Jackson Ball reviews the ninth episode of Better Call Saul…
It’s hard to believe it but the inaugural season of Better Call Saul is almost over. As we enter the show’s penultimate episode, entitled ‘Pimento’, we find the McGill brothers side-by-side, marching into the battleground of civil law.
Warning! Spoilers Ahead – You have been warned!
Following on from the developments of Episode 8, Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and Chuck (Michael McKean) find themselves embarking on a legal battle with enormous potential, unearthing the nefarious dealings of a local elderly home.
However, before focusing on the trials and tribulations of the suit-wearing siblings, we are treated to yet more golden moments from the effortlessly cool Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks). This time around Mike is doing a ‘little job on the side’; which involves him acting as protection for a particularly hapless individual who is about to enter into an underground, drug transaction.
Armed with nothing more than a cheese and pimento sandwich, Mike manages to eliminate two ‘professional rivals’ to secure the job, in a scene that also features a memorable cameo from Steven Ogg, aka Grand Theft Auto V’s Trevor Phillips.
This week’s subplot involving Mike may have been the most finely-tuned yet. It once again injected the show with a bit of that criminal-underground tension that we know and love, contrasting perfectly in an episode heavy with legal-jargon and bureaucracy.
That’s not to say that the legal-drama side of the show can’t provide its own share of surprises and thrills. In fact, that is exactly where the biggest shock of Episode 9, and perhaps the entire series, comes from.
After Chuck convinces Jimmy that their case is too large for them alone, they conclude that the best course of action is to enlist the help of Hamlin Hamlin McGill. However, to the brothers’ horror, pantomime-villain Howard Hamlin agrees to take the case but refuses to give Jimmy a job, cutting him out entirely. Just another typically dastardly move from Hamlin… or was it?
The episode’s real suckerpunch is delivered when Jimmy discovers that it was, in fact, his own brother Chuck that had demanded the stipulation not to hire him. It’s a revelation that rocks the foundations of the brother’s relationship and unearths a deep seeded resentment from the previously docile Chuck. It’s easily Michael McKean’s stand-out moment of the entire series.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnc360pUDRI&list=PL18yMRIfoszFLSgML6ddazw180SXMvMz5&feature=player_embedded
Originally published April 8, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
