"You can't play chicken with me. I invented chicken."
It's a fascinating choice that this episode, filled with notably creative directorial choices even by the standards of Better Call Saul, begins with a flash forward to the very end of Breaking Bad, showing us the offices of Saul Goodman for the first time,or the last time, depending on your perspective. Saul's... Jimmy's last goodbye to Francesca is as awkward as it was always going to be. It's the end of Jimmy's life as anuything other than monochrome mediocrity and paranoia, reminding us that yes, he may seem to get away with his morally dodgy choices while others suffer, but karma will be back to punish him in the end.
Jimmy's behaviour here is typically cynical. Instead of honestly selling phones in the shop, he goes out at night to sell to the mildly criminal, grey market semi-undrrworld, only to be mugged for his pains: on this one occasion, karma is more immrediate, and he seems to learn his lesson and go back to orthodoxy. At his typically hmilating meeting with his parole officer, he seems resigned to biding his time until he can hopefully get his law licence back. And... we've seen where that ultimately leads.
Meanwhile, he continues to slowly ruin the lives of others around him. Kim really damages her reputation with her Mese Verde clients because she's having to take on other work to support Jimmy. And Howard, being a decent sort, seems to be falling apart with all the guilt. Guilt that rightly belongs to Jimmy.
And yet, while elsewhere we see Jimmy with his dodgy ways, and how he damages the lives and careers of thosearound him, we end the episode with a German structural emngineer bimpressing Gus with his consummate professionalism. Professionalism with not a Jimmy in sight.
Superb telly, obviously.
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