TV Review: Better Call Saul "Bingo"

Jimmy finds it’s not easy being sleazy. Yet.

Review by Brandon Wolfe

The road to Saul Goodman is a twistier one for Jimmy McGill than initially expected. Many Better Call Saul episodes thus far have seemed to indicate that the naïve young (-ish) attorney was only a hop, skip and a jump away from becoming the unscrupulous shyster we came to know on Breaking Bad. Yet “Bingo” shows that the path to becoming a strip-mall sleazeball was littered with moments of selfless virtue for Jimmy, at the steep cost of money and career advancement. Jimmy still has a lot of pesky integrity he’ll need to shake off before he completes his journey.

“Bingo” finds Jimmy experiencing some measure of success in his newfound focus on elder law, charming the old biddies at the nursing home as the zany bingo announcer. He’s earmarked a roomy office with a stellar view (even if that view is of downtown Albuquerque). Even Chuck seems to be showing some improvement, venturing outside for quick intervals of exposure therapy. Jimmy’s also found time to pull Mike out of the fire, creating an alibi for that purloined police notebook from last week. Things take a turn, seemingly for the better, at first, yet ultimately for the worse, when the Kettlemans re-enter Jimmy’s orbit. It seems the couple is clinging to their bogus claim of innocence to the point of delusion, obstinately turning up their noses at Kim Wexler’s very reasonable plea deal offer because it requires them to admit guilt and return the stolen money. They opt to take their legal business elsewhere and Jimmy is their next stop.

Jimmy is not as eager to receive these potential clients as he once was. For starters, their defection from Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill puts Kim in the professional doghouse, through no fault of her own. For seconds, Jimmy knows their case is inherently unwinnable, exacerbated by the fact that the Kettlemans won’t even admit guilt to him in private despite the fact that he once engaged in a tug-of-war with Mrs. K over the bag of money in question. The Kettlemans are only able to secure Jimmy’s services when they helpfully remind him that $30,000 of the money wound up in his pockets, for what he charitably referred to at the time as a “retainer.”

The Kettlemans are frustrating characters. They’re frustrating by design, of course, but also frustrating in construction. They are cartoonishly one-note in a way that no one in the extended Breaking Bad universe that Better Call Saul exists within has ever been. Mr. Kettleman is an emasculated simp barely able, or allowed, to murmur a word on his own behalf due to the domineering nature of his betrothed. Mrs. Kettleman is an even bigger problem. She’s a creation wrought of such spitefully faux-cheerful, willful delusion that she doesn’t register as an actual human being (Jimmy hilariously refers to them as Ned and Maude Flanders at one point, but those two actual cartoon characters are much more recognizably human). The sitcommy characterization of the Kettlemans stands as stark contrast to the nuance Vince Gilligan and his team have brought to even the most minor characters in this world. The only interesting read on them is if you squint and imagine them as shallow caricatures of Walt and Skylar.

Kim Wexler is another issue, albeit one less concerning. She’s a solid enough character, but her relationship with Jimmy is still very nebulous. How much history do the two have? Have they always solely been friends or has there been more? She seems like a nice enough lady, but what is it about her that compels him to throw away a shot at the big leagues to help her out of a jam? There’s still this tokenism surrounding Kim that the show can’t seem to shake. She’s there because there needs to be a girl, but the show hasn’t done enough brick-laying toward either her character or her ties to our hero.

The solution Jimmy concocts to resolve the Kettleman dilemma involves Mike, who puts his certain set of skills to use in locating and removing the bag of cash from the Kettlemans’ possession. Watching Mike be his immensely efficient self is always a joy, but this does beg the question of why Jimmy thought to employ Mike in this fashion. Sure, this is the sort of work he dispatched Mike to do on Breaking Bad, but at this point in the game, all Jimmy knows about Mike is that he’s a cop killer and toll booth attendant. He should have no knowledge that Mike is the MacGyver of sublegal odd jobs. Watching Mike in action and working with Jimmy is a pleasure, but it does seem more like a sop to Breaking Bad fans than an organic development.

I pick these nits only because Better Call Saul does so much right that it’s easier to discuss the manners in which is still needs a little work. The show has made Jimmy a much more nuanced and sympathetic figure in just seven episodes than in the entire run of Breaking Bad, and Bob Odenkirk is doing exemplary work here (his fit of self-loathing rage at episode’s end is devastating). The show just needs to fine-tune some of the non-Mike supporting characters in Jimmy’s world to be as compelling as he is. I have all the faith in the world that it’ll get there soon.

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