Jimmy gives his first great performance
A metronome sways like an inverted pendulum.
Fingers flitter across piano keys.
Chuck messes up, starts over.
Credit: Ursula Coyote/AMC
Chucks home looks like a mausoleum of chiaroscuro loneliness.
He messes up again, and theres a rapping at the door.
Its Howard entreating entrance at Chucks chamber door, his arms full of groceries.
Its a complex case.
Definitely not a two-man job.
Chucks face tenses like a clenched fist.
Howard tells him that Jimmy is working for D&M.
Chuck mulls over this revelation.
Jimmy is a lawyer a real lawyer; the good news seems to carve more wrinkles into Chucks face.
(I know it was you, Chuck.
You broke my heart.)
But this problem between Chuck and Jimmy it isnotbusiness.
Chuck sits back at the piano, eyes glistening.
The metronome ticks away as Chuck becomes more and more out of sync with the outside world.
The row of rounded lights resembles a runway, or maybe the lanterns carried by souls stranded in limbo.
She rearranges the folders so she can sit next to Jimmy and play footsie.
Jimmy and Kim step into the parking garage to sneak a smoke.
They talk the future.
Jimmys doing well at D&M, and they like him.
Really, he wants to be closer to Kim: J&K.
We definitely…gotta get a smoker, he says of their hypothetical house together.
A swath of light cuts across them as whorls of smoke writhe up.
The dialogue is rife with contradictions, as is Jimmys fleeting existence as an up-and-coming, honest-to-God lawyer.
Jimmy, Im so happy for you, she says.
Theyre a good couple of course they wont last.
He proudly puts it in his cupholder.
Mrs. Nguyen stands cross-armed and tense, her sweater the same color as Jimmys recently departed car.
The car seems to merge with her as its reflection gleams against the window.
Til we meet again, Jimmy says, bidding her adieu.
Must be metric, he muses.
Mike tells the client hell retrieve the baseball cards, but, oh, itll cost him.
Mike shows up to the auto shop where Nacho works.
Dont have a go at upset him, okay?
He tells Jimmy Nice job, something that no one has yet said to our mini-mall Clarence Darrow.
Chuck, swaddled in his space blanket-lined lawyer garb (Jimmys idea), enters.
Kim puts her hand on Jimmys leg, and Jimmy goes on.
After the meeting, Jimmy asks Chuck why hes here.
My name is on the side of the building, Chuck says.
But…why is Chuck here?
With a smile: To bear witness.
Mike shows up, asks Jimmy if hes still morally flexible.
Jimmy meets with the police to defend Mikes client, now Jimmys client.
The police dont have to push the guy too hard hes as bad at lying as Jerry Lundegaard.
Why did the flop-sweaty nerd have a secret compartment in his wall?
Jimmy cuts in, telling the client to leave.
This unnamed wealthy man has a peculiar proclivity: He gets off by watching men sit on pies.
Like, literal pies.
Sitting on pies and crying.
Jimmy and his client go as far as actually making a video of him sitting on pies while crying.
Ladies and gentlemen, Saul Goodman, performer at law.
Later, Jimmy sits in bed with Kim.
Lamps glow luminously on either side of them.
Spread out before them is a pie one that his client didnt sit in.
(Jimmy bought extra so they could do multiple takes.)
When Kim asks about the pie, Jimmy tells her the story.
He tells her everything, describing the case as pro bono and harmless.
But she doesnt react the way he expects and chastises him for endangering his career by falsifying evidence.
Jimmy, she says, you cant tell me things like that anymore.
She has a great face, as Cheever said, but in it we see great sadness.
The camera moves further away while the lamps keep glowing.
The moral bottom has dropped out of Jimmys world without changing a mote of sunlight.
