'Better Call Saul' Recap: 'I'm Ready for My Close-up, Mr. McGill'
Warning: The recap for the “Amarillo" episode of Better Call Saul contains storyline and character spoilers.
In which Jimmy’s “showmanship” threatens to tank his career and relationship with Kim, and Mike’s family woes lead him to a dangerous reunion.
Waltz Across Texas
Sporting his Matlock suit and a white cowboy hat to match, Jimmy is in Amarillo, where he’s paid off a bus driver to fake a breakdown. While the driver is pretending to tinker with the engine, Jimmy boards the bus — full of residents of a local Sandpiper assisted living community — and seeks out Alma May Urbano. Ms. Urbano responded to one of Davis & Main’s mailers about the class action case against Sandpiper, but Jimmy hasn’t been able to get into the facility to chat with her. He also knows that the ears of her fellow Sandpiper-ans will perk up when he tells her she may have been overcharged by the company, and by the time the driver reboards the bus and gets the seniors to their lunch stop at Birdie’s Homestyle Buffet, Jimmy’s charms have made his trip a fruitful one.
“Nothing makes me sadder than to see people of the greatest generation, people like my own Nana and Bobo, getting overcharged by some great big company, even if it was an accident,” he tells them, signing up 24 new clients for Davis & Main before he heads back to the ABQ.
Chuck Amuck
In a meeting at the HMM offices, Cliff calls out Jimmy’s success in procuring the new clients in Texas, and everyone is thrilled… except grumpy Chuck, who wants to know how Jimmy turned one response card into 24 clients. He’s suspicious of Slippin’ Jimmy, and clearly looking to interrupt his little brother’s hot streak, so he tells Howard, Cliff, and the rest of the class action team that opposing counsel might conclude there has been some solicitation — a disbarrable offense — in play when they see the difference in those numbers.
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Jimmy, still shaken by Chuck’s sudden presence in the meetings at HMM, recovers in time to say it’s all the result of gossip among the Sandpiper residents. “Is it any surprise they wanna speak with a guy who is there to show them they may have money coming their way?” he asks. “I gotta tell ya, with all that in mind, I shoulda done better.”
The rest of the room is satisfied with that explanation, but Chuck is none too pleased with the egg on his face. He tries to recover — “The price of excellence is vigilance,” he tells everyone — but Jimmy has once again charmed his way out of potential disaster.
Except with Kim. She moves her feet when Jimmy tries to play footsie under the table, prompting him to speak up and tell everyone he understands Chuck’s concerns, and will find another way to sign up new clients. Cliff tells him he’s in charge of client outreach, so go forward.
After the meeting, Jimmy tries to charm his way past Kim’s questions about how he really signed on the Amarillo clients, but she spells things out for him, again. “You know I believe in you. But then I made my beliefs known to them, and now everything you do reflects back on me with Howard,” she says. “I talked him into going out on a limb for you, too. Do you understand? It’s my word, my judgment. You and I both know you can do this job. But please, you just have to do it the right way.”
The Ehrmantrauts
During a visit to his granddaughter, Kaylee, and daughter-in-law Stacey, Stacey accepts cash from Mike, and tells him she’s worried about gunshots she keeps hearing during the night. She called the cops, she tells him, but when they arrived, they found nothing. Mike offers to camp out on her couch to keep her and Kaylee safe, but she refuses. So, Mike being Mike, he parks his car outside Stacey’s house, and keeps watch all night, with a pimento sandwich and a baseball game on the radio. In the middle of the night, he hears a noise that sounds like gunshots and takes his gun out of the glove compartment. As the noises grow closer, he sees the source: a station wagon driver delivering newspapers. The thump of the papers hitting the ground — back in the good old days, when newspapers were just that thick — is what Stacey has been hearing, Mike concludes, and after staying up all night, he goes off to work at the parking lot, Stacey none the wiser about his recon.
As soon as he gets to his job, though, he gets a frantic call from Stacey, and speeds off to her house. When he gets out of his car, she immediately points to a nick on the corner of her house. It wasn’t there before, she insists, and she heard gunshots again the previous night. Mike, having witnessed the noise, gently suggests maybe she dreamt it. That makes her even more hysterical, so he tells her he believes her. “We’re getting you and Kaylee out of this house, end of story,” he tells a relieved Stacey.
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That’s going to require more cash than either of the Ehrmantrauts currently possess, though, so Mike pays a visit to his shady veterinarian friend, asking for any well-paying side hustles he may know about. The vet says he knows a loan shark, but Mike’s not into breaking legs. He takes a $200 bodyguard job, but the vet tells him, “You want next level pay, you gotta do next level work.”
The vet calls Mike later with good news — depending on how you look at it: Someone has a next level job, and is willing to pay serious money, and has specifically requested Mike.
Mike takes a meeting with this new client, who turns out to be Nacho. “I’ve got a problem,” Nacho says. “I can’t solve it myself.”
Mike: “This problem… is it a ‘who’ or a ‘what’?”
Nacho: “There’s a guy. I need him to go away.”
Showmanship
Jimmy, ever creative, does come up with another plan to attract Sandpiper clients: He wants to make a TV commercial. He pitches the idea to Cliff, who’s in a hurry to leave the office. The boss doesn’t say no, but isn’t enthusiastic about the idea, either, telling Jimmy the firm made a TV ad once, and that he’s willing to discuss it the next week.
Jimmy, of course, reads that as “go make a commercial,” which he does after viewing Davis & Main’s previous ad and declaring it showmanship-free. He hires a pair of film students to help make his vision a reality, and goes to the home of his client Mrs. Strauss — aka the owner of the alpine shepherd boy Hummel figurine from Season 1 — for the commercial’s setting. Mrs. Strauss is also starring as the victim of an assisted living facility scam in Jimmy’s vision, and as she descends the stairway via her motorized stairlift, she announces, “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. McGill.”
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The commercial is effective, and despite the sometimes questionable choices of the man who will someday select Saul Goodman’s wardrobe, tasteful. When Jimmy shows it to Kim, she’s impressed, telling him it looks professionally done. He assures her it’s American Bar Association compliant, too.
The next day at the office, he goes to Cliff’s office to talk, but hears him playing his guitar and turns away. He goes back to his office, gets the number for the TV station in Colorado Springs and asks his assistant, Omar, when the last FedEx is going out. Yes, Jimmy bought ad time, and is shipping a videotape of the commercial to the station.
On the day the commercial runs — during the first ad break in the afternoon airing of Murder, She Wrote, a favorite show of assisted living dwellers everywhere — Jimmy nervously waits at the office for the calls to come in, but they don’t. For a few minutes. The phones soon light up with requests for more info, and thinks he’s made a good call. Until the call he gets from Cliff.
Kim and Jimmy are watching a movie at his apartment when Cliff calls, so angry that he doesn’t even say hello. “You ran a commercial?!” he yells at Jimmy.
“To be fair, you did tell me client outreach was my department,” Jimmy says, only angering Cliff more with his disingenuousness.
“Howard told me you were a little eccentric,” Cliff says. “He didn’t tell me you were a goddamn arsonist.” He demands Jimmy show up at the office the next morning, at 8 a.m., ready to show the commercial to the partners at the firm.
Kim, meanwhile, thinks Cliff was calling to heap more praise upon “golden boy” Jimmy. And Jimmy lets her think that, before asking what he missed in the movie they’re watching.
“Did anything blow up yet?”
Legal Briefs:
* That song playing in Jimmy’s opening scene in Amarillo is Ernest Tubb’s “Waltz Across Texas.”
* Kim and Jimmy watch the 1968 thriller Ice Station Zebra, and Jimmy mentions Howard Hughes would give the movie a good review. It’s true; Hughes was so obsessed with the movie he would order the programmers at the Las Vegas TV station he owned to play it whenever he wanted to see it, which led to more than 100 airings of the movie.
* Yes, you do want to call that Davis & Main phone number from Jimmy’s commercial. It’s 505-242-7700. Go ahead.
Let’s hear your feedback, Saul fans: do you think Cliff will fire Jimmy over the TV ad, or will Jimmy’s results keep him employed? How long ‘til Kim finds out about this latest “eccentricity” by Jimmy? What about Mike: Is Stacey playing him to get cash and a nicer place to live? And what about this “problem guy” of Nacho’s? Could it be Tuco Salamanca? Could it be Gustavo Fring?! Is that how Gus and Mike meet?
Better Call Saul airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on AMC.
