3x06 Off Brand

[7.7/10] There’s a sense in “Off Brand” that many of the major figures of Better Call Saul haven’t really been doing what they’d like to be doing. Demands of family, money, and sometimes the two intertwined have kept the likes of Jimmy, Chuck, Mike, and Nacho are, at times, reluctant or bitter or scarred by the work they’ve been doing over the past few seasons. But for each of them, there is something pushing them, almost against their will, to move closer to something that might be better for their souls.

For Jimmy, that means a break from the law. At heart, Jimmy is a showman, a people-pleaser, albeit one who’s happy to use those skills to feather his nest where possible. That gives him an avenue in the law, but his references to having to go “Karloff” in his commercial for...commercials, or the dangers of stripes on screen suggest that he’s as thrilled by the art of his presentation as he is in any con.

He showed the same inclination in his meticulously-produced commercial for Davis & Main and his first big “Gimme Jimmy” ad. And the first glimpse we see of Cinnabon Gene is of a man whose world is black and white, where the only hint of color are the flashes of his famous “Better Call Saul” clips that first drew Jesse and Walt to him. As corny as it is to see Jimmy in the hat and beard and vest (and it must be said that Better Call Saul gets the lo-fi look of local ads down perfectly) there’s the sense that Jimmy is in his element when he’s on camera, and that it may be the closest thing to honest work that could sustain him.

After all, there is a sense that Jimmy became a lawyer out of a combination of admiration for his brother as a template for success and in a bid to earn his respect and perhaps even love. There’s ways in which his showmanship makes him a good fit, but as his stint at Davis & Main shows, also things that make him a liability. It does seem to pain Jimmy a bit to have to inform all of his clients of his twelve-month suspension (in another of this show’s tightly-edited and hilarious montages), and we know it won’t last, but maybe he would be happier as a commercial director and/or star than as an officer of the court. The suspension is not ideal, but it may just push Jimmy into something fulfilling after being so directed by his relationship with his brother.

As despondent as Chuck may seem having effectively lost his contest with his brother, the result seems to spur him as well. While the fallout from “Chicanery” clearly left him shaken, seeming even suicidal at times, a visit from Howard seems to snap him out of his funk. Howard, a talented advocate in his own right, appeals to Chuck’s vanity and his sense of serving the calling of the law above prosaic personal concerns.

In the shadow of those lofty ideal, Chuck begins to test the limits of his exposed psychosomatic “allergy.” He gives himself exposure therapy, gripping a battery in his hand with subtext that he’s pushing himself to move past it. And he even goes so far as to call a doctor, presumably to ask for help, to push him beyond his illness, whether he believes it to be physical or mental. As much as Chuck looks at his brother with disdain, in many ways Jimmy has been coddling him, indulging his electromagnetism “allergy” self-diagnosis rather than forcing him to confront the deeper-rooted issues that have caused it and deal with it. Oddly enough, it may be Jimmy’s final act with Chuck (if his statement to Rebecca is to be believed) that spurs his brother to get the help he needs.

Mike needs some help too. It’s not in the same way as Chuck exactly, but as he sits in that support group while his daughter-in-law recounts the difficulties of raising a daughter without her father, we know that Mike too has unresolved issues from his son’s death, issues that this sort of group might help him with.

But, like Jimmy, he’s also been pulled into a world by financial necessity and familial issues that it may do him better to be without. When his daughter-in-law asks him to help pour concrete for a neighborhood playground (possibly the one at which he’ll later be arrested) it’s the kind of labor, the kind of building something, that Mike appeared to covet in the last episode, with Gus luring him back into the world of drugs and brutality. There’s always something that feels a little less than above board about Mike’s daughter-in-law’s requests of him, a sense that she (consciously or unconsciously) uses Mike’s guilt over his son’s death to persuade him to do things for her and her daughter, but here, it may be the same sort of push that let’s him do a little of what he’d really like to be doing, like the kind Jimmy received.

And then there’s Nacho, who’s also pushed into actions he wouldn’t seem to pick without some amount of prodding. But unlike the three other men who get their share of focus in this episode, Nacho seems like he’s being pushed into something that will hurt him, that isn’t a step toward recovery or betterment and fulfillment, but something to drive him deeper into a place that isn’t comfortable.

When he’s counting dollars at the beginning of the episode, he’s apt to let the underling who’s a little light off with a warning. But all it takes is one belittling comment from Hector, who’s seemingly barely paying attention, for Nacho to drag the goon back in and brutalize him in the kitchen. When he’s upholstering in his father’s shop, a slip with the needle reflects the image of blood in his eyes, and suggests a man who is, at least in part, still carrying his grisly actions with him from that day.

But Hector prompts that sort of viciousness, that effort to take out what you need from whomever you need it from. Hector sends him to test the limits of Gus’s patience by taking six bricks from the Pollos Hermanos delivery rather than five. Push your advantage -- that’s the lesson Nacho is constantly learning from his would-be boss.

(As an aside, I don’t know that we really needed to see Gus surveying the industrial laundry facility which will eventually house Walter’s lab and conferring with Lydia. BCS has been good about not laying the Breaking Bad nods on too thick or shoehorning them in, but this felt like too much with little purpose beyond saying “Hey, remember how this becomes significant in the other series?”)

And yet, Nacho may take that lesson and turn it against the man who’s teaching it to him. Hector’s insistence on using Nacho’s dad’s shop as a front provokes real resistance in the young man. We’ve already seen Nacho’s willingness to throw his associates under the bus because they pose a threat in terms of stability or understanding. When Nacho places his foot on one of Hector’s pills, after a coughing fit prompted by Tuco earning himself some more time in jail, there’s the hint that he may have something to do with what finally fells Hector. Better Call Saul uses the the inevitability of Hector’s downfall to, ironically enough, create mystery, where Mike, Gus, and Nacho all have reasons to try to take him down.

That’s the risk of all these big events prodding our protagonists to try things that they’d otherwise been shoving to the side. We know that Jimmy’s filmmaking career is temporary, and that Mike’s handyman excursion is fleeting. These individuals will be pulled back into this world and this life despite their efforts, self-directed or not, that keep them away from it. The mixing of those worlds, the humble work at the car shop and the drug enforcer duties for Hector, may also collide for Nacho, in a way that pulls him back into that muck, into using that brutality Hector instills, without any need for further provocation.