Better Call Saul – Season 1, Episode 10 – Twilight Zone ← FREE KRAUT!

Better Call Saul – Season 1, Episode 10 – Twilight Zone 1

Yeah, I was busy at the time. So before it all slips my mind…

The episode was a mixed bag for me. The scene in the nursing home did what the show seems to do quite often – pound its theme into the ground – but it was less subtle than usual. Now I get it that Saul is fuming and trying to process his brother’s betrayal, behaving inappropriately and finally finishing the story he started in the first episode – the one that sent him to Albuquerque in the first place. But that scene still felt awfully long, as if its point had been made long before it finally concluded. The Cicero scenes, with his return to good pal Marco, starts with the most entertaining sequence of the show, the JFK long con. It was well played and acted. and allowed Marco to make his “Miles Davis giving up the trumpet” argument in favor of Jimmy’s underhanded ways.

As the episode progressed, it felt as much like one of co-creator Vince Gilligan’s favorite shows, The Twilight Zone. The clumsy dream-like sequence felt like something that would have been in a so-so Rod Serling episode, one of those set in city nightclubs at night with strange things happening. When Jimmy is called back to Albuquerque with news of his case, and an appealing offer, Marco wants one last watch con job. Jimmy can’t turn him down, and it ends with Marco’s natural but painless death.

And it is at this point that the show, and the entire season, reaches its pivotal moment. Jimmy is back in New Mexico, with an offer to work at another law firm where Chuck has no influence on the case he started. Jimmy seems uncertain about it, as Chuck wouldn’t like it. But he’s reassured that Chuck is irrelevant. Jimmy, however, doesn’t really believe it. He’s been burned too often trying to be legitimate, and he doesn’t really understand – in a conversation with Mike – why he didn’t take that Kettleman money. And all of the sudden, he decides against the offer, the case, and declares that he won’t turn down dirty money over ethical concerns again. He’s proving Marco right, and he’s proving Chuck right. The bad angels of Jimmy’s nature are his destiny. We know this, of course, because this show is a prequel. But this season has done a good job of portraying a man torn between his dogged desire to do right and the temptation to go astray.

As I write all of this down, the scene makes sense, especially in the context of the whole season. But when I was watching it, it felt abrupt and off. He just decides to give up on the case he’s worked on for a long while, because… Marco is dead? Because he doesn’t think he can make it at a fancy firm? He was a born crook? The question hangs there. Part of my problem is that the Cicero scenes, and for that matter the Philadelphia scenes in Mike’s episode, felt unreal. They’re even shot that way. That was OK for Mike, as his character in both shows is larger than life. For Jimmy, the central character, it felt unsatisfying for his turn to come – at least the way it’s written and shot by co-creator Peter Gould – as a result of the events in Cicero.

Maybe I’m being unfair. I know there’s more to it than that, and the show has done a better than expected job of painting a nuanced picture of Jimmy that nonetheless relies at its core on primal issues such as family and betrayal. But the final scene felt like it came out of nowhere. I can explain and rationalize it. But as drama, as the turning point (if that’s really what it is) of Jimmy’s life, the whole thing left me unsatisfied.

One comment on “Better Call Saul – Season 1, Episode 10 – Twilight Zone

  1. East Bay Evans Mar 27,2017 6:10 pm

    Couldn’t get past the first episode tbh.

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