TV Review: Better Call Saul (1×05) – “Alpine Shepherd Boy”

TV Review: Better Call Saul (1×05) – “Alpine Shepherd Boy”

Reprinted from The Young Folks as posted on March 4, 2015

There’s a point in “Alpine Shepherd Boy” where Jimmy McGill goes to see a new client after his billboard hero story and I wondered whether or not Better Call Saul was about to head down into a procedural route blended with the serialized storytelling. The premise of a lawyer with his sharp wit and wacky clientele could easily fuel a more episodic series; a form of television that is exceedingly becoming endangered as long-form stories become more and more popular. I’ve admittedly turned a blind eye to more episodic fare on occasion because for some reason it is fashionable to look down upon them these days, but in the right hands (and this show is surely in the right hands) the material for a case-of-the-week Jimmy/Saul show could be wildly entertaining.

Alas, it doesn’t look like my pointlessly overlong side note will come to fruition if “Alpine Shepherd Boy” is an indication of the direction this show is headed into. It does, however, spend the bulk of its running time with Jimmy meeting his oddball set of new prospects, tipping the tonal scale from light drama over into eccentric farce. Each of these vignettes, from the tycoon who wants to secede from the U.S. to the inventor whose child toilet trainer inadvertently turns sexual, are funny in their own right. Tycoon Richard Sipes is quite the impressionable character and one who I wouldn’t mind seeing pop up time and time again as a minor recurring character, though I doubt that will happen.

 

I bring up the notion of episodic stories because they can be a reprieve from the bigger arcs that can’t always sustain the episode orders made for TV seasons, and “Alpine Shepherd Boy” feels like it’s dallying with the idea of going down that path without fully committing. The interludes with the clients are little more than humorous space fillers until Kim and Jimmy get the call about Chuck in the hospital, only to go back to Jimmy seeing his clients, and then jump back to him dealing with Chuck. The episode doesn’t balance its structure and tone between the two approaches as smoothly as it could have. I’ve also found that I’m not as fully invested in the relationship between Jimmy and Kim as the show would like me to be, although this week allows the two of them to share more personal interactions outside of work and see their softer sides together.

The matter of Chuck’s “condition” is given much more attention though, with Clea DuVall’s doctor confirming our suspicions that his “condition” is more mental than physical, something that I saw as the case from the start but is nevertheless given a rather longwinded explanation. I got the sense that “Alpine” was making a conscious comparison between Jimmy providing for his brother and the ways that we take care of the elderly once they hit a certain point in life. Chuck’s existence at home isn’t so different from that of a lonely elderly person sheltered from the outside world, and the older décor of his house along with its spare spaces suggest the loneliness he feels. On another (much shorter) side note, Jimmy watches the older TV show Matlock to get a feel for how he should present himself to the older crowd, and I couldn’t help but see the coincidental similarity between the logo for that show and the one for Breaking Bad with its periodic table design.

 

Speaking of the lonely and the elderly, the final minutes of the episode take an unexpected left turn into the life of parking attendant Mike, who is even more isolated than Chuck is. He sits alone at the diner and can’t even get close to talk to the mystery woman who acknowledges his presence with familiarity (I assume this is his daughter since Breaking Bad made a point of Mike’s affection for his granddaughter). Before the episode ends with (presumably) Mike’s old police partner and several officers approaching Mike at home, his house and living is defined by cold stillness, a quality that actor Jonathon Banks has used to define the character himself since being introduced many years ago. Chuck and Mike both have tentative threads holding them to the lives of others, but with Mike’s partner returning and Slippin’ Jimmy threatening to undo Chuck’s trust, it looks like the past is coming back to haunt them both.

TV Review: Agent Carter (1×08) – “Valediction”

TV Review: Agent Carter (1×08) – “Valediction”

Reprinted from The Young Folks as posted on February 25, 2015

Look, I love Captain America, and I love Captain America: The First Avenger; it’s one of the few Marvel movies that I actually like more each time I watch it. One of the reasons why it was such a success was the character Peggy Carter, whose strength as an independent character made her both stand out amidst other female comic book movie characters and established her as a viable subject for her own television series. She had both a compelling history and a captivating actress playing her in Hayley Atwell, and could command attention on her own terms without the need to be defined by her relationship with Captain America. So how did Agent Carter’s finale repay its lead? By making itself all about remembering Captain America and the man who couldn’t save him while pushing the heroine aside in her own story.

When the pilot contained scenes of Peggy haunted by Captain America’s disappearance after his noble sacrifice, I never imagined that the show would actually turn that into a major plot point that defined where the story lead to. And yet, somehow, despite never having any major thematic or story-based connection to Peggy’s investigation of Leviathan at the S.S.R., the specter of Steve Rogers’ death continually loomed overhead like a grey cloud that wouldn’t go away. Then, in a nakedly manipulative move, this all came to a head in the emotional climax of the finale where Peggy has to plead over the radio for a brainwashed Howard Stark to not gas New York much like she did the same when Steve Rogers decided to sacrifice himself to stop Hydra’s plan.

What makes this conclusion to the finale so disappointing is that the story shifts its focus from Peggy to Howard and suddenly the crux of our investment lies in Howard’s guilt over the weapons he invented and his failure to save Cap from his icy fate. Howard is certainly an integral figure in the Marvel Universe but to make the finale all about his salvation as well the heroes’ ability to move on from their sacrificial male icon feels like a disservice to the story about a female secret agent struggling to work against male dominance at her job. Atwell gives it her all as Peggy tearfully struggles to get through this déjà vu of events, but it’s not enough to distract from the unease of her serving Howard’s arc instead of the reverse.

Luckily, all of this stuff only happens in the last 15 minutes or so, and everything else surrounding it is pretty great even if Howard remains an attention hog both as a character and a focal point in the story. Dominic Cooper plays up Stark’s arrogance after turning himself in to the S.S.R. while still retaining his easy-going charm, particularly when he tells Thompson to say that they “are humbled by his brilliance” before a press conference. And of course, with him being Howard Stark, his numerous flings with women meant that Dottie once used that to get close to him for information. The sins of the past haunt Howard in more ways than one.

Dottie gets plenty of time to shine in this finale. She’s used her girlish persona to manipulate others into doing her bidding in both the past and present, but actress Bridget Regan takes the opportunity to infuse that into the character’s actual personality. During her much-anticipated clash with Peggy at the end, a breathlessly satisfying bout filled with hard punches and blunt instruments, Regan brings a childlike glee to the punishment Dottie brings down on Peggy. Her brief moments of triumph show delight in dishing out the violence, something that ends rather unexpectedly when Peggy kicks her out the nearby window. However, it looks like this won’t be the last we see of the nefarious Dottie Underwood.

As for the rest of the S.S.R., Thompson takes a backseat to the action as Sousa steps into the forefront. Following the boneheaded decision to literally stick his nose right in the midst of the dangerous gas, the disabled agent redeems himself when he saves Thompson from the clutches of Dr. Ivchenko and beats the bad Russian at his own hypnotic game. This doesn’t stop Thompson from taking the credit for the operation while Sousa and Peggy look on unrecognized for their heroism. Sousa tries to stick up for Peggy but, in one of the finest and most astute moments the show has conceived, she tells him to stand down, insisting, “I don’t need [their] approval. I know my value.”

In a show all about female empowerment, this was perhaps the most empowering bit of all, one that reasserts the character’s self-confidence and worth and helps to (slightly) alleviate the finale’s unfortunate shift in focus to the male characters, both living and frozen. There’s hope in the future as well, with Peggy and Sousa showing affection for each other even as she delays his advances, along with Peggy echoing the end of Titanic as she dumps Cap’s blood into the East River and finally learns to let go. Even with the bumps along the way, I’d rather not let go of Agent Carter, which provided a well-deserved spotlight for one of Marvel’s best female characters and the chance to elaborate on previously unexplored territory for the overarching universe.

TV Review: Better Call Saul (1×04) – “Hero”

TV Review: Better Call Saul (1×04) – “Hero”

Reprinted from The Young Folks as posted on February 24, 2015

Last week, Better Call Saul showed us an earlier point in the McGill brothers’ lives when Jimmy was in jail and Chuck comes to see him, which set up a cyclical arc for Jimmy to reform himself after many questionable life decisions and then revert back to his old ways to Chuck’s disappointment. “Hero” follows through on that thread in a major by dedicating its entire run time to Slippin’ Jimmy’s ways of sticking it to the man and coming out on top. The cold open goes even further than last week’s by showing him and another man play out a scam for money, something that echoes the actions he undertakes over the course of the next hour.

Back in the present, we pick up immediately after the end of “Nacho” with Jimmy confronting the Kettlemans over the stolen money and once again offering his legal services. They once again refuse him, but offer a bribe instead to keep him quiet. Chuck previously taught Jimmy that the way up the lawyer ladder is to do good work and the clients will come, though Jimmy’s flippant reaction to this piece of advice gives some indication as to why he ends up taking the money. Jimmy wants to do good by his brother to atone for his past sins, but he also sees the reality of his current situation that he is a man scraping by on the skids with barely a penny to his name.

The bribe money emboldens him much like it did for Walter White before him (or rather, after him), inspiring a rise in confidence as he pays off old fees and gets a makeover to celebrate. This boost in self-assurance also prompts a deliberate jab at Howard Hamlin and the others at Hamlin Hamlin & McGill by imitating their billboard advertisement. Jimmy no doubt knows that what he’s doing is wrong and will immediately prompt a response from Howard but he doesn’t care; he just wants a chance to rile them up in an elaborate prank. In Jimmy’s eyes, getting a reaction from them is enough to validate himself as a worthy opponent.

Just as the first two episodes established Jimmy’s relationship with Chuck and the third gave he and Kim the time to interact, “Hero” brings forth Howard Hamlin as a possible villain for Jimmy to square off against. As played by underappreciated character actor Patrick Fabian (whose performance in The Last Exorcism is a standout) he’s not an out-and-out bad guy as Jimmy’s actions and scams are of course unethical, not the least of which is the rescue stunt pulled by “saving” the fallen billboard man. There’s plenty of resentment bubbling between them that gets pulled forth during the cease-and-desist scene, and Fabian plays the role with just enough pomp to keep the audience on Jimmy’s side without turning him into a cartoon bully.

Propping these men up as adversaries creates another dynamic between the characters with Kim as the middle-woman torn between her allegiances. As another person torn in their feelings, Jimmy attempts to hide his ‘hero’ story in the newspaper from Chuck to no avail, and the pieces are in place to clash against each other. “Hero” is mostly a transitional episode getting the characters from place to place and setting them in motion for events to come in the future. There’s not much to write home about and I doubt that this will be looked back on as a particularly memorable episode for Better Call Saul’s debut season, but it does an admirable and competent job of moving the pieces forward in entertaining fashion.

TV Review: Agent Carter (1×07) – “Snafu”

TV Review: Agent Carter (1×07) – “Snafu”

Reprinted from The Young Folks as posted on February 19, 2015

Remember when just last week I said that Agent Carter had its “shit’s going down” episode? Well, the ball just keeps on rolling in the latest installment: “Snafu.” With Peggy captured and the S.S.R. too busy prying her for information on Howard Stark, it’s time for Leviathan to make its deadly move against the good guys. They’ve mostly been lurking in the shadows for some time now mostly through covert work leading to the moment when they can properly strike a blow and make off with Stark’s weapons in the process. Last week revealed that Dr. Ivchenko is secretly plotting with Dottie to tear apart the S.S.R. right under their noses, and in “Snafu” they manage to succeed in more ways than one.

However, before we get to that, lets focus on Peggy’s side of the story, and by extension Jarvis’. As the show has well established, the men around the S.S.R. don’t treat her like an equal and are often oblivious to the fact that she is a perfectly competent agent, even if some like Thompson finally began to take notice later on. Getting caught as a conspirator with Stark certainly doesn’t help her case for respect, though she gets the opportunity to throw it back in their faces in the hour’s best scene. When the guys ask how she was able conduct her private investigation sight unseen, the feminist angle of Peggy’s characterization comes to the forefront in her wonderfully pointed response that she was able to get away with it precisely because she was invisible to them on a daily basis unless she was serving their needs.

It’s a canny way of showing how a woman’s achievements (in the 1940s and even today) are often perceived based on how they also benefit men rather than simply the woman’s needs, and it also shows how Peggy was able to utilize that ignorance to get the upper hand. Hayley Atwell particularly shines in this scene because she’s able to deliver the speech with Peggy’s usual cool conviction while also letting slip some cracks of emotion, which wonderfully shows how her mission is just as personal as it is professional. This is followed through later on when Jarvis comes in with a fake confession from Stark that he wrote and Peggy asks, “Do I have a say in this matter?” Jarvis’ attempt to remedy/delay their situation looks to have actually made it worse off instead of saving them, and Peggy is righteously irked that he may have bungled their chances.

However, a much more pressing and dangerous matter begins brewing when Dr. Ivchenko put his hypnosis charms on Dooley in order to obtain a weapon of some sort. Up to this point in the series, Shea Whigham has consistently been the most underutilized member of the cast, especially for an actor who plumbed complex depths as Eli Thompson on Boardwalk Empire. For an actor of his skill, the role of Chief Dooley has unfortunately often leaned more on caricature than anything else even though he’s gotten some moments in the last couple of weeks. But that changed with “Snafu,” in which arguably its best accomplishment is finally allowing Whigham to bring sympathy and pity to his character.

The first display of this comes towards the beginning when Dooley is on the phone talking about dinner with his wife and children, a scene that carries an air of dread as we see Ivchenko lurking in the background of the shot listening in. When the slippery doctor puts the chief under his spell, Whigham’s expression give hints that he knows that what he’s doing is wrong but he can’t do anything to stop himself, something that’s given greater resonance with the hallucinations he has of seeing his family again. Given the unfortunate end his character meets in this episode, it might as well have been titled “The Life and Death of Roger Dooley.”

By the end of “Snafu” the bad guys have won, with Ivchenko escaping the S.S.R. with a secret weapon and Dooley committing suicide to save everyone else from death by vest bomb. The final sequence with Dottie releasing the chemical weapon on unsuspecting movie theater patrons is creepy but also a bit of déjà vu for those who recently saw Kingsman: The Secret Service with its bonkers church scene. With only one episode left of the season there’s a bunch of threads that will need to be tied up and also some that still need to be answered for, such as the forced importance of Steve Rogers’ blood. Does Dooley’s death mean that Peggy might actually (somehow, I’m not sure how given her current situation) take his position and spearhead the creation of S.H.I.E.L.D.?

TV Review: Better Call Saul (1×03) – “Nacho”

TV Review: Better Call Saul (1×03) – “Nacho”

Reprinted from The Young Folks as posted on February 17, 2015

A sense of foreboding hangs over the most recent episode of Better Call Saul, “Nacho,” which it establishes right at the start. Although knowing the eventual futures of characters in prequels often dissipates suspense, in the right hands it can be used as a useful storytelling measure. There are no half measures here. “Nacho” opens with Chuck McGill visiting Jimmy in jail for several offenses that include a possible sex offense. At first I expected this to be another flash-forward for the show like those from the series it originated from, but the reality of it being a flashback actually makes it more interesting to ponder. We already know that Jimmy will turn into a *criminal* lawyer by the time he makes his first appearance on Breaking Bad as Saul Goodman, so the dilemma of will he/won’t he with Nacho and the Kettleman’s money is never in question (then again would it have been anyway?), but this flashback seems to shed some light on how the dynamic between the McGill brothers will play out over this season.

Present day Jimmy is a do-gooder, a down on his luck and desperate do-gooder, but nonetheless one to the core, and it looks like it stems from his promise to Chuck at the jail to clean up his act. His hesitance to become a *criminal* lawyer rather than simply a criminal lawyer last week is now put into a different light beyond simple morality. He doesn’t want to let his brother down, who has clearly done a lot to repeatedly get him out of trouble throughout his life, but we know that’s about to happen sometime in the foreseeable. The flashback establishes a cycle of bad behavior for our protagonist, a point that’s further driven home by Bob Odenkirk’s more animated performance that feels more Saul than Jimmy.

Our foreknowledge also extends to Mike the parking man, though to a much smaller degree. We get glimpses of Mike’s true nature when Jimmy pushes him to far and customarily gets his arm in a twist, and later there are references to his past as a cop that are used to show how he begrudgingly understands Jimmy’s skepticism about the Kettlemans’ actions. So far, Better Call Saul has managed to avoid the pitfalls of most prequels, with a forced joke/scene that plays as “insider sports” for Breaking Bad fans. There are callbacks, for sure, but episode writer Thomas Schnauz weaves them in such a way that newcomers won’t feel out of the loop. The story beats work internally without having to lean on outside knowledge like a crutch.

But those moments are really only a small portion of “Nacho,” which primarily concerns itself with the impending robbery of the Kettlemans by Tuco’s man Nacho and Jimmy’s attempts to sabotage and then remedy the situation. Driving this mini-mystery/thriller is the fractured history between Jimmy and Kim Wexler (after their connection was only mentioned in passing last week), and also Jimmy’s previously mentioned apprehensiveness about aiding and abetting a thief. These two threads are sometimes intertwined to humorous effect, such as when Jimmy uses a paper towel roll to muffle himself while warning the Kettlemans and then later Kim asks if he did the sex robot voice.

But while Jimmy may not have too bright a mind he certainly has an intuition about him, even if it’s one fueled by his frantic desire not to fail Nacho and die. Nacho claims that although he performed surveillance on the Kettleman home he never kidnapped them, and using that claim in connection with clues in the house Jimmy deduces that the Kettlemans staged their kidnapping. He and Kim are at odds with each other given that they each represent both sides of the situation, though through their interactions springs forth hints of a reluctant understanding of Jimmy’s story on Kim’s part.

If the episode makes any misstep it’s in the song choice of Bobby Bare’s “Find Out What’s Happening” as Jimmy makes his trek through the hot New Mexico area in search of the Kettleman’s hiding place. Gilligan is no stranger to making pointed song choices, but there’s a time when being on the nose becomes too much. The song turns prophetic when Jimmy eventually stumbles across the family’s tent in the woods and the episode ends on an “a-ha” moment when he inadvertently spills the stolen money all over the place. Nothing’s ever too simple in this world.

TV Review: Agent Carter (1×06) – “A Sin to Err”

TV Review: Agent Carter (1×06) – “A Sin to Err”

Reprinted from The Young Folks as posted on February 11, 2015

Every season of television has that one episode known as the “shit goes down” episode where all the plot threads converge, conflicts flare up, and/or everything falls apart, and “A Sin to Err” is that such episode for Agent Carter. It makes dramatic sense to place this after last week’s “The Iron Ceiling,” which was the show’s most thrilling hour in terms of pure popcorn entertainment, and since Agent Carter has the possibility of being treated as a miniseries rather than a long-form story it’s about time that everything came to a head. Although Peggy Carter has shown a knack for the art of being a double agent, serving her S.S.R. duties while aiding Howard Stark’s mission, the act can only last for so long before the ruse starts tearing apart.

Sousa’s private investigation into the mysterious blonde woman at the party finally places her as Peggy, leading Dooley to send the goon squad to apprehend her at the automat. She’s there with Edwin Jarvis as they work together in tracking down a female Leviathan agent that could have manipulated Howard’s playboy ways, and their scenes together remind me that Jarvis has unfortunately been missing for most of the previous two episodes, so it’s good to have him back in a sizable capacity. The fight sequence that ensues between them and Thompson’s S.S.R. squad is a standout that could go toe-to-toe with the best of the hand-to-hand bouts found in the Marvel movies (okay maybe not The Winter Soldier’s dynamically choreographed brawls, but most of the others at least). We’ve seen Peggy handle herself just fine in fights before, so to see her use those skills against the men who have underestimated her so much is especially exciting. The final knockout punch to Thompson is a real cherry.

Agent Sousa, however, doesn’t have it in him to pull the trigger on her. Sousa has always been an outlier of sorts within the S.S.R., not only because of his debilitating injury, but also because he’s the only one that doesn’t totally treat Carter like she’s beneath him. I’m not too sure that his decision is entirely consistent within character, as he’s already shown that he works hard to earn the respect of his peers and what better way to show that than to apprehend Carter after she’s revealed as an aide to Stark? Sure, there’s a parallel between them and their treatment within the S.S.R., but their actual goals in this story couldn’t be more different, so his decision to let her go feels fuzzy.

Meanwhile, as all this inter-spy fighting is going on, Leviathan is setting the stage for something more sinister and unexpected. Dottie, after acquiring a position, trains her sniper rifle on Chief Dooley’s office as he converses with extracted Russian Dr. Ivchenko and, in a clever bit of audience misdirection, uses the weapon to signal Ivchenko rather than assassinate him. See, the slippery doctor used his “rescue” last week as a means of infiltrating the S.S.R. to hypnotize and manipulate the agents. As far as the “villain gets caught on purpose” trope goes this one is pretty effective and much more so than when The Flash recently employed it in rote fashion.

Another nice surprise of the hour was seeing Angie prove herself as a capable and loyal friend to Peggy when the S.S.R. comes to interrogate her, elevating her status above “bubbly acquaintance oblivious to reality.” Angie’s previously just been an ancillary character who shows up rather frequently with little indication of where she fits in the overall story, so it was good to see the show writers realize this by finally giving her something notable to do besides chitchat with the heroine in her downtime. Girl power comes in numbers, and lord knows Peggy needs a close friend not connected to international conflict and espionage.

On the flip side, there’s Dottie making her play to kill Peggy for Leviathan and almost succeeding in doing so before Sousa and the S.S.R. halt those plans. Dottie has been shown as a rather twisted creation with her bed handcuffs and creepy investigation of Peggy’s apartment, and she continues that here as she delights in the lead-up to her would-be murder before flipping on a dime into clueless damsel for the agents. The deck is rather stacked against Peggy now that she’s in the custody of Dooley and Thompson and unmasked as a “traitor” working with the “enemy,” so either Jarvis will need to hatch an escape plan or Peggy will have to use her wits to convince the men of her right-doing. I’m betting on the latter.

TV Review: Better Call Saul (1×02) – “Mijo”

Reprinted from The Young Folks as posted on February 10, 2015

Well it didn’t take too long for two-bit lawyer Jimmy McGill to get himself into a sticky spot. Not only that, but he happened to land in the clutches of everyone’s favorite psycho Mexican drug lord, Tuco Salamanca. It turns out that the old lady being scammed by Jimmy and the skateboarding duo is Tuco’s grandmother and Tuco quickly sees through the thin lies. Anybody who remembers Walter and Jesse’s encounters with Tuco on Breaking Bad knows that Tuco isn’t someone who is easily crossed, and he proves to be a difficult negotiator to work with for the flustered and out-of-his-depth Jimmy.

More than anything, Better Call Saul’s second episode “Mijo” finds director Michelle MacLaren and series creators, Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, tightening their coil of suspense over the viewer. The great thing about a volatile character such as Tuco is that he’s a walking/talking suspense generator: unpredictable and often over-dramatic to such a degree that every second spent in his presence is one more second spent thinking about an exit strategy. One wrong sentence could set him off without notice and get a gun pulled on you (word to the wise: don’t call his (or anyone’s) grandmother a “biznatch”). The uncomfortable knots in your stomach practically tie themselves when he’s nearby.

Jimmy’s desperation is especially more evident in this predicament as star Bob Odenkirk dials away all traces of huckster slickness while retaining his way with words. Jimmy McGill is far away from the smooth operator Saul Goodman, but the raw materials are certainly already there to be honed with more experience. Jimmy is used to dealing with general low-lifes of a less violent caliber, as it’s clear that he most likely hasn’t dealt with men as dangerous as Tuco and his gang before. The encounter is enough to shake a man to his very core, and he manages to lower Tuco’s punishment of the skateboarders from murder to a little leg breaking. The would-be scam artists don’t even have a chance to appreciate that Jimmy really is the “best lawyer ever” as they scream in pain at the hospital.

“Mijo” is divided into two halves with distinctly different tones, and the shift can initially be jarring. MacLaren has so effectively sustained the tension for the first half that once the episode leaves the desert it can take a moment to readjust to normalcy. However, it’s anything but normal again for Jimmy. His attempt to decompress is fraught with unease as the sounds of snapping breadsticks too quickly recall memories of snapping legs, and the beautiful date sitting before him isn’t enough to distract from the horrors rushing back to his mind. The breadstick scene is a great example of Gilligan and Gould’s ability to push their comic sensibilities to some dark places, and MacLaren’s handle on the editing and sound design of this sequence creates a cruel combination of chuckles and disgust.

Things take a lighter turn as Jimmy finds the inspiration to get back into the swing of things with a montage of in-and-out court clients and dealings with Jimmy’s true nemesis: Mike the “troll” parking attendant. Mike was often the secret weapon of Breaking Bad; a man who could fly under the radar with ease and then just as easily stand out due to Jonathon Banks’ completely no-nonsense performance. His tired eyes conveyed years of world-weariness and an irritated resistance to the highfalutin bullshit of the fools surrounding him. Better Call Saul can’t get these two characters together soon enough, and judging by the promo for next week’s episode, it looks like we’ll be getting that sooner than later.