By Carl Franzen
It took almost the entire first season of Better Call Saul , but we’re finally getting an inkling of why the legally questionable but generally morally upstanding guy known as Jimmy McGill transforms into the purely sleezebag lawyer Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad. And the reason ain’t pretty.
Episode nine, “Pimento,” takes its name from a darkly funny confrontation involving the cheese spread of the same name—“the caviar of the South,” as Mike Ehrmantraut so affectionately puts it before he rapidly disarms a competing gun-for-hire and punches him in the throat. Yet the episode’s most important development concerns a much less physical yet more soul-wrenching clash, between Jimmy and his older brother Chuck.
Related: Read a Recap of Better Call Saul Episode 8
But before all that unfolds, Jimmy and Chuck begin the episode seemingly on better terms than ever before, sitting together on a park bench as Jimmy gently encourages his brother to enjoy the outdoors for the first time in months. Once again, we see how, whatever his failings, Jimmy is actually a loyal and well-meaning brother, motivating Chuck to overcome his electromagnetic paranoia without forcing him to face reality head on.
The relationship goes both ways, as Jimmy clearly values Chuck’s legal advice. He even reluctantly agrees with Chuck’s assessment to refer his burgeoning class-action lawsuit against the fraudulent retirement home Sandpiper Crossing over to HHM, Chuck’s old firm and Jimmy’s hated ultra-rival. “Hail Satan, I submit to the dark side,” Jimmy says about Chuck’s idea, his trademark wit in-tact. It was important for the episode’s writer/director Thomas Schnauz to re-establish this strong dynamic between the two McGill brothers, given the twist that occurs at the end.
That twist is touched off when Chuck sneaks out of his house at night in his space blanket, retrieves Jimmy’s cell phone from its electromagnetically-dormant containment area in the mailbox, and places a mysterious call with a pencil. Just what is he up to?
Mike also receives a mysterious call that leads him to an upper deck of a parking garage, one that should look awfully familiar to Breaking Bad fans (hint: Season 4, when Walt is trying to attach a certain device to a certain person’s car). He’s joined by two other guys, a bearded mountain and a cocksure stringbean. It quickly becomes apparent all three are there for the same gig, which the skinnier man describes as a “protection job” for a civilian. He asks Mike what he’s carrying, presumably referring to a weapon. Mike’s deadpan response: “Pimento sandwich.” The guy laughs initially, but then becomes annoyed, asking if Mike is serious and then chastising him for showing up unarmed.
The client finally arrives —a nervous, nebbish bespectacled man in a wood-paneled minivan who takes the name “Price,” he tells them, after his nephew. After the skinny guy tries to cut Mike out of the deal by pointing out he’s not packing any heat, Mike swiftly takes him down and removes four separate guns from his wheezing body. “So many guns, I don’t know which one to use,” Mike says sarcastically. The answer turns out to be none of them. He drops them all into a garbage can and hops in the minivan alone after the other hired gun flees in fear. “We don’t need three guys, we’ll be fine,” Mike assures the awestruck Price.
Back at Chuck’s house, Jimmy helps his older brother get dressed in his business suit, even coming up with the idea to line the space blanket underneath to help assuage Chuck’s paranoia. They make their way over to HHM, where Howard has already instructed all of the many other employees at the firm to dump their cellphones into a plastic bin and the power shut off. In a bizarre, almost hauntingly cult-like scene, Chuck enters the building lobby to the applause of the entire staff. Here we see firsthand how valued Chuck is to this firm — not only as a monetary asset, but to its culture. Who else could massively inconvenience everyone and get a warm reception in return?
That warmth may have something to do with Jimmy and Chuck’s case, which Howard Hamlin excitedly points out is a slam dunk. For the first time, he seems to be actually getting along with Jimmy, offering him a generous upfront fee and handsome share of the final settlement profits. But when Jimmy begins talking about moving into the corner office, the other shoe drops: Howard excuses the other gathered attorneys from the room and tells Jimmy he can’t work on the case with them. Jimmy, not surprisingly, flips out, and even the normally taciturn Chuck comes to his defense. Howard remains unmoved, saying it was a decision made by the partners. Jimmy’s response? He withdraws his offer and says: “I’m going to tell everyone of my clients what a lying miserable f–ker you are.”
Worlds collide as Mike and Price meet up with Nacho and two of his guys meet in front of a desolate power station (another vaguely familiar spot). It turns out a nervous Price is about to sell Nacho some unprescribed pharmaceuticals. When Price counts up the money, he finds it $20 short, but says “that’s okay.” Before he can hand over the pills, Mike jumps in and demands the full amount or no deal. A tense standoff ensues, but Nacho finally gives in, dropping a $20-bill and letting Price chase it in the wind.
After Nacho and his boys leave, an even more impressed Price asks Mike: “How did you know not to bring a gun?” Mike says he found out Nacho is running his own operation under the nose of his boss Tuco, and that Nacho wouldn’t want to risk this deal going bad and Tuco finding out. “The lesson is if you’re going to be a criminal, do your homework,” Mike says. Price objects to being called a criminal, saying, “I’m not a bad guy.” Mike points out Price sold stolen drugs, which fits the definition of a criminal, and launches into what may be the defining soliloquy of not the episode, but the entire Breaking Bad franchise. “I’ve known good criminals and bad cops, bad priests, honorable thieves, you can be on one side of the law or the other. But if you make a deal with somebody, you keep your word.” That is, morality doesn’t necessarily align with legality.
Related: Read all Better Call Saul Season 1 Recaps
This rings especially true in the episode’s climactic confrontation. After being pressured by HHM partner and his sometime love interest Kim to accept the referral deal, Jimmy begins thinking. He shows up at Chuck’s house in the morning after not sleeping all night and asks Chuck why he doesn’t just threaten to quit HHM, thereby forcing Howard into accepting Jimmy’s terms. When Chuck stammers to come up with an appropriate response, Jimmy pounces, revealing that he found out Chuck called Howard and told him not to let Jimmy work on the Sandpiper case referral. A clearly deeply wounded Jimmy has one simple question for his brother: “Why?”
In an arrogant and entitled tirade, Chuck lets the truth burst forth: “You’re not a real lawyer…. Slippin Jimmy with a law degree is a like a chimp with a machine gun!” This is too much for poor Jimmy, who openly says he thought Chuck would be proud of him for turning his life around. Now that he realizes his brother doesn’t actually trust or believe in him, and didn’t want to see him rise past the position of mailroom clerk, Jimmy’s entire worldview has been shattered. The one person he trusted and selflessly looked after, the person he looked up to and tried to emulate, has betrayed him. We can understand why Jimmy tells Chuck he’s done taking care of him after this. And it’s not too much of a leap to see why Jimmy might turn to more questionable pursuits from here. His brother, a supposedly upstanding paragon of the law, is frankly just not a good person, at least when it comes to Jimmy. And Jimmy’s reward for supporting him and playing by his rules all these years is being snubbed.
BCS has only one episode left this season, and its hard to imagine the two patching things up anytime soon.
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