Better Call Saul Season 1 Episode 3 Review: Nacho Man
Miranda Wicker
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With Better Call Saul Season 1 Episode 3, Better Call Saul just keeps getting better and better.
Once upon a time, Jimmy McGill was very familiar with handcuffs, and there's nothing kinky about that statement. (Okay, so he was maybe familiar with handcuffs in a 50 Shades of Grey kind of way too...)
If there's one thing fans almost universally love, it's a flashback. In the case of tonight's episode of Better Call Saul, viewers learned that Slippin' Jimmy had quite the sordid criminal history.
As he's in jail for what seems to be public indecency, Chuck arrives to write his baby brother off. He doesn't seem to want to help Jimmy until the point at which Jimmy begins begging for his brother's help. He promises to turn over a new leaf and do whatever it takes to earn his brother's trust, and that's where we find Jimmy "not a hero" McGill wrestling with himself for the duration of the third installment in the series.
We know what kind of man Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman becomes. Eventually he'll be quite content to skirt the legal system and make his money by helping criminals launder theirs. But he's not there yet.
Right now, Jimmy McGill is a man who wants to do the right thing, but the right thing is getting him pretty much nowhere.
As proof of Jimmy's heroism, even after telling himself that he's not a hero, he makes a call to the Kettleman family to warn them that someone might be planning to do them harm. He doesn't want to do it, because he doesn't want to get involved, but he knows he should.
Future iterations of Saul Goodman are the same. He's a man who doesn't want to get involved yet finds himself inextricably entwined in these crazy situations.
After seeing the opening scene with Jimmy and Chuck, Saul's later conflicts between doing right and doing right by his clients are clear. He made a promise to his brother and he's trying his best to keep it despite the fact that he's created a world for himself where doing so is nearly impossible.
Nacho will likely have something to do with creating these impossible situations. This is probably not the last we've seen of him.
Jimmy may have gotten off on the wrong foot with Nacho, but their relationship is about to be one that will make or break our protagonist. He probably earned a little loyalty and trust from Nacho by finding the Kettlemans (and their money) himself, thereby ruining Hamlin & McGill's case as well as his friend Kim, but now he's a gang attorney.
That has to pay at least enough for him to move out of the utility closet in the back of the nail salon, right?
The best part of the night, aside from Jimmy finding the Kettlemans camping in the desert with their giant bag of money, goes to the exchanges between Jimmy and Mike.
When we first met Mike on Breaking Bad, we knew he had ties to both Gus Fring and Saul Goodman, but how those affiliations came to be we were never made aware. For now, at least, Jimmy and Mike have come to an understanding about each other. At least a cursory understanding.
Mike's probably not going to start letting Jimmy out of the parking lot without paying and/or having the requisite number of stamps on his parking card, but a friendship is forming between the two men, or at least a working relationship, and I know I can't wait to see where it goes from here.
What did you think of "Nacho"? Are you excited to see what's in store for Jimmy and Mike? Jump into the comments below with your answers and don't forget to watch Better Call Saul online!
Miranda Wicker was a Staff Writer for TV Fanatic. She retired in 2017. Follow her on Twitter.
