Recap: Better Call Saul Episode 7 “Bingo”

Better Call Saul! — Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman Photo Credit: Ben Leuner/AMC
Better Call Saul! — Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman Photo Credit: Ben Leuner/AMC

The further we get into Season 1 of AMC’s Better Call Saul!, the harder it’s becoming for me to accept the inevitable: That Jimmy McGill will become Saul Goodman, that everything won’t turn out just fine for our intrepid hero and his damaged brother, that Jimmy won’t get the girl and the corner office. He’ll get a visor, a name tag, a complex and a handful of dough in Nebraska.

Jimmy is no Walter White in Matlock’s clothing, i.e., a good guy in a terrible spot driven to do awful things for a very good reason — who discovers that “bad” suits him just fine. Over and over again, Jimmy McGill tries to do the right thing, not just for himself, but for most everyone he encounters, and discovers that bum luck just seems to catch up with him, no matter how hard he tries to shake it. It’s rending — in the most entertaining of ways — to watch him take it on the chin each week, knowing that eventually he’ll let fate win.

No flashbacks to launch us into episode 7 — AKA “Bingo.” Instead, we’re back at the Albuquerque PD where Jimmy and Mike sit on a bench beneath a wall of Most Wanted posters and wait. It’s late and when detectives Abbasi and Sanders appear, Jimmy hands Abbasi his notebook and says, well, would ya look what they found in the parking lot. Just here to reunite you with your lost property. No crime committed at all.

Abbasi isn’t having it. Before he leaves, he tells Ehrmantraut that, in keeping with what he surely read in the lined pages, he will be interviewing Stacey and “hopefully whatever you are didn’t rub off on the rest of your family.” Sanders stays and Mike tells Jimmy to go. Jimmy protests, but Mike says he only wants to talk to his friend.

Sanders tells Mike that plenty of people think that the precinct was a sewer and Fenske and Hoffman got just what they deserved. More retirements are in the offing because of it. Maybe new blood will do the department good. Then he suggests to Mike that if Stacey has nothing to tell them, they’ll head back home — so perhaps Mike should talk to his daughter-in-law first. Mike says no; what she tells them is up to her. “That’s the least I owe her,” he says sadly.

Mike says he likes Abbasi and Sanders indulges him. The new guy just has some learning to do. Specifically, “some rocks you just don’t turn over.”

Jimmy waits for Mike in the lot, demanding to know what he said to the cops. “You’re safe, counselor,” Mike says wearily, getting into his car. “It’s in someone else’s hands.”

“What? Like, God?” Jimmy retorts. “Please don’t say Hamlin, Hamlin and McGill.” Mike drives away.

The next day, Jimmy makes a supply run to Chuck’s house and finds his brother out back, eyes screwed shut, fists clenched and counting. When he gets to 120, they bolt back inside, where Chuck explains that he’s attempting to build up his tolerance to electromagnetic waves, 60 seconds at a time. His little trip to the hospital with Albuquerque’s finest made him realize that he could have lost everything and he can’t go on letting life pass him by while he sits in his darkened home.

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Better Call Saul! — Michael McKean as Chuck McGill Photo Credit: Ben Leuner/AMC

Jimmy beams with pride, then, recognizing an opportunity, heads back to his car. He returns — grounded — with boxes of files that he claims have overrun his office now that his elder law business is booming. He’s just leaving them there temporarily — till he can relocate to bigger digs.

Then he excuses himself and peeks through a window to see if his plan has taken root. It has. Chuck is picking through the files.

Speaking of bigger digs — we cut to a casually dressed Jimmy and Kim in the lobby of a modern new office building. Jimmy tells the security guy that he’s expecting keys to check out the available office space on the eighth floor and he and Kim head up. The space is a doozie — room to grow, says Jimmy. Gotta look successful to be successful, cocobolo desk and all. The offices are spacious and bright with plenty of natural light and a corner office to die for. Jimmy says he’s saving that one for his partner in this burgeoning elder law practice he’s planning. It takes a moment, but Kim realizes whom he’s talking about. She looks stricken and explains to him that she’s on a two-year plan for making partner at HHM — and besides, they put her through law school, so she owes them. Literally and figuratively. Then she breaks the awkward silence that follows by making a break for the kitchen to ooh and ah about the stainless.

So much for Jimmy’s big plans for his Kettleman cash.

Speaking of the Kettlemans, we next see them seated across from Kim in the HHM conference room. Betsy is dressed for business, and she means it, while Craig sits meekly beside her. Kim explains that if the D.A. makes good on all of the charges against Craig, he could be looking at 30 years in the slammer. But she has worked a deal.

“A deal. I hate that terminology,” Betsy seethes, turning to Craig. “A deal is what they got OJ.”

Kim persists. If Craig pleads guilty and the Kettlemans refund the county’s coffers — all $1.6 million — Craig can serve 16 months in the county jail and be back home when his kids are still kids. There’s a flicker of relief on Craig’s face, but his missus is adamant: There is no money, therefore there is no crime and it’s Kim’s job to prove that at trial. How dare she lump Mr. Kettleman in with murders and rapists? Kim wearily tells them not to be foolish and take the near-miraculous deal she afforded them. She’ll give them a minute to think it over.

Betsy says they don’t need any more time or discussion. She clutches her husband’s hand and they smile at one another, Craig looking relieved that an end is in sight. It’s not quite the one he and Kim were expecting. “You’re fired,” says Betsy.

Dragging her husband by the hand with Howard and Kim trailing them, Mrs. Kettleman storms the exit and when Craig turns to take a last look at his potential salvation, she hisses, “Don’t look backward. Always, in life, look forward.” And drags him out the door.

Betsy doesn’t take her own advice.

Jimmy’s phone rings in the middle of the bingo game he’s hosting for his client base — a room full of seniors happily daubing numbers printed over Jimmy’s caricatured face — and a few seconds later, he’s once more seated across from the Kettlemans at the diner. They’re sorry about the earlier misunderstanding. He’s back on the job — which is winning “exoneration” for Craig. Zero jail time. Understood? When Jimmy protests, Betsy smiles pointedly and reminds him of the “retainer” he accepted in the tent in the mountains not so long ago.

Jimmy excuses himself and ducks into the men’s room (not noticing that, mere days before, he was seated beneath the mug shot of the guy at the urinal, even after the guy elbows him). He calls Kim and tells her that he found something that belongs to her. Namely, Mr. and Mrs. Cuckoo Bananas. Ned and Maude Flanders in The 25th Hour if you will. She asks him to please send them back to her.

Jimmy returns to the table and does just that. Betsy remains steadfast that there is no money to return. And besides, if there was, every last dollar would have to be accounted for. Every. Last. One. Jimmy gets her drift.

“We’re in this together,” she says triumphantly. “Now where do we begin?”

Jimmy starts at HHM, where he collects the Kettleman files and learns that Kim has been exiled to a remote part of the building nicknamed “The Cornfield” for losing the Kettlemans as clients. He finds her in their usual spot — smoking in a beam of light in the garage. She wonders why Jimmy took their case, chastises herself for doubting him then fills him in on what a dunderheaded embezzler Craig really is. So good luck with that case. The only trump card they have, says Kim, is the money and they refuse to play it.

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Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill and Rhea Seehorn as Kim in Better Call Saul – Photo Credit: Ursula Coyote/AMC

Jimmy returns to his office — the old one, not the new one —scours his law books, then fishes a shoebox full of cash from the ceiling.

better-call-saul-mikeThat night, as the Kettleman family — the people who live in glass houses — happily play charades in their family room, a figure lurks outside in the darkness. It’s Mike — the fixer has begun fixing. He takes out a small spray bottle, spritzes a bundle of bills, then heads for the back patio and sets the cash on the back of a toy truck. Then he heads to the back fence and waits, eating apples from the Kettlemans’ tree and catching a ball game on a transistor radio to pass the time.

And as the evening winds down and Craig Kettleman comes outside to dispose of the trash, he spots the cash-laden toy. Believing their kids managed to somehow locate their stash, mother and father Kettleman give them a lecture and Mike watches as Betsy heads upstairs with the money in her hand.

When the house goes dark, Mike lets himself in, black light in hand, and follows the trail left by the Luminol he sprayed on the cash, which transferred to the couple’s hands and shoes. It leads him to an upstairs bathroom and the cash hidden below the sink.

Returning to Jimmy’s office with his haul (“Thanks for not heading to the Bahamas with this,” says Jimmy sincerely.), Mike watches as Jimmy adds his bribe money back into the pile. “What are you doing?” he says, knowing from last week’s confession of firsthand experience that it’s a drop in the bucket that won’t ever be missed. “The ‘right’ thing,” says Jimmy, kissing what was left of the eighth-floor-office dream goodbye.

He asks Mike if he knows where he’s going with the cash. He does. “Am I correct in assuming we’re square?” Mike asks. “Square,” says Jimmy.

The next day he shows up on the Kettlemans’ doorstep and Craig cheerfully lets him in. Jimmy informs them that the circumstances of the case have changed. Changed how, they want to know. He tells them they might want to check on the money they had stashed in the upstairs powder room. Betsy looks mortified and makes a break for the stairs, Craig behind her.

“No, no, no, no, no,” she howls. What did you do with it, she snips. By it, you mean ….? wonders Jimmy. Where is it? Betsy demands. It’s on its way to the DA’s desk, even as they speak. How did you take it, says Craig. A good magician never reveals his secrets, says Jimmy.

Our favorite little narcissist informs Jimmy that he is a thief (Takes one to know one,” says Jimmy) and she will have him arrested. Also he’s fired. He already quit, says Jimmy. Now go back to Kim and take the deal.

Betsy threatens him with the bribe. Jimmy says, well, yes, that is a problem. However. If they happen to bring it up, it implicates Mrs. Kettleman in addition to Mr. Kettleman, landing them both in jail — where, he imagines, Betsy will wind up running her own gang.

Jimmy eyes her wearily and says, “The thing you folks need to know about me — I got nothing to lose. Christ, you should see my office.”

Finally Craig Kettleman takes the reins. “It’s not over,” Betsy protests. “Let’s find another lawyer.” She will not be treated this way. Think of the kids, says her husband. We have to. Betsy breaks down. Not for her poor children who are going to have find out why Mom and Dad really took them camping, one suspects, but for losing the game …and the lifetime of unearned financial security.

Cut to the HHM parking garage, where Jimmy waits at the elevator doors. Kim appears and he leads her to his car, where the Kettlemans are seated. She ushers them inside and as the elevator doors close, she looks at Jimmy and offers a silent thanks.

Jimmy heads back to the eighth-floor penthouse and walks into his would-be office, gazing out at the blue sky and bustling traffic. Life … going on. Then his anger gets the better of him and he kicks the door shut, dealing it a couple more solid blows before collapsing in a heap on the floor. And the only thing that stops Jimmy McGill from crying is the ringing of his phone.

New episodes of Better Call Saul premiere Monday nights at 10/9CT on AMC. 

About Lori Acken 1195 Articles
Lori just hasn't been the same since "thirtysomething" and "Northern Exposure" went off the air.