5x05 Dedicado a Max

[8.4/10] We’re used to Jimmy crossing lines and pushing limits. Time after time, Better Call Saul served up scenarios where Jimmy faced two choices: do things the reasonable and expected way or do things the Saul Goodman way. The former is safer and the latter might get you a little more, but it’s also riskier, sometimes much riskier.

For once, it’s Kim taking that risk. She’s obviously no stranger to participating in Jimmy’s schemes and concocting some of her own. But she’s also always had a limit, lengths she was not willing to go, in order to get what she wanted. It’s in Jimmy’s nature to con and squeeze the last bit of juice out of the orange. It’s Kim’s nature to dabble in that line of thinking, even excel at it, but ultimately come back to earth.

And yet, now she’s fighting for something that pushes her past those limitations. It’s not just this “squatter” she wants to save. It’s herself. Time and again, people question whether her continued efforts to land Mesa Verde’s call center on another plot of land is worth it, and present her off-ramps or moments when she should, by all accounts, step away. She turns them down, risks the career that she painstakingly built on the back of her own hard-fought labor and accomplishment, because of what she believes this fight says about her.

It is, like last week’s episode, something that draws a line between her and Gus Fring. “Dedicado a Max” continues the thematic throughline from that installment, suggesting that Kim and Fring are both enlisting their heavy hitters because they know a war is coming, and want the people in place who will allow them to win it.

Kim is a lawyer enmeshed in a business dispute. Gus is, as Mike puts it, a drug dealer in conflict with other drug dealers. But they are both motivated by something that elevates their struggle to something beyond simple business, beyond their livelihood, to the point that each is essentially willing to put that livelihood on the line in the name of something greater than all the pair have painstakingly accomplished over a lifetime of hard work.

For Kim, it’s a means to prove she’s a good person. She’s plainly still stinging from Mr. Acker’s dress-down in “Namaste.” So while he may never know her good(?) deeds, she summons Jimmy’s chicanery on his behalf, brings in her partner and boss to grease the wheels at Mesa Verde, and is even willing to tap into Jimmy’s underworld connections to dig up dirt on Kevin Wachtell to win the day. She’s not fighting to save Mr. Acker; she’s fighting to save her own soul, to affirm the kind of person she sees herself as, and is willing to risk everything in service of that.

Gus has no illusions about the kind of person he is. As he tells Mike in their fateful closing scene, he is what he is, and makes no bones about his anonymous charity as some way to absolve him of his sins. And yet, he too acts with a greater purpose. He is not fixing up Mike, sacrificing hundreds of thousands of dollars, and playing a dangerous game with Nacho just to succeed in his chosen line of work. He’s doing it all to avenge Max, the man he loved, and bring the people who killed him to justice.
That love is evident in the small town where Mike convalesces. The episode never comes out and confirms it, but it’s reasonable to deduce that this is one of the slums where Max grew up. Gus helps build up the town, provides funding for the local doctor, and as is evident in any one of the episode’s impeccably framed shots, where there lies a fountain dedicated to Fring’s poor deceased friend. So much of this half of “Dedicado” centers on Mike wondering why he is here,
what Gus wants in return from, when the answer is all around him.

Gus wants vengeance on those who took away someone he loved, something that, given what we know of Mike from season 1 (and apparently Gus knows too), Mr. Ehrmantraut can understand. Better Call Saul made a deliberate choice to break up Mike and Gus’s professional relationship in the early part of this season. Putting them back together can’t be too easy, or too convenient, or else it would feel cheap. Instead, Gus starts to convince Mike that he isn’t interested in having Mike as his henchman in a drug war; he wants Mike as his ally in a noble, if bloody cause, one that transcends his business interests, and verges onto something personal.

That’s all pretty heavy material. What it leaves out is how unbelievably funny and entertaining “Dedicado a Max” is for most of its runtime. We get Saul at his most mischievous and creative. We get Jimmy and Kim making fun of Kim’s client (and a little bit one another). And we get Mike grumping it up with a patient but no-B.S. caretaker. Each is uproarious and great in its own way.

The schemes to prevent the local construction crew (headed by John “Bender the robot” DiMaggio!), are pure, classic Saul. Everything from an address switcheroo (shades of his scheme to foil Chuck!), to planted archaeological pottery, to smoke detector-based radioactivity, to a faux-miracle to attract religious tourists helps buy Kim time and headache to try to convince Kevin to move his call center. Beyond the cleverness of his plans, it’s just fun to see Saul in his element, interacting with local deputies and contractors, cool as a cucumber and playing coy about every bit of it. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again -- as sad as it is to see Jimmy turn into Saul, it’s also incredibly amusing.

Still, there’s something low key funny about Mike’s misadventures as well. You can feel Mike’s (frankly kind of adorable frustration) at being trapped so far from home, in moral if not literal debt to someone else, and in a place where despite all his skills, he’s all but completely stymied from helping himself.

The funniest moment of it all is when he aims to recharge his cellphone so that he can phone his way out of here. It starts out like a classic bit of Breaking Bad-style tactile problem-solving. He picks and pries at various bits of detritus in a nearby storeroom, plays around with wires, starts fusing and cracking and connecting the mechanical parts he needs to complete his plan, only for the whole thing to be short-circuited when his caretaker sees his tinkering mess and just hands him a charger.

There’s a wry, understated brand of humor at play there, and it adds to the low-key sweet relationship between Mike and the woman looking after him. There’s a similar “not dealing with your crap” vibe to each of them, but also a willingness to help where it’s needed. For the caretaker, that means looking after Mike. For Mr. Ehrmantraut, it means helping sop up rain amid a downpour and fixing a waterlogged windowsill in the aftermath. However hard and gruff might be, there’s a softer side to him, a side that sees the humanity in others and wants to vindicate in his own, grumbly way.

That’s the side that Gus tries to appeal to. It’s the side that he hopes will persuade Mike to firmly step out of his civilian life, to join in a war, and help him get revenge. Gus’s revenge is premised on love and loss, loss that motivates him to do extraordinary things in order to make it all right.

Kim is willing to do the same here. She is just as smart and prepared, so she knows to try to recuse herself from the dispute once Jimmy’s on board, to have Rich Schweikart be the bearer of the suggestion to switch lots, and to reject Rich’s implied accusations as publicly as possible to bolster the strength and conviction of her refutation.

But all the while, she’s veering closer and closer to exposure. When Kevin says he “smells a rat” she almost imperceptibly flinches, until Kevin blames Mr. Acker instead of the scheme’s true author. When Jimmy tells her that she fought the good fought and lost, and anything beyond this would be risky and dirty, she doesn't back down. And when her boss tells her, gently at first and then explicitly, that he thinks she’s compromised, she effectively stakes her career and reputation on this lie and this plot.

That’s Slippin’ Jimmy-like behavior, the sort of choices that leave you doubling down on your past deceptions, overcommitting to them, in the hopes that you can stay one step ahead of your foes and pursuers. For Jimmy, that was to save or spite Chuck, and to help or hold onto Kim. For Gus, it’s to honor and avenge his fallen love. For Kim, it’s to convince herself of who she really is, to fight for a cause greater than money or professional success.

When it comes to Jimmy and Gus, we know where that path, that pushing of the limit, leads -- to measured success mixed with great costs and great loss. We can only hope it ends somewhere sunnier for Ms. Wexler.