On last week's episode of AMC's Better Call Saul , increasingly unethical lawyer Jimmy McGill got in hot water with his new boss at Davis & Main when he wrote, shot, and aired a commercial for the law firm — without running it by the partners first. Although the "experiment" was a resounding success, with phone calls flooding the offices for hours and days afterwards, Clifford Main was not amused with his newest hire. The hour ended with Jimmy being called into an early morning meeting with the partners, making viewers wonder: was this the end of Jimmy's law career?
Not quite, as it turns out… but it got very, very close to the end. Clifford told Jimmy that, the success of the commercial notwithstanding, this infraction would count as both strikes one and two, and that Jimmy would be working under increased levels of scrutiny from here on out. Although Jimmy tried to smooth things over by insisting that Client Outreach was "his" department, Cliff was having none of it. In fact, he even told Jimmy that initially the partners had voted 2-to-1 to immediately fire him with cause.
Fortunately, that didn't come to pass, and Jimmy survived to see another day of employment at David & Main. But as Breaking Bad fans know, Jimmy's days there have been numbered from the beginning, since we know he eventually ends up running a private practice in a strip mall under the pseudonym of Saul Goodman.
But just because Jimmy emerged from the meeting with the partners (relatively) unscathed didn't mean he was out of the woods entirely. It turns out that his misbehavior reflected poorly on Kim as well, since it was she who had recommended Jimmy to Davis & Main in the first place. As a result, Howard Hamlin stuck Kim in the basement doing "doc review" as punishment. Kim made Jimmy swear not to intervene with Howard on her behalf, and he acquiesced — sort of.
True, he didn't go to Howard about the situation; but he did go to his spiteful older brother, Chuck. In a knock-down-drag-out argument, the McGill brothers laid bare all the issues between them, with Chuck telling Jimmy that the latter's biggest problem is thinking the ends justify the (shady) means… and then being surprised when it all blows up in his face. When Chuck stated that life "isn't one big game of Let's Make A Deal," Jimmy insisted that that's EXACTLY what it is. He then offered Chuck his very own deal: if Chuck put in a good word for Kim with Howard and got her out of the basement, then Jimmy would quite the law. Forever.
Although that's exactly what Chuck has always wanted, the righteous McGill refused to stoop so low as to "extort" his brother. After all, Jimmy doesn't need any help tanking his career, as Chuck so kindly reminded him. And so "Gloves Off" ended with the Jimmy and Chuck's relationship worse off than ever, with Jimmy suffering a spectacular failure despite the equally spectacular success of his commercial, and with poor Kim suffering the brunt of the consequences for it.
I'd like to say I believe Jimmy can turn it around, but knowing where he ends up, I sadly already know he can't.
Images: Ursula Coyote/AMC (2)
