread lightly (see what I did
there?)…

Coming off an
episode last week that was mainly

focused on Jimmy it was nice to see this weeks episode maintain that
direction.
If I have any complaints
about this season of Better Call Saul it would
be how the Jimmy and
Mike story lines seem so far
apart, and I’m curious to how
they’re going to tie together. Although I
could make the argument that they

don’t necisarrialy need to tie together. Hear me out, hear me out. In

Breaking Bad Saul and
Mike worked together but only when it was needed.
Otherwise one could argue
that they lead completely
separate lives. Why
can’t Better Call Saul be that way? A way to
tell the stories of Saul

and Mike as they exist before Walter White and how their lives

continually intersect. While I
don’t think the show runners of Better Call
Saul
are going to go
that way at least it would sort of
make sense. But who
are we kidding, we want these two guys on screen
together. And at some point
this
season needs to bridge that gap.

This
week
brought a lot of
interesting elements to the table. The Jimmy and Kim “sharing a
law office
but not a practice” relationship
has already gotten off to a murky
start. When discussing her resignation
from HHM Jimmy right away tells Kim
that
she needs to undercut the firm; mail in the letter while Howard is on
the golf
course and start
recruiting clients. A pull the rug out from under them
technique that Kim
instantly says no to. The
importance here isn’t that Kim
says, of course she would she still respects
the firm and doesn’t want to
burn
bridges like a logical human being. What is important is the
fact they
are in business for
like a day and already Jimmy was trying to corrupt her,
which is my biggest
fear of them sharing the building
together. I feel that
moral, respectable, do things by the law Kim is
sitting on borrowed time

here.

Her meeting with Howard goes from snarky (“All hail the King of
the
D-Bags!) to “good for
you” pep talk in a matter of moments. Howard was quick to
be cold and
distant when he believed that Kim was
going to a rival firm (he’s
got connections. Must be the hair) but almost
seemed genuinely jealous when he

learned that she was going at on her own. There was actually a rare moment
where
Howard seemed human
writing off Kim’s school bills (hey Howard I have student
loans too if you
want to take care of them) and
talking about how his father
forced him into the firm. All of that vanished
as soon as Kim stepped out of the

office and he went back into shark mode. Hearing that Howard was looking to

recruit clients immediately
put Kim into a frantic run to her office trying to
recover from his head
start. One has to believe that in
that instant that she
thought Jimmy was right.

Although
it doesn’t go terribly
for Kim and she’s able to maintain her huge million
dollar acquisition,
Mesa Verde, at a lunch meeting. Kim
uses all the confidence
she’s acquired with the scams she’s pulled with
Jimmy to lure Mesa Verde back,

and it was great watching Kim use those powers for good and get herself a

win. But it didn’t come
without consequence. Before we address that though, how
great was it seeing
Kim excited in the dental office?
For the first time since
the show started we got a glimpse of Kim embracing
her full emotion and it was a

great character moment. Double thumbs up for this scene here. This heartfelt

moment would be short lived
as Howard turns to the big guns, Chuck, to help in a
last ditch effort to
retain Mesa Verde. Good ole Chuck
picks out his finest tin
foil jacket and goes to work with technology
ablazing, driven by the disgust

that Kim (who has such potential) would align herself with Jimmy. Chuck’s
Jedi
mind trick on the reps
from Mesa Verde works and they ultimately consed to the
logic that HHM is
the better fit. Double thumbs
down.

Going to the office
really takes it out of Chuck as he’s
rushed home to soak in the safeness of
his
technology free home and his favorite tin foil blanket. Learning of
Chuck’s
condition doesn’t
really seem to phase Jimmy until he learns how Chuck helped
chase Mesa Verde
away from Kim. For his part
Jimmy gives a good speech to
reaffirm Kim that starting their own firms is
the right decision, and maybe he

believes it, but I think on a larger scale Jimmy doesn’t believe Kim can

survive because she’s
unwilling to bend the rules. Lucky for her Jimmy has no
problem with
this.

And that brings us to what
I am sure will not only
be the major conflict for these last two
episodes but also the nail in

the coffin of the Jimmy and Kim relationship. Jimmy goes to visit Chuck and

check up on him and notices
the Mesa Verde files off in the corner. Chuck is
more or less in a
technology induced coma (which happens to
me often but for
different reasons) which Jimmy takes advantage of almost
instantly. Pulling out
a number
of different documents and heading to the local copy making store (for
you
young ones, yes those were an
actual thing) and goes into full art project
mode. Replacing the original
documents with his tampered ones
could possibly
persuade Mesa Verde back to Kim but there’s no way that
it’s going to go
unnoticed. How
could Jimmy possibly believe that Chuck won’t know it’s him or
that Kim
won’t see that he had some hand in
it? This is the first real illegal
act that we see Jimmy do as a lawyer, and
while he’s doing it for love,
it’s
going to cost him big time.

But there is a chance though that
it might
not. Get excited
because it’s theory time! What if Kim knows what Jimmy did and
chooses to
turn a blind eye. She won’t
acknowledge it but also won’t turn away
Mesa Verde. It could be Jimmy’s
second strike with her, but I think
it will
serve a bigger function in kicking open the door to bad lawyer
practices for
Kim. How could Kim
maintain that by the book stance if she turns her head to
this? It would be
only a matter of time until
she’s doing things the Jimmy way
(hehehehe Jimmy way… sorry I’m twelve).
Jimmy is the apple of temptation
and
I wonder if Kim will be able to keep herself from biting.

Some
quick
thoughts on other things
that happened in this episode…

  • really enjoyed the
    tracking shot to open the episode.
    This season has
    really worked in some great tracking shots and you all know
    that I’m a sucker
    for them.
    Plus it also served as a call back to how Gus would move his drugs
    in
    Breaking Bad.
  • Stake out Mike and his Thermos of
    Justice (name pending) are
    awesome. While his story has been
    pushed to the back
    burner the last couple of weeks I am looking forward to
    what he has planned for

    Hector. One could assume it will involve that truck from the tracking shot
    and
    the Hose of Doom that he
    created with his granddaughter at the end of the
    episode.

  • Everything about filming that
    commercial on the military
    base was hysterical. Just goes to show that there
    are new levels (or at least

    varying levels) of low Jimmy will travel in order to get what he needs. In
    this
    case a shot of Fudge (a
    reformed public masturbater pretending to be a military
    vet) standing in
    front of Fifi the war plane (ooooooh
    episode title
    alert!)

  • Despite what we may feel about Chuck
    luring Mersa Verde
    away from Kim
    we do have to admit that he’s hard to beat when he brings his A
    game. I
    feel that once he learns what Jimmy
    did we’re going to see that A game
    again, technology be damned. Time for
    another quick theory. Chuck trying
    to get
    revenge on Jimmy for his actions continues to go into the office with
    the
    technology blaring. This
    ultimately leads to his death (sorry kids I think he’s
    going to die) and
    would make Jimmy accountable for
    the deaths of two family
    members. Maybe he becomes Saul Goodman to escape
    the pain and torment of being

    Jimmy McGill? Things to think about.

So Geeklings, what did
you
think of this weeks
episode? Were you happy that Jimmy went super shady this
week in attempt to
avenge Kim? How much will his
actions cost him? What do you
think Mike has in store for Hector and the
Hose of Doom? Sound off in the

comments below.

 

Images from AMC

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