Better Call Saul “Alpine Shepherd Boy”

Well, here’s the last episode I got to see before my ex-wife showed up and started the series over on my Netflix account without, you know, asking if I wanted her company or anything.  That was a weird week or so.

I may have some unresolved issues.  Or not.  What about the McGills?

Apparently, stealing a newspaper from a driveway is enough to get someone to call the cops.  Honestly, I was a little surprised.  Chuck seemed more weird than anything else.  He even left some money behind.  I was not expecting that, but it made sense.  That also means Chuck and his issues can show just how inadequate the police are when dealing with a man like him, even with the cops going so far as to assume he’s a meth head or something, and his attempts to argue he has a condition go unheeded until he ends up in a hospital, something that requires Jimmy and later Howard to come get him.

I really, really wanna know exactly why Jimmy hates Howard.

Regardless, something of interest did come out of there:  Chuck isn’t really sick.  Not physically.  His issues are psychological, and if you’re smart, you can sneak past his “allergy to electricity”.  It makes me think there’s something Jimmy and Chuck have in common.  Jimmy has a need to hustle.  It often manifests in his general showmanship.  He likes old movies and TV shows and probably takes a lot of ideas from them.  He’s not 100% honest, but it’s hard to call him a liar when he’s on the job.  He’s more like someone who comes right up to the line and then stops himself for reasons of, I am guessing, really trying to be a good person.  But he also needs business, and rich old men looking to secede from the country paying with money with their own face and men trying to patent toilets that talk in an effort to encourage potty training and don’t realize everything the toilet says is sexual aren’t paying the bills.

Helping senior citizens trying to determine who gets what Hummel figurine in an old lady’s will?  That he can do.

But then there’s Chuck.  So, he doesn’t really have this electromagnetic condition:  does that mean he knows he doesn’t have it?  Is he lying to himself?  Does he know his condition is mental and not physical?  Is this being done for some reason that he is fully aware of?

Basically, if Jimmy can’t keep himself from hustling, is it possible Chuck has his own foibles that he can’t stop himself from doing?  Does he know he’s faking it?  The answers to those questions will say a lot about Chuck in the grand scheme of things.

But then the episode does a neat turn and stops following Jimmy around as he goes about his day.  Instead, after a brief encounter with Jimmy McGill, the episode follows Mike Ehrmantraut around as he meets the eyes of a woman in a car played by Rome actress Kerry Condon, AKA the voice of Iron Man’s FRIDAY, and later the cops come to see him.  Mike, in his nonplussed way, seems completely unsurprised to see the cops.  He’s mostly surprised to see a very specific cop there that is far from somewhere else.  At least, I assume the man was a cop.  He was there with other cops.

Breaking Bad told me Mike is a very dangerous man who has operated on both sides of the law.  So, as much as I am getting Saul Goodman’s origin story, if I get Mike’s as a bonus, man, this show will really be worth it.