Unfortunately, Chuck is far from through settling scores, and takes the tape of Jimmy’s confession to Howard, who’s simmering with rage but also unsure of what good the document will do now. “I forgot what that felt like.” He’s melancholy, but relieved that, at minimum, Chuck appears to have moved on from bitterness over Jimmy’s plot and resumed life as a consummate crank.

“For ten minutes today, Chuck didn’t hate me,” Jimmy muses to Kim. But all that matters is he and Chuck bonded over childhood memories of book time and knockoff Disney night-lights. He asks her to cover a consultation while he mends fences with Chuck, and can’t even keep his own clients’ names straight. Kim’s increasingly tense and resentful toward Jimmy, who cluelessly carries on as if they didn’t reel in Mesa Verde disreputably. She’s already uncomfortable around Paige, who’s still incredulous at what she believes was HHM’s address snafu. Kim will eventually succumb to her own hastily constructed reality. Then we see Gene, icing spatula in hand, collapse to the ground. The moment he breaks character - skipping past Saul and going right for Jimmy’s primal instinct as a public defender to shout advice at a shoplifting teen - any illusion of ordinariness is made plain as just that.

future Jimmy/Saul, whose quality of life relies on staying firmly inside the lines of his slavish routine at Cinnabon. Kim is more than capable of spending a whole night tweaking punctuation on paperwork if it tamps down her guilt. Mike can spend hours tearing down a station wagon until he finds some proof that he’s been bugged. Everyone in Better Call Saul is a bit obsessive.

Better call saul season 1 review