Acker is a cranky ol’ cuss, who gets one of the episode’s best lines (“I’m going to spread my legs out like this and just to finish it off, why don’t you give me a swift kick in the balls”) and makes Kim feel like the worst variety of heartless corporate suit. Moments later, Kim is leaving the courthouse and heading to a mostly empty plot of land where Mesa Verde wants to build a call center and where a lone hold out, Everett Acker (the “Northern Exposure” veteran Barry Corbin), is refusing to budge from his home of 30 years. “Mesa Verde keeps the lights on,” says the simmering Richard Schweikart (Dennis Boutsikaris), her corporate law overlord.
For Kim, “in” means a tighter tether to her corporate client, Mesa Verde, which entails skimping on pro bono clients, who appear to be her only source of professional satisfaction. This week’s episode, “The Guy for This,” is about the looming, deeply unpleasant sense of “in,” as experienced by both Jimmy and Kim. “It’s not about what you want,” Nacho says. “If there’s blowback, I don’t want to be in the middle of it,” Jimmy tells Nacho once his jailhouse consultation and debriefing with Lalo are over.
Signing up with Lalo means working against the interests of the formidable hometown drug team, whose heavyweights include Mike, a.k.a., the world’s most menacing senior citizen. But it’s sure to be terrifying, eventually. Let the record show that the first step to hell was lucrative - $8,000 for a half day’s work. Also, “Smoke” does give a slice of action regarding Nacho’s attempted assassination of Hector from the end of Better Call Saul Season 3, but it did not really move, with Gus seemingly suspicious about the pill swapping motion in his hands.Mere days after Jimmy became Saul Goodman, and started pitching his services to the criminally inclined, he’s been recruited by Lalo Salamanca and is now enmeshed in the imminent war between the Mexican cartel and Gus Fring. This part of the story was not resolved, making us wonder what he will do next week. He takes it upon himself to recon inside the company and embarrasses them about their security standards. Meanwhile, Mike does lighten up “Smoke” slightly when he finds what I believe to be a medical bill from a company named Madrigal at the house his close family live in. However, as usual with Jimmy, his grievance has to mean something more in benefit to him, so when Howard feels guilty for Chuck’s death, he does not do the human thing and comfort him but in spite, he provides an off-hand comment and walks away smiling whilst feeding his fish, much to the shock of Kim. The show represented the phase of early grieving convincingly, reducing the use of movement and sound and allowing the silent space to demonstrate that Jimmy is in the early part of the process. “Smoke” was deliberately depressing, showing an almost despondent Jimmy, who only moved with energy when he was served a shot of tequila by his fed up and injured partner, Kim.
Whether he did or not, I guess we will never truly know. It was so bizarre, his mental condition, but it made great television in the sense that the actor Michael McKean pulled it off convincingly, making us believe the character actually believed it. We will miss his non-existent disease of being allergic to electricity. As a character on TV, I do not mind him.īetter Call Saul Season 4 will be without Chuck McGill. What “Smoke” did confirm once again is that Jimmy is clearly emotionally manipulative and he is not a character I would like in my life.
By watching Better Call Saul you understand that everything is pre-determined slightly due to it spinning off as a prequel to Breaking Bad. The two lawyer brothers have been at war, whether politely or in an uncivilised manner since the first season, but it is time to move, as Jimmy will clearly have bigger, more illegal fish to fry. This is a loss that needed to happen eventually, though it feels like a heavy one. Well, “Smoke”, the premiere episode of Better Call Saul Season 4, confirms he has died. The finale left whether or not he died as a cliffhanger. In case you missed it, Season 3 ended with Chucky leaving an oil lantern flaming, and whilst he was sleeping away in bed, it tipped over and set his house on fire. The onset of depression the episode provides is understandable due to Jimmy having to deal with the loss of Chuck. This recap of Better Call Saul Season 4, Episode 1, “Smoke”, will contain spoilers.īetter Call Saul returns and in miserable fashion. Better Call Saul returns with “Smoke”, which is a depressing episode but for all the right reasons.