Better Call Saul season 3 episode 9 review: Jimmy and Irene; Kim’s scare
For Kim Wexler, she’s starting to realize that she’s biting off more than she can do. Mesa Verde is becoming more and more demanding, her relationship with Jimmy is strained, and it absolutely doesn’t help that she’s got Howard and HHM trying to mess with her.
Throughout tonight’s episode in general, Howard’s firm had their greedy little paws all over the place. Take, for example, with Chuck, as he tried to convince him that now was actually the time for him to hang it up. He was starting to get a sense of what an insurance liability he was going to become thanks to Jimmy’s interference. Meanwhile, he realized that he wasn’t exactly in a healthy place in order to do his job.
Jimmy also found a way to interfere further with Howard, going to him and confronting him about Sandpiper. If Howard thought that this was stressful, learning that Chuck was planning to sue him was even worse. Hey, Chuck knows his way around the courtroom, and this an issue that Howard is going to struggle to resolve.
What is Jimmy up to now?
He’s long been a master of elder law, but tonight, he showed that he’s also an expert at further manipulating members of the elderly in order to ensure that the best settlement came in. Enter Irene. Jimmy found a way to manipulate some of her friends to teal up with him after bribing her with some expensive shoes; basically, he painted a you-versus-her mentality among the group.
It certainly seemed to work at first, and that was before Jimmy got to the bingo hall at the end of the episode. He manipulated it so that she would be one of the Bingo recipients, making some of the other seniors resent her further. Does she really have the best interest of the entire group at heart? He’s implanted that in her mind.
Irene is still smart enough to know that her winning Bingo wasn’t the best thing in the world; she already realized that her friends all turned on her. This was when Jimmy comforted her / confronted her about the lawsuit. He pushed her to make the move in the interest of her friends … and he effectively got what he wanted. Jimmy is brilliant, but Jimmy is all sorts of sleazy. He went and told Kim that Sandpiper was celebrating at the end of the episode, and of course he wanted to enjoy a drink with her. The problem was that she was in the process of being swamped thanks to a new client … one that already was causing her a wide array of problems. To be specific, it caused her to crash her car in the closing seconds.
Mike’s new developments
After paying a visit from Lydia and actually submitting some tax information (something he was very resistant to do), all of a sudden he found himself far deeper in Gus Fring’s operation than ever before. It wasn’t the most eventful episode in the world for Mike, but it was enough for him to get a major step closer to where he is in the Breaking Bad canon.
Nacho’s trouble
Tonight, Nacho made a rather sad admission to his father: Someone was going to come to his shop and try to run it for a while, and that someone was Hector Salamanca. He had to tell him the truth about what was going on, for the sake of his own safety.
Final verdict
With there only being one episode left in Better Call Saul season 3, the story is starting to progress more across the board. Jimmy is playing dirtier and dirtier, and in the process, he may just stamp “Saul” on his forehead. An excellent episode, even if it did make us feel incredibly bad for Irene in the process. Grade: A-.
Where are things going on Better Call Saul?
(Photo: AMC.)