'Better Call Saul' Recap: Of Banker Boxes and Cupholders
Warning: This recap for the “Bali Ha’i" episode of Better Call Saul contains spoilers.
In which Kim gets an offer for her dream job, and Mike’s association with Nacho turns into a nightmare.
Sweet Dreams Are Made of This
It’s 1:08 a.m., and Jimmy McGill can’t sleep. He has a dream job, which he hates, and his girlfriend won’t return his phone calls. After watching some TV — where he sees Davis & Main is running a commercial to draw Sandpiper clients, but minus his voiceover and showmanship — and playing basketball, bowling, and soccer with the weird straw balls in his corporate apartment, he has an idea. He takes his work clothes and drives all the way to Albuquerque, to his old home/office in the back of Mrs. Nguyen’s nail salon. Once he puts the chairs up on his desk and unfolds the sofa bed and flops into it, it’s nothing but zzzzzzs. The next morning, Mrs. Nguyen is unhappy to find him there — he’s all paid up, he reminds her — and asks him if he already lost his job, the fancy new job where they gave him a car just for working there. “I should be so lucky,” Jimmy answers.
Let Me Serenade You
Kim is just as unhappy in her apartment, and Jimmy’s the reason. She keeps looking at her answering machine as she gets ready for work, and the machine shows she has six messages. She ignores them, but when the phone rings just as she’s about to walk out the door, she stops to listen. It’s Jimmy, of course, and he starts singing to her, “Bali Ha’i.” “That completes our week-long tour of South Pacific,” he says after his big number. “You’re welcome. Tomorrow we begin our exploration of the Carpenters’ catalog. Of course, I’m open to requests. That’s right, all you gotta do is call me. Anytime. Call me.” In spite of herself, and how mad she should still be at him for the TV commercial mess, she smiles as he sings for her.
At the office, things are looking up for Kim, but despite how hard she worked to get back in Howard’s good graces, she doesn’t seem especially happy to be out of the HMM basement and back in her own office. When Howard comes in to tell Kim that Paige and Kevin, from the huge Mesa Bank deal Kim brought into the firm, are there for a meeting, he is surprised that she hasn’t already unpacked her things. On the walk to the conference room, she does take the time to make sure he knows she didn’t ask Chuck to talk to him on her behalf, to which Howard doesn’t respond.
Related: ‘Better Call Saul’ Postmortem: A ‘Breaking Bad’ Alum Talks About His Surprise Entry Into Mike’s Life
And then, we find out why Howard expects such loyalty from Kim, and why she seems so eager to please him: When Kim was an employee in the HMM mailroom, the firm paid her way through law school. She’s literally and actually indebted to Howard, which comes out when Rick Schweikart, the opposing counsel in the Sandpiper case, takes her out to a fancy lunch and offers her an even fancier job at his firm. He’s been impressed with her since her deft handling of the Kettleman case (something Jimmy helped with), he tells her, and he’d like her to come on board at Schweikart and Cokely, for a partner track position, where she can use their considerable resources to “really spread her wings.” They’d take her off Sandpiper — so no ethical dilemmas for her — and they’ll even pay off her law school debt to HMM. Kim looks floored… happy that she’s gotten this offer of a dream position, and that someone she respects has acknowledged her talents and hard work at HMM for 10 years. Still, she’s not quite as — overjoyed? — as might have been expected.
Say Tio
There’s nothing dreamy about Mike’s life these days, except that his face has healed enough that he feels comfortable visiting Kaylee. But that also brings about the potential for his worst nightmare; Tio Salamanca sends his associate Arturo to get Mike’s answer to Tio’s request that Mike take the hit for Tuco’s gun charge. Arturo is waiting on Mike’s front steps when Mike gets home, and he tells him he must respectfully say no to Tio. Mike knows that won’t be the end of it — he even concocts a DIY security system by putting carbon paper and printer paper under a mat on his front porch, so any footprints at the door will be captured by the carbon. That’s how he knows Arturo and another goon are waiting inside his house to attack him one night, and he impressively takes down the two men, less than half his age, with nothing but the butt of his gun. He’s truly shocked, though, and more terrified than we’ve ever seen the tough guy former cop, when Tio sends two scary dudes — his nephews, Leonel and Marco, the twins from Breaking Bad! — to watch Kaylee in the pool at the hotel where Mike is paying for his granddaughter and Stacey to live. Not only do the twins make sure Mike sees them watching Kaylee, one of them forms a gun with his fingers and fires it at the most important thing in Mike’s life.
So Mike agrees to meet with Tio at an ice cream shop after closing time. The twins and Arturo are there, too, as is Nacho, who pats Mike down when he comes in. Tio doesn’t care that Mike has a gun, though; he only cares that Mike isn’t wearing a wire. Mike sits down at Tio’s table, and he tells him — it’s no longer a request — that he will go the next day and tell the DA that the gun Tuco had was his. Mike says he won’t. Tio says he will, or Leonel and Marco will visit Kaylee and Stacey. Mike wants to discuss his payment, then. Tio says his payment is getting to live. “Not enough,” Mike replies. He wants $50,000. And yes, he’s willing to die for it. “Maybe I need the money more than you do,” Mike tells Tio, who’s amused that Mike has “giant balls.” Mike also has $50K, hand delivered by Nacho later that night. He promptly gives Nacho half the cash, telling him it’s only fair, because he didn’t make his Tuco problem go away for as long as he had promised. Nacho points out the obvious to him: if Tio ever finds out how the two of them set up Tuco, he’ll kill them both.
The Banker Box
Kim’s sitting in her HHM office, staring up at an empty banker’s box, that symbol of moving in or out of an office. Or maybe, for Kim, it’s more of a symbol of how easily she can slip out of favor with Howard, and how long he’ll make her pay for such an offense. Like when, as she’s getting ready to grab lunch, Howard has an assistant bring her a stack of Sandpiper documents he wants her to complete in about an hour. Instead, she walks out of the office and ends up at Fork, the restaurant and bar where Rich Schweikart tried to woo her to his law firm. She’s drinking his special drink, too, at the bar, at lunch time, and she takes out Rich’s business card and her cell phone. Before she makes the call, though, she sees something more interesting: a mark. A guy is kissing his wife goodbye outside the restaurant one minute, and the next he’s hitting on Kim with a drink and some painfully cheesy pickup lines. She plays along and then makes a call… to Jimmy. She wants to know how quickly he can meet her at Fork. She, as her scamming alter ego “Gizelle,” has convinced Dale the pickup artist that she and her brother, “Victor,” are on the verge of riches with a start up company that revolves around Internet dating. Dale is a “live one on the hook,” Kim tells Jimmy, who’s only too eager to ditch a day of tedious paperwork with Erin breathing down his neck to goof on some blowhard tool with Kim.
Cut to the next morning: as Jimmy is getting dressed for work, Kim is looking at a check, made out to Ice Station Zebra Associates for $10,000, for an investment, from Dale Gibson. Jimmy tells her he may know someone who can help her cash it — of course he does — but she says it’s better as a souvenir, and puts it on her mirror. Jimmy says he thought she’d be a bit happier that morning — the grift was all her idea, after all — and she tells him about her job offer. He thinks it’s great, and she says it is, especially since she thinks her prospects of promotion at HHM are dead. She tells him she just keeps thinking about him floating in that pool; he knew what he wanted, but she got in the way, she tells him. She thinks he took the job at Davis & Main because of her. He tells her that’s not true, that he took the job because it was the right decision. He has a steady paycheck, a car that’s all one color, and a place to live that’s more than five square feet (never mind that he still prefers to sleep in the old place). He got what he wanted, he tells her, and with the Schweikart position, she could have everything she wants. “What’s not to love about that?” he asks. “Yeah, what’s not to love,” she says, unconvincingly.
As they kiss goodbye and each get in their cars to go to work, Jimmy tries to put his cup, his gift from Kim, in his car’s cupholder again. This time, it’s too much. He may have everything he wants, except this; so he gets a tool out of his car and pries the cupholder loose, until his World’s 2nd Best Lawyer mug will fit into the space.
Legal Briefs:
— The drink Schweikart raves about at Fork, the one Kim later indulges in during her grift of Dale: a Moscow Mule, a “vintage” drink, as he and Kim joke, that is indeed almost always served in a copper mug.
— Mike is in trouble with the Salamancas, and now he’s going to be in trouble with the police, after he claims ownership of Tuco’s gun. Could this be the thing that leads him to become Gustavo Fring’s cleaner? Meaning, could this be the thing that brings Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) to Better Call Saul? Possibly before the end of Season 2?
Let’s hear your feedback, Saul fans: Are Jimmy and Kim determined to be unsatisfied with the jobs other people consider dream gigs? Why isn’t Kim more excited about the Schweikart and Cokely offer? What drives her to pull these scams with Jimmy? And who else thinks that check from Dale is going to come back to bite her and Jimmy in a big way? As for Mike, can he use his ex-cop status to avoid any charges for Tuco’s gun? And who’s the bigger threat: Mike to Nacho, or Nacho to Mike?
Better Call Saul airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on AMC
