There's little reason to spend the precious minutes of an already overflowing episode mired in Mike's repetitive whiskey-fueled stumbles, or watching him channel Mr. Miyagi's spirit on some degenerates during his drunken journey home. Except for the fact that amidst ordering his final drink and breaking a nameless lowlife's arm, he reflects on a postcard of the Sydney Opera House, which is pinned up behind the bar. This very same opera house was masterminded by Werner's father, a source of immense pride and inspiration for Mike's fallen friend. As the wounded father of a slain son and (usually) doting grandfather to his lone granddaughter, Mike is acutely aware of the repercussions of his actions. He hasn't just taken a man's life in the course of doing business; he has extinguished an entire legacy, playing the role of god (or at least god's proxy) by ending the Ziegler bloodline's most revered living inheritor. It's no wonder he never aspired to make nice with Walter White. Yes, Walt was a raging narcissist, next to whom Werner was rich with virtue. But moving forward, it was crystal clear that Mike ought to avoid getting too familiar with any potential work pals while W-2'd with Madrigal Electromotive. (It is all the more poetic, then, that he met his end moments after parting with Jesse Pinkman, whom he let in like something closer to a second son.)
Kim's ultimatum to grumpy old Mr. Acker—who won't vacate his leased plot of land as stipulated so Mesa Verde can construct an ephemeral call center in the middle of nowhere—doesn't quite rise to the level of a fatal assault on his family's legacy. But to him, Schweikart & Cokley's insistence is perverse and only hardens his principle, namely that the Ackers have made good on that acreage since they built a house there and hunkered down in 1974, and he's not budging until the lease is up seven decades hence, by which time the next several generations of Ackers will have nurtured an association to that property all but priceless when placed side-by-side with some monument to corporate conquest.
Mr. Acker lays into Kim about her and her firm's fancy suits and cars, a righteous slobs-versus-snobs screed that sends Kim seething back to her car. But Mr. Acker doesn't know the half of what Kim went through as a child, growing up poor and itinerant and often reduced to roaming the streets barefoot and blue in her pajamas until she and her mom found the next landlord who would have them. He doesn't realize that her personal history has compelled her to work pro bono on behalf of the less fortunate, a task she was pulled away from so she could give the devil his due and haggle with a rancorous old ranch hand over dollars and sense. Turns out, he doesn't actually care. Even when Kim returns that night, makes herself vulnerable, and even offers to help him move out of pocket, Mr. Acker is so coarsened by the firm's machinations to that point that he questions her credibility to its core before beckoning her away from his door. In Mr. Acker's world, morality makes no allowance for half-measures, no matter how convincingly Kim makes the case—to herself as much as him—that integrity can be had in compromise. Or as Rich reminded her, "You have to give a little to get a little."
If Kim wields the law as a shield, Jimmy views it as both a hurdle and a tool. Yet "The Guy for This" eloquently illustrates their shared epiphany: whether heeding Kevin Wachtell's or Lalo Salamanca's call, "Once you're in, you're in." Werner never fully appreciated the gravity of his association, but Jimmy is far from a dreamer. He may talk at length ("the mouth," Lalo announces with semi-affection upon their introduction) and navigate the world as if shrouded in smoke and mirrors, but he has solidified into a cavalier realist. When Nacho first scoops Jimmy up outside the courthouse, and that ice cream cone tumbles onto the sidewalk, he's anxious and on his toes. When Lalo hires him to pass along talking points to Krazy 8 in jail that, when shared with detectives, might sabotage Gus's operation (unbeknownst to Jimmy), he's figuring out on the fly how to survive a situation with no compromise—only profit. By the time Nacho drops him back outside the courthouse, he can only slouch and stare at that sad ice cream cone, melted and ravaged by a colony of ants, a microcosm of nature's way. Jimmy felt emancipated from his identity as Chuck's little brother by blossoming into Saul, but from here on out, Saul is whoever the cartel needs him to be.
Unfortunately for Nacho, he's not quite living up to his father's expectations. Manuel appears at his son's swank bachelor pad, articulates his misgivings about his big, modern digs (the look on his face says enough), and describes an improbably generous offer he received for his shop. Nacho advises him to accept. Manuel is not surprised. He realizes Nacho shadow-brokered the offer, in a bid to nudge his father out of town for his own safety. To form, Manuel will not be moved. He goes full Mr. Acker on Nacho, raging on about the quality of life he labored to create and hoped to pass on as his legacy.
Alas, Nacho surpasses Jimmy, Kim, or even Mike when it comes to grasping the gravity of his tradeoffs. The best he can do is live long enough to elude either Lalo or Gus's leery gaze or the blunt end of their mistrust, so that he can eventually split under the cover of night and carve out a new path, not unlike what Jesse would later land on at the end of El Camino (though distinct from what Saul had to settle for as Gene). In a clandestine debrief with Gus and Tyrus about Saul's liaising with Krazy 8, Gus gives Nacho a narrow reprieve to continue as his inside man. But with DEA agents Hank Schrader and Steven Gomez (they're back) on the case, there's only so long Nacho can function as a de facto double agent straddling both sides of a simmering cartel war before his time runs out.
