Better Call Saul Turns Brother Against Brother, Again, Some More

Handled poorly, Better Call Saul could have been the TV-dramedic version of the Star Wars prequels: since we know this protagonist is going to end up turning evil, basically, won't it be tedious to wait for him to get that way? But, of course, Better Call Saul has been handled uncommonly well, and the many switchbacks on Jimmy McGill's path to becoming Darth Vader Saul Goodman are fascinating -- particularly, as "Cobbler" reminds us, as long as Chuck is around.

In "Nacho," Episode 3 of the show's first season, we opened on a flashback to Slippin' Jimmy, pinched: he's facing charges of assault, property damage, and a potential sex offender prosecution for his Chicago sunroof. It's in this situation that his brother Chuck finds him, and Jimmy is so ashamed that he resolves to give up the game. He takes a job in the mailroom at Chuck's law firm (assumedly after Chuck fired the high-school junior who'd been doing it on work study up to that point). He does years of penance. He becomes accustomed to the compromises and deprivations of straight life. But he still has dreams, which is how he comes to earn a law degree by correspondence and pass the New Mexico bar -- a pursuit he believes will earn him Chuck's approval and set them on the road to becoming peers. We saw (but didn't hear) in the season's eighth episode, "Rico," how Chuck's law partner Howard delivered the bad news that Jimmy would not be considered for a job as an associate at the firm. In the next episode, "Pimento," after Jimmy discovers a potentially huge case against an elder care corporation -- a case far too big for him to handle on his own -- he thinks this will finally be his way in at Chuck's firm. Instead, we got a searing scene in which Jimmy confronts Chuck for having pretended to respect and support Jimmy while secretly working to undermine him professionally. It's devastating to watch, and leads Jimmy to give up the law and go back to running short cons in Cicero and picking up tramps by pretending to be Kevin Costner. Jimmy's spent a good portion of his adult life valuing Chuck's opinion of him and trying to redeem himself for his past mistakes. Chuck's betrayal is enough to convince Jimmy that his efforts were a waste of time and that the law is a hustle that comes with hassles he doesn't need.

But in the Season 2 premiere, Jimmy changes his mind. Trying to get Kim to understand the appeal of the short con life kind of worked and kind of didn't: true, he got her to play along with him on a low-stakes one-nighter, which she evidently found exciting enough to want to nail him immediately afterward. The next morning, he tries to get her to agree with him that this is as valid a career path as the one she spent years studying for: "Hey, wouldn't it be great if we could do that every night?" "Yes, it would," she shrugs, "but we can't." "I know, yeah," he mumbles. "But, I'm just saying, if we could it would be great. But I know we can't." When Kim caps this exchange by saying she can't be late for work and then staring at Jimmy kind of pointedly as she makes to leave, like she's not wild about the idea of leaving him alone in her house without any supervision, it ends up being another turning point for Jimmy -- like the one with Chuck, years ago -- that convinces Jimmy there's no future for him in con artistry. If Kim's not going to join him in grifting, then he's going to have to join her in the law: he takes the job at Davis & Main after all. And it's not all bad: they're even going to get him a cocobolo desk!

The problem with Kim taking on the role in Jimmy's life that Jimmy used to think Chuck performed -- a role model to impress, spurring him on to be his very best self -- is that Chuck...still exists. And now the role he plays in Jimmy's life is rather different. When we reunite with Chuck at the beginning of "Cobbler," there's no indication that he's had any kind of contact with Jimmy since their schism in "Pimento" -- which is to say, no sign Jimmy's been there, since Chuck doesn't leave his house and certainly doesn't use email. Soon Howard shows up to check on Chuck, make sure his flunky's been meeting all Chuck's day-to-day needs, and oh, by the way, tell him that Jimmy got a job at a respectable law firm in Santa Fe, with which HHM is going to be working on the Sandpiper case. Chuck pretends to be pleased -- though why he bothers isn't clear; given that Chuck has taken every available opportunity to derail Jimmy's progress as an attorney by using Howard as his ax man, it's not like Howard doesn't know how Chuck really feels. (It's also not clear whether Howard really was just bringing Chuck information from the outside world that he knew Howard had no other way of getting or whether his intention was to manipulate Chuck into acting; we're rarely party to Howard's motivations or inner life, and though a lot of Season 1 made it seem as though Howard had personal beef with Jimmy, as that season wore on, we obviously learned that Chuck was his puppet master. ...Though, I guess, Jimmy did give Howard some cause to bear personal animus against him, too.) Whatever: once Chuck knows that Jimmy has joined the community of respectable lawyers, he has a reason to haul out and press his foil-lined electricity-proof suit.

And to this point, "Cobbler" has shown us a pretty good few days in the life of the new Jimmy, partner-track attorney at Davis & Main. Jimmy's girlfriend's rearranged papers so that she can sit next to him at meetings and play footsie under the table. Jimmy's getting rid of his shitty old beater and taking delivery of a new Mercedes (if one in which said girlfriend's gift of a "World's 2nd Best Lawyer" travel mug symbolically doesn't fit the cup holder). Jimmy's learning that his new boss and mentor, Cliff, also likes to unwind by playing music (the episode having opened with Chuck playing the piano, we later see Cliff noodling on a guitar in his office at work); Jimmy gets approbation, when he interrupts, for his having found evidence that Sandpiper's supposed "optional allowance program" was not optional at all. When Jimmy returns again to HHM, you'd never know it's been the site of so many of his past humiliations; he's smooth and confident presenting his findings to the rest of the attorneys on the Sandpiper case...

...right up until the moment an assistant enters with a plastic bin and quietly speaks to Howard, who tells everyone to give her their phones, watches, and other electronics. Everyone present obviously knows what this means, but Kim and Jimmy are the most visibly tense, and it takes a long ninety seconds for Chuck to make his way into the room; pointedly sit at the chair next to the one at the head of the table; and smile benignly as he waits for Jimmy to pick back up with what he'd been saying before Chuck's entrance. As might be expected, Jimmy is self-conscious to be lawyering in a room filled with near-strangers who have no idea of his petty-criminal history and consider him his equal...and, now, his brother, who gives no credit to Jimmy's sincere efforts to be a respectable lawyer. Jimmy stammers through a few painful attempts to resume his address until Kim places a steadying hand on the arm of his chair, steadying his mind and allowing him to continue, even under Chuck's haughty gaze.

After the meeting, the brothers McGill have another face-off -- much briefer and not nearly as fiery as the one in Chuck's living room last season, since they're in the hallway at HHM, but a painful one all the same.

Jimmy: Why are you here?

Chuck: To bear witness.

Just then, Jimmy's phone rings. Chuck flinches at it, and Jimmy moves off to take the call, evading whatever further diminishments Chuck was prepared to unleash. It's Mike, wanting to know if Jimmy's still "morally flexible"; if he is, Mike may have a job for him: to rescue Wormald from his own astounding stupidity. In order to shield himself from scrutiny should the cops continue looking into Wormald's mysterious baseball card theft, Mike's already brokered a deal with Nacho to return the cards and take Wormald's dumb Hummer off his hands. (Wormald is proud that someone as cool as Nacho's going to be driving it, and dismayed to learn that it's actually going straight to the chop shop. "It looks like a school bus for six-year-old pimps." - Nacho.) But the last loose end is the cops, who are going to need a story to explain why Wormald needed that cubbyhole behind his couch and what was in it. Jimmy sits quietly next to Wormald as he awkwardly explains that he got back his baseball cards and the case is closed, before dismissing him to get a cup of coffee and teasing the detectives about what was actually at issue. That Wormald's cards were stolen by a wealthy patron with whom Wormald had "artistic differences" which have since been mended is not enough of an explanation. Decorously talking around the "videos intended to titillate the senses" that Wormald made for this patron only inflames the detectives' curiosity more. Finally, Jimmy comes out with it: "Squat cobbler." What's a squat cobbler? "Hoboken squat cobbler. Full moon moon pie. Boston cream splat. Seriously? Simple Simon the ass man. Dutch apple ass. Guys! Am I not speaking English here?...It's when a man sits in pie! He sits in a pie! And he-- He wiggles around. Maybe it's like Hellmann's Mayonnaise, it has a different name west of the Rockies."

Jimmy is, of course, aided in his deception by the very face of Wormald, which definitely looks like it belongs to a man who sits in pies, wiggles around, and cries a little, but I guess "looking the type" doesn't actually count as proof, and as Jimmy recounts the story to Kim later (over a pie that no butt has violated), he explains that the cops were convinced after watching a video of the sort he'd described to them, and which he and Wormald made after the meeting. Kim is low-key horrified as she asks, "You fabricated evidence?" "I made a video," Jimmy replies. Ethics not, apparently, having been a big part of Jimmy's legal education at the University of American Samoa, Kim has to explain that what he did is actually a big deal: he could lose his job at Davis & Main if anyone there were to find out; more than that, he could get disbarred. Jimmy's not worried that this will ever get back to Davis & Main, or to anyone else who matters, but Kim is not so sure: "If you keep this up, they will find out. For what, Jimmy? What is the point?...I cannot hear about this sort of thing ever again, okay? I mean it, Jimmy." Jimmy being Jimmy, I'm pretty sure what he hears isn't that Kim is in distress about his recklessness and its potential consequences, but that she just "cannot hear about this sort of thing," and just responds to that part: "You won't." Kim's already shown him that she is morally flexible, by joining in his caper in the hotel bar in the season premiere. It's easy to imagine Jimmy's inner rationalizations: Kim can excuse these Slippin' Jimmy slips if she doesn't know specifics. If Jimmy's anointed Kim as his new touchstone, the person whose approval he keeps in mind before he makes any big decision, then he thinks he has a lot more ethical leeway than she might realize she accidentally gave him.

But then, Kim might not even be part of Jimmy's considerations anymore -- not after Chuck crashed the meeting at HHM. Now the question is how much Jimmy is motivated by his craving for Kim's approval. Now that he's seen Chuck again, it seems just as likely that what's driving him is a need to repudiate Chuck and everything he stands for. If Mike had called Jimmy that morning, when Jimmy was beavering away under a piece of tasteful contemporary art in his comfortable Davis & Main office, Jimmy's answer might have been a pass. But seeing Chuck -- talking to Chuck for just a few seconds -- increased Jimmy's willingness to get involved with Mike again. Jimmy's seen in Chuck's eyes that his estimation of Jimmy is the same now as it was when a greasy Jimmy was in police custody years ago, ashamed and alone. If Chuck still thinks Jimmy's a crook, despite everything Jimmy's done to establish his new reputation, maybe Jimmy might as well just live down to his old one.