Better Call Saul, Episode 5

From here on out, I'm going to play by the rules...there are clients out there who need me and I'm going to give them the best representation I know how to provide. I'm on the up and up okay? I will be good. Slippin' Jimmy? He's back in Cicero, dead and buried. (Jimmy McGill)

The man studied a VHS of Matlock to ascertain Andy Griffith's suit style in order to try and work a retirement home. The man advertised on the bottom of gelatin cups, using the phrase "Need a Will, Call McGill." I love this show, even when it's weird as hell, like it was last night.

Without any doubt, "Alpine Shepherd Boy" was the strangest hour of Better Call Saul thus far, but it's truthfully more the kind of show many of us expected when the series was first pitched. Saul Goodman is an odd duck and he's an opportunistic goose and he's always been closer to "Slip and Fall Jimmy" than anyone else, even if he tells himself the opposite. This week's episode focused on one serious matter, and then teased another in the final segment. Everything else was borderline surrealist comedy, but generally was very well executed.

Who sees a lawyer save a man's life by climbing up a billboard and then immediately sets a consultation with that attorney for legal assistance? Sure, James M. McGill's name might have been in my head, but I'd have then researched his history. A lawyer is responsible for freeing my ass or covering it, but not necessarily saving it from a burning building. So, back to the question, who would want to meet that lawyer the following day?

Well, in Better Call Saul's case, crazy people, elderly people, and crazier people. Jimmy drives up to an 1100-acre residence owned by one Big Ricky Sipes, who wants to hire McGill to help him secede from the United States, calling his estate the American Vatican City. He offers a million dollars, which hilariously turn out to be bills with his own face on them that will be accepted in the newly created territory. Strike one.

Next, Jimmy deals with a patent request from a man who created a voice and motion activated mechanism to help his children during potty training. Unfortunately, phrases like "Gosh, you're big, you're so big" and "Fill me up Chandler, put it in me" remind Jimmy (and everyone else) of what he eventually calls a sex toilet. This made me laugh out loud, but Jimmy wasn't smiling. Strike two. This scene was so awkward and uncomfortable but damn was it ever funny. Odenkirk made it even better. The Chandler therapy line was perfectly delivered.

Jimmy's third stop was at an elderly woman's home. She wants Jimmy to help her with a meticulous will and her main concern is what will happen to her treasured ceramic figurines, including one of an Alpine Shepherd Boy. He asks for and receives $140. Okay, made some money there. He wasn't lying to Chuck. He did have three consultations that day.

All three of these scenes were amusing, even if they felt mildly out of place for what we've come to expect from AMC. In retrospect, however, none of them seem all that outlandish. It fit, because it showed that after all of Jimmy's efforts, he still hasn't earned that respect he so desperately wants. This guy is still scraping the bottom of the barrel. He does, however, have a nice friendship, potentially more, with the lovely and intelligent Kim Wexler.

Rewinding for a moment, the cold open focused on events that literally picked up precisely where we left off last week, with the stolen newspaper and the neighbor watching Chuck leave a five-dollar bill under a rock in her driveway. Well, she called the police. We know Chuck can't just open the door to them, so he spouts off accurate legalese about probable cause. One officer has gone around the side of the house and sees various rations, including gas fuel, and thinks this guy might be a tweeker, so they burst down the door. Chuck ends up in the hospital. It was brief, just five minutes gone before the opening credits.

It all leads to the scene where Better Call Saul finally tells us more about Chuck's condition. Jimmy tells the doctor that his brother is "allergic to electricity", which Chuck says is officially termed "Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity". Electronic devices affect his nervous system. The doctor doesn't buy it and as she slyly turns on a device in his hospital bed, we're all supposed to know Chuck McGill has a mental problem. We already did, but this was where Jimmy sees it clearly and can't deny it anymore, even though he can't bring himself to bail on Chuck or commit him. Against doctor's orders and his own common sense, he takes his brother home and enables his insanity, because he doesn't want to hurt Chuck.

Again, in the most personal moments, Jimmy shows compassion and empathy. He's not a bad guy. He is a slimy lawyer who truly believes that if he could just find success, he would be on the up and up. We know based on Breaking Bad that it's never going to happen. Sure, Saul Goodman does have television spots, a better car, and a horrendous, but bought haircut, and he presumably has far more money, but he's still hanging out in gutters on the regular. It's just who he is, but for now, and maybe until he's in deep with Gus Fring and Walter White, Jimmy McGill still buys into his own lies and visions of credibility. This self-rationalization keeps him at a distance from the sludge in which he lives and the bargains he makes with morality.

Finally, he has a brief exchange with Mike Ehrmantraut, and the rest of "Alpine Shepherd Boy" sticks with the former Pennsylvania cop. Jonathan Banks is terrific in so many ways, among them his facial acting. He barely speaks during the finishing sequence, which first shows him checking up on a young woman, maybe his daughter, maybe someone he knew from the past. As the episode ends, his former police colleagues and local authorities arrive at his door. What did he do? Why are they in Albuquerque, most likely on a tip from the young woman who saw him as she left her home? That's for next week.

It wasn't the series' best episode thus far, but I still had a fun time watching it. The Matlock moment may be my favorite up to this point. It was so ridiculous, so asinine, that it was just perfect for that scenario. Odenkirk is so good as this character and absolutely nailed that sequence. Very few shows could pull off such an off kilter episode, but this one did. It was a fairly dramatic shift from what we're used to, but for the most part, it worked.

Follow me @GuyNamedJason, but you'll need to sign a non-disclosure agreement first before I show you the prototype for my sex toilet...errrrr electronic potty trainer.