[8.1/10] For the entirety of this season, Kim Wexler, and the audience, have been waiting for Jimmy McGill to genuinely deal with his brother’s death, to confront it in some way, rather than moving on as though nothing happened. From the season premiere, where he brushed off Howard’s tortured confession with a happy air, to last week’s raging out, we’ve seen Jimmy sublimate his feelings about Chuck and his brother’s death. We’ve seen him repress them, run from them, and act out because of them, but never really face them head on.
Those feelings are at the core of “Winner”, the finale of Better Call Saul’s fourth season. The latest scheme from Kim and Jimmy requires Jimmy to cry crocodile tears at Chuck’s grave on the anniversary of his death, to get earnestly involved in the scholarship grants made in Chuck’s name, to loudly but “anonymously” throw a party for the dedication of the Chuck McGill memorial law library and seem too broken up to enjoy it. It’s all a big show, to attract as many members of the local bar as possible, in the hopes that word will get back to the committee judging his appeal for reinstatement as a lawyer.
It is an effort to put on grief, wear it like a mask, for self-serving purposes. The knock on Jimmy, the thing that held him back in his first hearing, was a lack of remorse or concerning or mournfulness about his brother. So he and Kim send every signal imaginable to the legal community, in lugubrious tones, that Jimmy is a broken man still shaken up by his brother’s passing, only withholding mention of Chuck because the memory is too painful to bear.
As usual, it’s a good plan! It’s hard to know for sure whether the signs of Jimmy’s faux grief make it back to the review board, but they at least seem to be effective on his immediate prey. And Kim is there by his side, shooting down his more outlandish ideas, workshopping his speech to the committee, and helping her partner mislead people in the hopes of regaining something that was taken away from him.
But the key to it all working is Jimmy’s speech to the review board. He goes in with a plan to recite Chuck’s letter to him. Jimmy wants to let his brother’s eloquence and feeling carry the day so that he doesn't have to put on that mask of true feeling and seem insincere. But he departs from the script. He improvises. He offers what sounds like an honest assessment of his relationship with his brother, the reasons why he became a lawyer, the difficulty of gaining Chuck’s approval, the truths about Chuck’s demeanor and the hardships their sibling relationship faced at times.
The the impact of those words is heightened by the karaoke cold open that shows Jimmy as needling but caring, Chuck as condescending but proud, and the two of them as loving siblings. It clearly moves the review board. It causes Kim to wipe away a tear. And you’d have to be made of stone to sit in the audience and not feel something as Jimmy offers what sounds like a heartfelt and honest eulogy for his brother and their relationship.
But it’s a canard, a put-on, a lie. It is an echo of similar faux-sentimental assessments from Chuck, and once again, I almost believed it. Jimmy revels in having put one over on the review board. His cravenness about tugging their heartstrings astounds Kim, underlining her worst fears about the man she loves. After tearfully echoing the passage from his brother’s letter, about his pride in sharing the name McGill, Jimmy asks for a “doing business as” form to practice under a pseudonym instead. Saul Goodman, scruple-free lawyer to the seedy underbelly of Albuquerque, is born out of the ashes of his brother’s life and name.
There was no truth in Jimmy’s seemingly sincere pronouncements. There was no outpouring of grief or real feeling in that confessional moment, or if there was, it was anesthetized and calibrated to be used for dishonest purposes. For ten episodes, we’ve been waiting for Jimmy to acknowledge what his brother meant to him in some genuine way, and instead, he gives us, the review board, and most notably Kim, what turns out to be just another performance.
It is, in a strange way, a negative image of how Mike behaves in this episode. When he speaks to Gus about Werner’s disappearance, he seeks mercy on his friend’s behalf, trying to avoid a mortal response from his employer. He pleads caution, forgiveness, the possibility of correction. But when he speaks to Werner himself, he’s colder, angrier, more taciturn and practical in the way we’ve come to expect as the default for Mr. Ehrmantraut. He too has a divide between the face he presents in his profession and the one he presents to his erstwhile friend.
But at least “Winner” gives us some good cat-and-mousing in that effort. For all the heady material in Better Call Saul, it’s hard not to enjoy the petty thrills of detective work and chases gone wrong all the more. Seeing Mike pose as a concerned brother in law, and piece together where Werner’s likely to be is an absolute treat. And the way he manages to loses Lalo Salamanca -- with a gum in the ticket machine ploy -- is a lot of fun.
Lalo himself, though, really drags this portion of the episode down. He’s a little too cartoony of an antagonist on a heightened but still down-to-earth show. The fact that he crawls through the ceiling like he’s freaking Spider-Man was patently ridiculous. And his single-minded pursuit of Mike and ability to ferret details out just as well veered too far into the realm of contrivance. I appreciate the promise of greater friction to come between Gus and Mike’s operation and the Salamancas, but the bulk of Lalo’s business in this one was unnecessary, and kept Nacho, who’s been underserved in general this season, on the sidelines.
Still, it leads to a tragic, moving, heartfelt scene between Mike and Werner where what needs to be done is done. Between Werner’s naive requests to see his wife, Mike’s matter of fact resignation about what needs to happen, and Werner’s slow realization of the position he’s in all unspools slowly and painfully.
The upshot of it is simple though. Mike found a friend, and he has to kill him. There’s sadness in Mike’s eyes, evident beneath the anger that it came to this. There’s pain in Werner’s, and for yours truly, when Werner tells Mike that he thought his little escapade would result only in frustration but ultimately forgiveness and understanding from Mike, because they’re friends.
There’s not room for friends in this line of work, at least not under Gus Fring. Ultimately, it’s not up to Mike, and underneath the stars of New Mexico, at a distance, with a spark and a silhouette, we see him have to end the life of someone he’d rather let go, because it’s his job. Werner is the first man that Mike kills for Gus, but he won’t be the last. And it all starts with a man who made one mistake, that can’t be forgiven, because the powers that be would never allow it.
That’s what ties Mike’s portion of the episode to Jimmy’s. Jimmy delivers what is basically the Saul Goodman Manifesto to a young woman who was denied one of the Chuck McGill scholarships since she was caught shoplifting. He tells her that chances at respectability like that scholarship are false promises, dangled in front of lesser-thans to convince them they have a shot when they were judged harshly before they even stepped in the door. The system is stacked against you. The rules are to their benefit. So don’t abide by them. Make your success without them. Do what you have to do. Rub their nose in your success rather letting yourself be cowed by something unfair and biased against you. The world will try to define you by one mistake, but fight back and don’t let them win.
That’s a comforting worldview, one that lets the viewer off the hook to some degree. We want to like Jimmy. He’s affable. He’s fun. He’s good at what he does. It’s easy to buy in Jimmy’s own sublimated self-assessment -- that the white shoed system is unwilling to overlook less credentialed but hard-working individuals who’ve had missteps but overcome them, so he has to fight dirty. It’s tempting to buy into that narrative -- that the people with the power aren’t playing fair, so why should he? Why shouldn’t scratch, claw, fight, and cut corners along the way to getting what he deserves?
But the truth is that “the system” hasn’t done much to keep Jimmy down. Howard Hamlin wanted to give him a job after he became a lawyer. Davis & Main gave him every opportunity to succeed. Even the disciplinary committee is not unreasonable in questioning Jimmy’s penitence when he offers no remorse for the person he hurt with his scheme. Jimmy’s made plenty of his own mistakes, but it’s not “them” trying to hold Jimmy McGill down; it’s “him.”
That’s the trick of this season finale. Despite all the put-ons and subterfuge, Jimmy does genuinely reckon with the death of his brother, he just does it in the guise of unseen forces set against him rather than a cold body in the cold ground. It’s Chuck who tried to keep Jimmy from being on the same level as him. It’s Chuck who instigated the disciplinary proceedings that continue to be a thorn in Jimmy’s side. It’s Chuck who judged his younger sibling solely on his mistakes, who overlooked his hustle, who saw those missteps as all that Jimmy was or could be. When Jimmy rails against the system that he sees as holding him down, when he uses that as an excuse to color outside the lines, he’s really railing against the brother, and his feelings of anger and pain and grievance, that no longer have a living object of blame to sustain them.
Because Jimmy has to be the winner. If Jimmy is denied his reinstatement, if a young woman with a checkered past but a bright future can’t earn a scholarship in his brother’s name, if it’s ultimately judged that someone like Jimmy isn’t allowed to be in the profession of someone like Chuck, then it means that Chuck won, and Jimmy can’t bear that.
Despite the loss of his sibling, we only see Jimmy truly cry once this season. It’s not in front of the review board. It’s not in a quiet moment with Kim. It’s in his car, by himself, when the engine won’t start, when he feels stymied, when it seems like the forces Chuck set in motion will pull him under for good, cosmically confirming his brother’s harsh assessment of him.
There is grief in Jimmy McGill, pain caused by a severe loss. But that loss didn’t happen when Chuck died. It happened when Chuck broke his heart, turned him away, told him that he didn’t matter. As with others on T.V. this year, death didn’t mean the loss of a confidante for Jimmy; it meant the end of the possibility of approval, of pride, of the sort of family relationship Jimmy had always wanted and thought he might one day gain.
There is truth in those tears behind the wheel of an off-color sedan, a mourning in private to contrast with the show he puts on in public. And Saul Goodman -- the real Saul Goodman -- is born. Because if Jimmy couldn’t earn his brother’s love, then at least he can win, he can try to become what Chuck never thought he would, reach heights his brother never reached, no matter what lies he has to tell, what corners he has to cut, or who he has to hurt or deceive to get there. That’s Jimmy’s truth now; that’s his response to his Chuck’s death, and that’s the force that moves him from the decency and concern of the man we meet at the beginning Better Call Saul to the amoral, win-at-all-costs mentality that comes with the new name that distinguishes him from his brother.
Yeah, this episode was a big infomercial, but a brilliant one!
Everyone's crazy for not giving this a 10. The tension was so good, music and lighting great. Acting superb. Mariko drew a line in the sand and forced all the other lords to acknowledge it. The music during the stand off was amazing. Some big pay offs like the last minute intervention by Ishido, the short intimacy, the betrayal, the meeting between former friends, and twists and reversals was crazy. I loved this episode. Can't wait to see what happens in the finale. I'll miss the romance subplot though =(
I love Francesca, they have great chemistry together. And that John Legend moment was beautiful.
The season premiere was meeh, I gave it 6/10
I was expecting more and it felt like one of the boring mid season episodes
I won't judge yet, I'll keep watching till the last episode
My heart was breaking for Dev this season, love can be hard, but you gotta admit he was being kind of a dick to her at the end right here. He clearly did not appreciate how hard is it for her to abandon something that was a part of her life for 10 years, he was being selfish and unfair in saying that she used him, since he was aware of her situation and could have refused or stopped at any moment like he stopped with Rachel.
This is what I hate the most about american love stories, I mean... okay, he loves her, she loves him, what about Pino? is it fair that he loses his 10 years partner just because he got too busy for a few months? does that undo those 10 years?
I dunno, I feel that ending was too easy and unearned, and clearly a too simple resolution to a very complicated issue.
I don't usually care for this kinda shit usually, it always felt to me that caring about fictional characters relationships is a very silly thing to do but this show was obviously too real and there's a part of me that related to that experience, which made me write this.
Anyhoo, this was quite the season, I wasn't so sure at first but it won me after a few episodes, the writing was fine until that last scene, hopefully Aziz will be back with more in a few years.
Funny how people can hate somethig just because it is giving a brand publicity. Like, fuck yeah, apple products are awesome. And fuck yeah, the cast and writing of modern family is awesome too. If you hate something because you don't have it, sucks to be you points tongue
My favourite episode so far. The most realistic and optimistic, and by all means most romantic season episode I have ever seen. I'm on cloud nine.
Really refreshing show! Too bad there are only 10 episodes and the episodes are too short. It's a trip back into the 90's with the music and references it's just really great! And that ending... really hope there will be a season 2
Amazing episode! Really different than anything i've seen before. Great job!
I anticipated the sound coming back when the two girls got into the cab and it still kinda scared me. Amazing episode.
Jimmy gets a new job and spends most of his first shift bored out of his mind before he gets creative and decides to decorate the windows. Kim goes to court as an observer which makes the judge uncomfortable. Nacho gets caught in a turf war alongside with the cousins and it takes a toll on his recovery. Mike exposes a fraud at group therapy and he is called to meet with Gus for a new job.
So I was born in the mid 80s and raised in the 90s aka the exact age bracket that fits this show. I didn't click with the first episode it felt like it was jumping on the nostalgia bandwagon and didn't have much heart. But over the course of the season it got there. It's like being back in those days. Even down to that teal zig zag pattern on the damn cups.
The characters felt real, Luke was a little dick at times but hey, teens get like that. It all builds up sometimes.
The music and feel of it all was spot on and the love stories were refreshing and sweet.
The ending was interesting. Though the dad was an asshole and Luke's mum definitely thinks so... Old feelings can be hard to shake. Looking forward to getting back into this universe next season.
THAT KISS THO!!!!!!
tyler and mcQuaid definitely deserves better tho! i hope they will find happiness in s2 (if it gets renewed)
also im glad luke fixed the things he fucked up
Bitch what... the fuck. The fuck.
I want to find the words to write a more comprehensive review of this episode, but they fail me right now. I thought it was beautiful. Denise deserved this shine. This episode is a great example of how the formal experimentation of this show pays off.
My favorite episode of this show yet. Just two funny and sympathetic dudes hitting it off and fitting perfectly to each other.
I really don't know whether they made that guy look better or worse.
I enjoyed the Community jokes and references mid-show, but other than that this all felt incredibly forced and unfunny.
It's totally amazing how they pictured forum.
Such a surreal episode! I loved how they depicted mid-2000's Reddit a.k.a. the forums, but after some time all the features they put in seemed too forced.
Also I'm not sure that all the vintage clothes vendors are pudgy, little eccentric cat ladies but I'm not in that business, so who knows.
I liked that first episode! What you might critique though, is that it doesn't really show too many extreme variations of pizza. Sure, some ideas are different from Italian pizza, but there's almost nothing that's absolutely groundbreaking.
That being said, the first episode is great to watch if you're a food enthusiast. But if you came looking for something distinctly different from Chef's Table, in a way that you want to see uniqueness to an extreme degree (which is what I was expecting), you probably won't be satisfied with Ugly Delicious.
