[7.5/10] You’d like to think that Kim knows right from wrong. She tries, or at least tried, to hold Jimmy back from his worst impulses. She has regrets over the lengths he goes to on her behalf and the people he hurts in the process. She genuinely fights for the little guy, giving up a lucrative practice to provide top notch legal services to those who can’t typically afford it. She turns over unhelpful evidence to prosecutors because it’s the right thing to do. She is, in a world of hucksters and crime lords, a good person.
But she didn’t have the best role model growing up. In some ways she’s the opposite of Saul. The young Jimmy McGill watched his scrupulous-to-a-fault father and saw the sucker he never wanted to become. The young Kim Wexler watched her unreliable screw-up of a mother and saw a cautionary tale that set her on the straight and narrow. And yet, whether we want it or not, whether we rebel or not, parts of the people who raise us seep into our future selves and can’t help but influence who we become.
So when “Axe and Grind” opens with a flashback, we see a miniature ruse pulled off by Kim’s mom. Beth Hoyt cuts an incredible vocal and physical likeness of Rhea Seehorn, which adds force to the way the elder Ms. Wexler’s false protestations to get her daughter off the hook pave the way for Kim’s later skullduggery. The chance to instill some morals is lost, the dressing down a facade. It ends with a mother who seems proud of her daughter’s coloring outside of the line, who shoplifts the earrings Kim was caught for swiping as a reward, and who tells her only child that it’s all okay, so long as she gets away with it.
There’s not much in the way of a grand unifying theme to “Axe and Grind.” As a prelude to the mid-season finale, it is more of a tapestry, a chance to check-in with all the major players and move the pieces into place for next week’s “D-Day.” But it represents one more choice for Kim, one opportunity to vindicate the moral best that she’s capable of, or to decide that vengeance masquerading as justice is more important. Given the tragic nature of the show, it’s hard to guess which one she’ll pick.
But along the way, we get a chance to see glimpses of other major characters and storylines moving apace. My favorite is Mike watching his granddaughter and daughter-in-law from afar, refusing Tyus’ insinuation that he should remove the hired protection he has watching their house. It’s a reminder of what Mike is doing this for, the reason he got into business with someone as cold-hearted as Gus Fring, and what he’s unwilling to sacrifice in the name of getting the job done.
There’s a grim efficiency to Mike, a cool competency in scenarios that would rattle the best of us. But it’s counterbalanced by the heart of the man, his connection to his loved ones and loved ones past who were hurt by their association with him, the type of loss he never wants to see happen again.
Speaking of Gus, the head of the Fring organization doesn’t appear in this episode, but Giancarlo Esposito is in the directing chair. It’s a great outing for him and the team, with sharply-composed shots that are not showy, but come with a visual panache that makes less-than-explosive scenes still hold the viewer’s focus. The performers all do strong work, and it speaks to how naturally the show’s castmembers have shifted into directing when the opportunity arises.
Of course, none can top Saul Goodman when it comes to directing, and in this final season, we get one more return for his makeshift film crew! It’s nice to see the trio in action as part of Kim and Jimmy’s scheme with the mediator, and it’s nearly as nice to see another Mr. Show alum, John Ennis, make a cameo. For all the grand moral questions and lethal encounters among drug runners features in Better Call Saul, there’s a supreme joy and comedy to seeing Saul orchestrating his audio-visual masterpieces. There’s an alternate universe where he’s an under-the-radar but industry-lauded force behind the camera, and not the conman-turned-jurist-turned conman we know and love.
But if that were the case, who knows what would become of Francesca, Saul’s assistant, interior decorator, and reluctant accomplice. It’s nice to see her get a little bit of shading, showing genuine excitement to see Kim again and genuine enthusiasm for her chance to redecorate Saul’s office. Only the depths of what she’s committed to soon become apparent, as the her boss’s clientele wreaks havoc on her upholstery and “water features”, while the man himself makes her complicit in his dirty deeds re Sandpiper. We know from Breaking Bad that she continues to hitch her wagon to Saul’s train, but it’s easy to see how her enthusiasm wanes amid such...difficult circumstances.
Still, her unfortunate circumstances are nothing compared to the ones now facing one of Werner Ziegler’s “boys.” Lalo uses the gift from last week to track him down in the middle of the German wilderness, and seems poised to interrogate him in a half-Audition, half-Misery situation.
I’ll confess, the Lalo sections of Better Call Saul often feel like they come from another show. I really enjoy Tony Dalton’s performance, and there’s a shark-like menace to Lalo that makes him a formidable opponent for sharp players like Gus, Mike, and Nacho. But sometimes he seems larger-than-life in a way that's out of step with the show: Spider-Manning his way through a ceiling, sneaking out a suburban window without detection, and besting a hired good holding an ax with little more than a hidden razor blade. I prefer seeing characters in this universe succeed thanks to their wits or their determination, not via incredible physical feats, and Lalo’s had more of the latter of late.
Still, there is some down to earth trouble to deal with in “Axe and Grind”. The episode goes out of its way to make Howard seem sympathetic before Kim and Jimmy unleash their plan to ruin him. We watch the lengths he goes to in order to prepare the perfect, nigh-literal peace offering of a cappuccino for his wife, who callously dumps his artistic coffee creation into a travel mug. Her casual aloofness for how much Howard is trying to accommodate her, to have her care about him, to see that he’s trying, only to be politely but coldly rebuffed at every turn is quietly heartbreaking. It is a reminder that there are layers to each of these characters, struggles each is going through beyond what Saul and Kim are privy to, that make us wonder if Hamlin deserves the full-fledged ruination that waits for him, no matter what mistakes he may have made in the past.
Kim is the author of that ruination (with Jimmy’s buy-in and assistance of course), but she may not be there to see it happen. Clifford Main shows up to watch her argument and offers her possible entry into a significant equal access to justice program that only sterling “up-and-comers” gain admission to. He probes whether she might have something to do with Howard’s protestations of interference from Jimmy and his allies, but she says the right things, speaking highly of Howard and HHM in a way that reassures Clifford nothing’s afoot.
The most wholesome moment in a less-than-wholesome episode comes with Jimmy’s genuine excitement for his wife at hearing the news, and encouragement that Kim be excited to. They kiss. They celebrate. They tell one another that Kim need not be there for the events that will destroy Howard Hamlin. She can have both. Kim can be the crusader for justice who travels to Santa Fe to rub elbows with the biggest names in legal aid, and she can mastermind a scheme to take down a professional rival and white shoe jerk in Albuquerque.
Except she can’t. In one of those coincidences that shouldn’t work, but clicks because it works against our heroes rather than for them, Jimmy goes to buy a celebratory bottle of tequila, the same kind he and Kim scammed Ken Wins out of in season 2. Only he spots the actual mediator for Sandpiper, who’s sporting a full cast, an unforeseen wrinkle that will destroy the plausibility of the staged photos necessary for their plan.
Saul winces in defeat. He calls Kim en route to her big pro bono meeting and tells her it’s time to pull the plug and live to fight another day. Kim has a choice. She can keep driving and decide that this opportunity to do right by the underserved who’d be helped by the resources she could marshal in Cliff’s organization, or she can turn around and try to put out this fire. She can take extreme measures to bring down one man or do some professional pitching to help countless.
In an earlier scene, Kim and Jimmy run into the veterinarian who’s helped Jimmy and Mike find jobs in the past. They need to secure some chemical assistance to help pull off their latest ploy. But in the process, they find out that he’s giving up his life as a black market gatekeeper, devoting himself to his real work full time. Jimmy’s aghast that he would sell his “little black book” (which features a business card for a certain vacuum company), a source of low-risk, high-yield passive income. Kim retorts that it doesn’t matter when you know what you want.
Kim’s given up quite a bit to choose the life that she has. She gave up the associate grind at HHM to find some place she could fly higher. She gave up great progress and recognition at Schweikart & Cokely to pursue her pro bono work full time. She has repeatedly given up the life of traditional traditional success in order to pursue a higher calling, a greater type of justice, than she could achieve greasing the wheels for Mesa Verde or climbing the corporate ladder. She wanted those things, and she sacrificed quite a bit in service of that calling.
But she also knows the kind of skills she can deploy elsewhere when she needs or want to. She saw in her mother how to sell moral indignation as a cover for getting what you desired in the first place scot free. She saw how to break the rules and earn a measure of approbation for not getting caught.
Kim Wexler knows right from wrong. She genuinely wants justice and equity for the people she represents and thousands more who deserve a fighting chance. But at the end of the day, she knows what she wants, and she wants Howard Hamlin’s head more.
It's easy to reduce "The Door" down to its big reveal. For all of the mysteries and unanswered questions floating around Game of Thrones, sometimes the most interesting, and most moving discoveries are the ones that fill in the gaps you didn't even realize you wanted to know about in surprising and unexpected ways.
But Hodor's tragic origin story, which is far closer and more connected to the events of the present than we ever might have imagined, is part and parcel with a larger theme that weaves through every story told in "The Door." As Mrs. Bloom pointed out, the episode is chiefly concerned with the idea of being a faithful servant, of whether it's right to question, right to advise, right to disobey, and right to expect sacrifice. Hodor is simply the most extreme example of these ideas, that fealty can come with a cost, and like many power structures in Westeros, the price paid by those on the weaker side of things becomes questionable when brought into the light.
It comes through in Arya's story, where she is slowly but surely realizing that the Faceless Men may not be the noble devotees of the right path that she thought, but instead, that they're assassins for hire, who kill people for the simple fact that they're required to do so. Or so it would seem. It's hard to know whether, like anything with the doublespeak that comes from the House of Black and White, this is just another test for Arya to pass. Yet, it seems like Jaqen H'ghar does not simply want Arya to forget who she was; he wants her to forget what she believes in, in the idea that she make wreak vengeance, but it's vengeance with a purpose, to people who deserve it, not just for bad actresses who want meatier parts.
And at the same time, the play itself shows the Game of Thrones audience what being a good servant gets you. Both Ned Stark and Tyrion Lannister served as hand to the king, and while they pushed their respective kings in directions that the ruler didn't always like, they tried to be good servants, to do what was in their king's best interests, even if it meant making some difficult choices. Where did it lead them? Ned is dead; it's implied that Joffrey plotted to have Tyrion killed during the Battle of Blackwater Bay. And they don't even have a legacy. History is written by the victors, and with the Lannisters in power, their rival Stark is potrayed as a dim-witted, power-hungry swine and Tyrion is depicted as a sniveling lecherous villain. Good servants are not necessarily rewarded.
But sometimes they get away scott free. One of the most striking scenes in "The Door" apart from the fireworks of the finale is when Sansa confronts Littlefinger about his pretensions to being her humble servant, while at the same time knowingly leading her to harm. It's a blunt, appropriately accusatory exchange, where she makes Littlefinger own up to his actions. But Sansa has a good advisor, the noble Brienne, who serves by her side and seeks to genuinely protect the lady she serves, rather than pretends to for her own ends. This is an incredibly harsh version of "goofus and gallant" where Littlefinger knowingly permitted unspeakable acts of horror to be visited upon the woman he pretended to be looking out for, while Brienne helped rescue her from those horrors. In the harsh world of Westeros, a true servant, a true protector, can help drive away the terrors of the false prophets.
Dany has a moment with her own loyal servant. Ser Jorah admits his love to her, that his devotion is not simply the professional devotion worthy of a queen, but that he has a true depth of feeling for her in her heart. There is a sense that Dany remains stoic at this news, that she initially gives no indication of returning his cares or affections. Even as she enjoys a dalliance with Daario, there has always been a sense that Dany is above romance after the death of Khal Drogo, that her mission is to rule, and that any flirtations are mere blowing off steam or means to an end.
But when Jorah reveals his affliction, her true feelings betray her. I don't mean to suggest that Dany returns Jorah's romantic love. There's multiple ways to read their scenes together, but I don't take her to feel the same way about him as he does for her. And yet, she cares deeply for Jorah, and the news that he is doomed to die from the greyscale shows her struggling to maintain her regal composure. One of the signs that Dany is meant to rule, meant to become the leader Westeros needs, is that she uses the power she has over Jorah for good. She orders him to find a cure. She is clearly gobsmacked by his revelation, and wants and needs her friend to be well. He has proven his devotion time and time again, and she uses it for his benefit rather than for hers.
That same idea is present in the other brief but still momentous revelation in the episode -- that the Children of the Forest, the same ones who seek to help Bran defeat the White Walkers, are the ones who created the very monsters that he and Jon and the rest of the rightly-worried people of Westeros are trying to fight against. The Children meant to create the White Walkers as servants, as someone meant to protect them from the men who were cutting down their trees and driving them to extinction, but clearly these snow demons lost their will to obey, whether because they were mistreated or simply chose their own path, and it led to a problem that grew and grew and threatens to consume the world.
That culminates in Hodor's last stand. The sequences leading up to it are some of the most vivid and visually impressive in the show. The eerie stillness as Bran wanders through a horde of Wights before being grabbed by the Night's King is unsettling and scary. The unnerving, stop-motion like movements of the Wights, the servants of the Night King and his horsemen, has a Jason and the Argonauts-like disquieting quality given the herky jerky way they surround the tree, descend through the ceiling, and swarm like spiders around the tunnels beneath.
And then there's poor Hodor. I've often been hesitant about unbounded magic and time travel in stories, because it can often lead to a game-breaking arms race, where the good guys can only use their overpowering spells or change the past when it suits the narrative, not when it would make sense. But this is different. When Bran, who is in in the process of absorbing the Three-Eyed Ravens' last bits of wisdom, wargs into Hodor in the past, in order to save himself in the future, he causes his companion to break into a horrific seizure in the past. Hodor's single-worded simplicity is not the product of some unfortunate accident or genetic inevitability. It is the result of a choice made by the man he serves, that turned him into a living sacrifice, without any say in the matter.
There is a price to Bran's choice, to his inexperience, to how he uses these abilities that give him the power to change the shape of events to come. He is not simply a wizard with the talents to cast the right spell at the right time. He is a conduit of forces he cannot control, and which did not only lead sweet Hodor to his death as he stood letting Meera and Bran escape from the horde of Wights who threatened to end their effort before it began, but it took Hodor's life away in the interim. Maybe Hodor was not destined for greatness as a cheerful stable boy in Winterfell. Maybe he's even a happier and more useful as an erstwhile caretaker, someone who can look after Bran and Rickon and be a force for good.
But Bran has a responsibility to him. Hodor was as good and loyal a servant as there could be, he gave his life--twice--to protect Bran, and he's tirelessly protected and ferried his young ward hither and yon in the interim. But Hodor didn't choose this. Bran turned him into a tool, into a means to an end, into another life sacrificed at the feet of a nobleman, albeit one with the potential to save the whole world. And that, I hope, is a bulwark to Bran's new magic, that he recognizes what he extracts from others when he uses these abilities, and that it mediates his ability to simply shape the past or the future.
Much of Game of Thrones is a deconstruction, and "The Door" shows the darker side of blind devotion. Many people have died in the show. Many people have died thoughtlessly, cruelly, or tragically. But few carried the pathos of Hodor, a piece of collateral damage in war in which he was a bystander. The reason that Hodor was a simple and loyal as he was is that Bran, intentionally or not, violated him, and left him as something lesser than he was or might have been.
That feels necessary when there was Wights at the door and White Walkers at The Wall. Someone has to hold the door. But there's something that feels wrong, or at least tragic about it being this stable boy who never had the chance to decide if that's what he wanted, what he believed in. He had his entire being stolen from him and then had what was left of his life given over to a ravenous fleet of demons. That is a sad, uncomfortable fate for a quiet, happy stable boy, impressed into service to the very nobleman who made him into the diminished creature he became . Sometimes sacrifices must be made. Sometimes people have to give their lives for the greater good. But when those people don't have any autonomy in those choices, when they don't even understand that the choices that are being made for them, the ways in which a master uses a servant seem all the more troubling, all the more questionable, and all the more concerning in a world where those in power extract their price from those without it, be they slaves, assassins, or simple, sweet giants.
"I fought. I lost. Now I rest...You'll be fighting their battles forever." Stories both eschew and crave finality. A good journey has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but when we're truly invested in it, we don't want the ride to stop. We crave the spills, chills, and surprises. So heroes come back from the dead, siblings thought long lost reappear, and like the white walkers headed toward the gate, the story marches on.
Thorne's last words are one of the few little quotations that echo through the episode. Throne dies with his head held high, a man who knew what he was and what he did, and lays out his actions in firm but understandable terms. I never particularly cared for Throne--he always seemed to hate Jon almost irrationally--but in his bravery against the Wildling attack on Castle Black and his honest defense of his principles, he showed himself to be a man who made a choice and accepted his fate. He takes comfort in the certainty of that.
Jon is thrown into the most uncertain waters from the getgo. He arises from the dead, knowing that it shouldn't be, feeling the scars where the knives entered his body and knowing that something unnatural has happened. He has been drafted into this war, at some points making conscious actions because of what he believes in, but at others simply swept along by the current of what was required of him. Thorne tried to do what he thought was right and is hanged for it. Jon did the same and yet gets to return from the land of the dead, left to wonder if it's all worth it, if he can stand fighting these same battles over and over again, if he can suffer the betrayal, the knives piercing his flesh that seem to come in one form or another whatever he tries to do.
When he swings a blade of his own, slicing the rope keeping his betrayers in place on the makeshift gallows, it's a visual echo of deserter from Castle Black that Ned Stark executed in the beginning of the show. That opening scene, about the responsibilities of being a leader and accepting the uglier parts of the job, and of "honor" has come back in several forms over the course of the show. From Rob executing Lord Carstark, to Theon's botched execution during his reign of terror, to Jon himself having to execute a former member of the King's Guard. It's the burden of command.
But this time, Jon has to look into the eyes of a child. He has to cut that rope and see the very sort of innocent he was trying to save, resenting him to his very last breath. This is his reward for all his service and commitment. This is his reward for making the tough decisions. This is his reward for effectively giving his life in order to save thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of lives. It's ugly and harsh and compounded by a hatred from people like Ollly who will never understand, no matter how many warm embraces from his brothers he may receive.
It's particularly harsh because, as Varys puts it, children are innocent. The Spider works his magic on a sympathizer for the sons of the harpy, and he's a presence of Machiavellian perfection. The arch manner in which he probes his resistant witness, his iron fist in the velvet glove that gets him the information he wants, is another boon from one of the show's most entertaining characters. But the futility of it all comes through in what he learns as well.
The lands that Dany liberated, the ones that made her the "breaker of chains," have not only returned to slavery, but have been funding the sons of the harpy and setting the whole of Slaver's Bay against her. Preceded, though it may be, by a hilarious seen where Tyrion tries to make conversation with his much more subdued companions, it's a dispiriting revelation. Dany too tried to do the right thing, to live by her principles and make herself worthy of being called a queen, but parts of the old system are as resilient as they are malignant, and it's exhausting to have to constantly fight to keep whatever meager gains you've managed to make.
And Dany herself is once more reduce to something less than she ought to be. She's accomplished a great deal, and yet she is just the latest victim of this cycle. She stands surrounded by women who, as the one who speaks for them all explained, once imagined that their great Khals would rule the world with their distaff counterparts at their sides. Instead, they are each left to play out the string as something lesser and compartmentalized, with Dany potentially being punished for having dared to do anything but submit. Maybe when she speaks to the council that decides her fate, she will convince them to free her, or at least to let her help them lead a horde of Dothraki to Slaver's Bay as an antidote to the Sons of the Harpy. But one could easily forgive her for, like her raven-haired counterpart at the wall, growing tired of this neverending battle, that seems to leave you back where you started no matter what you've tried to do.
They're not the only ones who end up back where they started. In a surprise reveal, we see Osha and Rickon back in Winterfell for the first time since they departed from Bran & Co. While I fear that their reappearance will be another excuse to give Ramsay a new pair of torture toys for a while, there's a similar theme running through the preceding exchange between him and the rebel bannerman who delivers the youngest Stark. He refuses to swear oaths or kneel or pledge fealty. He's seen what oaths are worth: the Boltons turning on the Starks, Ramsay turning on his father, the Carstarks joining Ramsay even though their share blood with Ned's brood. What good is an oath, whether it be a bannerman's to Ramsay or Jon Snow's to the watch, if people break them so easily. Maybe they're just a way to keep people in line, to keep them from looking out for themselves or upsettng the usual order, and those lines can only be crossed so often before people begin to wonder if they were illusory in the first place.
The High Sparrow figures out how to keep Tommen in line, another innocent child tainted by the movements of the larger forces at work, through his mother, who is facing challenges of her own with the small council. The soft machinations of the High Sparrow, seeming to constantly yield and yet simply redirecting forces like anger to his own ends, allow him to use Tommen's connections to his family to help keep him cowed. Arya is kept in line by trying to break those very connections, but trying to teach her to sever her ties with her siblings, with the names on her list, with the relationships that kept her a part of her old life. As I've said before, the montage that shows her developing her skills as an assassin is a bit too Karate Kid for my tastes, but by drinking the bowl full of poison, Arya follows her brother in accepting a dividing line between an old life and a new one and changing her manner and methods accordingly.
But those sorts of connections are the one warm thing for Jon as he returns to the living. The joking embrace of Toramund, the similar ribbing welcome of Edd, make it feel as though there was at least something for Jon to come back to. And then there's the one connection that's absent -- Sam, who is bringing Gilly and Sam Jr. back to where he started, a likely unwelcome homecoming he undertakes for the good of the people he loves and who, as Gilly conveys by calling him the father of her child, love him back. He set off on this journey to help Jon and to protect his loved ones from the rapists and criminals at Castle Black, and though his pleasant moments are punctuated by unhappy (if amusing) bouts of nausea, he knows what he has to do, and is buoyed by the affection of those he feels that familial connection to.
The same familial connection drives a young Ned Stark in the show's flashback to the Tower of Joy seen through Bran's eyes. He intends to rescue his sister, but the methods used fail to live up to the man Bran imagined his father to be. This too, is a broken oath, of sorts. Bran has heard this story a thousand times -- he knows how it's supposed to end. But instead, even honorable Ned, covers up the fact that his bannerman, Mera's father, stabbed the opposing swordsman in the back to win the day. Again, honor is shown to be a fairytale in Westeros, one where the show's only paragon of virtue this side of Brienne will invent lies in service of a more important truth. We don't get to see all the details of that truth just yet, but Bran, and the audience, are learning that there's more to the story.
And there's more to Jon's story as well. After seasons that left Jon concerned with the affairs of The Wall, whether at Castle Black or in the Wildlings' territory, he is headed elsewhere. But he remains stung by the futility of his actions, that he cannot try to serve the greater good, cannot try to live up to his father's honor, cannot even die without being pulled back into what he was trying to move on from.
Only Alliser Thorne could make it sound like a failing to have the temerity to come back from the dead, but he's right. Jon will continue the struggle; he will continue to suffer losses, and he may never have the chance to rest. He has fought these battles, many other people's battles, for so long. Who can blame him for seeing someone like Olly kicking in mid-air and deciding that he's had enough? Once, Jon pledged, like all of the Brothers, that his watch would "not end until my death." Well, he died, and now his watch has ended, and the closest thing to a traditional hero left on Game of Thrones has earned the right to go fight his own battle, to go fail again, or perhaps not even fight at all.
