Hey. You people know the rules. How many times do I have to yell you?
No rice! It says right there. You know, that does it.
You and I, we're having another
[a theme song plays, just a song, nothing much]
All right! Season five, episode seven. "JMM."
Kim and Jimmy are getting married, and there's black all over the place.
Black briefcases.
Kim's black shoes.
Jimmy's black ring, seemingly with the soul of Saul squirming around in it. Barely contained.
Kim's wearing her spike earrings. Those daggers.
When she's wearing those earrings, she means business.
And I think she means business here, because she's dressed in black for her own wedding day.
As they discuss the parameters of this marital transaction,
we see Jimmy and Kim shot through the table, and it makes them look as if they're in a cage.
Ding-dong, wedding bells are ringing, right?
No. This is not your typical wedding. And that's the point.
It's a wedding that's defined by what it is not.
It's not what we see in this first shot inside the courthouse.
This loving couple, the frolicking kids.
You've got the golds, reds, and greens of the bouquet. The blue seats. The kids in purple.
It's a ribbon of color amid the beige backdrop of the courthouse.
This is what Huell had in mind when he put on his rainbow-sequin lapels this morning.
Then the shot changes to follow Huell's gaze, and now he's comparing that little postcard of joy we saw
To Mr. and Mrs. Undertaker here, filling out their paperwork, grimly.
Huell can't really make sense of it. His whole interaction with Jimmy takes place in the negative.
No, there's no rings. No, there's no kids. No honeymoon.
Jimmy notes, additionally, that the marriage is probably not what 12-year-old Kim had in mind,
(JIMMY) This might not be what you dreamed of when you were 12.
(KIM) Jimmy. It's not about that.
Although judging by our glimpse of 12-year-old Kim in the cold open to the last episode,
maybe there are more echoes of Kim's tween life than Jimmy is aware of right here.
The wedding is summed up by these papers on the wall:
No rice, no glitter, no bubbles, no litter.
A musical way to express the null space in which this matrimony takes place.
And Jimmy and Kim barely occupy this weird space together.
The judge has to force them to look at each other.
They had positioned themselves more like litigants at a trial.
Look at the tableau for the actual ceremony here.
It's sort of a glum parody of the stereotypical happy, doves-and-lace wedding.
We've got the bride clenching her jaw,
the groom kind of unsure if he's even allowed to be happy or not,
the sort of aloof best man and maid of honor over there,
Look even at the carefully positioned members of the gallery here.
Maybe at the storybook wedding, Jimmy's parents would be there. Kim's mom would be there.
Instead, we have these three strangers as stand-ins for their family members.
My favorite touch is that the sequence that began with a loving kiss in the hallway
is bookended by this kiss—loving, question mark…?
Huell photographs it with a disposable camera.
He's photographing the disposable marriage with a disposable camera.
Just another way
to add commentary to the story.
Like I said, there's no honeymoon because Kim’s got to get to this big meeting with Kevin Wachtell.
This scene begins with a shot—close-up shot—of a photo on Kevin's desk.
It’s a shot of Don Wachtell with young Kevin at that commercial shoot we saw before.
Then there's this rack focus that places Kevin snugly in the figure of Don Wachtell.
Great camerawork here. And the message is that Kevin is the "dad" now.
Now, when a show presents a shot this beautiful to begin a scene,
pay attention because it's there to frame your perception of what's going to come.
So let's keep in mind this idea of Kevin Wachtell as father figure.
The meeting does not go well, right? And I always watch Paige in these scenes with Kevin because
she's Kim's friend, yes, but she has a career to protect.
Her primary interest, you can tell, is to keep Kevin happy.
So the way she acts is sort of a weathervane for his mood, right?
After everyone has said their piece, which way does Paige go?
Well, she crosses our heroes in the frame and invites them to leave.
Oh! And if everyone could notice what side of the desk Paige is on when she asks them to leave,
Paige would really appreciate that. Because she wants you to know,
she's not going to go down on the Kim Wexler ship.
Okay? Thanks. Paige just wants to be real sure of that.
To this point, the whole conversation has at least
stayed within the bounds of the professional context.
Yes, Kevin's really giving it to Kim, especially, but
it's all within the bounds of her professional screwup
But then, Kevin has to offer this parting advice to Kim.
Remarking about the man that, unbeknown to him, she has just married, he says:
(KEVIN) Kim, one more thing. This fella, McGill or Goodman, whatever.
You could do a whole lot better.
Now it's personal. Now he's Daddy expressing disappointment in his little girl.
We haven't seen Kim's father to this point in the series.
And his conspicuous absence from that cold open in "Wexler v. Goodman"
leads me to suspect that there is some pain there.
That Kim will not appreciate Kevin Wachtell acting like her dad.
Also, you could just look at the death on her face when he treats her like this
to tell that she is pissed.
So when she strides back into Kevin's office that second time and says she intends to tell the truth,
the possibility of her lighting her career on fire seems to be on the table.
Her emotions seem to be that intense.
But it's a misdirection. Once again, Kim plays us, the audience.
She's doing that more often lately. She just did it at the end of the last episode
(KIM) Maybe we get married?
And again it's a twist that's driven by Kim withholding some information
or seeming to lead us down one path and then zigging when we though she was going to zag.
It makes her a more unpredictable and dangerous presence on screen.
She doesn't tell the Saul Goodman truth that we sort of think she might for a second,
but she does tell the truth.
(KIM) The truth is,
you ignored our advice.
Kim's basic message to Kevin is, "You're not my daddy."
Just not in so many words.
Kim makes her case purely professionally.
She doesn't go into the personal realm, the way Kevin did.
So her second visit to the office is pretty effective.
Effective, at least maybe, in keeping the business,
but definitely in reasserting her own agency in this relationship with Kevin.
This is Kim's talent. This focus.
She's roiling with anger at Kevin's "father knows best" routine—right?—
on top of the nervousness of these huge lies she's carrying around.
Yet she finds a way to funnel that energy into a really focused and impactful argument.
Her method of attack is not the "shock and awe" that Saul like to use, right?
It's deliberate. It's austere and pointed,
Just like those dagger earrings, the shape of which is mirrored on the wall here
as she makes this case to Kevin.
Kim's not all business. She still does have a more reckless side,
as we see pretty soon in this episode.
When Jimmy tells her about his cartel dealings, she's happy.
She's happy not just because it marks a real change in Jimmy's behavior—
that he told her something that he didn't want to tell her—
but also because the potential to be a "friend of the cartel" is exciting.
As a lawyer, you get to exist in the legal realm and the criminal world at the same time.
It's the blue world and the red world. And nothing excites Kim and Jimmy more, right?
That mix of "blue" and "red" is an essential part of their relationship.
Blue and red were the guests of honor at their wedding!
And you can tell Kim is animated by the potential for trouble here
because we see her bathed in that transgressive color of gold,
in close up, with this glowing smile.
Just like we saw her two episodes ago as the Mesa Verde cowboy logo scheme came into focus.
Oh, by the way, that all went so smoothly that I'm sure
this cartel business is going to work out great for Kim, too.
Speaking of cartel business, let's move to the courtroom,
starting with this moment when Jimmy is overcome
as he observes the grieving family of the man Lalo killed.
Jimmy has been running from his own grief,
and now he's confronted with this family's intense grief.
And not just that—he's implicated in it, too.
The soundtrack goes all blurry.
[SFX: distant echoes of speech]
And the camera pushes in slowly to give the shot an introspective feel
because Jimmy is reckoning with himself right now.
And perhaps considering himself through Chuck's eyes, too.
Because prominent in the sound mix is this sound of the strikers on a typewriter.
[SFX: distant echoes of speech, typewriter keys]
Thwack, thwack. And you think, it's the court reporter, right?
That's the literal read of that sound.
Well…
The court reporter's using this little clicky thing.
And remember, we're hearing the soundtrack inside Jimmy's head.
Maybe this is the sound in the room. But the typewriter that Jimmy's hearing, in his head,
is this one.
The one that belonged to Chuck. McGill brother number one.
The paragon of virtue who now, in Jimmy's consciousness, bears witness to Slippin' Jimmy
abetting the escape of a homicidal drug trafficker.
Yeah, it makes him a little dizzy for Jimmy to see himself this way. Through Chuck's eyes.
But then comes this jump cut.
And Saul is suddenly on his feet. He seems to go from sitting to standing in an instant.
Now, a jump cut is a cut that creates a minor discontinuity within a scene.
Some indeterminate little bit of time gets collapsed by the editing.
And the beautiful paradox of it is that by forcing this artificial break,
it makes you more aware of the time that was lost.
Perfect for this moment that's translating the psychological reality
of time being lost in this dissociative state—
translating it into a filmic reality of actual lost time here.
This is just a 30-second stretch of the show here. I've already talked about
the sound mixing, the editing.
Now let's appreciate the performance. Because after that jump cut,
we see Jimmy standing there—limp, hollow, absent.
It seems like he's not really there.
Lalo's looking at him, like, "What's going on with this guy?"
And then before our very eyes, he comes to life as Saul Goodman.
Lawyer number one on your speed dial.
It is unsettling to watch the puppet go from lifeless to alive.
And the eeriness of that moment is amplified
by the disorientation of the jump cut that preceded it.
And the snap of that jump cut was heightened
by this muddy, slow soundscape that preceded that.
It's virtuosic filmmaking that's really using every part of the filmmaking process
to heighten our sense of Jimmy/Saul's experience here.
As we see Saul sink to new, darker depths in this episode,
we often see this dark stain on the ceiling adjacent to Saul's head in the frame.
It looks like rotting tissue, right?
And it evokes the spiritual necrosis that's taking place within Jimmy right now
as the rot of Saul grows and evolves within him.
And as the courtroom scene plays out, we can kind of see
on Jimmy's face, this battle that's going on between Jimmy and Saul,
with Saul mostly in command.
But not exactly firm, right? I love the moment when Saul falters
as he's making the argument to the judge that Lalo shouldn't be separated from his fake family
while he's in the presence of the family of the man who Lalo killed.
I mean, the depraved irony of it is too much even for Saul to bear in this moment.
The emotional impact of this whole experience is summed up
at the beginning of the subsequent scene
by this cubist rendering of Jimmy's face as he peers around the corner.
It really gives you a sense of the distorted perspective
that this duality within him is bringing about.
And we have a shot of the Whelan family, right?
So it's very economical. We have a vision of Jimmy's internal conflict
and then we have the immediate cause of it right in front of us.
Into this emotional milieu steps Howard.
(HOWARD) Hey, Jimmy.
(JIMMY) Howard.
So Howard confronts Jimmy about the rather vicious pranks he's been playing,
and Howard's question is, "Why?"
But the thing is, he knows why. And that's what makes him so fearsome to Jimmy.
More than anyone, Howard can understand the complicated pain that Jimmy faced after Chuck's death.
Howard has experienced some version of that pain himself.
So that's what sets off the rant here. It's Howard simply saying…
(HOWARD) Jimmy, I'm sorry you're in pain.
Jimmy knows that Howard understands.
Jimmy knows that Howard can see and feel the confusion and vulnerability
that Jimmy has worked so hard not to face—that he's, in fact, strived to hide.
Being confronted this way by someone who knows him so deeply is terrifying.
And that's why the Saul Goodman defense mechanism kicks in,
and kicks in with reckless abandon.
(SAUL) Ohh, don't you fuckin' "Oh, Jimmy" me.
You look down on me? You pity me?
Walk away. That's right, Howard.
Saul chews out Howard, and his rant is almost entirely about
how big he is and how little Howard is.
I don't think we need Freud to understand that Jimmy is feeling pretty small.
And so is Saul. And why not?
Because what exactly did Saul do in this episode?
He had no strategy until Mike dropped the entire playbook on his lap.
He went where he was told and did what he was supposed to.
He's a mouthpiece for a drug lord. And he knows it.
But he's trying to pretend otherwise.
Pretty convincing, right?
I mean, the sad irony is that, as Saul rants about how small Howard is,
the deranged, outsized scale of his own delusions—
they only serve to make him look small.
And he finally ends on this:
(SAUL) I'm like a god in human clothing! Lightning bolts shoot from my fingertips!
What an interesting choice of metaphor. Again my thoughts turn to Chuck.
Chuck, we know—we saw many times—
he wasn't actually, biologically, physically sensitive to electromagnetism. Right?
But he did tend to deteriorate any time Slippin' Jimmy started to rear his head again.
Started acting up again.
Because Chuck wasn't allergic to the electricity in the power lines.
He was allergic to this electricity.
The "lightning bolts" within Jimmy.
The power that now animates Saul Goodman.
Speaking of "bolts," I've got to bolt.
Or, as Rich Schweikert might say to his bald client,
(RICH) I guess we'll get out of your hair.
So let me get out of your hair. Share your insights in the comments, as always.
Hey, if you watched to the end of the video, you probably had a good time, so why not subscribe?
Thank you so much for watching. Thank you, intrepid editor Brendan.
We'll see you soon! Bye for now.