“He wanted me to talk. I talked.” God, did he ever.
Titled “Talk” after this characteristically terse bit of dialogue from Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), the fourth episode of Better Call Saul‘s fourth season continues the show’s ongoing study of how vivid a picture it can paint of the moral collapse of its characters in as few brushstrokes as possible. Mike, Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), Nacho Varga (Michael Mando), and even Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) spend the episode essentially taking turns sliding a few more rungs down the ladder toward their respective eventual fates. For Jimmy and Mike, this means a life of crime that will end in disaster when they’re drawn into the orbit of one Walter White a few years later. For Nacho and Kim… well, we don’t know what happens to them, not yet. But this installment makes the case that they’re just as broken down as their Breaking Bad co-star counterparts, and seemingly just as unlikely to be able to put the pieces back together.
Mike leads the episode, though the first time we see him it’s not in the grizzled form of Banks’ world-weary ex-cop. Instead, we see him — or rather just his expert, confident craftsman’s hands — through the eyes of Matty, the son he lost to the circle of crooked cops he himself was a part of. In a cold-open flashback, a young Matty watches Mike pour and set concrete for a DIY project decades earlier. The crash cut from that wide-eyed little boy inscribing his name in the still-wet concrete, set to the upbeat strains of Hugh Masekela’s “Grazing in the Grass,” to the face of Mike as we know him, sitting in a grief-counseling group and both looking and sounding like Death itself, is a crushing one.
Jonathan Banks, Kerry Condon; Better Call Saul
But it’s not until later in the episode that we’re shown who wanted Mike to talk, and what he said. In a diner with his fellow group member and potential love interest Anita (Tamara Tunie, a welcome presence here as always), Ehrmantraut says that a widower in their group is a fraud — that the details he shares about his supposed late wife change every time, that rubs his wrist when he lies in a tell that’d get him laughed out of any poker game. First skeptical and then both intrigued and amused, Anita agrees to a 10-dollar bet over whether Mike’s suspicions will pan out at the next meeting.
The trouble starts when the guy dares to follow up a heartbreaking revelation from Mike’s daughter-in-law Stacey (Kerry Condon), Matty Ehrmantraut’s widow: She went an entire morning without thinking of her late husband. As she describes the feeling of realizing her husband is passing out of her day-to-day memories and mindset, we watch Mike’s breathing grow quicker and sharper, his face twitch and draw tight. It’s unclear, even to him I think, if he’s shocked or saddened or relieved or angered by his beloved daughter-in-law’s confession.
That confusion quickly solidifies into rage when the phony widower starts a transparently bogus story about how his wife wanted to go to Australia on vacation before she died, to the point where Mike can no longer contain himself and snorts with derision. Both the group leader and the fraud invite him to share his feelings, and share he does, tearing the man’s credibility apart with a threat to look up the obituaries for the alleged wife in the newspaper and by pointing out that the last time he told this story, the never-taken vacation was to Cuba, not down under. As both Anita and Stacey look on in dismay, the man flees the group.
“He came to the right place,” Mike rumbles, turning his anger on the group at large. “He knew you wouldn’t notice, and you didn’t. All wrapped up in your sad little stories, feeding off each other’s misery…” Then comes the line we heard earlier: “He wanted me to talk. I talked.” It cuts through the air like a knife, severing one more connection Mike has to the world outside the underworld to which he will soon belong. Based on the episode’s concluding scene, in which Gus Fring (Giancarlo Espositio) summons Mike to a meeting to confront him about his involvement in Nacho Varga’s attempted assassination of rival kingpin Hector Salamanca and offer him an unknown job, he’ll join that underworld sooner rather than later.
Nacho could tell Mike a thing or two about life under Gus’s thumb. In his own intense, largely wordless showcase sequence, Nacho travels with the Salamanca Brothers (Daniel and Luis Moncada) to the headquarters of a cartel-affiliated drug ring that Gus has decided to frame for the fake hit on Nacho last week. Ignoring his strategic advice to call in reinforcements and shoot the place up that night, the silent and sinister brothers do the job themselves, murdering apparently dozens of people in the process. When Nacho is forced to intervene to save them from an ambush awaiting them outside, the wounds in his side and shoulder reopen painfully, leaving him barely able to stand.
Luis Moncada, Michael Mando; Better Call Saul
Nacho is sharp enough to understand this was a power play by Fring to suck up territory while the Salamanca branch of the cartel has a leadership vacuum, but this insight doesn’t free him from further indentured servitude to the Chicken Man, who could rat out Nacho’s strike against Hector at any time. Varga winds up seeking shelter and solace from his estranged father, who mercifully gives him both.
Kim Wexler’s little self-contained short story of a plotline displays parallels to those of both Mike and Nacho. Like the latter, she’s the walking wounded, her arm still in a sling and bruises still visible on her face from the car accident she suffered while compulsively working around the clock to compensate for Jimmy’s lack of income. This stands out to Judge Munzinger (a cameo from Benson and Star Trek: Voyager alum Ethan Phillips), whose low-stakes courtroom she’s been loitering in. Calling her into his chambers during his lunchbreak, he teasingly but firmly chastises her about trying to rekindle her love for the law by looking for a “once-in-a-lifetime case” on his docket — a move he’s seen lawyers disillusioned by their dreary work in the corporate sector make many times before. “You won’t find any Save the Broken Lawyer cases here,” he says. Yet when court resumes that afternoon, there she is in the gallery once again; like Mike, she’s both unwilling and unable to hide her brokenness.
The final member of our drab four is Jimmy himself. When we first join him, he blows off yet another job offer, this one from a chain of cellphone stores, presumably because he knows he’ll be collecting on that Hummel heist he and Ira (Franc Ross) pulled off last week. (When Ira winds up netting more from the rare figurine than Jimmy expected, he still pays McGill his fair share, as a make-good for Jimmy helping him escape the figurine’s owner unnoticed. Who says there’s no honor among thieves?)
But when Kim asks Jimmy to consider seeing a therapist whose number she provides him, he suddenly sings a different tune. He calls the cellphone place back up and accepts the job, only to discover he’s been marooned at a location that gets approximately zero foot traffic. A born hustler like Jimmy can’t stand to twiddle his thumbs all day while there’s action elsewhere, so after his meeting with Ira — who wants to work together again, on the condition they use a different phone next time just in case someone’s listening — he has a brainstorm.
Better Call Saul Dropped Another Surprise Breaking Bad Cameo
Like Mike in the cold open, Jimmy goes DIY, painting a slogan on the windows of the store: “IS THE MAN LISTENING? PRIVACY SOLD HERE.” The once and future Saul Goodman has identified the untapped market potential of burglars, drug dealers, and anyone else who needs burner phones the way regular working stiffs need bag lunches.
It’s hard to imagine this going over well with his current legitimate employers, or even with some of his illicit associates; given what we see of his by-the-letter regulatory enforcement as a security consultant, Mike Ehrmantraut would have no time for Jimmy’s decision to essentially advertise his criminality for all to see.
But so what? As Jimmy tells Kim, he’s only got to kill 10 months before he’s a lawyer again. That sinking feeling in your gut is the knowledge that yeah, he’ll be a lawyer alright, but his name won’t be Jimmy McGill anymore. Saul Goodman, call your office.
Better Call Saul airs Monday nights at 9/8c on AMC.
Source : TVGuide
