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.