Curse you cliffhangers
The newest episode of Better Call Saul is called “Talk,” even though it mainly focuses on the character of Mike — a person who usually only speaks when it’s absolutely necessary (which hints towards the ironic importance of his words in this episode).
First, let’s start with Jimmy, even though he doesn’t get a ton of screen time during this Better Call Saul episode.
We first see him lying in bed with no real ambition to get up, while Kim, on the other hand, is busy getting ready. Jimmy gets a phone call offering him another job — this time for a shift supervisor at a cell phone store — but he once again turns them down.
Until Kim tells him that might now be a time to talk to someone about Chuck’s death, it is. That’s the last thing he wants to do, so, searching for some kind of excuse, he tells Kim that he can’t because he has a new job.
He calls back the store and tells him he changed his mind, then setting off for his first day of work.
Upon arriving, he’s immediately reminded why he hates working mindless jobs like this — there’s absolutely nothing to do, as this store rarely has any customers. After a montage of Jimmy wasting time on the clock, he makes the split decision to take off and visit his buddy Ira.
Ira, who was the one who performed the heist in the previous episode, gives Jimmy his cut from the collectible — a shockingly high amount of money. Ira, who might just be the nicest guy in Better Call Saul, could have easily kept the extra money to himself but decided to be honest about it, telling Jimmy to give him a call if he comes up with another job.
Jimmy doesn’t have one in mind, but he does get some inspiration from Ira when tells him he got a new phone so that the man can’t listen in.
Jimmy then returns to the store and paints a pretty large and colorful message on the front windows: “Is the Man Listening? Privacy Sold Here.”
Kim hasn’t had all too productive of a day either.
She decided to head down to Judge Munsinger’s (Ethan Phillips) courtroom to observe a few cases, just for the fun of it.
Munsinger sees him in the audience and calls her into his office during lunch, telling her she’s not she’s not the first lawyer trying to revamp their passion for the law by sitting in on his cases. He tells her to move on, as she’s not going to find any groundbreaking cases from him.
Much to his surprise, though, he returns to his podium to find Kim still sitting there, just observing.
On the cartel side of the equation, things get a lot bloodier during this Better Call Saul episode.
Gus, being the genius mastermind that he is, arranged for the Espinozas — another rival cartel gang — to pick up the stolen drugs that went missing when Nacho and Arturo were in their little “accident.”
That leads the Salamanca twins right to the Espinozas front door, as they think that they must be the ones responsible for the hit on their family that left Nacho hospitalized.
And, of course, they waste no time extracting revenge. The twins walking in there guns a’blazing, killing anything and everything in their sight (I told you these guys were terrifying). They eventually kill everyone, but it’s enough heat to force both of them back to Mexico so they can lay low for a while.
Nacho, who is beginning to become wise to the whole situation, is told to report to Gus later that night. Nacho lays out everything he knows, and Gus is pretty impressed (of course, he’s not going to show it, but the fact that he didn’t make a threat or anything like that seems to suggest so). That doesn’t mean he’s done with Nacho, though. He tells him to get some rest, as they have more work to do.
Nacho, still injured from his wounds, is pretty dismayed by all this. He returns to his father, asking for his help.
Then we have Mike. The episode actually opens with a flashback of Mike as a father, pouring concrete with his late son Matty. Mike then snaps out of the memory and back into reality, as he’s sitting in the grief therapy group that he’s been more or less forced to attend with his daughter-in-law, Stacey (Kerry Condon).
Mike, predictably, doesn’t say anything in the group but we later see him have breakfast with fellow group member Anita (Tamara Tunie).
Anita mentions that she wants to reach out to Henry (Marc Evan Jackson), a third group member who seems to be struggling with the loss of his wife, but Mike tells her not to bother. Henry made the whole story about his dead wife up and is just using the group as a means to get attention — the way he rubs his wrists whenever he lies is a dead giveaway.
Mike isn’t prepared to say anything else about it (except for the ten dollar wager he makes with Anita as to whether he’s right or not) until the next therapy meeting.
Stacey kicks off by telling a sad story about how Matt is beginning to fade from her memory, which gets a minor reaction out of Mike. What gets a major reaction, though, is when Henry jumps in to tell a story about his “wife” before Stacey even finishes.
Mike let’s loose. He tells everyone that it’s a fake story, then going off on a rant about how no one in the group notices because they’re all too busy being swallowed by their own grief.
“You wanted me to talk,” he ends his monologue with. “I talked.”
But he’s not done yet. When on another inspection of one of Lydia’s plants, he gets a call telling him to meet Gus later that night. He pulls into a Los Pollos Hermanos parking lot, only to find that Gus has brought an entire army with him.
Mike knows what it’s about — Nacho. In fact, he’s surprised that it took Gus this long to figure out that Mike knew Nacho was working against Hector.
Mike keeps his cool, though, as he knows his job was never to be Nacho’s bodyguard and that if Gus wanted him dead, he would be already. So he cuts right to the chase: “You brought me here because you have an ask. So why don’t you stop running a game on me and just tell me about the job?”
Of course, we fade to credits right at that moment, so we have to wait until next week to find out what Gus wants Mike to do. Odds are, it’s going to be something pretty badass.
Tune in to AMC tonight for the latest episode of Better Call Saul and check out our other Better Call Saul recaps by clicking here!