Bingo

Overall, for this episode, I liked the plotline and the scenes around the Kettlemans, but I found the rest less compelling and in some places a little puzzling.

As was often the case with Breaking Bad, I really liked the opening shot of this episode. The implication as they scan down a list of pictures of Wanted Men and end on the real-life face of Jimmy was very interesting. The way they kept returning to shots with different speakers in the scene, mainly Jimmy, Mike, and/or Detective Sanders, but with the Wanted Men bulletin board framed behind them also seemed very apropos given the logical inferences from their conversation. In particular, I'm thinking about Detective Sanders suggesting that Fensky and Hoffman got what was coming and saying "The whole precinct was a sewer.", "Might be a good thing. New blood.", and "Some rocks you don't turn over." To my ears, that whole sequence was a sharp condemnation of both Sanders and Mike. If the precinct was a sewer, and new blood is needed to make things better, there's a sizable chunk of culpability that falls on them. Especially if their attitude is that when you see things going wrong, you don't look any closer. It seemed at once a nice little wrap of the previous episode and a sign of the difficulty of conforming to set episode lengths where Mike's story, which I thought was the best arc so far, awkwardly spilled over into both the preceding and succeeding episodes.

I found the scenes between Jimmy and Chuck, and in Jimmy's potential new office space with Kim a bit puzzling. The scene with Chuck didn't really seem to serve much purpose, it more felt like they didn't want to do an episode without nodding to Chuck's existence, but didn't have a real goal in mind either. I did really like the way Jimmy left Chuck a bunch of files knowing he'd go through them, the way you hope they will build on that in the future, but I was disappointed that they didn't come back and fulfill that promise in this episode. If that setup was their only real purpose, the scene seemed a bit thin. And I felt like Jimmy ought to know that Kim wouldn't accept his offer to go into business together, that the scene between them was a clumsy attempt to set up a later payoff. In general, I found the fact that we know so little about how Jimmy and Kim feel about each other, that they seem to be important to each other but don't ever have a conversation that moves past the superficial, that Jimmy seems to actually think Kim might join him, really problematic. I'll deal with this in more depth at the end, since the episode circles back to the office later.

I'd say the thing that most interested me about the Kettlemans, a thing I'm not sure I would have picked up on so quickly had I not been watching closely, is the dynamics of the relationship between Betsy and Craig Kettleman. I saw it first as they're holding hands talking to Kim, and Betsy pointedly releases Craig's hand as Kim delivers bad news, like if Craig is going to jail, Betsy wants nothing to do with him. I'm not sure if Craig is whipped or just meek, but you see it in the way Betsy frequently answers questions for him, interrupts to finish his sentences, leads him by the arm. I found it an interesting dynamic that she seems to care much more for her image and her family's financial fortune than she does for whether or not Craig goes to jail.

But inasmuch as I enjoyed observing the dynamics of the Kettlemans' relationship, I was frustrated watching Jimmy throughout the episode, not having access to his motivations. To start, I was mystified at why Jimmy didn't want to take the Kettlemans as clients, even before he spoke with Kim. There are implications he thinks they're too crazy to take on, that their goals/demands are unreasonable, that he knows they're Kim's clients and is suspicious of what's transpiring. But on the other hand, he was perfectly willing to take them on before, they can demand whatever they like but if they go to trial he'll be making a boatload of money that, protest as much as they like, they'll have no legitimate means to recoup, and he was actively trying to steal them from HHM before. I guess this is my way of saying not only did I want to know more about Jimmy's mental state through all this, information that could have come out in his conversations with Kim, but I found his actions implausible, as if the writers were steering him down a particular course because it suited their ends, because they wanted to get Mike involved and to get to the final confrontation between Jimmy and the Kettlemans.

I enjoyed the sequence with Mike at the Kettlemans. The whole watching Mike, thinking along with Jimmy, trying to figure out what's going on is something Better Call Saul does very well. I found it a little odd that money that had been lying around in a backpack in episode 3 is now stashed away in a hidden compartment inside a hidden compartment in a cabinet. But I thought the final confrontation between Jimmy and the Kelletmans was pitch-perfect, well-executed, and well thought-through. I liked the way Jimmy sees the exact dynamics he needs to exploit--the wife's sense of her own self-interest--and plays to that. I liked the way Betsy sprang up and ran for the money. I like the tension that runs through the scene were the consequences for both sides are really, really high and you're not quite sure where things will end up, but the logic and force behind Jimmy's lines, that "criminals have no recourse", and that he's "got nothing to lose" is compelling and impactful. I thought it was interesting how well this scheme of Jimmy's came off compared to the total or partial failure of pretty much all his other schemes so far, and it left me wondering whether the difference was Mike's involvement, Kim's involvement, or just dumb luck.

But as nicely as that scene is put together, there's one thing that bothered me really strongly. What is Saul's motivation? The episode ends with him taking his anger and his frustration out on his potential new office space. There's a sense that he's angry and disappointed because he's lost something, and the scene has some impact because it's clear that he has, but I can't tell you what he's lost. Is he angry because Kim won't be his partner? Because he lost out on the Kettlemans' case to help Kim? Because he secretly loves Kim and we just don't know it yet? Because he lost the money he had to return to the Kim's to set things right? Because he really wants to be a successful lawyer but he doesn't know how to make it happen? The most important question of the episode, why does he go to so much trouble, take such big risks, lose an opportunity to make so much money litigating the Kettleman's case, to help Kim stay at HHM is totally unanswered. As much as I liked the Kettleman arc in this episode, to end it by highlighting that there is this central, fundamental, really important thing that we don't know about Jimmy left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Better Call Saul: Five-O

I have to say, I really enjoyed this episode. I have a few quibbles, which I'll save to the end, but I thought it told a really compelling story that was interesting on many levels.

The episode starts with a string of really beautiful cinematography. Beautiful shots aren't really my thing, I can appreciate them when I see them, but I'm generally more interested in stories and themes. That said, if cinematography is your thing, this episode starts with beautiful shots following a train, some really well-chosen lighting and angles in a train station, a sequence of revealing shots of Mike's lumpy and aging body, and moves onto some more nice use of lighting and angles to show Stacey's backyard and Mike pushing his granddaughter Kaylee on a swing.

The episode then moves into promise-making mode. For those of you not familiar with the narrative concept of promise-making, it involves implicitly suggesting to the viewer that certain things are going to occur or be explained in the course of an episode. If a story fails to deliver on those promises, it generally leaves the viewer/reader feeling cheated. If the story makes big promises, as this one does, and delivers on most of them, the impact is heightened because the story's mastery of technique, of showing the viewer the inevitable, well-crafted chain of events that leads to the conclusion, earns, so to speak, the viewer's admiration and emotional or intellectual response.

The conversation between Mike and Stacey makes a lot of promises. The implicit accusations Stacey levels at Mike, and Mike's halting denial promise us that Mike does know what the phone conversation Matt had was about, he knows what Matt was involved with, he knows something about who killed Matt. The tension that builds between Stacey and Mike promises us some resolution, whether in this episode or another. Mike also makes an explicit promise, that he's better, solid, that he'll be around to help with Kaylee. This last one is definitely not resolved in this episode, and sets the stage for commitment to Stacey being a recurring theme in future episodes.

At this point, Jimmy makes a brief appearance that I think is really interesting for what it says about the narrative he's building for himself. First, I'm a big fan of the Matlock look. I liked the tribute, I liked the awkward way Jimmy wore it. Most of all, I liked the way it signaled that Jimmy has internalized the criticism that he's the type of lawyer criminals hire, but that he thinks he can solve it with superficial changes to his appearance. This interacts beautifully with the whole sequence where Jimmy verbally refuses Mike's request to spill coffee on the officer, but does it anyway and then asks Mike how he knew he'd be willing to spill the coffee. The answer, which Mike does not give, is that the Matlock guise is insufficient, that Mike too recognizes him as a criminals' lawyer, that the thirst for success, for approval, the need to please, marks him as such. Again, we come back to Dunning-Kruger, if Jimmy can't see these traits, doesn't really seem to be able to conceive of them, he won't be able to fix them.

The confrontation between Stacey and Mike furthers some of the central mysteries of the episode. Mike, very emotional, insists that his son wasn't dirty, and we're left wondering whether that's true or Mike, for some reason yet unknown, just really needs to believe that it's true. A further promise is made here, that is, that we will find out. Along with the suggestion in the police interview that Mike killed Hoffman and Fensky, these scenes in combination left me wondering why Mike doesn't want this mystery solved.

And this leads to the gut of the story, to a flashback sequence that starts with Mike popping open the door to a police car with a bit of string. I loved this scene. It gave you just enough information to be able to think ahead as the scene unravels, but not too much that you know everything. Then he walks over to two cops and tells them, "I know it was you." At this point I was thinking two things, first why not turn them in if he knows it was them, and second, what he is baiting them into. The rest I had all worked out as it unfurled, that he was playing at being drunk, that the gun they found on him was unloaded and he hoped they would try to kill him with his own weapon, that he probably had stashed a weapon of his own earlier in the sequence, but I thought it was all beautifully done. Nice tension, nice pacing, nice sense of letting the viewer think along with you but not being absolutely certain of what's coming up.

But given all that, I thought the most interesting part of this slice of the story was the contrast it sets up between Mike and Jimmy. Mike has thought ahead, at all times he's several steps ahead of Hoffman and Fensky, and his plan unravels exactly as he expected it to. He's the model of competence. Jimmy, on the other hand, has plans that are never thought out more than a step or two in advance, that always twist and bend in ways he's not prepared for and doesn't seem to have made even the slightest attempt to anticipate. He's sly and capable enough that we can't call him incompetent, but he is a purveyor of chaos.

The closing conversation between Mike and Stacey was my favorite part of the episode. We see Mike's despair. The hopelessness of asking cops to be straight when they're busting drug deals involving more cash than they make in a year, the corrupting necessity of going along to get along. We see the way our society is setup to fail. That alone is really interesting to me. Then layer on this complex narrative of Mike and Matt. Of the ultra-competent, street-smart, tough guy who's raised his son exactly the right way, upright and strong and tough and stubborn. And those traits, the very traits that reveal what a good father Mike was, what an outstanding person Matt was, are the traits that get him killed. I didn't find Mike sobbing over breaking his boy to be as compelling as some might. I thought that perfect tragic setup, Mike raising a boy who was doomed the moment he lovingly followed in his father's footsteps and joined the police, I thought that was where the true beauty and irony was in the story, and I thought the episode suffered a little for missing the emotional and intellectual power of that inevitability.

And for readers who are starting to get a sense of me, I'm sure it won't come as a surprise that as much as I found this conversation powerful, I had a lot of trouble with it. For one, I found the continual jumping around in time really disconcerting. When, exactly, is this conversation supposed to have taken place? And why does it need to come at the end? I think that's actually a big mistake. The conversation gives away no details of what happened between Mike, Hoffman, and Fensky. If we know how Mike feels about his son, about his time on the force earlier, it would have made the scene between the three that much more powerful, we would have known exactly what the stakes were for Mike, exactly why he was doing what he was doing, exactly how important it was to him. As it was, I will, with a slight twinge of embarrassment, admit, I didn't even realize that it was Hoffman and Fensky he met in the bar until later. I thought, if his son wasn't dirty, Hoffman and Fensky might not be dirty too, they might have all been killed the same way. And that Mike's beautifully conceived and executed plan might have been to avenge all three of them by killing two other dirty cops.

But this background story about Mike also reinforces this desire I've expressed before to see a different kind of narrative arc in the whole of Better Call Saul itself. Rather than a show that glorifies Mike's vigilante justice, his calm execution of vengeance, rather than a show that glorifies the chaos that Jimmy leaves in his wake, I'd like to see the show where Matt figures out how to stay alive. Where he's able to meld his strength of character with his father's street smarts, with Jimmy's legal expertise and showmanship, and somehow, someway, change the culture of Philadelphia. What does it take to clean up the Philadelphia PD, a change in culture, a change in politics? There's nothing difficult in writing a show about criminals, about the moral compromises they make to justify their actions, about the things they might wish they didn't have to do to stay alive. What would really take guts and imagination is to write a realistic show about strong and tough and cunning little guys who are able to wrest power away from those who have built the system that ensnares so many in choices that inevitably lead to corruption. Frankly, I don't have any conception of how they could possibly succeed, but I think the web of deceit among the upper echelons of politicians and police leadership would make the web of deceit among criminals look pale and paltry by comparison.

All this is even more important because of the narrative Mike has written for himself. He's a victim, a victim of a set of systems he was powerless to change because he never tried. Being a victim is convenient, it absolves Mike, it absolves us, of responsibility. But a funny thing happens when everyone's a victim, when people give up trying to band together to change the circumstances of their lives. Predictably, the next generation falls victim to the same problems.