5x04 Namaste

If there’s a persistent thematic undercurrent that touches every part of Better Call Saul, and maybe even Breaking Bad, it’s that people from very different walks of life are not all that different. The respected and superficially decent like Chuck McGill and Walter White can be cruel and self-serving. Those on the margins of society like Nacho Varga and Jesse Pinkman can be both intelligent and empathetic. And crime bosses and young attorneys can be equally determined, equally dogged, and equally committed to doing what they need to in order to play the long game and win.
At first blush, the challenges facing Kim Wexler and Gus Fring couldn’t be more different. Kim is dealing with an ornery, wannabe adverse possessor who refuses to vacate his land. Gus is dealing with a rival crime boss coming at him via the DEA. And yet, their responses are similar. When backed into a corner, their M.O. is to work harder, to be smart and conscientious about every step, and to take the short term loss for the long term gain.
For Kim, that initially comes down to trying to save the man’s home on her own terms. The show makes a point to note the difference between her and Jimmy after their bottle escapades in a way that presages her plan to preserve Mr. Acker’s home. When the pair run across the broken glass from their frustration-venting pitch-fest the night before, Jimmy brushes it off, telling his partner that’s what they pay the apartment complex for. Kim doesn’t push back on him, but once he’s gone, she takes the time to sweet it up on her own.
That’s Kim Wexler. She acts out on occasion, but she cleans up her own messes, and other people’s messes for that matter. That’s what she aims to do with Mr. Acker, put in the extra work, down to the pegs, to make her case and win her issue. Something Mr. Acker said struck a chord in her, reminding her of where she came from and where she is now, and she’s trying to vindicate that, to reassure herself about who she is and what she stands for by using her power and position to help him in the best way she knows how.
For Kim, that means a well-constructed PowerPoint presentation and a compelling argument about the financial benefits of redressed drainage (hello There Will Be Blood fans!). She makes the business case for Mesa Verde moving its call center to an alternate location. She lays out the financial and practical reason for Kevin to break ground elsewhere. She plays by the rules and it gets her…nowhere. Kevin bluntly asks if it’s his land, and when Kim flatly affirms that it is, he politely but firmly says that’s the end of it. It’s a loss, but one that, as always, won’t deter her forever.
Gus is also facing down a loss. Keeping the increasingly fragile peace, preserving Nacho’s security as his mole within the Salamanca organization, means sacrificing hundreds of thousands of dollars to the DEA and giving Lalo the win. Gus is not an overly expressive man, but his demeanor tells the audience everything to know about how he feels about this (and his polite but curt treatment of his poor assistant manager).
And yet, while he doesn’t play by the rules, Gus is like Kim in that he’s impeccably prepared for the task at hand. His attention to detail in everything is perfect, giving the cops three low level guys and enough money for their “leads” to pay off, but not enough to let them anywhere near him, his real lieutenants, or his empire. It’s trading a rook for a queen, and it doesn’t make Gus happy, but it allows him to live to fight another day.
Mike lives to fight another day too, though his prospects are far less metaphorical. What brings Mike and Gus together is the way they share that same sort of professionalism and attention to detail. But Mike’s losing it. Werner’s death has gotten to him, made him less stable and steady, something even his daughter-in-law recognizes.
But that just makes things worse for Mike. His muttered curses show how affronted Mike feels about not being allowed to babysit his granddaughter (and Jonathan Banks nails the scene, as usual). He also wants to be punished. So he walks by the same toughs he had a confrontation with in the prior episode, dishing out some punishment, but taking much much more, including a knife to the gut. It’s a form of self-immolation by Mike, one where he’s descended into self-loathing over his hand in his friend’s death, can’t move past it, and doesn’t have the tools or the inclination to heal himself.
But somebody does. It’s uncertain where exactly Mike is when he wakes up from his beating and stabbing, but a safe bet is that Gus is involved. He sees the war with the Salamancas escalating, and particularly with a precarious situation like this one, knows the benefits of having someone with Mike’s talents and preparedness on his side. If anyone has the incentive and the means to get Mike better, it’s Gus Fring, and my money’s on Mike having woken up in Gus’s childhood home.
When your back’s against the wall, it’s helpful to have an ace in the hole. That’s what Kim reluctantly has with Jimmy. The title character of Better Call Saul has more of a minor role in this episode. Most of what we see of him is how he works his magic. It’s amusing to watch him deal with the “fifty percent off!” knuckleheads, and telling that he’s not only willing to hook them up with a phony rehab center, but more than happy to have some poor grandmother wire him the funds necessary to defend these unrepentant idiots. It’s just as fun to watch him pull the ol’ switcheroo with his defendant and a random bartender to challenge a witness’s recollection on the stand. Slippin’ Jimmy is up to his old tricks, and as sad as that is in some ways, it’s also roundly entertaining.
But what’s interesting is that he has another off-ramp to become Jimmy McGill or at least avoid being Slippin’ Jimmy with a new moniker once again. Howard Hamlin not only takes him out to lunch he offers Jimmy a job. He apologizes for not giving him a shot before, offers him respect for standing up for the young woman on the scholarship committee, and seemingly offers Jimmy the respectability he’s craved for so long.
Jimmy doesn’t want it anymore though. He’s done trying to play the game of men like Howard and Chuck, and is resolved, even dare I say happy, to play his own. An opening weight-check through a thrift store pays off in the closing moments of the episode, where Saul heaves his bowling balls over Howard’s gate and messes up his car in the process. It’s not the first bit of vehicular revenge he’s inflicted, and it cements the way that Saul is here to stay, whether you like it or not.
Kim doesn’t like it, but she needs it. When the right way fails, Kim resorts to the wrong way, also known as the Saul Goodman way. At the end of the day, she wants justice for Mr. Acker, and she wants absolution for herself. So she connects Mr. Acker with her partner, something already less than scrupulous to begin with given her connection to the other side of the dispute, but made all the more ethically dubious given that she’s expressly enlisting Jimmy given his propensity to lie, steal, and cheat his way to victory no matter what. His equine visual aid to make the point is a bizarre but hilarious moment, and by the end of a fraught confrontation, Saul Goodman has himself another client.
It’s not the ideal solution for Kim Wexler, but she knows how to take a loss in one space so that she can get a win in another that’s more important to her. It’s the same type of judgment call that Gus Fring makes with the police. The intersection between his operation and Hank & Gomey’s has a real Breaking Bad energy to it, with the police sniffing in the right places, but finding themselves a step slow relative to what the bad guys have concocted.
The show wrings tension from an all-but choreographed routine to give the DEA what it wants while Gus quietly seethes amid a fryer-scrub. It’s a nice way to convey Gus’s frustrations, unable to be taken out where he wants them, coming out for one of his precision operations while the other is going down. In the end, he gives up a good chunk of change and small parts of that operation to keep his edge on Lalo, while Hank, despite his smiling, chipper, culvert-contemplating demeanor, knows it’s a hollow victory.
It binds all these wayward souls together. Nacho and Mike are both hurting from the messes they’re stuck in. Jimmy and Mike are both secret weapons for their partners, ones whose abilities are needed in particularly tight spots. And Kim and Gus are on very different sides of the law, but still recognize the value in enduring a hit now – to the wallet, to the plan, to your pride – in order to win in the long haul. As this franchise continues, it’s telescoped the include more and more of the world, and finds that while challenges are different, the responses, and the people, are the same.