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Better Call Saul “Rebecca” Review

You know the drill.
Full spoilers
ahead…

Well. That was an excellent hour of television. I’ve
watched enough TV to
know that
after really excellent episodes, like last weeks “Gloves Off”, a
viewer can
expect the following week to turn
things down to simmer a little
giving the viewer a week to kind of adjust.
Better Call Saul was
having
none of that as “Rebecca” kept the ball rolling. Now it’s easy to
start off
with what happens in
the final scene, and while awesome, I don’t want it to
take away from the
other truly great aspects of this
episode. That’s not saying
we’re going to ignore it either because it was
all types of awesome, but I just

want to celebrate the other parts of this episode first. Think of it as you

would think desert, saving
the best for last. Unless you’re one of those people
who have desert first
in which case I don’t understand
you and you’re going to
have to wait.

Let’s start at the beginning
(always the most reasonable

place to start unless you’re Tarantino) as this weeks Better Call

Saul opened with a flashback.
We got a little glimpse of what life for
Chuck was before he let the demons
of technology eat his soul. As a
matter of
fact we even saw him change a light bulb while holding the used
one in his
mouth. Could you
imagine present day Chuck doing that? I think he’d explode. We
see that
Chuck was married to a very
successful violinist, has to be successful
if Yo-Yo Ma is coming to your
wedding, and what his house looked
like before he
started tearing the wires out of the walls.

Jimmy
coming over for dinner
was a bit
awkward. I wouldn’t say it was tense but parts of it seemed forced.
Jimmy
knew that he didn’t fit in at
that dinner table, and a key point being he
brought beer to a wine party. I
know it sounds silly but how
badly did that
bottle of beer stand out among the wine goblets when the
three of them clinked
glasses?
Jimmy has been masterful at turning awkward situations around in his
favor
and quickly turns to telling
lawyer jokes. When in doubt hit them with
humor, and surprisingly Chuck’s
wife was all about it. Clearly
this just adds
to Chuck’s strain as he starts tugging on his ear, secret
code for get Jimmy
out, that
goes unnoticed by his wife. Jimmy is well intentioned here and I
believe
trying to make a good impression to
make up for missing their wedding,
but the whole time I just wanted him to
leave and avoid the

microscope.

Side note, was that jealousy we saw from Chuck as he
tried to
deliver his own lawyer
joke in bed? I found that to be rather curious when one
takes into account
how much he disapproves of
Jimmy’s existence. Almost like he
was lowering himself to Jimmy’s level to
tell a joke.

Once we
moved on
from our flashback we moved to the present as we see Jimmy working
late at Davis
& Main,
anyone else notice his name plate was lower cased? Just seemed kind
of funny
and fitting. Any way, we got to
see that there are real
ramifications to Jimmy’s actions, and those
ramifications are named Erin. First

off I kind of found Erin to be a delightful pain in the ass. Clearly the
firm
can’t trust Jimmy to
operate on his own so now he needs to be babysat. Of
course this pisses
Jimmy off and he does what comes
natural to him and avoids
the issue. Setting up a meeting to discuss his
over use of the word “clearly”,

Jimmy sneaks out the back door as a silent eff you to the firm. Like any
good
pain in the ass Erin is in
his office the very next morning ready to continue
their work. Make no
mistake about it, the fact that
Jimmy’s first impulse is to
lie to Erin about why he left speaks volumes
about his character. It was

pretty clear that he thought Erin’s arrival was garbage but still felt the
need
to tell her about some
fictional gas disease. The ninja pixie was having none of
it and cut him off
at the pass.

There is little doubt that

Erin is going to be a big problem for Jimmy and his abilities to “grease the

wheel”. She was very anti
beanie baby “gift” giving , and had no problem putting
Jimmy on blast about
it. Erin insists that she has
Jimmy’s best intentions and
I believe her, but I also believe that she’s
willing to get him kicked out of

the firm if need be. But if we know anything about Jimmy he has a knack for

bringing people down in the
muck with him. I wonder if he’ll be able to find a
weakness in Erin to
exploit.

Else where in the
land of people not taking
crap from Jimmy, Kim is busting her tail to get
removed from her basement

dungeon and is doing her best to ignore Jimmy despite how persistent he is.
The
idea of suing her firm is
enough to set Kim off. Ignoring the fact that it would
be career suicide,
Kim goes off on Jimmy acknowledging
the fact that he’s the
reason why she’s a basement dweller. At this moment
Kim takes the gloves off
and
calls Jimmy out on pretty much everything from not being able to follow the

rules of the law to trying to
tank his job. It was good to see Kim give it to
Jimmy here and hold him
accountable for his actions. Jimmy
has lived a life
where people are constantly cleaning up after his messes,
and this is no
different with
Kim. The “You don’t save me. I save me.” line was excellent and
one of the
many standout moments for Kim in
this episode.

Watching
Better Call Saul it’s easy to see how
different Kim is than Jimmy. For

starters she loves her job. Like for realsies. Watching her
feverishly
work to get herself out
of the basement was an excellent display of just how
opposite the two are.
Anyone else noticing how she
always wears some variation
of the color blue. One of my favorite things on
Breaking Bad was it’s

representation of colors, and it seems like a theme that is bleeding into

Better Call Saul. For
those wondering blue represents loyalty, trust, and
faith which are all
qualities that I would associate with
Kim. While we’re on
the subject of talking about things I loved about
Breaking Bad
lets
talk about the shows ability to set scenes to music. The use of the
Spanish
version of “My Way”, which I
loved by the way, was great as Kim went
through post-it note after post-it
note looking for a win. Which
finally came
through a woman named Paige. How great was it seeing Kim’s
reaction to finally
getting a
glimmer of hope? Only to be just as bitter seeing it ripped away with
Howard
not lifting the basement
ban.

This leads Kim to question if she
has any future at the firm,
and transitions to a fantastic
scene
between her and Chuck. Michael Mckean straight up killed
it. Chuck gave
us some
insight on why his relationship with Jimmy is strained, and it makes
total
sense. Their father owned a small
shop, and Jimmy more or less grew up
there, and wasn’t the best of
businessmen. Chuck comes home from law
school to
help sort the books and finds that fourteen thousand dollars is
missing over a
stretch of time.
Clearly it’s Jimmy’s doing but their father would hear
nothing of it.
Shortly there after the shop closes
and their father passes.
Enter Chuck’s resentment of Jimmy, and who can
blame him really? A part of me

wants to believe that there’s no way Jimmy would steal from his father like

that, but knowing what we
know of how Jimmy operates it’s more naive to think
that he wouldn’t steal
a lot of money over time. A
little here and a little
there. No one is ever going to notice.

“My
brother is not a bad person,

he has a good heart, he can’t help himself, and everyone’s left picking up
the
pieces.” If this wasn’t
a tag line for the show I don’t know what is. Chuck
leaves the office
telling Kim he’ll put in a good word
for her to Howard and
get her out of the basement. She’s too valuable to be
wasted. One does have to

wonder though if Chuck is setting something up where he can use Kim against

Jimmy at some point. Either
way this scene was masterful and one of the shows
best.

Ding,
Ding, Ding

Do
you guys hear that
because it sounds like we just arrived to our big discussion
moment from the
episode. That’s right
Breaking Bad fans, tonight saw the
return of Hector Salamanca sans
wheelchair and bell. If you guys
read my preview
piece I had a brief idea that it would be Gus who confronted
Mike over last
weeks events
with Tuco but this was waaaaaaaaay better. Don’t get me
wrong I’m
anxiously awaiting the
introduction of Gus but the arrival of Hector
not only opens the door to
that but makes more sense. Speaking
on Tuco’s
behalf, Hector apologies to Mike for his actions and says that he
does belong in
jail. But
there’s a catch. The sentence should be for the assault only, and if
Mike
would say the gun is his he’ll be
doing Hector a favor and earning himself
five thousand dollars in the
process. Clearly this is a veiled
threat and what
we know about Hector he’s a bad dude. This scene
was fun for a lot of
reasons.
One, the diner seems to be the same diner that Lydia used when making
meth
deals in Breaking Bad.
Two, it was great seeing Hector operate as
he would before being bound to
that wheelchair. There’s something
smooth and
charismatic in him despite all the danger he presents. Third, did
you guys see
how pissed Mike
was?! Current theory is Mike will agree to take the gun rap for
Tuco, but
before he does Gus will step in.
This can help set up the working
relationship between the two, and give us
another way for Gus to stick it to

Hector. Just a theory.

So, what did you guys think? Were you
surprised to
see Hector show up in
the diner? What did you think about that scene between
Chuck and Kim? How
much of a problem is Erin going to
be? Leave your thoughts in
the comments
below.

 

Images from

AMC

 

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