Better Call Saul: Slip

 "This is the land of the free and the home of the lawsuit."

Once again, and I know I'm always saying this, an episode that's clearly setting stuff for later proves to be a superb character piece. The dramatic episodes aren't necessarily the only good episodes.

Jimmy is still struggling to earn a living and pay his half of the office money. There's a brilliant early scene where his TV commercial racket is brutally exposed. Yet Jimmy is a con man par excellence. The pre-credits scene is highly revealing: not only is he in denial about how his selfish actions ruined his opnen and generous father, but he sees his father's honesty and integrity as a weakness. Manipulate, or be manipulated. And this is how he gets out of the hole he's in.

So he gets out of a day's community service by conning the supervisor, rather impressively, and earning himself $700 into the bargain. Why should Jimmy have to suffer consequences for his behaviour? Shame is for suckers. And worse, he seems to manipulate Kim, who adores him, into letting him off paying his half... and taking extra work, spreading herself thin. Ouch. Does Jimmy care at all about the woman who clearly loves him? Obvioisly not. Behind the surface charm is a cold, calculating, self-centred git.

As an aside, I wonder about Chuck, too. Was his "condition" always a lie? Does this episode show him finding a way to escape from having to pretend not that the condition no longer serves its purpose? I don't know, and I may be wrong that he's ben faking. We shall see.

As a contrast, other characters prominent in this episode are all, to a degree, on the criminal side. But they have morals and integrity, at least of sorts, things that Jimmy will never have. A tense and extraordinary scene shows Nacho delivering poison pills into Hector's pocket, but he's doing it for his dad. Mike is also trying to do Hector over, but he has his reasons. And then we have his arrangement with Gus at the end... Gus, too, has his principles.

A nuanced and fasdcinating episode. As ever. These characters are extraordinary.