Kim finds herself in a perplexing predicament, struggling to nudge her surroundings toward risk aversion. There's Bobby, her client—a young father with another on the way—who stares down the barrel of years in prison unless he pleads for a reduced sentence. Despite his record and the predictable outcome of a trial, Bobby stubbornly believes that the spark in his eye and the unborn child in his wife's belly will charm any panel of twelve. And then there's Jimmy, who's made the impulsive leap to start his own business as Saul Goodman, a black-market cell-phone dealer turned lawyer for the delinquent and downtrodden. "I can't see it," she says over takeout, a ritual as much a part of their routine as practicing law. "You will," he promises, but Kim is already half-lost, blending into the background of his grandiose ideas like a peel-and-stick kitchen backsplash. She eventually finds herself somewhere between Jimmy and Saul, urging Bobby to take the DA's deal, but it's clear that while Jimmy is more self-assured than ever, their identity as a couple is in a crisis that needs counseling.
At least Kim has time to reflect on who she is independent of Jimmy now that Jimmy is inseparable from Saul. Casper, Kai, and the rest of Werner's crew are a shell without their foreman, whom Mike had to put down after his disappearing act from the Superlab site. "He was worth 50 of you," Casper growls as Mike hands him plane tickets back to Europe with little time to waste. For the late Mr. Ziegler's laborers, it's a mixed blessing to be hastily and temporarily recalled from their duties as Gus scrambles to cover his tracks after having to expose his operation to Lalo.
But Gus's efforts are only superficial; he merely gave Lalo a tour of his supposed chicken chiller. This was after Lalo came around Gus's chicken farm with Juan Bolsa to snoop and ask questions about why some of the Salamanca product was compromised. Gus pinned the whole mess on poor Werner, insisting the architect got greedy and went on the lam with a couple kilos in tow, forcing Gus to improvise and filter in some subpar local smack. Bolsa implored Lalo to appreciate that with Gus, it's all business and never personal, but Lalo reminded him of the time Hector shot Gus's partner in cold blood south of the border, making it clear that Fring's motives are mortally intertwined.
All of this underscores how, despite Jimmy and Gus's apparent polar opposite personas, they are both perennial outsiders tunneling their way towards commanding respect. And each has committed to compartmentalizing their vulnerabilities in order to shrug off the low expectations of naysayers and nemeses from their past. Gus has evolved into a stoic brute, prone to cautioning combustible allies like Mike about transgressing even slightly, no matter how heavy a toll their work takes on the soul. Jimmy, on the other hand, has finally blossomed into an overqualified huckster eager to exploit his second chance without Chuck or anyone else's choice words. The once-timid Mr. McGill, Esq., has soared off unfettered as the garrulous Saul Goodman.
The scene where Saul erects a carnival-style tent and convenes a gathering of Juggalo-inspired followers to acquire half-price burner phones, effectively using it as a down payment for future legal services, is a vivid illustration of his charismatic appeal. Dressed in a pastel suit that rekindles the "Inflatable" glory of his past, with a hairdo more evangelistic bouffant than his later, iconic hangdog style, Saul weaves a tale of his reputation as the "magic man" of criminal defense to junkies and lowlifes from afar. (Huell is more than happy to serve as a living testament to his legendary ability to make prison sentences disappear.) This spectacular exhibition, hastily assembled under the cover of night, is the exact opposite of how the Salamanca clan—now led by Lalo, with Nacho and Krazy 8 as his wary lieutenants—conducts its business of collecting money from corner men and ladies armed with sawed-off shotguns, like middlewoman Mouse, in a monotonous, workmanlike fashion while sweating through the daytime hours.
The question looms: how much does Jimmy silently absorb from spending time around Lalo, whom we know from Breaking Bad crosses paths with him roughly concurrent to his dealings with Gus? And does all of this, taken into account alongside his imminent and ruinous run-in with Walter White, prepare the future Gene Takovic to take out Jeff the cabby (Don Harvey), who exposes him as Saul once and for all at a lonely bench in that Omaha mall? We'll likely have to wait until at least this time next year for the answer to that. Gene may be weary of running from himself, but Saul has only just begun to hit his stride.
