Better Call Saul season 3, episode 7 recap: Expenses
By David Rouben
Better Call Saul looked at the struggles former lawyer Jimmy McGill had as producer Saul Goodman, while Nacho enlists an old friend to take down Hector.
As the third season of Better Call Saul winds down, we’re seeing Jimmy McGill make the full-time transition to Saul Goodman. He’s always had a bit of Saul in him, going back to when he was a child, but he fully came about because of Chuck’s resentment towards him.
It’s pretty clear that Slippin’ Jimmy and Saul Goodman are one and the same, but now that he’s used that name in an ad, he’s fully embraced that side of him. However, as this episode showed, even he had to start from humble beginnings.
Better Call Saul season 3, episode 7 recap
Jimmy’s standing outside the Albuquerque Community Center, where a whole line of people wait with him. A truck pulls up and a guy takes their names down so they can sign a waiver. They all put on construction gear and pick up garbage underneath a highway. Obviously, he’s doing this as part of his community service.
Jimmy gets a call and answers it with “Saul Goodman Productions” while pretending he’s out on location. Despite being out for four hours, he’s only handed 30 minutes because he was on his phone most of the time. He tries to be the peoples’ champion and stand up for a cause, but they couldn’t care less about his situation. He’s got to take the 30 minutes or risk taking zero.
As soon as he gets back to his car, he rushes to clean himself up and look presentable. He goes out to his first shoot, where he and his film crew produce an ad for Duke City Recliners. After using a take that was noticeably worse than the first one, he tries swindling the guy into shooting seven more for a discounted rate. However, he doesn’t budge because he doesn’t have enough money.
He and Kim file his expenses back at the law office, where she’s impressed by how much he’s raking in. When someone comes to deliver Chinese food, he has to spend the rest of the Duke City money. When he complains over the $1 tip, Jimmy says “we could make it zero.”
Someone enters his house, and when he turns on the lights, he finds Nacho has snuck in. It’s Pryce, a.k.a. Squat Cobbler. He still hasn’t forgiven Nacho for stealing his baseball cards, but he came with a favor. He shows Pryce the pill that Hector dropped and asks for more of them with the capsules emptied and the exact marking. While the company he works for doesn’t manufacture them, he can pull some strings. Nacho will offer him $20,000 for it.
After helping out his daughter-in-law with a job, Mike spots Pryce out by his parking lot. He wants to hire Mike again to be his bodyguard and tells him about Nacho’s offer. He doesn’t know how he got past his security system, but Mike correctly guesses that he unplugged his phone lines. Pryce thinks that Nacho’s going to kill him, no matter what, but Mike doesn’t want to get roped in, even for $3,000.
Paige meets with Kim, who gloats over how foolish she and Jimmy made Chuck look. But Kim and her guilty conscience isn’t as happy about it, saying “all we did was tear down a sick man.”
Jimmy rushes over from his garbage-collecting shift to get to his film crew. But speeding drained the battery on his beater, and they have to take the bus instead. They’re at a music shop, but the two aren’t very keen on paying a lot for little return. Remember, they’re taking up Jimmy’s old spot, and they don’t think that viewers of Murder, She Wrote are also people that go to their store. Jimmy’s desperate to shoot them, so he offers to do it for free. He then has to pay his crew with the rest of the money left in his wallet.
Stacey Ehrmantraut is hosting a support group at her home. Mike talks to one of the people who spoke. She reveals that her husband, Alan, never came back after a hiking trip. She never found out what happened to him and says it does matter even though she wished it didn’t. That obviously struck a chord with Mike, because he calls Pryce to say he’s in.
As a way of making back some quick cash, Jimmy and Kim go out to the bar. He initially wants to do an old Cicero trick, and sell someone a worthless credit card for $5,000, but Kim’s not willing to go through with it. Jimmy then tells Kim to put Chuck in the rearview mirror and not think about him. She later convinces him to be Viktor and Giselle with a wealthy businessman.
Mike, Pryce, and Nacho go to their old meeting point. Mike knows who the pills are meant for, and questions how effective it really is. Nacho says he’s got no choice. He tells him to switch the pills back if he manages to pull this off without a bullet in his head, so as to leave behind no trace.
Jimmy goes to an insurance company trying to get back the money he spent on malpractice insurance. The woman states that not only is it against the rules to refund that, but his premiums will go up 150 percent when his license is reinstated.
He starts crying in the office, asking for just one break. He spills out all of his problems to the insurance lady, then starts mentioning his brother. He states how he makes mistakes with clients because he’s working under a gas lantern and suffered a mental breakdown in the bar hearing. He thinks that one more mistake will destroy him and notices that she’s writing all of this down. He asks if she’s really going to do anything, then walks out of the insurance office with a smirk.
Final thoughts
Jimmy found yet another way to screw over Chuck. Realizing that he can’t get out of paying for his premiums, he instead drives up the cost of his brother’s insurance. Jimmy may bemoan Chuck for how much he hates him, but he goes to truly great lengths to make him suffer.
More fansided.com: 50 Best TV Shows on Netflix
This Nacho-Hector subplot is starting to clear things up, but there are still a lot of questions left. Is this how Hector turns into a vegetable? Will he use ricin? Does Nacho get a chance to see this plan through, or will he be killed beforehand? The scene in which they execute the plan should be one of the most anticipated of this season.