Jimmy has officially joined the game. It's time to leave behind the tacky "World's 2nd Best Lawyer" mugs, the bulky Davis & Main sports bottles filled with either urine or vinegar, and other trinkets. Tragically, that even includes his trusty Suzuki Esteem, which had never seen more than $50 in its trunk but briefly burst at its seams with $7 million. Now, like the travel mug Kim once gifted him in happier times, his two-tone beauty is riddled with bullets, leaking and best left for dead in the middle of the desert.
The good news for Jimmy is that he doesn't meet a similar fate. He should have, but just as one of Lalo's rivals (or perhaps comrades, as it seems he robbed Peter to pay Paul) points a pistol straight at his face, Mike's sniper bullets save the day. The old man is a one-man killing machine, mowing down cartel members left and right, armed with automatic weapons and endless rounds. But Mike is patient and precise, and all but one of his targets fall in the hailstorm of battle.
It couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes, but Jimmy is jarred into stunned silence, confirming he isn't shot but barely able to babble, let alone deploy his silver tongue. Mike is tender in a way we've seen before, sympathetic to Jimmy being in over his head but weary from escorting another lost soul out of their personal crossroads and into the underworld. He's even more unnerved to discover that Jimmy has been candid with Kim about being in the middle of nowhere to pick up a small fortune from Marco and Leonel and ensure its arrival back to Albuquerque to post $7 million bail in Lalo's name—or Jose De Guzman's, as it were. For that matter, it's news to Mike that Jimmy and Kim are married, and Mike betrays a silent incredulity at their naïveté that speaks volumes.
The problem is, while Jimmy and Mike are mired in their own private "Pine Barrens," camping out by glowstick and lugging Lalo's loot under the oppressive southwestern sun (even I was thirsty from all those lingering shots on Jimmy's blistered lips and battered complexion, comparable to the rusted panel of his Esteem's rear passenger door), Kim is left to her own devices back home. Perhaps still reeling (or rejuvenated) from her recent confrontations with Mitch and Kevin and Mr. Acker, et al., she chooses to come at Lalo with straight talk, woman to man. Only, Lalo is a monster. Kim and Jimmy's pact to be forthright with one another has already run up against its limitations. Coming to Lalo with an acknowledgment that she knows the truth about who he is and where Jimmy is—and why—is going to hurt.
Jimmy's desperate longing to reunite with Kim, coupled with a heartening pep talk from Mike about his own loved ones he yearns to see again, ignites within him a true bravery that he could have easily shunned if he had summoned the courage to stay on a more straightforward path at several crucial junctures. As the lone surviving assassin closes in on them in an endless loop, resembling a Mad Max-style mercenary in the open West, Jimmy makes a bold move and steps into the open, his reflective space blanket almost serving as a suicidal SOS. (An entire essay could and should be dedicated to the symbolic significance of the space blanket in this episode to Jimmy, vis-à-vis Chuck.) Mike stumbles to his feet, readies his weapon, steadies his aim, and after an initial false shot, nails the deranged driver, leaving Jimmy gasping for breath and barely clinging to life—yet again.
As Mike tramples over the space blanket, he and his unlikely ally cling to their rifles and their compromised cash, one of them several steps ahead of Gus's nefarious plans and the other about to become $100,000 richer, but reeling from the sheer confusion of what they have just experienced and grappling with whom to trust and fear. The answer, of course, is that one must trust and fear no one and everyone simultaneously. None of this is a straightforward journey, and now Kim herself is at the mercy of someone else's narrow rules. She is in the game now.
