Hey, everybody! On this edition of the Basement Breakdown, you got to give a
little to get a little. Give me a minute, and you'll get the details. Join me,
John Teti, as I have another Basement Breakdown.
Okay. Season five, episode three,
"The Guy For This." A couple themes I want to draw out here in this episode. One,
talking versus seeing. This episode really highlights Kim and Saul's ability
to talk. To spin a story. And it contrasts them against antagonists who can see
them through their words. This is also an episode that hinges on what you give and
what you get. How much the characters have to give of themselves, or otherwise,
and how much they get back in return. These ideas crop up early in the episode
in this garage scene. Okay, Saul's nervous. Lalo's giving him the silent treatment
after he arrives. Saul says:
(SAUL) Can I talk? I'll talk.
There's a lot of talk about
talking in this episode from Saul and Kim, and as soon as Saul says "I'll talk," we
cut to this wide shot. Now, look at the energy of the lighting here.
Jimmy's standing in what looks like a spotlight. If we weren't in a garage,
you would almost expect him to be delivering this Shakespearean soliloquy. It makes it
feel like more of a performance, which it is. Jimmy knows here that he's in too
deep. He's now messing with cartel power players. Like, this is deeper into that
red world, the criminal element, than he'd like, so he puts himself in this blue
light. The light of the lawful world, right? And it's all, "Oh, I'm just a
legitimate lawyer plying my trade." The light is tellingly weak because Saul is
clinging to the thinnest veneer of respectability. As it turns out, that's
exactly what Lalo wants. We have these two other sources of light in the shot,
too. Lalo's shop light and the lights above Lalo's head. They're harsh. They're
glaring. They're penetrating. The lighting here is conveying the intensity of
Lalo's gaze even when he's not looking. Lalo's power to see is an essential part
of the character, right? And if Lalo's power is his eyes, then Saul's power, as
Lalo says, is his mouth.
(LALO) You're the guy with a mouth.
Look how his eyes have both
this piercing glow and this deep darkness when he delivers this line. Lalo has
brought Saul here because he wanted to see the mouth. Look at the staging. Lalo
pulls up a chair, spreads his legs. He makes himself the audience. This is a
stance for seeing. And apparently Lalo likes what he sees, judging by the
exchange that ends the scene. We see Saul coming up with the fee for his services.
He rattles off a bunch of things he'll be providing, but he really has trouble
coming up with a number.
(JIMMY) Seven thousand, eight— nine hundred twenty-five dollars?
What is Saul giving up here? He's giving up some safety, some self-respect. He's giving up
the ability to be honest about what he does with his life—with Kim, for instance.
What should he get in return for that? Well, he has a hard time putting a price
tag on it. And we sort of see his greed and fear doing battle in his head as he
sort of sputters out this ridiculous number. As for Lalo, he just pays him whatever.
(LALO) Let's make it eight.
Lalo can see how much Saul is worth. Saul can't. Saul's
looking at himself as a lawyer Lalo's just looking at him as a mouth.
A mouth who can project Lalo's voice beyond the bounds of the criminal sphere.
Then Saul goes up against our old friend Hank Schrader, and man, I love these two
scenes that reintroduce Hank and Gomie. You know, I might even shoot a separate
Breakdown down the line for the Hank reintroduction here. It's such a great
re-entrance for the character. But for now, I want to stick with the Saul thread.
And the essential line in the interview room here is Hank saying:
(HANK) "S'all good, man!"
Really, c'mon. That's your name?
Hank sees through Saul immediately. "Saul Goodman," those are just words, he's saying. I see
you through the words. The takeaway for the audience is that Hank has seen the
likes of Saul before, and we can see that Saul, who's already in deep on the "red"
side, now is in the major leagues on the "blue" side, too, right? He's messing with
the elite, and he needs to up his game, fast. And boy, can he feel it because Saul's
theatrics don't work on Hank. Hank, leaning back in his chair, making himself
the audience to the performance. He's not impressed. Hank is
a professional. All he cares about: What is he going to get out of this
transaction? So Saul ends up having to offer something of substance. A promise
of information leading to arrests, right? He did his job, but he gave more than he
wanted to give, and we can see this really weighs on him as we go to the act
break. But it turns out Lalo doesn't really care.
(SAUL) They're gunning for arrests.
(LALO) Okay.
He's happy, and let's explore why he's so
pleased. Both of these Lalo-Saul scenes begin
with images of Lalo fixating on his car. He's working on his car in the garage.
Then on the racetrack, we watch him driving that same car. He's driving fast,
and he's driving in these big circles. Remember the spinning blade imagery from
Lalo's visit to Fring's "chicken cooler." Here we have another fast, rotating image.
That's the energy of both of these images, right? And the effect of the
energy is the same. We're seeing and feeling
Lalo's wheels spinning. And they spin fast, right? Tony Dalton's performance
makes that clear. When Lalo gets out of the car, he is bursting with excitement
over the new carburetor that has his car going faster than ever.
(LALO) I replaced the carburetor. She's running like a racehorse, man.
The car is Lalo.
The carburetor is Saul. Because, think about it.
Now Lalo's eyes have a mouth. This is a big upgrade, and Lalo is feeling powerful.
Like a racehorse, he says, and what is Lalo's favorite thing about his new
mouth? Well, it emerges when Saul emphasizes how Krazy-8 is not
actually a snitch, and remember that, Lalo—right? Lalo's so bemused by Saul's
concern. It's like, "What do you care?"
(JIMMY) Well, all due respect, you're paying me, but
he's my client. I'd like to keep him alive.
Lalo loves this because Saul's
concern for another human being so clearly marks him as someone who is
not of the cartel. Who is not of their criminal world. "This dude, good idea," he
says to Nacho. He says it in Spanish, even more clearly marking Saul as the
outsider here. "This dude" is not one of us. Through Saul, Lalo can extend his power
into that blue world, the legitimate world, where Gus Fring is so fluent and
capable, right? Now, Lalo feels like he has a toehold in Gus
Fring's world, and that's why he's so excited. His car, the Salamanca operation,
has been souped up by the addition of Saul. Saul's very valuable to Lalo now,
and Nacho spells out what that means for him:
(NACHO) When you're in, you're in.
When you're in, you're in.
A reality that Nacho knows better than anyone, as we see in
this episode, when he has that scene with his father. His father backed by the
blue color, and Nacho backed by the red. That was just a quick drive-by analysis
of the Nacho scene. I'll leave the rest to you because I want to turn now to Kim.
(KIM) Hey!
We're gonna find a lot of echoes, in her storyline, of the Saul storyline. And we
have this pair of balcony scenes that frames both of the heroes' stories, but
they're especially poignant for Kim here. To understand this first scene on
the balcony, we're gonna follow the beer bottle.
Jimmy enters. He takes Kim's empty bottle. He sort of regards it for a second, then
he sets it down with a thunk. This subtly deliberate performance by Odenkirk and
the sound design of that thunk of the bottle sort of subconsciously draw our
attention to this prop. Then Kim focuses on the bottle, and to accentuate
this, we have a rack focus from the bottle to Kim. From object to beholder.
Kim looks at the bottle as if Jimmy took something from her, and you might say,
well, hey it's just a bottle. It's practically nothing. He's doing her a
favor. That's the point—she's so hypersensitive to what Saul's
taking from her right now that even this little bottle sticks in her craw. Kim
says she's drinking to celebrate. She's celebrating the upcoming day of pro bono
work. No Mesa Verde. By the way, Jimmy is the one who got Kim
the Mesa Verde account—although in awfully messy fashion—so he's hurt a
little by this. But the point is that this bottle is imbued with the spirit of
justice and light that Kim is anticipating in her upcoming day of work.
Then she looks at the bottle again, and she practically glares at it, and I think
she glares at it because she knows that the answer to the next question that's
going to come out of her mouth is going to involve Jimmy/Saul
taking something from her. Taking some hope, some optimism. It's going to
subtract from that feeling of goodness that she's anticipating right now.
(KIM) What about you?
(SAUL) Financially speaking, Saul Goodman just had his best day yet.
And when Jimmy says Saul Goodman had this lucrative day, and she just takes a
moment to imagine what that could be, she sort of nods her head like, yep. He
just took another little piece of hope from me. Another little piece of hope
just died thanks to Jimmy and Saul. So when Kim leaves, she crosses past Jimmy
in the frame—pretty aggressive staging—she snatches her empty, and it sends two
messages. One, don't do me any favors. Two, I'm not gonna let you take anything from
me. Judging by his reaction, Jimmy gets the message. The courthouse is where we
establish Kim's internal struggle for this episode. The title of the episode is
"The Guy For This," and that applies directly to Jimmy's situation, but it's
also a question of prime concern for Kim here. She wants to think that she's "the
guy" for this. This benevolent, soul-nourishing legal work for the needy. What
does she say to Rich Schweikart on the phone?
(KIM) My clients need me. I have a full day
of appearances here.
And her boss says, no, she's "the guy" for this: going out to the
desert to talk with some yahoo because their rich client is having a temper
tantrum. It's the opposite of the pro bono stuff that she envisions for
herself, right? Rich Schweikart's justification is,
(RICH) Once in a while, you have to give a little to get a little. You know?
Nobody knows this better than Kim.
She's given a lot to get… some. Before we leave this scene, I want
to call out Kim's remark to her clients. She tells them, if it goes to trial,
she'll talk to the jury. And she says,
(KIM) You were trying to do a good thing.
And I think they'll see that.
This is Kim's ideal of how she operates. She talks, and
people see the good. The good in her clients. The good in Jimmy. The good in
herself, right? This is sort of an archetype of how she wants to work. Keep
that in mind as we visit Mr. Acker's neighborhood. Let's just appreciate this
house for a moment. The red roof, the yellow fence. We know by now that these
colors indicate that the house exists in transgression of the law. And there's
this extreme otherworldly isolation that gives the house an almost mythical
quality. The trees give the house a sense of age. It's been here for a long time.
The empty foundations lead us to imagine all the other houses that were once
there, and this is the only one that remains. All these details set the stage
for Kim to encounter some elemental force. Something allegorical in the
person of Mr. Acker
(MR. ACKER) Stay right where you're at!
He makes Kim stand at the gate.
He pulls up a chair. He leans back, spreads his legs, and watches her show.
"Go ahead. Talk." The staging really echoes the staging of
Lalo and Saul in Saul's storyline. He's the audience, and she may begin the show.
And after they have this back-and-forth about the contract, He starts to snipe at her.
"You people are all the same. You're just like the rest of them." She's annoyed
by this, but okay, whatever. But then he says:
(MR. ACKER) And I can see you.
"I can see you."
And his jibes penetrate deeper now because he tells her, well, she does good
things just to make her feel better about the bad things that she does. The
cynical things that she does. It's the exact accusation that Kim levels at
herself. Wow, Mr. Acker really can see her. This shakes Kim. Look how Mr. Acker grows
over the course of this rant. We have this shot that's pretty much on his
level, and then later, he's looming over us from this low camera angle. It really
shows us the power that Mr. Acker suddenly has over Kim. in the car two
things I want to call out in this scene. First, I want you to note the flow of
this conversation.
(KIM) Good. What about Ingram?
(VOICE ON PHONE) He didn't show.
(KIM) Did you call all three numbers?
Kim needs to feel like she's essential to these
needy clients back at the courthouse, right? That she's "the guy" for that. She
fixates on what seems like this inconsequential glitch and really makes
it seem like, oh, she needed to be there. But she can hear that she didn't need to
be there. She's not the one guy for what's happening back at the courthouse.
Even she concedes that her associate handled the workload fine. The other
thing I want to call attention to in this scene is just the sound editing. How
the revving of the engine is present throughout, and it makes it feel like the
lead-up to Kim's crash at the end of season three. A bit of a misdirection
because she doesn't crash. She pulls over. She looks in the rear-view mirror and
decides she has to go back.
(KIM) Mr. Acker?
And remember, this comes after Kim's speech
to Mr. Acker about how you can't make your own rules, the law is the law. She
was talking to Saul as much as Mr. Acker in that exchange, right? Well, now, here she
is breaking and entering.
(KIM) Really like to talk to you.
Again we're talking about talking.
And it's true. She really wants to talk to him. Because like Jimmy, she
feels that she can solve anything if she talks enough. She can make Mr. Acker see
the good in what she's presenting if she just keeps talking. Acker has only
two lines in this whole scene. It's a kind of long scene but he only has two
lines. Line number one:
(ACKER) Say what you came to say.
And she does. For two minutes, we
watch her act out the whole show that she's rehearsed and we watch the act
devolve. She shows him the houses where she wants him to live, just like Jimmy
did in "50% Off," right? She says she won't pretend to understand what Mr. Acker's
feeling, and then she proceeds to do just that. Pretend. And when she says that
little Kim's toes used to turn blue.
(KIM) My toes turned blue.
When she arrives at that
word, "blue," that is the moment where Kim sees herself in that blue light of moral
right and wrong. It's also the moment where she's conjuring this disfigured
version of her youth. It's a moment when she's truly debased herself. She's
judging herself in this blue light, and we can see her wither under it. We can
see it in Rhea Seehorn's performance here, and Acker can see her, too.
And so we arrive at line number two:
(ACKER) You'll say anything to get what you want, won't you?
You'll say anything to get what you want. Not a lot to analyze there. He said it.
What did she want? Two things. She wanted him to see her as a good person, and she
wanted the win for Mesa Verde. And she goes 0-for-2. And so we reconvene on the
balcony, for balcony scene No. 2. There's no dialogue in this scene. I
this choice because there's nothing left to say. Both of these characters have
spent the whole day talking and talking and talking, and yet feeling like they're
just sliding backwards. Further into despair. The last thing they want to do
right now is talk. For all the distance between them, Kim and Jimmy have always
been really good at occupying rock-bottom together. They're good at
consoling each other when they hit bottom. They really seem together in this
scene, sharing, not talking. It brings to mind, for me, that scene in the first season
of the two of them sharing a cigarette in the basement of HHM. Very similar
energy here. They really seem together. Then Jimmy plays with his beer
bottle, almost dropping his beer, then catching it at the last moment. And this
is a Jimmy pattern. He goes right up to the edge of destroying himself and then—
oh!—snatches himself back at the last moment. Kim right now feels like she has
nothing left. Nothing left to give, nothing left to lose. So she basically
says, you know what, Jimmy? Sure, blow it up. What do I care?
And Jimmy's reaction is, well, if Kim will blow it up with me, then sure, I'll blow
it up. Because he just needs to be together with her. And so they
experience this moment of togetherness, this moment of catharsis at rock-bottom.
But we kind of know that this energy can't last.
That's your breakdown. Hey, if you made it this far, you probably had a good time, so
please subscribe. Now, I know you might be saying, what about that ice cream cone?
Well, the ice cream cone is an image that has so many threads, it's going to get
its own video. So stay tuned for that. Hey, thank you so much for the supportive
comments you've been leaving. It means a lot to me.
Thanks to Brendan Leonard, my cameraman and my editor who comes up with some
great B-roll. He finds the right shot to match my analysis. He makes me look
really smart. Thank you, Brendan. Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe! I'll see you next
time. Bye for now!