I'd describe the show's arc as Jimmy does some questionable things, ends up in trouble, through a combination of coincidence, wits, desperation, and determination, solves a mystery, proves the cops wrong, potentially saves his own skin, and blows open the case against the Kettlemans. And I think that arc, especially with the nice tidy ending, could be really satisfying to a casual viewer. But as someone watching the show critically, it fell flat for me. My wife and I, having watched all the original and Next Generation Strek Trek episodes together, are now watching Star Trek: Enterprise. The writing's always been a little uneven, but we're now in the third season, and the writing is noticeably worse. By about five minutes into literally every episode in the third season, we've rolled our eyes at each other multiple times while questioning aloud why the characters are doing particular things that don't make sense and obviously are going to cause them problems. A show requires a sort of benefit of the doubt, a suspension of disbelief, in order to work, and this episode lost mine.
Now, don't get me wrong, Better Call Saul is absolutely much better written than "Enterprise". I do like the complexity and the kind of real-world grit of characters like Jimmy and Mike. I like how the show prods you to think along with the characters, trying to answer questions like what is Jimmy doing, how is he going to get out of this, should he tell Kim everything he knows about Nacho, where did the Kettlemans really go? But there are too many odd decisions or coincidences in this show, and by the end I was no longer willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.
To start, I didn't understand what Jimmy was doing in calling Kim and the Kettlemans, whether he was trying to warn them or play them and why he thought, if he was trying to warn them, things would not backfire. Then there were the multiple phone messages he left for Nacho which, while I understand he was nervous and hunting for a way out, just seemed to me over-the-top asking for trouble. There's the whole interaction with Mike, which has never made any sense to me. Why is he always short on stickers, hasn't he learned yet, why not just pay the extra money, why make a big fuss that will obviously make things worse, why, in this episode, does he have pocket change to make who-knows-how-many pay phone calls, but doesn't have enough cash to pay nine dollars in parking fees? I understand Jimmy's impulsiveness, his impatience, his desperation in this particular episode, I understand there's a certain humor at work here, but it's always struck me as a bit contrived. Still, I consider all this relatively minor. When Jimmy makes the desperate and/or foolish decision to look for the Kettlemans himself by walking randomly, with no tracking skills, for what, given the progression of lighting from later afternoon to evening, must be hours, and manages to find them, that's when the show really lost me. Things didn't get any better when the Kettlemans just happen to leave the backpack with all the cash near the door to their tent, and it's the bag Jimmy just happens to grab and start pulling on.
Another reason I found this episode frustrating is that I want access to at least some of Jimmy's internal monologue, the narrative he's building for himself. The show goes to great lengths, especially when he's calling to warn the Kettlemans, to show his indecision, to show how hard he's wrestling with himself over the course of action he's taking. But we have no idea why he's wrestling with himself, what his concerns are we don't even, even during the calls to Kim and to the Kettlemans, we don't even really know what he's trying to accomplish. I personally thought he was still trying to play them somehow. I understand the show is trying to build suspense, to arouse in the viewer a desire to see how things turn out and what's really going on, and I'm sure that works for a lot of people. But when a show withholds important information that a character obviously has access to, I recognize that as an artifice employed by the writers, and it frustrates me, it shows the seems in the presentation. I personally would find the show more meaningful, more engaging, more revelatory of Jimmy's character, if we found out what he was thinking, which demons he was wrestling with, how much doubt he harbored over the wisdom of his path, what he thought his chances of success were, what his ultimate plan is, or if he even has one.
I think the show itself senses this deficiency. When he hangs up from talking to Kim, he mumbles "I'm no hero." At the time, I took it as additional evidence that he was trying to play them somehow, but in hindsight I think it's intended to show his regret from trying to scam Mrs. Kettleman/Tucos' grandmother. Either way, that utterance indicates to me that the writers realized that Jimmy had to make some kind of comment on his internal mental state, that they couldn't just leave everything to showing us his actions. His regret needed to be vocalized. I just don't think they went far enough. There's so much meat in this part of the story that's left on the bone, so much opportunity to complicate Jimmy's narrative and his character that's wasted.
The last thing I want to comment on is the opening scene between younger Chuck and younger Jimmy. I certainly thought it was cool to see the younger Jimmy, but again, that scene didn't work well for me because so little information was conveyed. We already knew Jimmy had a troubled past, and that's all we really learn. I also found it really confusing when Jimmy appeared sincerely (to my eyes) to want to turn over a new leaf, and it just made Chuck mad at him. This was another case where if we had more markers of internal mental state, both from Jimmy and from Chuck, it would give us a lot more insight into their characters, make the scene easier to understand, enrich some of the later interactions, and help us understand why Jimmy in the present seems in such danger of falling off the narrow path, especially with his family offering so little support.
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