All is Not Well on Gilligan’s Island

Vince Gilligan has blessed us once again. The second episode of the third season of Better Call Saul has aired. I have thoughts concerning this momentous event.

Jimmy McGill (Saul) has a girlfriend named Kim. She is supposed to be a straight arrow. She’s an associate with his former firm, Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill. His brother, Chuck, is the most-senior senior partner. Chuck took Kim’s only client, and Jimmy got the client back for her by falsifying documents Chuck was using in his representation. Chuck got Jimmy to admit what he did, and he recorded the confession without telling Jimmy.

Now Jimmy knows about the tape. A grunt at HHM found out about the tape, and he told Kim. Kim then went to Jimmy, demanded $20 cash from him in order to be able to represent herself as his criminal defense attorney, and told him about the tape. She wanted to tell him about the tape, but she was concerned that her remarks would not be confidential. As his attorney, she figured, she would be able to speak under cover of attorney-client privilege. Does that work when you know about the crime before you become the defendant’s attorney? I do not know. It smells off.

The HHM boys can’t play the tape for the client, because that would make them look like vengeful idiots, and it would offend the client. Going to the cops would not be a slam-dunk (in BCS logic, anyway), so there is no point in trying. Chuck has a plan for the tape, and it involves further action. In Episode 3, he showed what the plan is.

Kim had a lot of Jimmy-related problems before the tape kerfuffle arose. She has committed two crimes with Jimmy. On one occasion, she helped him con a very sharp, successful securities trader into buying them hundreds of dollars’ worth of drinks. Second, she got Jimmy to help her con an amorous engineer into giving her a $10,000 check to invest in a non-existent enterprise. She didn’t profit from these crimes, apart from the free booze. She didn’t cash the check. Still, they were serious crimes.

Here’s another thing: squat cobbler. Jimmy had a drug-dealer client. The client was robbed of some drugs plus a baseball card collection. Stupidly, the client called the cops, thinking he could get the baseball cards back without having any issues related to the drugs. He didn’t mention the drugs. The cops found a suspicious cavity in his house, suitable for hiding illegal items. The cops kept calling the client, claiming they were real excited about the cards, but they really wanted to get info on his suspicious hiding place.

In real life, the answer to this problem would be to tell the police this: “If you find the cards, let me know, but I don’t want to be bothered until then.” Better yet: “I don’t care about the cards. Let it go.” The cops can’t make you come to the police station over and over just because they feel like it. Jimmy’s answer, however, was to claim his client hid embarrassing fetish videos in the hole, and that they featured vignettes of him sitting on pies and crying. Jimmy made up the name “squat cobbler” to describe the fetish. He told Kim about it, so now she probably has a legal obligation to tell the bar association. But she has not done so.

Kim has bar trouble waiting to bite her on the butt, along with two solid criminal cases which would bring bar troubles of their own.

What is Vince Gilligan going to do with this? More importantly, will he bring the Skipper into it?

Here’s what I’m thinking. During the Heisenberg years, Kim Wexler is dead or in prison. We never saw her in Breaking Bad, which took place after the Saul prequel. That means something happened to her. Gilligan has put several nice traps in front of her, and they are waiting to spring open and swallow her.

Jimmy is a tragic figure. He screws up and screws up and screws up. He knows he’s ruining his future, but he can’t stop. It’s his nature. Tragic figures are more interesting if their screwups hurt the people they love. I think Vince Gilligan will pull that string eventually.

We’re supposed to think Kim is pure and responsible, but she is neither. She committed two ridiculous, brazen crimes, in a sparsely populated state, against two victims who were highly likely to run into her later in the course of business. She concealed a crime (Jimmy’s) that would send a goody-two-shoes like Chuck running to the bar with bells on. She also recommended Jimmy, a con artist, for a job with another firm. This is not how pure, responsible people act. Maybe Gilligan is planning to shatter the audience’s rosy estimation of Kim.

Scenario: the securities trader walks into HHM one day looking for representation. The partners haul Kim out and sing her praises to him. “This is the gleaming angel that will handle your case.” We already know the securities trader is a shrewd and somewhat nasty character. Would he nark on Kim immediately and go to another firm? Of course not. He’d smile and shake her hand and act like he had never seen her before. Then in private, they’d talk. He’d be able to make her do anything he wants. Sex. More crimes. Squat cobbler. Who knows?

Scenario: the amorous, rejected engineer comes to HHM for help. Kim is assigned. Because he’s not sharp or nasty, he flips out instantly and starts ranting about her crime in the lobby. Kim’s life is thrown into turmoil. She loses her job. Prosecution is a real possibility. Chuck may squeal on her; it’s what he loves.

Maybe the engineer will turn out to be nasty after all. That would be more interesting than a nasty guy we already dislike.

She has bills to pay. Maybe she’ll have to start working for Jimmy. Maybe Jimmy will call Mike Ehrmantraut to come up with a way to squeeze the engineer. Blackmail is a possibility. Maybe the engineer has a trove of squat cobbler videos. Mike goes to the engineer’s house to “reason” with him. The engineer tries to shoot him. Mike shoots first. Kim is overwhelmed with guilt, so she kills herself.

Kim is going down. That, I am sure of. Maybe there will be some kind of standoff, and Kim, wanting to restore sanity, will get in the way and take a bullet.

I’m not sure why I watch this show! It’s kind of depressing, knowing it has a miserable ending. Jimmy is going to end up managing a Cinnabons stand in a mall in some flat state full of wheat. Walter White will die. Jim’s romance with Kim will end in failure. Mike will be shot in the belly by a high school teacher. Badger will never get his GED. Q will get distracted and let two planes crash into each other.

In any case, it’s fun to guess. My sincere apologies to anyone who doesn’t watch the show.