Note: Major spoilers for the Better Call Saul season 2 premiere, you have been warned.
Better Call Saul, the prequel series to my favorite television show of all time, Breaking Bad, has now officially started its second season, and unfortunately, I feel that it started off with more a whimper than anything else. I have been looking forward to the return of this show since the first season ended, as I really felt that the first season did a good job of distancing itself from Breaking Bad, while still keeping that overall feeling and keeping some of the links to Breaking Bad. I guess I was just hoping for more from this episode than we got.
After a brief intro showing what has become of Saul/Jimmy after the events in Breaking Bad (working as a manager at Cinnabon), the episode really starts off with Jimmy turning down the job that Kim had lined up for him. He doesn't really give a reason, just turns it down and walks away. He then stops and talks to Mike Ehrmantraut on the way out and questions why they gave back all the money at the end of the first season, and says he will never make that mistake again.
Next we see Mike about to take on another job with the pharmaceutical IT guy from the first season, but after seeing the new wildly painted Hummer that the guy has bought, Mike decides its time to step away from this job, as the guy doesn't understand what it takes to be successful as illegally selling drugs to dangerous criminals. The guy does the sell anyway, and the drug dealer he has been dealing with (Nacho) finds out where he lives during the exchange, proving that Mike was right.
We now go back to Jimmy, who is lounging in some pool at a hotel. Turns out he is using someone else's name and charging their room to get free drinks and food. Kim shows up and gets upset with Jimmy for turning down the job, as he tries to explain why he did it. The best explanation he can give is that he is just being himself, aka Slippin' Jimmy the con artist, and then he shows her what he means by scamming some douchebag at the bar that was talking about the stock market into buying him and Kim a bunch of drinks and then leaving abruptly. Kim and Jimmy then go home together.
The next morning, Kim is going back to work and Jimmy is quite obviously upset and wants her to just come with him and repeat the same thing over again. However, Kim knows that she has responsibility, and goes to work while Jimmy tells her that he has somewhere he needs to be anyway.
Cut back to the pharmaceutical IT guy, and the police show up at his house. The place has been ransacked and he talks about how his baseball cards have all been stolen, and he wants the police to find them before they can be sold to a pawn shop or a collector. The police sense that there is something suspicious going on, and they discover a hidden area behind his couch where something has been hidden away. They don't say it outright, but we get the idea that they are on to him for stashing drugs from his company and then selling them off.
Back to Jimmy in the pool again, and he is calling Kim trying to get her to come there, because he has found an easy mark. After he calls and leaves several messages, he then calls one more time, but this time it is to the people who offered him a job at the beginning, and he decides to take the job. When he shows up, everybody is welcoming him in, shaking his hand, making a big deal about him. He gets his own office and his own assistant. It looks like he has everything he needs, but then he sees a light switch on the wall that says "Do not turn off for any reason." He goes over to the light switch, and he can't help but to remove the sign and turn the switch off. He looks around and it looks like the switch did nothing. He flips the switch back to on, and the episode ends.
Overall, I was just thinking most of the time, "Come on, let's get on with this." I felt that there was a lot of build up to something, but then there was never any payoff. He said he was never going to make that mistake again about the money at the beginning, but by the end of the episode, here he was going back to trying to do the right thing. I understand that there is still a long ways to go in the story, and they have already alluded to the fact that he can't just leave well enough alone (the light switch scene), but I feel like we get the point already and didn't need the full 46 minutes of the episode to see this in action. I also found it weird that they did so much with the pharmaceutical guy, but then once again, no payoff. The cops appear to be on to him, but nothing really happened. I'm sure that will get tied up in the next episode, but still, I just felt like with the season 2 premiere, we needed a little more, I don't know, but just something.
Hopefully this episode was just a way to settle into the season, get a few balls rolling, and then let them pick up steam as they roll down hill over the next few episodes in the season. The first season took a little bit to get rolling as well, so I'm going to try not to jump to too many conclusions just yet. I will try to hold off better judgement until next week, but so far, I just feel that it was a bit of an underwhelming start.
My rating for the episode is 6/10
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