Margaux and I discuss last night’s Mike-centric Better Call Saul.
Trevor: One of my favorite things about Better Call Saul is that it will occasionally take a detour and act as a prequel series for Mike Ehrmantraut as well as Saul Goodman. “Gloves Off” was a pretty Mike-heavy episode, and while it didn’t pack the emotional wallop of last season’s “Five-O,” there’s something wonderful about watching this character operate in his element. Needless to say, I dug it.
Margaux: Mike bookends “Gloves Off” and I think it was a really smart way to structured the episode; in terms of on-screen time, this was definitely all about Mike, we got the minimum (it felt) with Jimmy and I never thought watching an older gentleman get the crap beaten out of him would be the break from Jimmy that I wanted. I wonder if Tuco’s involvement here is the Breaking Bad character that Gilligan and Gould had said would have an appearance/arc on this season of Better Call Saul?
Trevor: I’m going to assume it is, unless Gus Fring makes an appearance soon. Which would obviously be welcome, because I’ll be honest, Tuco has never quite done it for me. He’s one of Breaking Bad’s most cartoonish characters, and every scene with him pretty much follows the same formula: he starts out somewhat normal, if menacing, before ramping up quickly into full-blown craziness. I like that he and Nacho are partners, but now I feel that the writing is on the wall for Nacho, because I don’t recall him being in any of Breaking Bad. Honestly, I prefer Nacho to Tuco.
Margaux: I prefer Nacho to Tuco as well, Tuco’s personality doesn’t lend itself to doing as much meth as he does, it makes him the walking definition of “erratic.” So Nacho’s reason for wanting to have Mike take him out makes sense from a business standpoint, and a personal harm one (um, bone fragment lodged in your chest? Hard pass). I had to agree with Mike, it was way too risky to whack Tuco – also we know Tuco lives long enough to get killed on Breaking Bad. So Mike simply provocated Tuco into beating him in a taqueria parking lot, which only will put Tuco away from 5+ years. But that is 5+ years for Tuco’s crazy ass to mull over the list of possible suspects.
Trevor: Loved that scene. Michael Mando was playing Nacho so well when Mike was confronting Tuco. Nacho had no idea what Mike was doing, but decided to play along anyway. It says a lot about the level of respect Mike has earned for himself. And Jonathan Banks has absolutely perfected Mike’s delivery and cadence. Episodes like these are always a softball pitch to me because I love the character too goddamn much to be objective.
Margaux: It’s a given that Banks and Odenkirk will be great, but I can’t overstate how much I enjoy watching Michael Mando and Rhea Seehorn play their parts, they do a lot with even the minor moments. Especially now that we’ve become so invested in their journey’s with Jimmy and/or Mike, it’s even more exciting to see what they’re going to do next. This is skipping ahead a little, and jumping over to epilogue of Jimmy’s story of the Nest Egg commercial, but when Jimmy finds Kim doing grunt work after hours at HHM the quiet forcefulness to her voice when confronting Jimmy was very sad. She wants so much wants Jimmy to the best lawyer (and person) he can be, not for her, but for himself. And she’s starting to realize he can’t/won’t, but she says it’s not totally over yet, but the hopes – she ain’t high.
Trevor: That was a wonderfully staged scene, too. Look how the bars in the basement resemble those of a prison cell. Maybe not the most original image, but Better Call Saul does so much with lighting, especially in this episode, that you look past that.
Speaking of lighting – Chuck’s house looks straight-up sepulchral. My favorite scene of “Gloves Off” might have been the confrontation between Jimmy and Chuck. I thought it was a wonderful touch that Jimmy stayed with Chuck all night, then took him to task for Kim’s demotion as soon as Chuck woke up. And the Faustian deal that he offered him was extraordinary, and also led to one of my favorite exchanges, one that really shows the fundamental difference between the McGill brothers. “Life is not one big game of Let’s Make a Deal!” “Yes it is!” And then the obvious foreshadowing of “No more Jimmy McGill, Esquire!” Top to bottom, just an amazingly written, directed, and acted scene.
Margaux: Chuck may not be a “bad guy,” but he is a fuckin’ asshole. It was cringe worthy to watch them in that scene. When we met them they seemed to be more or less loving brothers – problems, sure, but they weren’t fighting like this. I know you thought it was touching that Jimmy stayed overnight to make sure Chuck would be okay (and so that he could get what he wanted off his chest, to make his Jimmy deal), I was begging Jimmy to just leave – it wasn’t worth more of the same argument they had at the end of season one. For every half nice thing Chuck says to Jimmy, he immediately shits on him, “thanks for staying, but you’re still going to be 20 minutes late to work.” That’s not to say that Jimmy is absolved or shouldn’t be held accountable, Jimmy becomes so pleased when he thinks he finally has Chuck on the hook for extortion, it’s like they finally have something in common.
Trevor: The way I see Chuck…he’s an asshole, sure, but I wouldn’t call him a villain. In fact, I’d say BCS has all but ditched anything resembling an outright villain this season. (Last season Howard Hamlin all but twirled a mustache and tied Kim to train tracks.) We might not like what Chuck says, and he might say it like a condescending prick, but the fact is he’s more or less right. We know what Jimmy becomes. He doesn’t become an upstanding pillar of the legal community; he aids and abets the most lethal, organized meth operation the Southwest has ever seen. So it’s a little easier for me to sympathize with Chuck than with, say, Morgan on The Walking Dead. (I hate Morgan so much I want to bitch about him while reviewing other shows.)
Margaux: You are right that there isn’t an outright villain this season (Sandpiper? The “Man”?), I do like this…for a lack of a better phrase, slice of life insight we get into Jimmy and Mike’s pre-Breaking Bad lives. Chuck is right, but he isn’t the protagonist (and neither is Morgan, Morgan is just a moron on a show that serves a completely different purpose than BCS) so despite what Jimmy does ultimately, our allegiance will always be with him. He makes aiding and abetting very charming, okay?
What I really would like is more depth to Chuck’s ‘illness’ because there has to be something else to it, the root cause or at least more backstory that lead up to it. It could even be as simple as the scene where Mike checks out a handful of rifles and demonstrates to the gun show vendor that he has an intimate knowledge on the Army issued model. Boom, got it, Mike went to ‘Nam.
Trevor: Yeah, I’d like some more background on that too, but I have to believe that Gilligan and Gould wouldn’t introduce something that weird and not explain it. But how funny would it be if we never got any more info? God, I’d never stop laughing.
You wanna talk stars? You can take the lead on this one.
Margaux: The show really hit its stride this season with last week’s episode “Amarillo,” and “Gloves Off” was the support to that theory. Better Call Saul is never anything less than excellent, which makes it so tricky to review because no one wants to read a point-by-point plot review with commentary like: “so good!”, “I lol’ed”, “much bob, very wow.” With that being said, “Gloves Off” gave me the realization that Jimmy is very good at making messes that he doesn’t have to clean up, he lets others do it, whether it be the secretaries in the bullpen at D&M who had to field the 100+ calls from Sandpiper residents, or Kim, or even Eduardo, the janitor at HHM. I don’t want to see the cracks in Jimmy’s character, but I appreciate that Better Call Saul is all about that and I can’t wait to see how deep the grave he digs is. 4 stars.
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