 Welcome to Solcast. Today we're talking about season five, episode six of Better Call Saul, titled, Wexler v. Goodman. We did our instant take earlier in the week. This will be our full recap and analysis where Adam and I and our tech guy-sized brother Alon, yo, we've had a chance to digest the episode. We've marinated on it and we've got the full analysis for you here. So let's jump into episode six. Adam, why don't you kick it off with the Mike Nacho side of the episode? All right. Nacho's story begins in a classic criminal enterprise location. Nail salon. Abandoned warehouse. Oh yeah. Get your story straight. This quarantine's getting in your head. I know. All right. We started, we start off in the warehouse and we see Gus arrive with Mike. Mike, just from the beginning that Mike exits the car, he looks like the Mike we remember from Breaking Bad. Doesn't he? He looks like one of Gus's soldiers already. Right. Gus made him the offer. Well, he's made him the offer several times. But last episode, he opened up a little bit and he told Mike why he's so interested in hiring him. And skip two, it looks like he was persuasive enough and Mike is officially Gus's Mike that we know from Breaking Bad. And Gus arrives there with Mike, Nacho sees him and recognizes him and says, oh, you're Michael. And something about if Hector or the others find out, you're going to be a big trouble. And Nacho basically gives Gus the update that Lalo is using his CI, his Confidential Informant. Crazy 8. No, CI stands for Confidential Informant. Word 8 doesn't start with an I. Crazy 8. There you go. And so he basically gives him the update. Gus basically says, give up some lower people or hire new drug dealers, let them get, who won't know anything, let them get arrested, protect our people. Which that's a nice, you want to see that kind of loyalty. Right. And Gus, if you think about it, he has Victor and Tyrus there helping him out. And they're still around toward the end game or toward like the middle of Breaking Bad. And that means he kept them on for quite a long time. Right. Gus has his version of in Star Trek, they would have certain characters that wear red shirts. If you saw a character in a red shirt, you knew that character was likely to die in that episode. Gus has his own red shirts, people that are expendable. So if someone like Lalo is using a Confidential Informant to give up Gus's people, Gus can give up his expendable people. He can expend them. Exactly. He'll make their shirts red. Right. With a box cutter. Yeah. And actually, he didn't kill Tyrus. He and Tyrus died. Did Tyrus die in that bomb too from Hector? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So they died simultaneously. It's kind of beautiful. In a way. All three of them. All right. So Nacho talks about all the different schemes that Lalo's planning. All the possibilities. He might hit Gus's supply trucks. He might actually try to get Gus's customers sick. So he's going to go after his place of legitimate business, which I'm guessing is a little bit crossing a line in this world. Right. And crossing like health code violations, things like that. And basically cause so much trouble that the bosses down south decide Gus isn't even worth all the effort. He's not bringing in enough money or he's just causing too much havoc. Gus basically tells Nacho, from now on, you report to Mike. Right. Which is the best news Nacho could have gotten. Yeah. Nacho's got to be thrilled with this. Not that Mike is someone to be trifled with, but Nacho is on somewhat friendly terms with Mike. They've worked together in the past. And I don't want to take anything away from Mike, but he is a less scary person than Gus. Yeah. I think that's fair to say. And he gives off a nice fatherly vibe as long as you don't ask him about a son too much. Right. And not yet Nacho's in good hands here. Kind of reminds me of when Mike and Jesse were working together more. Right. Right. Which we've seen. I mean, I feel like Nacho has been the Jesse of this series in a lot of ways where he's the character who chose the criminal life, but has certainly ended up in over his head and still has emotional ties to the real world. People outside the criminal underworld. And that makes him a more sympathetic character and makes him more vulnerable, just like Nacho. And it's pretty funny having seen that connection that now Nacho is in virtually the same position as Jesse working for Mike and getting mixed up in all this stuff with Gus. Yeah. And I feel bad for him because it sounds like he, I mean, he has no choice at all in this situation. Right. Right. He has the metaphorical, not so metaphorical gun against his father's head, which he tells Mike about in the scene. Right. And Mike basically, he doesn't want to hear that right now. He says, let's take care of Lalo. We'll talk about your father later. I think Mike has a soft, well, I think in general, he has a soft spot for the side of good rather than evil. And I think he also does have a soft spot for younger, kind of tough guys that remind him of his son. Right. And I think we even saw glimpses of this in El Camino actually. I think the opening scene of the movie was Mike standing next to Jesse talking about what Jesse's future is going to be. If he can escape all this, if he can pay the vacuum repair guy to make him disappear. So Mike does have a soft spot. I think he sees himself as a mentor. And if he can, he has a soft spot on the other hand, he is pretty hardened where he says, Nacho, you got into this thing with both eyes open. And he softens when Nacho says, well, my father didn't. So he, yeah, Mike sympathizes with that. Right. And we were puzzling last episode over how is it that Nacho recognizes Mike. We know that they've crossed paths before, but it's kind of hard to remember. And so I did a little digging into the archives. And it's amazing how much stuff has happened in this series, because it often feels like it's not moving that quickly. But then you go and read a synopsis of a season, which it's not even like more than, well, a 10 to 12 episodes. Yeah, so a lot has happened. Back in, I think season one, Nacho bought those pills from a guy who was going by the pseudonym Price, but his actual name was Daniel. He's the guy who would always go, Mike hard, which I think I've managed to do that impression every episode so far. But yeah, he turned out to be a very important character in terms of bringing people together. And basically Mike, Nacho bought these pills from Price. And Mike was serving as Price's bodyguard at the time. And Mike did a really good job actually as the bodyguard. So Price counted the money in front of Nacho, noticed that he was short $20, and Mike actually demanded the full amount or said no deal, even though I think, I think I don't know if Price would have been quite as firm about it. Yeah. And Nacho reluctantly actually paid the remaining in 20 bucks. So Nacho, we like Nacho, but when you go and look back, he doesn't actually look very good. He later, Price ends up like firing Mike. I don't remember why, but I think Price basically thought I can handle this from now on. I don't need to pay you. I think he didn't like paying extra for Mike's protection, even though he didn't realize he was in very good hands. And so basically, Price shows up to the deal alone in his big-ass yellow Hummer with the flames on it. And Nacho notices the license plate. He is able to check the car's registration and he figures out Price's true name and address. So, of course, Nacho then robs the guy. So he breaks into his house, steals his money, takes his precious baseball card collection, hence the famous quote. My cards. My cards. So Price, being the intelligent man, the intelligent pharmacist that he is, calls the police to report stolen goods, even though the money is money that he got selling stolen pharmaceutical drugs. It's huge crime. And basically, Mike realizes this is all going to get back to him if Price keeps blabbing to the police. So Mike, who is aware of what's going on with Nacho and his attempt, his plans to poison, well, it's not his uncle, but his plans to poison Uncle Tio Hector. And Mike threatens, like, I'm going to tell Tuko what you're doing unless you return the baseball cards. And so Nacho, a man of reason, makes good on that and he gives the baseball cards back and things are all good, except Nacho does commandeer Price's car. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And their paths cross a few more times since then, but that's where it began for them. Right, right. And that's also, you know, Jimmy was also involved because Nacho was, like, staking out the Kettleman's house, too. So if you go back far enough, you see how these plots interweaved. And when Mike knew about Nacho's intention to drug Hector, he did try to even mentor him there, telling him, this is dangerous, what you're doing. And that's why he made the comment in this scene, you went into it with both eyes open. I made it very clear to you the major risk you were taking, making that move. Right. He was much, Nacho was much safer before Lalo got there. Right, right. The other thing is Mike actually gave him advice on how to try to get away with poisoning Hector. Or he didn't poison him so much as he replaced his heart medication with a placebo. Right. And he said, you better replace the placebos with the actual medication again, you know, after he dies or whatever his fate is. So that because you better believe they're going to look at those pills and try to determine if something was wrong about them. Right. So he's been kind of dispensing free advice from the beginning. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm actually pretty excited about seeing them working together because first I think it'll give Mike more of a sense of purpose, not just having a job and working for Gus and getting to like kick some ass, but also having someone to mentor. And I'm curious what he could possibly do to get Nacho out of this situation. The only way I could see it is if Mike somehow convinces Gus, Nacho is no longer valuable to us. And I don't know what that looks like, you know, because to me it would be once you've defeated Hector, but we know that doesn't happen in this series. Maybe they get Hector and his whole crew to a position where Gus is comfortable. We don't need Nacho anymore. And somehow Mike is able to convince him of that. I'm not sure. I mean, it seems like Mike has some idea or at least he's willing to entertain the idea of working with Nacho to get him out of this situation. And I'm looking forward to seeing it. Like you said, it's going to be good to see Mike using his powers for good. It's just hard to imagine what that plan would look like. Can you picture Mike allowing Gus to kill Nacho? I could picture breaking bad Gus break. I could picture breaking bad like allowing Gus to kill Nacho. And maybe we're getting close to a point where the character is at that point where Mike would step aside and allow it to happen. Yeah, I think we've been wondering since the beginning, but I think Nacho's fate is definitely up for question. It's up for debate here because he's not a character in Breaking Bad. And I think what that means is he either succeeds in getting out of all of this, or I think he dies. I don't think he just gets absorbed into the depths of Gus's enterprise or something, and that's why we don't see him. I think he's either going to come out of it a winner. Maybe something tragic will happen. Like he survives, but his dad dies, or who knows. Or maybe he dies, but he saves his dad. And he gets some kind of redemption story. There's no chance they're going to call a vacuum repair guy. Is there? That would be about five times too many. Yeah. I already thought that was kind of too obvious for them to do in El Camino. The problem is that it makes so much sense in so many situations that come up in this show that you'd start to say, why wouldn't they call him in this situation? Yeah. So the fact that it happened in El Camino, I didn't consider it bad writing or anything. It was the natural, rational thing to happen. But if they then also went to the vacuum cleaner guy in this timeline, it's just too much. That's like a literally get out of jail for $200,000. Right, right. Do not pass go. Do go to New Hampshire or Alaska. Is in the vacuum guy a salt connection? Yeah. I'm really curious if they're going to cover how they end up getting in touch. I don't know if they will, because the actor is, yeah, Robert Forster. Unless they do like an ultra flashback to when Saul is a kid and they have a young guy playing Robert Forster when he was younger, and it turns out he was like his old baseball coach or something. Normally, I'd say any idea I trust that the writers of this show can find a way to pull it off. I'm going to say that one. I really can't see it working. Yeah. I think it'll remain a mystery how they get introduced to each other. But I'm sure we'll find we will see how Saul meets other interesting people in the criminal underworld. I'm looking forward to that, because I always loved when you just whip up the name of another random person who would do something criminal for them. Right. All right. That's the Gus and Nacho scene. They're together again. And this time, I think it's from the get go, they're pretty effective, as we see later in this episode. So Mike does what he does best. He goes to the library to do a little bit of scheming or to execute a scheme. That's right. He plays the old man, just like the gentle, kindly old man role pretty well through his body language. But really he's extremely sharp. He knows exactly what he's doing. He's looking through the books and he's like, gee, only 25 cents. I can do it way better. Yo, books here, 25 cents. So he buys eight of them. And that's just to warm himself up to Lily in the library. The principle of reciprocity. That's right. Right. He scratches her back. She helps him get a murderous drug lord arrested. Yeah. It's the same. It's the old time, old principle. Time tested. And so... Speaking of, what did you say before, an old man that's like... Yeah, doddering old man. Yeah, exactly. Time old tested. Lily in the library and test time tested principle. Okay. So they sit down. He's like, hey, are you Lily in Simmons? All right. Let's talk about this thing that happened. She's like, I already told the police everything. But he manages to get her to sit down. He doesn't want information. He already knows everything that happened. He wants to feed her information. Right. And she was a witness to the travel wire incident. Right. Where Lalo famously very quickly jumped up into the ceiling and murdered the guy. Last season. That's roughly what happened. Then he set the place on fire. I just laughed so hard I cramped my back. Are you okay? I heard something crack just now. Okay, I'm good. You good? Yeah. I replaced Gil's medicine with a placebo. Oh, my God. Oh, man. You got the back issues? All right. I'm fine. All right. So he shows her the... He's like, were there any classic cars there? Do you think maybe it was this car? Like, yeah, maybe that does ring a bell. And he's like, do you think you want to tell the cops that? Right. Tell them it was a 78, you know, whatever. Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo. There you go. Yes. And what's funny is, as he was telling her that, I was watching and I was thinking, I don't think I'd be able to remember it. Like just in that short period of time, I feel like I'd screw up on the phone. I'd get it wrong. Right after he told her the making model, I in my head repeated it to see if I could remember it. Me too. Yeah. I did. I did too, but I was surprised. Me too. And so she does adjust that, and it just further, we don't know exactly where this is going yet, other than he's just giving them more leads on Lalo. Right. Because that's, that murder is unsolved. Yeah. He's leading the witness. He wants her to call the detectives that she spoke to and tell them, hey, I saw this car there. Yeah. Even though she didn't really see it, maybe she saw it, maybe she didn't, but Mike has basically planted that information and subtly pressured her into telling the police, hey, I saw this car. Right. And then what is he, what's the one like little tidbit he tells her before she makes the call? Don't mention me. I don't want credit. I only want justice. Which that reminds me of what Saul said, JMM on his bag would mean. Justice matters most. All right. Now Mike goes, this is step two in his plan. Right. He gave them one lead on the car, but he happens to know or at least assume that the fact that Lalo, he was stuck in the parking lot, if you remember, when he was trying to pursue Werner or who was he following? Mike. He was following Mike. So he, Mike got him trapped basically in the parking lot where he used to work, right? And Lalo got really impatient and someone in front of him was stuck. And so the guy, Lalo basically rammed the car in front of him and drove through the gate. And I think Mike rationally assumed that there's probably a police case, like a case open about a hit and run. So he basically gave, gave another lead on that hit and run so that both pieces of information would come in together and they'd be like, Oh, it's the exact same car happened on the same day within a reasonable distance of each other. And he does it in really clever way. He understands how to use authority to scare people into just assuming he is who he acts like he is. So the random like intern looking guy in the police station, he, Mike points to the envelope and he goes, what is that? And he goes, that's like an inter office envelope. He goes, doesn't it have a date? How long has it been there? I don't know. What doesn't it have a date? Exactly. And so he basically says, don't you think it should go to Detective Roberts? And so it goes to Detective Roberts and inside there is a document describing that hit and run talking about the car. I do that same car. Yeah. And it has a posted on it and it's basically like, you know, thought you might want to read this or something signed and you can't, it's a scribble. You can't tell who signed it, which is really clever. And I bet that's something Mike picked up from his days in the police force. And this scene was a better call saw firing on all comedic cylinders. It was a great scene. First off, we've seen Mike do this move before last season when he was checking Gus's security at one of his locations. He just walks in and just acts like he's the boss there. I think he was wearing a hard hat. Yeah, he was wearing a hard hat. I think it was one of, he had to interact with Lydia and she wasn't cool with it. Yeah. The great scene, we got to see that side of Mike again here and it was hilarious. And then also before Roberts gets the envelope, we see him on the phone and he's having the worst conversation in the world with this woman where he's saying, well, if the smell is coming from the porch, it's probably a possum. Well, it could be a dead body. Sure. But if you can't fit under there, it's probably a possum. It's fantastic. Yeah. And so he sunk his teeth into that right away because, okay, here's an actual crime we can solve. Right. And lo and behold, we hear next next next time we see Mike and Nacho, we hear Mike on a phone with Nacho. Nacho basically says, all right, he just dropped me off. This is where he is. I don't think any of us expected Lalo to actually get busted this very episode. Things moved fast. And that just goes to show like Lalo has been this ominous, smart, but unstable enemy for a while now. And the instant Mike gets roped in to try to take him down, he's imprisoned. Right. Then Mike, he finds out where Lalo's car is from Nacho and then he gets to take out a police radio and plugs it into the car, makes the call, says, here's Lalo's car, the guy you're looking for based on the hit and run, based on the librarian's witness information. And so the cops surround Lalo and at first he goes to reach for a gun when it's just one cop. And I thought that cop is dead and he's going to get away. And then immediately a bunch of other cop cars show up, Lalo puts the gun down, reaches his keys out the window and drops his keys. It reminded me of the two twins, the silent twins that were like two terminators for a season, this unstoppable force. And then they come up against Hank and like that, one of them gets his brain blasted out the other side of his head, the other loses his legs and they're both just taken out suddenly and unexpectedly. That was the most intense scene in movie or film history. Sorry, TV or film history. I remember hearing my pulse, like hearing my heart beat in my head when I was first watching that scene where Hank was battling the twins out of nowhere. Yeah, totally unexpected. And I'm not saying Lalo's done and he's finished, but based off of history, he could be because Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, they do like to build things up and then subvert your expectations in a satisfying way. Yeah, not game of their own style. So Lalo could be essentially taken down now or maybe he has a clever way to get out of this. Well, I'm sure he at least has a clever way to try to get out of it because he's definitely going to end up hiring Saul for his lawyer. And Saul is not going to just give up. No, and that's kind of the moment we've been waiting for, at least the moment I've been waiting for, which is once Saul is not exactly publicly, but is very apparently defending Lalo, then he's going to come face to face with Mike and get involved in all of this. Going to be very interesting to see how that all plays out. Yeah, all these plots are converging. So it's going to, everything's going to get crazy. This show has been a slow burn, but it's been accelerating episode by episode. And I think from here on out, it's going to get more and more intense as we're going to reach levels of intensity that are higher than Breaking Bad. Right. Only four episodes to go this season too. So I think we're pretty much there. Yeah. Let's talk about Jimmy and Kim this episode. We start off seeing Kim in junior high waiting to be picked up. And you can see she's been waiting there a long time. It's night. She's standing there with her cello. And then finally, she would play the cello. Finally, her mother shows up and we very quickly learned her mom is an alcoholic. Kim even asks her, have you been drinking tonight? And she refuses to get in the car with her mom. Instead, she walks home three miles with a cello. Now, a couple of things here. Number one, her mom first to her is Kimmy. So all the times in the last two or three years on this podcast that you and I have almost called Kim Kimmy, we've been vindicated. That's right. But at the same time, I owe Kim an apology because she talked about how difficult her childhood was when she was speaking with Mr. Acker. And I thought she was lying. I thought she was making it up. And this scene at least shows us a glimpse of her childhood. And it seems like it was a difficult childhood. And maybe she was telling the truth when she was talking to him. Told you. He did tell me. I think I leaned toward it being true also. All right. Well, Kimmy, I apologize. She goes by Kim now. That's OK. So do you have any thoughts on why they chose to include this scene in this episode? Because it really is the first time we've seen a glimpse. I think we've seen glimpses of Jimmy's childhood and his younger years. This is the first time we've seen it for Kim. Kim, it's becoming clear, doesn't make consistently good decisions. She sometimes makes good decisions. She sometimes does irresponsible things. She puts her law career at risk. She breaks the law. She gets roped into stuff. These are all the kinds of behaviors you'd expect from someone who was not perfectly well adjusted. Gill, you might relate to that on a some level. And so showing, I think there's more to it than just this. But at minimum, seeing the kind of child that she has, it puts some things in perspective. It's not like she had everything handed to her on a silver platter and that she had everything going right from the very beginning. She had to work really hard, probably, to overcome all of this. In fact, just the fact that she had to walk home with her cello in order to protect herself and just look after herself shows what a tough experience it was to be her growing up. And I think that is not without its rippling effects on someone's psyche. And therefore, it's a little less weird than that she makes some reckless decisions here and there. And also, I don't know exactly how it explains what happens at the end of the episode with Saul, but it makes it a little less unexpected. Right. And I have some additional thoughts on that, but I'm going to hold on to them until we get to the end of the episode. Because I'm going to try and connect the dots. I have some thoughts on how this scene informs the bombshell we hear from Kim at the end of the episode. So we'll hold on to that. Then we get back to modern day. We see an old Mesa Verde commercial with Kevin and his dad, sort of cheesy Western commercial for their bank. And we zoom out to find that Saul is sitting there with his student film crew. And they want to create some film project. It's unclear exactly what we know it has something to do with the commercial we just saw. We have a pretty funny back and forth between Saul and the students where they say it's going to take at least a week. They've got finals coming up. Saul wants it done by tomorrow. So they start to talk about shortcuts they can take. You know, what if we use voiceover instead of actors? What if we do it all in one location? We do the Superman thing, i.e. green screen. Or blue screen. Right. Saul says blue screen. They say you mean green screen. But what's funny is when we were kids we actually played with a blue screen. That's right. And doesn't our green screen have a blue screen on the other side? Yeah. Blue screen is a thing. I don't know why you typically see green screen as opposed to blue screen. But they are both used. I guess there's more blue found around and about. So you use green. I guess. I'm saying that's why green is more used. Right. That's our tech guy. What do you mean? The whole world, the whole, every most of the land of the earth is green. And we don't live in the ocean. Yeah. But think about it. You're talking about a background, sky, blue, green screen. All right. Moving on. Trees. So later on we see Saul with his film crew and a bunch of actors at the nail salon where they're shooting whatever footage they're planning on shooting. We don't exactly know the plan at this point. Later we see it's that takedown commercial of Kevin and Mesa Verde. Yup. That's right. They spray paint a green screen on the wall. And we have just an amazing montage of Saul directing the different actors, giving conflicting direction. Yeah. Just throw it away. Don't hit it too hard. But with feeling. One of my favorite moments and just overall a hilarious montage. Later in the night, Kim arrives at the salon. She watches from outside. So the reflection of fish are in front of her. So we always wonder what do the fish mean? We'll get back to that. She kind of smiles while she watches Saul. Anyway, she came to the nail salon just to talk and basically wants to call off the whole plan. She asks if Jimmy thinks that Mr. Acker would settle for 75K. Jimmy says, is Kevin willing to go up to 75,000? Kim reassures in that whatever level Kevin is willing to go to, Kim will cover the rest personally out of pocket. So really, really going out on a limb and going out of her way even financially to help Mr. Acker. So they decide that Kim and Saul to call off the plan or really Kim decides we're going to call off the plan and settle. Saul really doesn't want to. He says, what about the play? The play is beautiful, like watching a walk off home run. But Kim, it's your play. If you don't want to do it, if you want to walk, we'll walk. And then he has to break it to the kids. He's going to really let them down. Do you think in that moment he knew he was lying? I don't think he did in the moment, but I think it was very, even if it was seconds later, I think he decided that when he agreed not to do it, he didn't really agree not to do it. Right. He probably just immediately started thinking about other ways to play off of this and say, oh, this is perfect because now when I go ahead and do it, she's going to seem really, really angry. And she'll have plausible deniability because to her knowledge, the plan was called off. So she's going to be caught off guard and the emotion that she needs to show in the May, Saturday meeting, she doesn't have to act anymore. Now it'll be genuine. He probably pieced that together seconds after this conversation with Kim. Yeah, which in some ways actually shows a really high amount of empathy in the sense that he can basically say putting myself in her shoes, she's going to get really genuinely angry and that's going to work perfectly here. Right. We at times have thought that Sol seems almost sociopathic the way that he manipulated everyone in the courtroom last season, made everybody cry, including Kim, but he has an understanding of human emotion. I mean, you sort of have to be as influential and persuasive as he is. So it's I think you're exactly right. He understands exactly what emotions Kim needs to portray in that moment. He understands that by betraying her, he's going to anger her. So he gets it and he uses it to his advantage. And I'll say on first viewing in this moment, I hated Jimmy or not in this moment, but when he, I guess, knowing that he was going to catch her off guard and he was probably going to go ahead with the plan anyway, I hated Jimmy here. But thinking about it later, you have to kind of hold Kim accountable here. And I'm going to quote actually Dalmatian Parade, somebody who commented on our Solcast YouTube channel with his own theory where he basically said that, yes, Kim should be mad at Jimmy for his betrayal, but it's not breakup worthy. And she's pretty culpable here because she came up with the plan. She took Jimmy along for the ride so far into the plan only at the last second to pull it away from him. And that's like putting an alcoholic in a liquor store and throwing, basically saying you're on your own. She knows Jimmy. She knows that he can't walk away from this. It's an obsession for him. So yes, I'm mad at Jimmy and she should be mad at him, but at the same time, she has to know that he can't walk away from this. Yeah. I mean, what could she, what did she expect? Right. Exactly. Now, one question I do have is, do you think that Jimmy doesn't walk away because he wants to win? Or is it just about they had this great play and he just wants to execute it? I think it's the execution. I think he wants to win too, but it's almost like he never see, he never gives the impression that he's unsure if his plans are going to work or not. I think he's really confident in them. It's not the desire to win that motivates him so much as in his mind, if he does, if he executes his plan, he will win. That's just the full form of it. What he wants is to actually carry out his idea. Right. It's the scheming. He likes scheming and he likes executing those schemes. And it's like a musician. They created the perfect song and they were about to perform it. And then Kim said, yeah, never mind. And Jimmy's supposed to walk away from that. So then we see Kim with Rich giving a call to Page to let her know that Mr. Acker has decided to settle. Let's meet Wednesday, 3 p.m. with Mr. Goodman and we'll put all this behind us. If you recall, Kim and Richard are not on the best terms right now. They had their shouting match last episode, so Kim apologizes, says that she was unprofessional. And then Richard says, if you've got a bone to pick with me, that's fine. And you can yell at me. I don't have a problem with that, but never in front of the troops. You know what that does to morale. So Kim, here's what we're going to do. You and I are going to walk out the door. We're going to go to lunch together and everyone's going to see it. And people will know that the two of us are now getting along again. He's a great boss. That's exactly what I wrote here. I love his professionalism, crisis averted. He knows the impact that this has on his relationship with Kim. He knows what it does to everyone in the office. So they're going to go get lunch. The two of them could smooth things over and they could smooth smooth things over with the whole staff. Even when, in the last episode, when he was convinced that Kim was intentionally screwing over their own client, he wasn't going to really penalize her or do anything. And he wasn't going to tell the client or anything like that. He was just going to try to get her off the case. What more could you ask for? Yeah. Kim really doesn't know how good she has it. If she knew Nacho, for example, who his boss was, Richard Schweickart is the man. And Nacho has two bosses, too, and they're both crazy. So Saul is at the courthouse. He's just finished defending a couple of ladies of the night. And he tells them, maybe you don't want to go back to work right away, but they've got to keep making money. And then they offer him as a thank you some services. Do you have to rub your hands together? Licking his lips. I don't know. Some services. I like that you're painting a picture for people that are just listening to this and not watching it. He turns it down, but he does hire them for an hour. As soon as he did that, I knew it had something to do with Howard. I know, me too. And then they cut to the next scene. Howard and Cliff are at lunch at a fancy restaurant with a lot of important judges, a lot of important people around. And these two girls approach Howard, call him Howie, and basically say, you owe us. We're not leaving until you pay us. Painting it out that Howard is a repeat customer, someone they know well. And a very humiliating situation for Howard. And I think I'm going to guess a lot of, in fact, a well-respected judge is there. Yes, a lot of important people are there. So this is probably worse than throwing the bowling balls at his car, I'd say. Oh, definitely. Yeah, this is damaging his reputation. This is, I mean, it would ruin your life potentially. Yeah. And Saul, meanwhile, is watching with binoculars from his car and he says, oh, God, I'm good. I can picture him specifically going out to buy binoculars just for this moment. Yeah, yeah. I'm surprised he didn't get a camcorder. He calls up Mike, do you have any binoculars I can borrow? I think Saul just Chicago sunroofed Howard's whole life. While Saul is watching all of this, he calls up a mysterious Olivia and asks her, have you ever heard of a bank called Mesa Verde? Now, why do you think we've talked about this so many times? Why is Saul torturing Howard to such a degree? The same reason Gus tortured a Coate for like a year or something like that. So it's revenge, basically. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's like, it's somewhat of a form of revenge. And also, I think it's just, he's not just a con artist, like he's a prankster. And for him, this is like a hobby. A hobby of his is tormenting Howard. Right. And so I thought about it. And one variable I think you and I are missing when we think about why he's torturing Howard is we've sort of assumed, I think we've assumed that Jimmy doesn't think about Chuck all that much. He's moved on. Last season when he had that tearful speech in the courthouse that we talk about so much, we said it was basically fake. Maybe he's using some real emotions. But then I wondered, what if Jimmy hasn't really moved on from that? What if he actually does harbor some guilt over what happened with Chuck and he's not at peace with it? But then he sees Howard has made peace with it. Howard's moved on. That could be angering him. And so he's essentially taking it out on Howard. That's the manifestation of the guilt that he's still harboring over Chuck. Interesting. Okay, so that's a valid, I think that's a valid interpretation. Here's a different interpretation. He still has hard feelings against Chuck, but because Chuck is no longer around, the last vestige of his legacy is Howard. Got it, okay. Okay, he might be in the grave, but I can still somehow kind of screw with him a little bit. Got it. I actually, I like your interpretation more, but I think this one's also possible. I think that, so I've been trying to figure out where's the Howard storyline going. And I have a feeling it's going to be the emotional culmination we've been waiting for, for Jimmy to truly deal with Chuck's death. Because at a certain point, I think Howard is going to become aware that all of these crazy things that are happening to him are coming from Jimmy. And I think he's going to confront Jimmy and say, you haven't moved on. This is your way of dealing with Chuck's death. Your Howard is already getting spot on. Do you think there are any listeners or any any watchers of the show that think Howard deserves this? I don't think so. I mean, if you think that Howard deserves this, please write in and let us know. I'm curious. Yeah, but then don't talk to us too much more after that because I really don't think he deserves it. And if you think he does, I will question your moral compass. Actually, no, we like the attention. What are you doing? But I mean, I don't think Howard was ever that bad to him. No, I mean, he was at the beginning. It seemed like he was. But again, it was at the behest of Chuck. Right. And if anyone can relate to being manipulated by Chuck or pressured into something by Chuck, it's Jimmy. Right. So if there is, I would love there to be a confrontation between Howard and Jimmy, and I'd love to see Jimmy defend himself because that might be the only time we get him to truly lay out. Here's what I'm feeling about this. If Howard calls him out and says you're still harboring some guilt, why can't you move on like I have Namaste too on your license plate? And then Jimmy will say, you know what? I'm not harboring guilt. Here's what I'm feeling. Something along those lines. That would be nice. I probably won't spell it out that way, but. He turns and faces the camera and says, you might be wondering what's been going through my head these past couple of seasons. When Howard asked me that question, I couldn't believe it. Here's what I wanted to tell him. So we get to the meeting Wednesday, 3 p.m. Kim is sitting there with Kevin, Paige, Richard, all the important people. And then Saul shows up and he's all smiles. He says, nice to see lots and lots of happy faces, except you, Rich. He just knows how to play a room. And then Kim, she is very comfortable. She thinks everything is going to go according to plan. Kim says, we think a $45,000 settlement is more than generous. And presumably that $45,000 is what Kevin is willing to give, but Kim is going to give something out of pocket on the side to get to the 75K. I still don't even totally understand why she's doing it. No. And again, I don't think she fully understands why she's doing it. I think if the spark was probably Mr. Acker called me out on not truly being a good person, I need to prove that I am a good person and it snowballs into I am going to make sure Mr. Acker walks away happy. But the scene, do you have to say something? It's just such a, when you step back and you think, okay, because of those conflicting feelings, she got her boyfriend to become the legal opposition and escalate everything. Like the original, the solution, the law can solve this problem. She might not like the effect it's going to have on Mr. Acker, but they were just going to kick him out and they were going to do it legally, right? She didn't have to put herself at risk and if she did feel true guilt over it, she could have, I guess, paid him afterward. Okay, I'm sorry, I feel bad. Here you go. Yeah, but do you think it's that she has a little bit of what Jimmy has, right? That's part of what the attraction has been between the two of them. So when something starts to snowball like this, she looks for the play. She looks for the great play I can do to win in this situation. I think Saul and Kim both went through difficult things in life, very different kinds of things, but difficult things nonetheless. And they probably both appreciate what it means to form a vision or a plan and really carry it out. I think they understand how important that can be and what a game changer it can be. And so maybe coming from that kind of background, it makes her more likely to scheme. Yes. And speaking of game changing, so in the middle of this conversation, where Kim says $45,000, that is our settlement offer. We think it's more than generous. The game changes very quickly. It takes a very sharp left turn here, where Saul says we have a different definition of generous. And that was even though I knew it was coming, one of the most intense moments of the season, because a look on Kim's face and just the intense betrayal by Jimmy in that scene, insane. So Kevin says that he wants to know fine, what is the number? And Jimmy says $4 million. Again, insane. So they go back and forth. Kevin is very angry as he storms out. Saul says, wait a minute. I have a DVD of video I want to show you. Kim tries to get Kevin to leave. She's trying desperately to get control of the situation, but can't do it. Kevin's going to stay. Saul puts on a video. And by the way, the video has got nothing to do with the conversation that we just had. Right. Right. Kim Saul puts the video on. And it's basically that old Mesa Verde commercial we saw overlaid with people complaining about Mesa Verde. Going into their bank gave me a rash. And then Saul pops up on the screen and says, if you're sick after going into a bank, give me a call. Or if you were unfairly foreclosed on, give me a call. So it's basically a commercial he's threatening to play that will paint a very bad picture of Mesa Verde will hurt his and his father's reputation, plus potentially lead to some lawsuits against Mesa Verde. And if that wasn't enough, we finally get the answer to what Kim spotted in those photos. Apparently the man on a horse logo is from a photograph that was taken by the Olivia Bitsui that Saul called earlier in the episode. Kevin says, we own that photo. Yes, you own that copy of the photo, but truly she owns the likeness of that photo. And you are infringing on copyright by using it as your logo. So Jimmy has put Kevin in a corner where he's got three things on him. Number one, he's got Mr. Acker who wants some sort of a settlement. Number two, he's got the threat of destroying his reputation with this commercial. And number three, he's got what looks to be a legitimate copyright claim. So Kevin and Jimmy meet in the garage in the parking garage where Saul gets Kevin to agree to Mr. Acker keeping the house $45,000 to Mr. Acker, a public apology. Olivia gets $200,000 plus credit for that photo, another public apology. And Saul explains all this to him in the most excruciating way possible. Can you imagine a world, Kevin? Can you imagine a world where you give a public apology? Close your eyes. So anyway, intense scene when when Jimmy drops all this, Kim look on her face throughout the scene, just the frustration, her telling Kevin, I would advise you not to say anything. I would advise you not to watch this video. That was some, she was, her acting was great. Yeah, Rhea Seahorn, she always knocks it out of the park, but the range of emotions she has to go through. And to go from I'm totally in control, I'm comfortable immediately to what the hell just happened. What did Jimmy just say to me? The betrayal, the shock, amazing. By the way, Vince Gilligan did say that if they were to make another spinoff of this universe, he would love to make about Lalo. I would watch that. Yeah, he wanted to make something about Kim. Now, if gun to my head, speaking of the Breaking Bad universe, gun to my head, bag over my head thrown in the desert. Yeah, in that situation, I would bet that they're not going to make it. But they did show us something about her past, her as a child. They're giving us little tastes of who she used to be. So maybe maybe like you said, I have a feeling Better Call Saul is the last we'll see of the Breaking Bad universe, at least for a while. And then maybe 10 years down the road, Vince Gilligan will be sitting there and say, you know, I could see and I don't know what I was trying to do. I think Walt did survive. Yeah, there you go. And Walt gets out of jail and he's kind of old and decrepit and he goes, Jesse, you still have that Bunsen burner. Yes, anyway, I do think maybe they'll revisit the world at some point, whether it's Kim or somebody else. But anyway, though, in this scene, we were just talking about how great her acting was. Yeah. And that plays very much into a comment that Jimmy makes later in the episode, which is the fact that she didn't know that we're going to go ahead with the plan meant that her anger in the scene was real, which helps to make her less culpable if things were to somehow come out that all of this was coordination between Jimmy and Kim. And I actually do think her career is probably pretty safe. Yeah, the way he laid it out, because he's not doing anything truly illegal here. They even talk about the fact that in the commercial, he never states that Mesa Verde did anything wrong. They say vague things like, did you walk into a bank and get a rash? They don't say Mesa Verde, it's implied heavily. Well, and they include the current leader of the bank's father, an actual clip of him and all the commercials going up, which, you know, it's funny for us. But imagine being Kevin in this bank is your life, grew up with it, you inherited it. It's something you're proud of. And you have to see, I'm assuming his dad is dead, because it's really old footage. You have to see your dead father being made a fool. Mockery, yeah. Yeah. And yeah, so he is very rightly angry here. And now I do think the commercial is, I said it's legal. It's probably in a gray area. And that's what Kim says. Just enough of a gray area to drag this thing out way too long. Right, exactly. So just more leverage on Kevin, you're going to want to do what we're asking for here. So Kim is very angry. And we're waiting with baited breath to see what happens when she gets home. Because we see Jimmy in the apartment seems blissfully unaware that anything horrible just happened. He's playing his guitar. He's pretty bad, by the way. And then when Kim walks in, he just says, Hey, how'd it go? And then he gives a half-hearted apology. Look, apologies for sandbagging you with the old switcheroo. Look, you being angry at me. That worked. Emotion like that. You can't fake it. And she says, No, you can't. And when she starts to explain what happened, he tells her to do the voice. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's really not. Do you think he's not taking it seriously or he's trying to push it into non-serious territory? I think at first he doesn't realize the gravity of the situation. And then he starts to see it, but still tries to push it into silly everything's okay territory. He wants to celebrate. He says, Everybody wins. And then Kim corrects him. She says, You win. Saul corrects her and says, We win. What didn't you get that you wanted? And then she says, This is the bombshell for me. I don't trust you. You played me. And Saul says, It'll never happen again. Kim says, That's a lie. And she tells him to look her in the eyes and say, You'll never do it again. He can't do it. No. And then she says, We can't keep doing this. Either we end this now. And before we get to the last line, did you think in this scene, I thought it's over. We've been waiting to see how does Kim and Saul end? And I thought this was truly it. When she said either we end this now, and there's just a split second for me to think, I would now could be hindsight, but I feel like a really small part of me anticipated, not necessarily we get married, but something like that. Right. Most of me thought, Either we end this now, or we ruin our lives, you know, or something like that. Me too. Or she was going to say, Either we end this now, or this. Points a gun at his face. No. So she says, Either we end this now, or we get married. You and I were really scratching our heads last episode, trying to figure out why this marriage proposal. And I went through. That's not a proposal, is it? Not a proposal, but a proto proposal. Yeah. If you will. I won't. I went through a couple of theories, and I think I've landed on one that connects with the flashback we saw at the beginning of the episode. All right. My first theory was that Kim thinks that getting married will create a bond between them, where Jimmy is less likely to lie. It creates a sense of obligation in him, where he will just be less likely to lie to her. I don't think that is likely to work out that way. So I thought about it some more, and here's what I think. There is an actually Dalmatian parade, the guy you commented on our YouTube video. He had a theory which tied into this as well, where he brought up the concept of spousal privilege, which is a real thing. If you're married to somebody, when you discuss something between the two of you, there is privilege around there. It's sort of automatically considered confidential. And at first I wrote that off and said, is she really using this as some kind of a legal scheme? And I think the answer is yes. So let's go back to the flashback. She's obviously trapped in that relationship because we're talking about her family, her mother, but even trapped within that relationship, she's trying to exercise some sense of control. I'm not going to get in the car with you. I'm going to walk home. And I think something that is imprinting in her mind is that when you're in a relationship with somebody and you're trapped, you can't walk away, but you can exercise some degree of control. So here she is in this relationship with Jimmy. She's trapped. And the problem is that Jimmy justifies stabbing her in the back by saying that he's trying to protect her. Well, if that's the reason he's lying to her, is to protect her. If we can get this spousal privilege thing on the table, he won't need the lie to me because now whatever we talk about is protected. It's confidential. So by any rights, she should be walking away from this self-destructive relationship. But I think she's trained not to think in those terms. She can't walk away. So what can she do? She doesn't want him to lie to her anymore? Spousal privilege? He doesn't have to. And I think that's the mental calculation that she's doing here. I could definitely see that. She's a really sharp legal mind. And it's possible that it just, it's possible it's something she's thought about already, or I could just as easily see it coming to her in the moment of, well, if we're going to keep doing these kinds of things, legally the smartest thing to do here is to get married. Assuming Saul can start to trust her enough that she'll be a good enough actor that he can share the schemes with her and that he won't need to elicit genuine reactions in certain types of situations. Right. And I don't think she thought of it in the moment necessarily, but probably on the angry drive home. I think that's probably when it came to her. And shout out to Dalmatian Parade. He had the, he had the spousal privilege idea and thought that Kim wanted to use it. So Jimmy would stop lying to her. But the thing that I would add to that is the connection to the flashback and maybe why she would go to such lengths to hold on to the relationship to the point where she's thinking about something like spousal privilege. But I have a feeling we'll get an answer to that next episode. Because hopefully we see the immediate aftermath of this conversation where Saul says what and she explains it. How cool would it be if we actually see a wedding on this show? Well, I normally, I don't care about weddings and like relationships and TV shows that much. And one thing I actually liked about Breaking Bad was that that was not really, it mattered, but it was deep into an already existing marriage with Skyler. Whereas this has been going on for some time, but it hasn't really moved forward. Right. Breaking Bad didn't have a gym and PAM. Yeah. Better call Saul does. Actually, I didn't think about that. There really wasn't a lot of focus. I was going to say there wasn't a lot of focus on romantic relationships and Breaking Bad. But they're definitely, I mean, with Jesse, there were some pretty important plot points there. What about Walton, that woman from the school? Is that the principal? Yeah, it is. Is it the principal or is it the principal? No, that was. It's the principal in the attempt to seduce the principal. Oh God, that was so hard to watch. Tringy is seen in that whole series. So that was more like Michael Scott and Ryan and German Pan. That's where the episode ends. I thought an amazing episode. Any other thoughts on episode six? It's giving us so, it's been, this episode really moved the chess pieces around the table. I think a lot of the season has been set up. A lot of stuff has happened, but you know the things that have happened so far are just small steps towards some kind of, the writers of this show are like architects. They're building an integrated structure and I think we're going to be just blown away by the end. Yeah, it's like a trans dimensional Rubik's cube. Three dimensional underwater backgammon. Oh, no, you do one. So I'm going to hungry hippos. I was gonna. Oh, really? I was going to say 4D outer space hungry, hungry hippos. You guys are good. I do want to mention another email we received from Reginald. If you remember, he is one of our best fans because every time he sends an email, he gives it an awesome title. So you and I were debating the meaning of fish that have appeared in this episode, they appeared in the last episode. And actually before we released the last episode where we brought up the fish, Reginald emailed us also thinking about, he also had fish on the brain. Yeah, so I think we had eaten salmon last week too. We did, yeah. So his title was Finding Nemo or With Friends Like These. And he surmises that the fish actually represents Kim because when Kim and Saul are in the nail salon with Mr. X, Mr. X comments on the fish saying, these things are full of parasites and after description of what Kim is doing to Saul because she is using him for this acker scheme and sort of parasitically feeding off the obsession that he has with scheming. So in this situation, Kim is the parasite or the fish? I don't know. I could see it. I could see how it might go in both ways. You could say that Saul is a parasite in the sense that he's using, well, he's doing. Maybe they're symbiotic. Yeah, it's symbiotic, but it's mutually destructive. That's why it's the fish because there's multiple parasites within the fish. So the fish, they're both flawed creatures living in the same filthy water. All right, Reginald, I hope you don't mind we modified your theory. If I've misrepresented it in any way, you can send me Finding Dory or with friends like these, sequel as original theory. And we promised that if you were to go into the Apple Podcast app and leave us a rating or leave us a review, you would get a shout out and one Mr. Smexone bottle. Let me know if I'm properly pronouncing your name. He listened to us and he left a great review. He said, great podcast. Love the instant takes. It's a quality show. It's free. And they get the instant takes up faster than anyone else. This is free. Well, that's what I was going to say. He was kind of patting us on the back for making it free, which makes me think, does it not? Are we like doing something nice? But does it have to be free? You know, we want to monetize this eventually so we can all quit our jobs, right? Audiblepodcast.com. Something like that. Anyway, so he gave us two stars. Anyway, thank you, Mr. Smexone bottle. That's how you pronounce that, right? Smexone, Smexone eb, ebdo, ebdo. Smexonable. So thank you. And if you too would like a shout out, Apple Podcasts app rating review, or if you're watching this on YouTube, hit the like button, subscribe to the channel and hit that bell icon. So you get notified the next time we do a video. I want you hitting that bell harder than Hector hits his bell. I couldn't have said it better myself. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. And we'll talk to you on the next episode. I'm Gil. I'm Adam. I'm Alun. And this is SawCast.