Note: Major spoilers for the Better Call Saul season 2 episode "Cobbler", you have been warned.
Despite the fact that I think the show has started off to a bit of a slow start for its sophomore season, I still find myself being sucked into the anxiously waiting to see what happens next scenario. I don't know if it is my deep admiration for Breaking Bad, and knowing that there are likely big things on the horizon, or if it is just that the way the show is written is supposed to make me feel that way. This week's episode certainly ended on a high note, and there were several very good scenes throughout the course of the episode, but I still felt like a lot of the time, I just wanted the episode to get to the point already.
The episode starts with Chuck in his house, still with all the electrical items turned off around his house, and he is trying to play the piano. After his boss shows up to tell him that Jimmy has taken on a job at the other firm, Chuck clearly doesn't take the news well, and it appears that he has decided to leave the house and go in to work to see Jimmy at the meeting between the two firms that happens later in the show. I felt that this scene was pretty good at continuing to develop Chuck. I feel bad for him half the time, but it sure feels that he is going out of his way to make sure that Jimmy doesn't succeed. He is a very interesting character, as I don't know if I should like him or hate him.
Next we see Pryce showing up at the police station to further discuss his missing baseball cards, and Mike sees him come in. Mike tells him that the police are just trying to set him up to confess to the drugs that he was hiding in his house, but Pryce doesn't believe him. Mike says he will take care of it and will find the missing baseball cards, and Pryce reluctantly agrees. Mike then goes to Nacho's place of business (his dad's auto body shop), and tells Nacho that if he doesn't return the baseball cards, he is going to tell his uncle Tuco that he has been doing side business, and Nacho decides that the wrath of Tuco is not worth the trouble, and so he says he will return them after hearing Mike's offer (more on that later).
We then go to the meeting between the two firms, and everyone is surprised to see Chuck show up. After the meeting, Chuck tries to talk to Jimmy, but Jimmy really doesn't want anything to do with him. They have a brief conversation, and then Jimmy leaves. It is very clear in this scene that Chuck is being nothing more than an instigator, and it is eating at Jimmy that his brother would only come out to (hopefully) see him fail. I still think that the dynamic between the two and whether or not Chuck is really out to sabotage him or if he genuinely is hoping that Jimmy will just come into his own and prove him wrong. I think it is the former, but I guess only time will tell.
Nacho, Mike, and Pryce all show up at the normal meeting spot, and Pryce gets his baseball cards back. In exchange, he has to give up his yellow Hummer, which Nacho is planning on breaking down for scrap, and so he is making a good profit off of the deal. Afterwards, Mike tells Pryce that he is going to need to go to the police station to tell them he found his baseball cards, but first he calls Jimmy to go to the police station with him.
To get the cops to accept that Pryce found his cards and can drop the case, Jimmy tells them that what he was really hiding was some sexual fetish videos that he had made. This is a big whopper, but it reminds me of some of the excuses that we saw Saul Goodman make in Breaking Bad, where he just goes so over the top, that its hard to question him on it. To take this even further, he actually has Pryce make one of his "squat cobbler" videos to show to the cops so that they won't think he's making it up.
At the end of the episode, Jimmy and Kim are eating pie (yes, the ones he bought to make the video with, but these were the "untouched" pies). Jimmy relays the story to Kim, and she gets visibly up when she finds out that he fabricated evidence (the video he made), and tells him that he could lose his license to practice for doing something so stupid. She says that she doesn't want to ever hear about anything like that again, and he says, "Don't worry, you won't ever hear about it again." We all take this as he just isn't going to tell her about it when he does it again, as opposed to realizing that what he did was stupid and not doing it again.
As I said above, I felt that the episode was a better than last weeks, but I was still hoping for it to pick up pace a little more. There is still a long ways to go in the season, so I'm sure that it will pick up a bit in the next few episodes, but I just keeping waiting for something big to open up, and it just hasn't happened yet.
There were several very strong scenes in the episode. When Mike goes to visit Nacho at the auto body shop, I think this was one of the better scenes in the series so far. Mike just adds something extra to all the scenes he is in, just as he did in Breaking Bad. The other scene is the end scene with Jimmy and Kim. The way it goes from all fun and games to being so serious, it was a very well filmed scene and really reminds me just why I started liking the show to begin with, and Breaking Bad before it. The writing is just so well done, and the way these scenes are filmed, they just suck you in and make you hungry for more.
My rating for the episode is 7/10
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