Better Call Saul season 4 episode 5 review: The flash-forward and more

We feel like we could almost do this entire Better Call Saul season 4 episode 5 review about the flash-forward at the start of it. After all, the series actually dove into the Breaking Bad timeline briefly to give us a glimpse of the last time presumably that Saul Goodman saw Francesca before fleeing and officially becoming Gene in Omaha.

That moment was a good example of this character in crisis, and it was a far cry from his crisis that we saw during the episode: The character getting mugged after taking his cell-phone trade to the streets at night. He had found a way to capitalize on the paranoia of others for profit, but in doing so, he set himself up for danger. He was trying to live like his old self, but at the end of the episode it felt like he was convinced that this wasn’t who he wanted to be — he got rid of the window display and everything.

Of course, one of the things that we do know is that this regression back to James McGill and away from Slippin’ Jimmy is pretty short-lived.

Meanwhile, tonight Kim found herself in a position where her helping her assistant got in the way of her job at Mesa Verde, and questions arose as to how committed she was to the cause. We also saw Howard at the courthouse tonight, struggling mightily with insomnia and basically looking like garbage. We think that he was struggling with Chuck’s death more than Jimmy is; yet, he didn’t want to share too much as to what was going on with Jimmy.

After seeing Howard, Jimmy had a PPD check-in where he made it clear that he was ready to get back to being a lawyer again the moment that he could. He wasn’t giving up on that.

As for Mike…

This week, he did his part in order to plan the excavation operation as a part of his work for Gus Fring. That involved him bringing in and working with a specialized group of people. The main point of this story was to give a good sense as to what this operation was; not only that, but where it could go moving forward. These are more seeds that Breaking Bad will sprout, but this was not the strongest Mike story of the season. It just felt like a long way to go for a story that was not that jam-packed when it comes to activity.

Basically, the reminder we got tonight is that the operation Gus wanted to set up was not a particularly-cheap one.

CarterMatt Verdict

While we do think that Better Call Saul season 4 episode 5 was a little bit imbalanced, it was certainly still entertaining from start to finish. The flash-forward to us is perhaps the most exciting, largely because we do think of this as us getting a chance to learn about something we didn’t know about before.

What did you think about Better Call Saul season 4 episode 5 overall? Be sure to share right now in the attached comments!

(Photo: AMC.)