2x08 Fifi

Better Call Saul, like its forebear, is full of impressive and creative sequences. Whether it's last week's inflatable man montage, or Kim's cold-calling routine, or the breaking breadsticks that conveyed Jimmy's unease after his twin accomplices' run-in with Tuco, the show isn't shy about using the assorted tricks in its visual toolbox to propel the show forward. "Fifi" offers two, which serve fairly distinct purposes. There's the opening one-shot of the ice cream truck going through border security, which eventually cuts away to the driver stopping by the side of the road on the other side of the border and picking up a gun. It's a deceptively simple sequence, despite the technical impressiveness of the tracking-shot opening, that tells us a great deal about the clockwork being set in motion.

In just that wordless scene, we already know a great deal about this man and more importantly, what he's there to do. The fact that he so blithely takes a popsicle out of his supply tells us that the ice cream isn't the cargo that matters for making it across the border. The stop to pick up the gun tells us that he's likely to be some kind of hitman or assassin, who uses the ice cream gig as a ruse to make it to the States, do his business, and disappear back across the border once his job is finished. And the number of popsicle sticks jammed into the dirt next to the gun's hiding place tells us this is far from the first time he's pulled this sort of thing; he's capable, a repeat customers, and not a pushover despite his nondescript appearance. There's remarkable narrative economy in the information conveyed in a four-minute scene.

Though the sequences are much more straightforward thereafter, "Fifi" shows that Mike isn't a dummy. He's not naive enough to think that his deal with Hector will be enough to keep him, and more importantly, Kaylee safe, so he does his due diligence. When we see that same ice cream truck backing into Hector's warehouse, while the boss himself smokes a cigarette outside, it's clear who that driver was called in to kill. Mike isn't the type to take it lying down.

He's resourceful. There's something extraordinarily sweet about his little project with Kaylee. He speaks to her like a grandfather would; he's gentle and kinder to this innocent than the normally grumpy old man is to anyone else in this world, and it becomes evident the depth of feeling he has that would move him to go to great lengths to ensure that nothing he did could ever be allowed to lead her to harm.

The reveal that they're not making a soaker together as Mike tells Stacey, but instead a makeshift road hazard to be employed against Hector is equal parts adorable and foreboding. There's some strange ironic quality to Mike having his granddaughter help him build the device that's supposed to help provide for her protection. It's appropriate that Mike is watching His Girl Friday while he adds the nails to his drug war arts and crafts projects, because it's a story of someone who tried to get away from something they were very good at, but which was toxic to them, and found themself being pulled back into that life regardless. BCS is building to a reckoning between Mike and Hector, and I can't wait to see where it takes them.

I don't like to play the what if/prediction game with television shows and films, both because I'm wrong more often than I'm right and because it frames what happens next in terms of your expectations rather than viewing the show's developments with an open mind. But watching Mike stalk Hector can't help but make me wonder. What if it's Mike's assault that puts Hector in the state he's in when we meet him in Breaking Bad, here or in the future? And what if after the attack (whether or not it turns out to be the attack), one of the final images of the season is Mike being approached by Gus Fring who sees Mike's work against the Salamancas, offers him money and protection from the blowback, and says, "It seems we have common interests." Knowing the way Vince Gilligan's shows like to pull the rug out from under their audience, that's probably a little too neat for his style, but a man can dream.

But there's another great sequence in "Fifi" -- the one where Jimmy meticulously flips the numbers on all of Chuck's filings for Mesa Verde at a 24-hour copy shop. It's a great scene that communicates how far Jimmy will go when he sets his mind to something, and that whatever his quick fix instincts, he can also be the "Jimmy Hustle" that Hamlin characterized him as, busting his hump to bring his impromptu scheme to fruition.

That scene, however, begs the question -- who did Jimmy do it for? The natural answer is Kim. She's making a bold move going out on her own; she gives a pitch to Mesa Verde that would make Don Draper swoon, feels like she's on top of the world, and then is devastated when Chuck undermines her at the eleventh hour. Jimmy clearly cares for Kim, doesn't want to see her screwed over when she put in all the hard work and deserves to land Mesa Verde, and is willing to take the kind of steps to defend her that she won't take herself.

After all, Kim disregards his advice to play fast and loose with her resignation and contact Mesa Verde before Howard can sink his claws into them. In the scene where she gives him her resignation letter, and he returns the favor by wiping away her debts, giving her a word of encouragement and explanation, and then immediately trying to beat her to the punch on Mesa Verde, it's hard to tell whether Howard is phony and disingenuous or well-meaning but pragmatic. Given the complex characters that make up Better Call Saul and its predecessor's stock and trade, it's probably a mix of the two, with a hint of wistfulness and humanity in play when Howard reminisces about his father encouraging him to be the second "H" in "HHM." Regardless, as Kim sprints down the hallway to get a word in edgewise with her biggest client, it's clear that she's devoted to her own method, and that means doing things the right way, but working harder at it than anyone else. It's natural for Jimmy to want to try to come to the rescue when that way fails her.

But maybe he did it for Chuck, or rather, to spite Chuck. A major theme of this season has been the way that Kim has replaced Chuck as the grand motivator in Jimmy's life. It's hard to tell how much he enacts his little trick in order to help Kim or to jab Chuck in the eye after he does something Jimmy sees as unfair. In truth, Chuck is fighting the way Jimmy would. He doesn't quite have Jimmy's golden tongue, but his pitch to Mesa Verde, the misdirect, the folksy charm, the subtle sway rather than the hard sell, is pure McGill. It may not be just--Jimmy's right when he points out that Kim earned that client, twice--but it seems fair, it seems like an equal and opposite pitch, and it seems like Jimmy's style of "fair play."

Jimmy cannot abide it. He cannot sit still while his brother looks down on another individual who doesn't quite meet his standards and takes what they want, what they deserve, away from them for his own self-serving ends. Yes, Jimmy's scheme is to help Kim, but it's also to thwart Chuck, to try to prevent him from doing to Kim with Mesa Verde what he tried to do with Jimmy and Sandpiper. Chuck's warm bit of gratitude for Jimmy looking after him despite their issues, his promise that he would do the same if the roles were reversed, casts a sense of guilt over the proceedings. The moment in the boardroom was a triumph for Chuck in the same way it was the sinking of the Titanic for Kim. It's a moment with the lights on and the cell phones in the room where he still shined, and it nearly killed him, but he pulled it off. Jimmy is here to take that away from him, and even if it's because what Chuck took belongs to someone else, that big moment of progress for Chuck, that little moment of fraternal affection, muddies the waters when it comes to Jimmy's plan.

But maybe Jimmy did it for himself. There's a look in his eyes after Kim tells him that Mesa Verde fell through, and he responds that he still wants to do this. Is it disappointment? Is it frustration that Chuck threw her under the bus? Is it concern for his own financial well-being diving into this with Kim starting from scratch? The hilarious scene where Jimmy sneaks his film crew alongside a plant onto a military base to film his commercial suggests that Jimmy will always find a way to make ends meet. He may have to cut a few corners here and there to get where he wants to go, but he knows who he is and what he has to do to succeed, even on his own. Kim and her commitment to the straight and narrow may not have the same good fortune, especially with the twin titans of HHM undercutting her at every turn.

There's also a different look he gets when Kim tells him that she landed the client in the first place. Maybe it's simple skepticism. Maybe it's a reflection of how despite his outward support and congratulations, he doesn't want her to count her chickens before they've hatched. Or maybe it's jealousy. Jimmy seems the type to resent it if Kim manages to soar out of the gate while he's still rebuilding from square one. It's easy to see how Jimmy could bristle at Kim looking down on his motlier methods, start to resent it, and then bring up that she wouldn't even have Mesa Verde if he hadn't use those methods to intercede on her behalf, something that Kim would no doubt see as a betrayal rather than a boon.

It's hard to know, and probably some measure of all three at once. There are conflicting impulses at play for almost every major character on the show that push and pull them in different directions. But that's one of the beautiful things about Better Call Saul, how so much can unspool from just a couple of inventive, telling sequences and a few meaningful looks, whether it be the impending confrontation between Mike and Hector, or the swirl of influences on Jimmy as he cuts and copies his way to an act that will have a major impact for the woman he loves at the expense of a brother for whom his feelings are much more conflicted. It's intricate and messy and complex, and that's part of what makes it great.

"Things work out the way they're supposed to, I guess."

Oh, Howard, you poor son of a bitch. That sentiment is true in the sense that this show lines up perfectly with the start of Breaking Bad, but there's a reason why only a handful of characters from Better Call Saul were in Breaking Bad. Well, I guess that's not entirely true in Howard's case; he was always there in Gus' super-lab when Walt and Jesse were cooking.

Kim rushing back to her office to beat Howard's secretary reminds me of that scene in Jerry Maguire when Jerry and Bob Sugar are calling all their clients to win them over.

Of fucking course Hector is rolling around in a red '60 Chevy Impala. He really wanted to give off that Miami coke dealer in the 80s vibe.

Goddamn Kim truly nailed the "sell me this pen" test with Mesa Verde.

Boy, if anyone needed any more proof (outside the obvious) that this show takes place before Breaking Bad, Chuck dropping references to "Enron and WorldCom" really does it.

And damn if Chuck's selling the pen pitch wasn't even better than Kim's. It's masterful, the kind of "selling" that would've made Chuck a better con artist than Jimmy if Chuck ever went down that path; not underhanded or illegal, just expertly manipulative.

Well, now UNM director's "your funeral" comment about the lack of permits in the previous episode are MUCH clearer; conning your way onto an air base to film a commercial with an actor faking his service really is a first-class ticket to getting shot or arrested.

Oh, shit, I totally forgot this was the episode that spawned the infamous Chicanery speech. Xerox, rulers, box cutters (heh) and tape: the pains we had to go through to falsify documentation before Photoshop and Acrobat were so widely available/affordable.