Margaux and I look back at last night’s excellent Better Call Saul.
Trevor: I think Better Call Saul’s slow-burn approach to storytelling really paid off in “Nailed.” It’s quite impressive, the patience that Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould (who wrote and directed this episode) have for their story, and it speaks volumes about the level of respect they have for their audience. I thought “Nailed” was pretty terrific. Your thoughts?
Margaux: That I wish Gilligan and Gould wrote the finale of The Walking Dead (no, I will NOT let that go). All jokes aside, the final few minutes of “Nailed” had me at the edge of my seat, even though the stakes aren’t – at least on the surface – all that high, you know it means something to the character. The character that you care about, that you like, and want see succeed, so the tension of Jimmy hiding in the shadows and watching Chuck had all the emotions of watching slow moving car crash or bank robbery. When in reality it was just Chuck hassling a 24-hour copy shop and you holding your breath that Jimmy doesn’t get caught in the process.
Trevor: And it’s such a testament to the competence behind the camera that “Nailed” can start off with such a tense, dangerous scene. Mike using his hose o’nails to rob the Salamanca’s money truck was impressive enough, but he did it all while dressed like the damn Zodiac killer. Jonathan Banks has been playing Mike so well for so long that his sheer physicality is intimidating enough. That scene would have been worse if Mike had said anything. And it shows just how well BCS uses neutral and primary colors. The washed-out desert is a vista we’ve come to recognize as belonging to Gilligan’s vision of New Mexico, but that splash of dark, dark black that was Mike made him stick out like something intrusive and dangerous – a Black Widow, maybe.
Margaux: To my eyes, Mike looked like the gimp suit that terrorized everyone in the Murder House season of American Horror Story, either way, we’re in agreement that he was scary as hell, looking like a goth kid forced to go the beach. Loved how “Nailed” picked up pretty much where BCS left off in “Fifi” with the nail hose that Mike, with the aid of his granddaughter, had made. The cold open that followed the oblivious to his fate truck driver singing “Mi Cucu” was nice because it’s one of things where you always wonder how “bad guys” handle the mundane moments in life, like driving down a desert road. We found out that bad guys are just like us! They sing in the car! It was also an exceptionally well shot stunt where you felt like you saw all angles and nothing was glossed over or CGI’ed. Not like that is this show’s style, but from the pulley system Mike sets up to deploy the nail hose that ultimately stops the truck, to how Mike sneaks up and gets the drop on the driver, I enjoyed this cold open almost as much as I enjoy seeing present-day, black and white Cinnabon manager Saul.
Trevor: Who I’d love to see more of, very soon. With Jimmy and Chuck gearing up for an explosive confrontation, Mike and Hector Salamanca are getting ready for their own, which will be quite literally more explosive. Seeing these two go head-to-head is a joy to watch, especially with the revelation from Nacho that Hector is totally over it. “But I haven’t forgotten about him,” Mike intones – he can’t abide that Kaylee was threatened. Stealing 250 grand is a good way to fuck with the Salamancas, and now I’m just wondering if Mike is responsible for Hector ending up in a wheelchair, incapable of speech. “Nailed” really focused on consequences – more explicitly with Chuck and Jimmy, which we’ll get to – and that would certainly qualify.
Margaux: Mike straight jacking 250K from Hector felt a touch Robin Hood-esque too: he buys the entire bar a round of drinks directly after the fact afterall. I definitely don’t think it’s over between Hector and Mike, at least for Mike, especially when Nacho tells Mike that the good Samaritan who discovers the hog tied driver got a shotgun blast to the face (“we cleaned it up”). And this kids, is exactly why you never do nice things for people you don’t know, ever. Clearly Mike couldn’t of exactly predicted the innocent bystander, but the Dorothy Umbridge that Mike takes with Hector cannot end well for Hector only because Hector has made the critical mistake of counting Mike out. Tsk, tsk. Let’s put it this way, I’d be shocked if Mike ISN’T the reason Tio ends up a wheelchair.
Trevor: That would be kind of a bait-and-switch, and since this isn’t The Walking Dead I don’t think the show will fuck with us like that.
It will fuck with us in other ways, though – that confrontation between Chuck and Jimmy was pretty gut-wrenching. Chuck has all the fervor of someone who knows he’s right, but Kim is correct in that he has no proof. She doesn’t believe Jimmy right away – probably doesn’t believe him at all by the end of the episode – but there’s no denying that Jimmy is rubbing off on her. She’s not quite Lady Macbeth yet, but if she’s not careful she could become Slippin’ Kimmy. It was hard enough watching her deny Chuck the one thing he needed in that moment – someone to believe him – and there was no victory in it for Jimmy either, as she punched him repeatedly in the car, resentful of how far she’s slipped on account of him. I’ve said it before, but Rhea Seehorn is absolutely killing it this season.
Margaux: I clapped after Kim – respectfully – rips Chuck a new one, and God did he need it after he fucking name checked Mozart and Magna Carta in the same condescending rant, it was almost as hard to watch as Chuck belittling Paige at the bank hearing. Chuck is a grade-A prick, not that that excuses what Jimmy did, but I do agree with Kim: you made him this way. I felt and will continue to feel no sympathy for Chuck, and I’m starting to think he doesn’t have electrosensitivity as he does social and general anxiety, but that’s besides the point. Glad Kim chose not to give Chuck validation, fuck Chuck and the high-ass horse he rode in on. I honestly had a bit of a hard time believing that Chuck suddenly turned into Colombo and was ready to throw the cuffs on Jimmy so vehemently. And I don’t buy for one second that Chuck would A. be there for his brother the way Jimmy has taken care of him and B. that Chuck felt “sick” throwing Jimmy under the bus. He didn’t and he doesn’t. I think Gould did a great job in the writing by having Kim not only know what Jimmy did, but to remind him that Chuck is smarter than everyone, which helped the believability of Chuck instantaneously knowing it was Jimmy that fudged the docs.
Trevor: I like that Kim and Chuck are both aware of Jimmy’s chicanery, but Kim is being a little more circumspect in how she calls him out on it. She (correctly) reasons that Chuck is too smart and too pissed off to let this go, which leads to that wonderfully tense scene at the copy store. Better Call Saul has done a great job this season of making Chuck’s disease visceral and painful, and it was pretty uncomfortable watching him suffer attacks before ultimately collapsing. That would have been bad enough, but the way he smacked his head on a table was a pretty sick way to end the episode. Like I mentioned above, “Nailed” was all about consequences.
Margaux: Consequences and concussions, apparently. On a more light hearted note, I can’t wait to see Saul 1.0’s first commercial. The clandestine nature to Jimmy’s shoots have such a guerrilla film school quality, and I say this lovingly, and the safe word being “Rhubarb” makes me laugh way more than it should.
Trevor: “Rhubarb” is such a nice touch; Jimmy’s crew could just as easily say “Someone’s coming,” but the fact that they all use the code word shows just how convincing Jimmy can be, which is almost a direct route to becoming Saul. I love those little vignettes of his commercial shoots. They don’t really inform the central plot, but they inform the overall character arc, and in a small way it shows that Gilligan and Gould have not even slightly lost sight of the bigger picture.
Margaux: This season has made great, subtle strides to nudging Jimmy ever so carefully closer to Saul – from the ties that upset D&M to the commercial – and I used to think that something horrible happens between Jimmy and Kim that pushes (or pushed) him into becoming Saul, but after Kim more or less confirms that she knows what the audience does, I think Kim might be in the picture when Jimmy makes the transition to Saul.
Trevor: And maybe that’s what drives her out of the picture. It’s funny, every damn week we bemoan how hard it is to grade BCS on a numerical scale, before (usually) giving the episode four stars. This is what I assume we will do today (although a case could be made for 4.5). What I’m getting at is, this second season would make an amazing binge-watch. Seeing all these arcs unfold over hours instead of weeks would be straight-up riveting, and I’m really looking forward to re-watching this on Netflix.
Margaux: The second season of Better Call Saul is so perfectly plotted, and each episode so easily flows into the next without having to be like, “wait, who’s that? What do they want? Where are they going”; they manage the stakes and the cliffhangers and the setting up of tension and conflict so well, even though most people know where Mike and Jimmy end up, it is quite the feat to keep the audience this on edge with so little really going on. I can’t believe we’re already at the finale, which will be a double header of a showdown for Mike and Jimmy, I – like you – cannot wait to binge rewatch this season already.
Trevor: You want to talk stars? As I said earlier, I’m leaning towards 4.5, not just for “Nailed” itself, but for the remarkable achievement of the season thus far. I see no way that Better Call Saul could shit the bed in its finale, and “Nailed” does a terrific job of setting it up.
Margaux: Oh we’re total agreement on the star rating not just for this episode, but for this season as a whole. And I feel confident in that numeration for the entire second season without even seeing the finale because the only way they could ruin this is by not just not airing the finale, which I cannot foresee happening for any reason. I can only see us going back and bumping up the season score a .5 point because with all these pawns in place, how could they fuck it up? Afterall, this isn’t The Walking Dead, thank fuck.
About Author
