Here, take this spongey little ball. Run your thumb along the seam. It’s bright yellow, and look! It’s even smiling at you! Give it a couple good squeezes. Really show it who’s boss.
How do you feel? Did that help? On a scale of one to ten, how likely are you to heave bowling balls onto your former colleague’s car? …Yikes. Keep squeezing, buddy.
In this week’s episode, titled “Namaste” (wink, nudge), everybody’s pissed off and handling it in their own uniquely terrible ways. In a move that seems to finalize a semi-redemption arc that took most of season 4 to process, Howard graciously offers Jimmy a job over lunch and another chance at HHM. He spends a lot of energy praising Jimmy’s scrappy nature. Maybe there’s something to this therapy thing?
Jimmy seems to take Howard’s new lease on life at face value–right up until he sees Howard’s shwanky new vanity plate as they’re leaving the restaurant. Namastay in your lane, Howard. There’s only room for one tacky lawyer in this town. In the podcast, Jim and I take a deep dive into the different motivations that could’ve led Jimmy and Howard to where they are by the end of this episode. And make goofy jokes. Business as usual.
Kim is still trying to balance law and ethics, a struggle which comes to a head when everything she does to make the squatter Acker’s life easier fails. It turns out Kevin and Paige may be better dressed, but they’re every bit as stubborn as Acker. The circumstances find Kim once again asking her dirtbag boyfriend to skirt the law for the greater good–despite her defensive blowup at him only three episodes ago for even suggesting something similar. Kim keeps wanting to have her cake and eat it too, a stance that everyone old enough to have credit card debt knows is a recipe for disaster.
Saul convinces Acker that he’s the right lawyer to “stick it to” Mesa Verde using... visual aids. Share on XSaul convinces Acker that he’s the right lawyer to “stick it to” Mesa Verde using… visual aids. If you haven’t watched this one yet, it’s worth it just for Barry Corbin’s note-perfect delivery of his line in this moment. It’s terrible, wonderful small screen gold that had both Jim and I laughing out loud on our first watch.
Gus isn’t laughing. In fact, this is the second episode in a row where we don’t even see his cool-eyed customer service smile. While Hank and Gomez trail and nab everyone involved in the dead drops, Gus alternately glares at his phone in his Los Pollos office and takes out his frustration on assistant manager Lyle by questioning his commitment to the fryer cleaning lifestyle.
Cue a classic back-and-forth mini montage of Hank and Gomez chasing down Gus’s money pickup guy through a series of increasingly smaller cullll-verts, and Lyle desperately scrubbing the fryers, flop sweat flying, to please his thoroughly unpleasable boss. The agents don’t get the guy who could’ve led to arrests higher up the drug chain, but Hank slaps on a smile and takes his team out for drinks anyway. I think one of these guys may be a better boss than the other.
This week’s final scene shows us Mike at his lowest. Turned away in no uncertain terms from his usual babysitting night with Kaylee because of his prior outburst, Mike gets tanked again and walks back to his house past the same thugs who harassed him before. This is pretty clearly an act of self-destruction, and absolutely heartbreaking to see in a man who seems so unshakeable in Breaking Bad.
It plays out almost how you’d think. We anticipated that he would get jumped much more seriously this time, but I don’t think anyone could have predicted where he’d wake up the next morning. I don’t know about you, but we’re desperately curious to see where a couple of these plot points are going.
Hello, straw filter and adobe. It’s been a while.