Spoiler warning: do not read until you’ve seen the second episode of Better Call Saul on AMC/Netflix
‘I’m Special Agent Jeffrey Steel, FBI’
Did we expect Saul to be heading out to the desert quite so soon? Tuco’s surprise appearance at the end of the pilot leads into much more familiar Breaking Bad territory in this second episode. Duct tape? Check. Unhinged gangsters going loco? Check. Protagonist frantically trying to reason with them? Check. Imminent threat of death while miles from civilisation? Well – this might be a problem for Better Call Saul, if not for Jimmy. It’s the Prequel Invincibility Problem (Pip), if you will.
We know Jimmy lives to change his name to Saul and dispense his idiosyncratic take on the US legal system to Messrs White and Pinkman, so we know that he will get out of any seriously life-threatening situation that he’s in here. It’s not something that comes into play when he’s horse-trading with prosecution lawyers (“Petty with a prior?”), chilling in the back of the nail salon or trying to get Mike to let him out of that car park; they’re all scenes that flesh out Jimmy’s life without raising the stakes too far. But when he’s staring down the barrel of a gun in the desert – even if it’s being waved around by the wildly unpredictable Tuco – at some point you know the Pip trump card will be played. As for the skater brothers – well, their broken legs did serve to show us (and, perhaps, Jimmy) one thing: he’s got a gift for talking his way out of trouble.
‘Take off the space blanket’
After cocktails in a bar where the sight of breadsticks being snapped reminds him of the legs being broken out in the desert, Jimmy wakes on Chuck’s sofa. He’s so hungover, he can’t remember how he got there. As we later learn, Jimmy is not only working in the nail salon store room – he’s sleeping there too. So, in the absence of any real home life, the scenes with his brother are the closest we get to seeing him at his most unguarded. Chuck might have gone off the deep end and been there for some time (of course there’s no milk for the coffee – there’s no electricity for the fridge), but he’s still Jimmy’s big brother. The dynamic flips between Chuck giving Jimmy advice and Jimmy trying not to lose his patience with Chuck’s “condition”; it sounds as if it might not be the first time Jimmy’s cell phone has been chucked out, and it’s not the first time that Jimmy has had to explain what he’s been up to – he insists the hospital bill to fix two broken legs is nothing to do with the “Slipping Jimmy” scam.
‘I like ripping off thieves because they can’t go to the cops, they have no recourse’
The best thing to come out of the desert is our introduction to Nacho Varga. Tuco’s far more reasonable associate has sized up the situation and tracked Jimmy down to his “office” (cue a great frantic clear-up as Jimmy repacks up his fold-out bed). Nacho takes the trouble to let Jimmy know he’s got plans to work his own sideline without Tuco (“It’s cool, he doesn’t know I’m here”). He picked up on the most lucrative detail in Jimmy’s longwinded explanation about why he came to be knocking on Tuco’s abuelita’s (grandmother’s) house: the story of Betsy and Craig Kettleman, the couple who stand accused of stealing $1.5m. Nacho is thinking big: they’d be the perfect score for him, and he wants Jimmy to figure out how.
We saw the Kettlemans visiting the offices of Hamlin, Hamlin and McGill in the first episode – will Jimmy be more tempted to help Nacho if it’s also a chance to get back at his brother’s partner, Howard?
Questions and quotes
“I’m a lawyer, not a criminal.” Jimmy’s sticking to the right side of the law. For now.
“I just talked you down from a death sentence to six months probation – I’m the best lawyer ever.” Love the pillow in Jimmy’s filing cabinet.
“Wow. You got a mouth on you.” Tuco nails it.
Fans of Orphan Black might remember actor Michael Mando, who plays Nacho Varga, as Sarah’s drug-dealing ex, Vic.
“It’s … showtime!” Another great use of montage as Jimmy gets his act together in the courts, defending a range of lowlifes and deadbeats with panache, making friends with the court clerk (although not Mike and his parking stickers), psyching himself up with the same routine in front of the bathroom mirror every time. But which movie is Jimmy thinking of?
“I’m Special Agent Jeffrey Steel, FBI.” Just in case Better Call Saul doesn’t work out, there’s the next Breaking Bad spinoff right there.
