Not partners.
Full spoilers for Better Call Saul continue below.
Goodbye Davis & Main, farewell beautiful dream of Wexler-McGill, and welcome Jimmy McGill, attorney at law.
After taking the focus off of Jimmy for several weeks, Better Call Saul swung the camera back around on its leading man for a pretty huge episode centered on his career. He's been wrestling not only with his Davis & Main gig but also the constraints its put on him as a rule-bending lawyer all season. Finally, he's found his way out: he forced D&M to fire him so he could set up a new practice (though that didn't quite go the way he'd hoped).
The montage of Jimmy coming up with creative ways to get fired -- not flushing the toilet, playing the bagpipes, juicing obnoxiously -- was one of the highlights of the episode. Bob Odenkirk is consistently the comedic heart of this show, and any chance he gets to showcase that is a good one (we'll never forget you, cobbler). Adding in the imagery of Jimmy getting inspiration from a wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man Airdancer commits to the absurdity of the sequence -- and hey, who doesn't like seeing Saul suits in action?
Jimmy's plan to get himself fired so he gets to keep his bonus pays off, though he fully earns that "a--hole" comment from Clifford Main. His follow-up was somewhat less advised: Jimmy went to Kim and pitched a Wexler-McGill firm that would make them partners. Unfortunately, Kim knows Jimmy at his best and his worst, and though she is willing to be romantic partners with him in spite (or despite) that, she's not willing to commit to him professionally.
That's clearly a pretty big blow to Jimmy -- especially when she comes back to him at the end of the episode and tells him she'd like to work alongside him, but not with him. Her pitch is that they both share office space but as solo practitioners, not partners. "Inflatable" intentionally ends before Jimmy can give his answer, but if there's anything that shows him there aren't many who support him as his own lawyer, this is it.
It's interesting to tie that back to the excellent opening where we see the younger version of Jimmy who Chuck talked about earlier in the season. Here, we see his father falling victim to a scam artist -- he likely would have fallen victim to the older version of his son if he met him, too. The scammer tells young Jimmy that men are either "wolves" or "sheep," and it's clear that in striking off on his own journey (as he's repeatedly considered) is Jimmy's way of being a wolf.
There wasn't as much with Mike's storyline this episode, though we did get a big hint as to how his and Jimmy's storylines will tie back together. Jimmy represented Mike when he rescinded his claim that the gun was Tuco's, and Mike subsequently helped his daughter-in-law land the perfect house in a nice neighborhood she had been hoping for. Jimmy makes a point to tell Mike about his own run-in with Tuco from back in Season 1, and it's easy to see that as the Tuco situation escalates in Mike's arc, Jimmy will get drawn into it both as his lawyer and his cohort.
The Verdict
There was lots to love in Better Call Saul's seventh episode of Season 2, from Jimmy's big ploy to get fired to Kim's pitch for being "solo practitioners" alongside one another. Many important pieces are being brought together as the series gears up for its finale, and there are plenty of hints of how various storylines will be brought together. But Better Call Saul is at its best when it balances its comedy with rich character drama, and "Inflatable" was a perfect example of how that can successfully pay off. Plus, so many Saul suits.
Editors' Choice
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