“Bagman” takes Jimmy beyond borders into a bloody desert nightmare.
Last week,Better Call Saulhit a stunning new high.
The hour climaxed withBob Odenkirkwinning an Emmy, probably, with a burst of florid hallway egomania.
Credit: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
“I travel in worlds you might’t even imagine!”
Jimmy screamed at Howard (Patrick Fabian).
“I’m like a god in human clothing!
Lightning bolts shoot from my fingertips!”
I love this show so much when it’s a detail-fixated legal opera.
An indifferent judge united Jimmy and Kim (Rhea Seehorn) in matrimony.
Jimmy diverted the case against Lalo (Tony Dalton) with some witness-tampering maneuvers.
This week’s episode, “Bagman,” veers far in the opposite direction.
It’s an often wordless survival tale, shot on location along desert horizons.
Lalo sends Jimmy to pick up $7 million in bail money.
“You’re the right guy for this,” he explains.
“You’re nobody.”
That line cuts Mr.
Lightning Bolt down to size, and one day later he’s barely a bacterium.
Fancy courtroom acrobatics hold no power out here on the moral borderlands of the criminal frontier.
Jimmy gets the money from Lalo’s cousins.
Then he’s staring down the barrel of too many guns, victim of a bit of inter-cartel espionage.
Rescued by Mike (Jonathan Banks), he’s doomed to a hike through nowhere.
You recognize stylistic decisions from the sequel filmEl Camino.
Gilligan loves extreme long shots that shrink characters to tiny points on the infinite landscape.
There are narrative echoes back to the original show.
The destruction of Jimmy’s Esteem suggests the junkyarding ofBad’s own mascot vehicle, the meth-cooking RV.
I’m not sure if the references were intentional, and the effect was the opposite of repetitive.
In this penultimate season,Better Call Saulkeeps moving toward familiar events in impossible-to-predict ways.
After staring his own death in the face, Jimmy goes into shock.
“Bagman” digs intoBetter Call Saul’s own history.
Jimmy finally uses the space blanket in the climax, drawing the attention of the gunman hunting them.
Is he embracing Chuck’s memory?
Or, halfway dead from thirst, does he grab the blanket out of kamikaze spite?
The script, credited to Gordon Smith, is allusive without being specific.
The episode’s a marvel to look at, scenes staged with sweaty-exquisite perfection.
Two dialogue scenes stand out for prophetic edge.
On a cold desert night, Mike chastises Jimmy for telling Kim about his interactions with Lalo.
“She’s in the game now,” Mike says, lit up monster-green by his travel lights.
It’s a nice speech as close to a mantra as craggly Mike has ever allowed us.
Meanwhile, Kim does not wait patiently for her husband to get home.
She warned Jimmy off the mission before he left: “I don’t like this.
I don’t want you to do it.”
Worried, she takes matters into her own hands.
She speaks to Lalo like she’s engaging with a logical person.
Does she know how far she is from the world she knows?
Better Call Saulhas always been a roller coaster ride for me.
There are other things I’ve never been sure about, most of them Salamanca-adjacent.
Can the Goodman marriage survive?
What does it mean for Kim to be in “the game”?
In the span of two episodes,Saultook Saul from his highest highs to the lowest lows.
“Bagman” doesn’t even let him escape from his current predicament.
Our last sight of him, he’s lugging millions of dollars through another hot day.
He’s thirsty enough to drink his own urine, a cannibal for his own waste.
