Note: Major spoilers for the Better Call Saul season 2 episode "Amarillo", you have been warned.
I think I have gotten past the slow build feeling that the show has taken on in its second season, and have started to embrace the fact that good writing and production value, as this show definitely has, can make the build feel more worthwhile when the payoff finally shows up. I'm not saying that there wasn't anything really happening in the episode. If anything, there is a lot happening, it's just all building into a slower crescendo that I think is only going to get more intense as the season plugs along. For as much as I have felt that the season is moving along slower than I would like, I am also finding that as all of these things start to play out a little more, I get dragged deeper into the "well, what is going to happen next" line of thinking, and each episode keeps getting better and better each week.
We start off this week with Jimmy dressed in a cowboy hat and boots, waiting on the side of the road. A bus pulls up and the driver gets out, acting as if the bus has broken down, but instead we find out that Jimmy has paid the driver to stop here so he can talk to the passengers. This scene is brilliant in that it shows us what Jimmy will one day become, and that is Saul Goodman. For all of Jimmy's insecurities and hang-ups about his brother, and whether he feels comfortable in his own skin, Saul throws all that out the window and just let's Jimmy be what he is meant to be, and that is the Saul that we all got to see in Breaking Bad. He plays to the crowd on the bus beautifully, and before the scene is over, he has gotten every single one of them to fill out the information he wants them to, and he has his witnesses to go against Sandpiper in his class action lawsuit.
When Jimmy is in his Saul persona (even though they still aren't calling it that yet), he doesn't have to play exactly by the rules, and that is in full force here. Those that are closest to him know this about him, and that shows up in the next scene, in the board meeting where Chuck and Kim are in attendance. Chuck calls him out, and says that is sounds like he must be soliciting, which is a big no-no, and Jimmy assures them that this isn't the case. Kim and Chuck can tell that Jimmy is not being entirely truthful, and he tries to talk his way around the issue, and then finally says that he doesn't want there to be any sort of suspicion, so he will try to find a new way to get clients. This still doesn't really put Chuck or Kim's mind at ease, but they seem to at least give him the benefit of the doubt at this point.
As Jimmy tries to come up with a new way to reach clients, he comes up with the idea of making a television commercial and running it at strategic times when the residents at the various communities will be most likely to see it. He runs the idea by his boss, who seems somewhat open to the idea, but doesn't seem to be fully on board. Jimmy decides that he will make his own video and then show it to his boss so that he can see just what Jimmy is talking about. But first, he decides to show it to Kim, who loves the video, but then says she is surprised that Jimmy's boss went for it. Not telling her that it hasn't been approved yet, he lets her think that the commercial has already been approved and is set up to start airing soon.
Jimmy starts to take the video in to show it to his boss, but then thinks better of it after hearing what Kim had said the night before, so instead he decides to run the commercial first, and see what kind of response he gets. After it initially looks like there will be no response, the phones start ringing off the hook, and it looks like Jimmy's idea has really paid off. However, when Jimmy's boss finds out about the commercial, he calls Jimmy and is furious, despite the overwhelming response. He tells Jimmy that he will have to come in and meet with the partners, and things don't look good for Jimmy.
Also during this episode, we see Mike talking to his daughter-in-law, and she informs him that she has heard gunshots at night. He volunteers to stay overnight, but she tells him not to worry about it. He instead stays in his car overnight outside the house, and finds out that the gunshots she thought she heard was just somebody throwing out newspapers in the driveways of the nearby houses. Content that everything is okay, Mike returns to work, only to get a phone call from her, telling him that it has happened again. When Mike shows up, she shows him a mark on the garage, that she says is from a bullet that has taken out a chunk of the wall. He doesn't tell her that he stayed out the whole night before, and instead that he wants her and her daughter to leave the house. Knowing that they can't really afford it, he takes on a job that he normally wouldn't do, but the guy asked for him by name and is paying big money. He shows up to find out about the job, and it is Nacho, and he tells Mike that he has someone he needs to get rid of.
I'm not really sure what is going on with the daughter-in-law, whether she is maybe playing Mike to get more money, or if she has just turned paranoid for some reason and is just imaging things happening in the middle of the night. I assume they will elaborating on this in the coming weeks, so I won't speculate too much on it for now. As far as Nacho goes, he didn't say who he needs to get rid of, but since it was the final scene of the episode, I imagine that when we find out who it is, it will be a big deal. I'm thinking it could be either his uncle Tuco, or maybe even Jimmy for some reason, or perhaps an unknown third party at this time (I have my fingers crossed that it has something to do with Gus Fring, a character from Breaking Bad that I think would add a whole new dynamic to this show). Once again, I can speculate all day, but will just have to wait until next week to find out.
As far as the Jimmy storyline goes, I think they did a really good job this week of showing how Jimmy is so determined to prove himself to both Kim and Chuck, that is willing to bend the rules further and further, while trying to make them think that he is doing everything on the up and up, and doesn't have a lot of regard for what other problems he is causing in the meantime. I feel like he had to know that running the commercial was a bad idea, but that maybe he just thought the good that would likely come of it would be enough to make his boss forget that he did this without approval. I'm afraid he has caused a huge rift at his new job, and may even end up fired over this whole situation, which would certainly put him on his path to become full time Saul instead of Jimmy, as the more bridges he burns, the worse things are going to get for him.
I'm extremely anxious to see the next episode at this point, as I feel that the train is starting to pick up steam before it inevitably jumps the tracks in the coming episodes. I really feel like the season has to started really find its footing, and we are starting to see where things are heading, and I just hope that it keeps on picking up that steam as it goes until we get to a huge climax and hopefully some really exciting episodes. The way things are going, I think that is going to be sooner rather than later.
My rating for the episode is 7.5/10
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