Entertainment

The Distance Is Growing Between Jimmy & Kim On ‘Better Call Saul’

by Caitlin Gallagher
Nicole Wilder/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

Kim put an end to Jimmy's dream of Wexler McGill in "Piñata," but this Better Call Saul couple is still mixing their personal and professional lives. Spoilers for "Something Stupid" follow. After he assaults a police officer, Kim becomes Huell's lawyer on Better Call Saul. Jimmy has a month before he will be reinstated by the New Mexico bar association, so he heads to Kim's spacious Schweikart and Cokely office and asks for legal assistance for his associate. Jimmy has his own nefarious plan to bring down the police officer who arrested Huell, but Kim has to represent Huell in her own way. Although, to keep Huell out of prison and keep her sterling reputation, Kim will have to get really creative, as the end of "Something Stupid" indicates.

Saul Goodman's bodyguard Huell Babineaux (Lavell Crawford) is one of the most beloved characters on Breaking Bad. The prequel series showed back in Season 3 how Jimmy and Huell first worked together during Jimmy's bar association hearing. The veterinarian Caldera recommended Huell to Jimmy for his pickpocketing skills. Huell successfully placed a cell phone battery in Chuck's suit, which revealed Chuck's true intention of having his brother disbarred. Huell next showed up at the end of "Piñata" where he and Man Mountain (who had appeared back in Better Call Saul Season 1) were Jimmy's muscle to scare away the three teenagers (Rocco, Jed, and Zane) who messed with his prepaid cell phone business in "Quite A Ride."

Nicole Wilder/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

Months have passed in the Better Call Saul world and Jimmy's cell phone business has been thriving with Huell's help. So when Huell comes back from lunch one day and sees Jimmy in a serious conversation with someone, he uses his enforcer skills and knocks the man down with a bag of sandwiches. Unfortunately, unlike Jimmy, Huell doesn't have the street smarts to recognize that this man is a cop. And on top of that, this officer had arrested Huell three years earlier.

Huell is arrested and the prosecutor wants to put him in jail for two and a half years. Considering it's January 2004 on Better Call Saul and viewers didn't meet Huell until Breaking Bad Season 4 (which, as Thrillist outlined, takes place in 2009), it is possible that Huell goes to jail for a bit. But he's adamant about not serving any time. Huell tells Jimmy he will run if Jimmy can't get him out of going to prison. And considering that Saul probably wouldn't want to use a recent ex-con as his bodyguard on Breaking Bad, Huell most likely is staying out of jail — thanks to Kim.

Nicole Wilder/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

Jimmy enlists the help of Kim, who has her career in a great place as a partner of Schweikart and Cokely. Jimmy suggests to Kim that they get the cop drunk (since he had a previous DUI and was put on desk duty) and have him blow up in court — kind of like what they did to Chuck in Season 3. But Kim doesn't want to go down the Slippin' Jimmy path and refuses to ruin a cop. Instead, she does her homework on other cases of battery on a PO and finds what she calls "unequal justice" for Huell. The prosecutor doesn't back down — and insults Jimmy in the process since she doesn't know Kim is dating him.

Kim tells Jimmy that Huell will have to serve jail time and that Jimmy needs to back her up on telling Huell not to run. After all, she has put herself on the line to defend him and if Huell flees now, he'll hurt Kim's reputation. But Kim isn't convinced that Jimmy will actually stop Huell from running — and for good reason. After all, she just found out that he has been selling drop phones to criminals for the last few months.

Nicole Wilder/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

So Kim comes up with a Wexler-approved plan to win Huell's case. She tells Jimmy that it's "a better way" after she raids an office supplies store for a bunch of colored paper and writing implements. (Her "better way" comment also harkens back to when Jesse told Hank that there was a "better way" to get Walt in Season 5.) What she has in mind isn't clear, but you can expect Kim to use some superior lawyer skills à la Chuck McGill to get the job done.

As the opening sequence shows, the distance between Kim and Jimmy is growing, which Rhea Seehorn had warned Bustle about in an interview earlier this season. While Kim is going to help Jimmy with the Huell situation in her own way, this might just be the catalyst for Kim's breaking point. As she finds success in her own life, can she constantly be set back by Jimmy's lack of morals? Although she could justify shady antics when it came to showing Chuck's true colors, she has drawn a line with Huell. And it's quite possible that Kim and Jimmy will never be on the same side of that line again as Jimmy heads into some serious Saul territory.