You picked out one of the really great moments of the episode, when McGill couldn’t resist spilling that coffee. It was so far superior to last week’s drama that I feel like the contrast should be obvious, and I’m excited to see how everything plays out this season and beyond. I would almost advocate that they operate as co-stars, especially seeing how well Mike carried last night’s episode.
Stoic coffee break full#
This is the combination that works, full stop. The blustering motormouth and the saturnine tough guy are a perfect odd couple, and I hope the writers and Gilligan realize that they are the soul of the show. We know who Mike is now, and somehow, his personality seems to mesh even better with McGill, even though that didn’t seem possible. It explains his taciturn, melancholy quality in both this show and BB. The revenge he plots is clever, although in that distinctly Breaking Bad way where a million things have to go right to the point that it almost beggars belief, but the real drama is in that original loss-no matter what else happens, Ehrmantraut will always feel that he failed in his most important role. It’s a devastating double whammy-not only did Ehrmantraut diminish himself in the eyes of his son, coming off that pedestal of integrity, but he failed to protect him anyway. The origin story last night was simple but elegant-he had to convince his son Matt, a fellow cop, to take dirty money in order to protect himself, but because he hesitated, Matt’s partners lost faith in him and murdered him. You get the feeling he may never talk, but you can’t help but stick around waiting for the moment.
He’s a maddeningly silent man, but in a way that fascinates you and draws you in. And you hit on something that had been brewing in my head for a while, but that I needed to put into words…as good as Odenkirk can be, he needs the support of heavyweight characters.Īnd Ehrmantraut is that character. I know you and I disagree on Chuck-we both love Michael McKean, but I think we differ on the efficacy of his character-but I think we’re on the same page with Kim Wexler and Howard Hamlin, who are just so uninteresting. My biggest complaint last week was that the show had Ehrmantraut ready to deploy, and instead we were focusing on characters that just seemed irrelevant. His face is sallow, slack, yet somehow hard and flinty-the kind of mug a director loves, because it speaks even in silence. Certain actors have the extra something that just seems to hold the camera, and Banks is on. This was an excellent episode with real drama, real stakes and the incomparable Jonathan Banks. And Saul gets himself into more fine messes than Oliver Hardy.
Jimmy just wants to walk the straight and narrow, but he’s fighting his own nature and losing at every turn. And after several episodes, that seems to be the overarching theme of the show. Jimmy is trying so hard to stay above board, but when the moment comes in the interrogation, he can’t help himself and goes along with Mike’s plan to steal the detective’s notebook. In present-day-or at least prequel present-Mike enlists the help of Jimmy/Saul to stay ahead of the cops investigating the killings. The villains drive him to an abandoned alley where they’re planning his suicide, but Mike, as usual, is three steps ahead of them. This is the kind of writing that Vince Gilligan and his team have excelled at for years now. In an extended flashback, we see Mike avenge his son in glorious fashion. His son was murdered by crooked cops, and just before his death, Mike had to admit to him that he was crooked himself. Mike’s whole demeanor is the result of an almost unbearable combination of sadness and guilt. It was a tight, self-contained story that opens the show up in a huge new direction. I don’t know about you, but I loved this episode. One of our minor quibbles with Better Call Saul so far is has been that too much of the show was on the shoulders of Bob Odenkirk, but he finally got some respite last night.
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