The end of tonight’s Better Call Saul is a triumphant one. Jimmy’s finally taking his life into his own hands, and not allowing the emotional manipulations of Chuck to dictate his actions. He’s following the double yellow lines, staying in his lane, and doing things his own way. Jimmy, in his his mind, has broken free.
And he has. Oh boy, he has. But he’s less a freed animal than a drifting ship; he’s not broken chains as much as his moorings. Whatever grip he had on his life is now gone, and he’s drifting with the tide. He no longer approaches things with his future (or anybody else) in mind. He takes the short-term benefits as quickly as he can.
But yet, you can’t really even blame him. There’s a certain stereotype to people who live lives of crime or deceit; they are seen as fundamentally miserable people who just need a straight arrow to show them happiness of being good. But the one person who Jimmy has spent a year protecting and reinvigorating thinks he’s not worth the paper his law degree is printed on. Marco, on the other hand, loves him like a brother, and only wants to see him happy. Marco looks up to Jimmy and treats him like family. Chuck treats him like the shoeshine boy whom he gives a big tip to assuage his guilt. Why wouldn’t Jimmy return to that? In that world, people treat him nicely. In that world, he’s a success. In that world, he doesn’t have to worry about anybody but himself. Jimmy got tired of people shrugging at him; Jimmy got tired of people throwing up their hands when the anvil lands on his head. Jimmy mentioned the roadrunner, but he’s much closer to Wile E. Coyote: he’s chasing something that he wants so badly that even as he falls off a cliff his legs are still running.
To watch Jimmy break down as B after B after B came up in the bingo machine was heartbreaking. He’s holding it together, and this one last thing goes wrong. The odds are against him again. How many more times can he deal with this? He turned down the Kettlemans’ money. He turned down the scheme with Nacho. He even gave up his clients so that they would have the best representation possible. How much more can the universe do to him?
And then it takes Marco.
There’s no predicting these sorts of things; not really, anyways. You never know what sort of crap the unknown will dump on you. But when you catch a run of really cold cards, it starts to feel personal. So you start grasping at things that have kept you afloat before. You find things that you put away because you thought you were better than them, now. You pull out the old stuffed animals and the blankets or Yu-Gi-Oh cards or whatever is in the deepest recesses of your good memories, and you try to get ahold of a world that exists to shake you off at the earliest possible moment. And to have that taken–no, ripped away–from you is the last straw. So when Jimmy McGill went back to Chicago to be a douchebag psychopath because that felt like him kicking the universe in testicles, it felt great. He probably would’ve gone back to Albuquerque and worked in his elder law and got that job at Davis and Maine. But then the universe flipped a billion coins and all of them were facing down, and Marco died.
Jimmy is now in total control, alone, of his future. He thinks he’s got power, and options, and that his acceptance of his desire to climb the social ladder by any means necessary somehow makes him a better man. But it just makes him weaker. He’ll drift in the wind, like the bug he feels like he is, blown to places he’ll never come back from, and do things that the old Jimmy McGill would’ve spent his life trying to stop. He might see it as getting one over on a world that has been undeniably cruel to him, but he’s forgotten the universal rule of being a gambler: the house always wins.
Stray Thoughts
– This episode was a really fascinating piece of work, but it wasn’t as good as some of the previous ones. Which is really saying something.
– I dread the day when Kim is no longer a part of this show.
– By the way, Chuck, nobody likes Fuji apples, you pretentious douchebag.
– I might be offended because you called Red Delicious apples tasteless.
– I am definitely offended.
– Hamlin being revealed as the pseudo-good guy of the firm is hilarious.
[Photo via AMC]
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Even with you still thinking this trash episode was good, I can’t help but feel this is one of the most wonderfully well-written and thoughtful reviews I have read in recent years. NEW YORK TIMES hire this man immediately!
This episode should get 6 stars at most. Be more discerning with your stars. THIS EPISODE WAS GARBAGE!