Mabel
In the present day, "Gene" is on his lunch break from working at the Cinnabon when he spots a young shoplifter. He reluctantly tips off pursuing police officers to the shoplifter's location, resulting in an arrest. However, as the shoplifter is led away, he is overcome with emotion and, falling into his old instincts, shouts at him to say nothing and hire a lawyer. Realizing he has just acted out of character, Saul fears that he might have given himself away. He returns to the Cinnabon and tries to prepare more food, but the shock overwhelms him and he passes out.
Chuck hides the tape recorder in his desk drawer as Jimmy gives the good news to Howard outside. He goes back in to help Chuck remove the foil from his living room, bristling when Chuck scolds him to carefully remove the tape to avoid ruining the varnish on his walls. On the bookshelf, Jimmy is pleased to find an old copy of The Adventures of Mabel, which Chuck read to him when they were young. They reminisce about off-brand Daffy Duck nightlights and weird neighbors, and are friendly and warm again. But if Jimmy thinks he's eventually winning over his brother, Chuck coldly makes it clear that their history will not save him: "You will pay."
Jimmy returns to Wexler-McGill to bring Kim up to speed on his meeting with Chuck, sadly commenting that he forgot what it was like when his brother didn’t hate him. Meanwhile, Chuck plays the tape for Howard. He tamps down his anger to remind Chuck that the tape can not legally be used against Jimmy nor can it be used to recover Mesa Verde. Chuck replies that he has other plans for the tape.
Mike drives away in a panic, his hit on Hector compromised. He stops by a junkyard and grabs a toolbox: he's going to be meticulous about finding the bug on his car. Hours later, the junkyard is about to close and his car is in pieces. He tells the owner to keep the car, but asks about the gas caps they have for sale after they catch his eye. Sure enough, the bug was in his gas cap all along. After being dropped off at home, he checks out the gas cap on his own car, and finds that it's been bugged as well. He writes down its ID number...
Captain Bauer confronts Jimmy about gaining access to his air base for guerrilla filming. Unrepentant, Jimmy refuses to take his commercial off the air and threatens him with a demotion after he tells Bauer's commander about how he lied his way in. Bauer storms out, swearing that Jimmy will get what he deserves. "A lawyer you can trust, my ass!" Much like Chuck, he warns Jimmy "The wheel is gonna turn. It always does."
On a late shift at the parking booth, Mike waits to make sure he isn't being watched before shutting the booth down and going to his car. He removes the bugged gas cap and drives off into the night. He meets with Caldera, who insists that they only meet during "business hours", but has agreed to get what Mike wants: a tracking device, the same model as the one he just ditched.
Kim wows Paige with the quality of the approval papers (complete with a reduced postponement period), which she uses to drag Chuck's arrogance and incompetence at the banking board meeting. Struggling with the truth of the matter, she asks for one more day to look over them, and obsesses over the documents down to minor punctuation issues. Meanwhile, Jimmy redecorates the office and waits for Kim to call it a day. When she does, but her confidence ebbs and she returns to second-guessing her writing, he returns to his painting without complaint.
Chuck asks Ernesto to bring new batteries for his tape recorder during a grocery run; he requests that Ernesto swap the batteries for him, as they activate his EHS. It seems the play button was pressed: Ernesto hears a portion of Jimmy's confession when he replaces the batteries. A furious Chuck demands he turn it off and pressures him to keep silent about the incriminating recording. Stunned, Ernesto agrees and quickly finishes his tasks. When he leaves, Chuck allows himself a smirk.
Mike tests his new bug and sees that not only is it battery-operated, the accompanying monitor gives a low battery warning. Inspired, he comes up with a plan: he will replace the bug in the gas cap with his bug and run down the other bug’s battery by wiring it up to a transistor radio. When whoever is tailing him sees that the bug is about to die, they will swap it out for a fresh one, unknowingly bringing Mike's bug with them. He waits by a window, a bowl of nuts at the ready: sure enough, someone replaces his gas cap with a new one. Mike turns on his monitor and begins his pursuit.
Tropes in this episode:
- Artistic License – Military:
- Among the charges Captain Bauer threatens Jimmy with is "stolen valor" (fraudulently taking credit for earning combat medals). However, the law
for that was created in 2005, a few years after the episode takes place. - In real life, anyone seeking entrance to a military base for a tour must go through the public affairs office, which background checks visitors. So Captain Bauer is not in the picture because he's busy training and flying. Even if Jimmy and his UNM film crew managed to distract the PAO and shot the spot, this commercial would have been seen and discussed by all of the base's command staff. There would be no secret as to how he talked his way onto the base and the Judge Advocate General (military lawyer) would be the one to make a visit to Jimmy's office (or at the very least, make a threatening call). If Jimmy wanted to play tough guy, he'd soon get a visit from the US Attorney's office and that would be that. Of course, Bauer wasn't willing to risk his career, so Jimmy was likely bluffing and it paid off.
- Among the charges Captain Bauer threatens Jimmy with is "stolen valor" (fraudulently taking credit for earning combat medals). However, the law
- All for Nothing: Mike tears his whole temporary car apart just to find the tracking bug, when it is in the gas cap the whole time.
- Batman Gambit: Chuck's seeming new angle. He is either engaging in general paranoia or suspects Ernesto, as the fact the tape "accidentally" plays for Ernesto at the point where Jimmy incriminates himself seems a bit too coincidental – he may be setting Ernesto up to snare Jimmy.
- Mike's plan relies on his stalkers being either lazy or hasty enough to replace the whole bug-infested fuel cap because of the dead battery, rather than take a minute to disassemble the cap, open the bug's casing and replace the battery itself.
- Call-Forward:
- The elderly client that Jimmy is ushering out right before the gullible Captain Bauer shows up starts telling Jimmy about her flowers and mentions lily of the valley, the plant Walt used to poison Brock.
- Mike's use of a radio to drain the tracking bug looks like a miniature version of the impromptu battery Walt had set up to recharge his trailer's battery.
- Cliffhanger: The present day Cold Open ends on one for the first time when Gene collapses at work, indicating that the story of Gene is about more than just showing how far Jimmy will fall in the future.
- Double-Meaning Title: As noted below, "Mabel" is a Significant Anagram for "Blame". Also, just like the character of Mabel from The Adventures of Mabel Jimmy is going to be beset by troubles and adversaries who will initially seem to have the odds in their favor. But Jimmy is always going to find a way to best them.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Mike realizes exactly how he Failed a Spot Check when he sees a gas cap for sale inside the junkyard shop. And sure enough he finds that tracing inside his own gas cap.
- Grammar Nazi: Kim to herself. After her friend at Mesa Verde complains how Chuck supposedly mixed up the address in his paperwork, Kim now spends hours painstakingly going through her own, constantly second guessing her use of punctuation, no matter how slight.
- Hard-Work Montage: Mike methodically dismantling the car as he searches for the bug, which takes several hours until the sun is going down.
- Hidden Depths: Mike shows enough familiarity with electronics to figure out that the battery in the tracking bug remotely warns the operator when it's low, and is able to use a radio to drain the battery itself. It's a precursor to trick the operator to instead take Mike's own newly acquired and fully charged tracking device so that he can himself start tracking whoever has been tracking him.
- The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: The guy who's been tracking Mike ends up getting tracked by him.
- Manipulative Bastard: Chuck takes advantage of Ernesto knowing of his condition by pretending that he needs Ernesto's help to change the batteries in the tape recorder for him. The tape recorder itself has its play button on, and it plays the tape the moment Ernesto changes the batteries. And it begins playing at the most damning point in the tape, when Jimmy starts to admit to the Mesa Verde forgery. Chuck reminds Ernesto of lawyer confidentiality, and admonishes him never to speak of it to anyone outside of HHM for fear of legal consequences. It of course amounts to Reverse Psychology, because while Chuck is giving the surface appearance of not wanting the tape's contents to reach Jimmy, he's banking on Ernesto taking it straight to Jimmy.
- In Memoriam: The episode is dedicated to Eric Justen, a re-recording mixer for Breaking Bad, who died of a heart attack the previous August.
- Motive Decay: Something of a subtle plot point for almost all the major characters.
- Jimmy and Chuck are neglecting their legal work and businesses because they are increasingly preoccupied with their dysfunctional relationships, and Jimmy in particular seems to be losing interest in working with his elderly clientele.
- Kim's uneasiness about the role Jimmy's fraud played in her getting the Mesa Verde case is actively interfering with her ability to work that case, plus she's picking up Jimmy's slack when she really doesn't have the time or resources for it, all of which undermine her desires for professional autonomy. Although she still gets through and satisfy Mesa Verde more than they expected.
- Mike has gone from trying to provide for his family to pursuing a vendetta against the Salamancas and spending loads of money in order to track down the people tracking him. As the veterinarian lampshades, Mike has gone from the epitome of professionalism to someone who steps outside normal business hours because It's Personal.
- Properly Paranoid: Mike, wondering who stuck the 'Don't' message on his windscreen and thus who is keeping track of him, takes his car to a scrap/repair yard and takes it apart, (correctly) suspecting the car is bugged.
- Rule of Symbolism:
- Jimmy tries to help Chuck take down the numerous space blankets that Chuck has put up. He begins tearing them down with force, which prompts Chuck to lecture him on the need for finesse, patiently alternating the left and right thumbs to gently bring down the edge of a space blanket in a tight roll without tearing the varnish from the walnut wood of the house. It acts as Foreshadowing in that Chuck has carefully and patiently planned a trap for Jimmy, and Jimmy is going to fall into it with a rash and impatient action without thinking through the consequences.
- A thunderstorm in the background is approaching when Mike begins searching for the track bug in his car. Gus Fring is about to enter Mike's life, which means Mike is going to cross more than one Moral Event Horizon in the future.
- The half-painted rainbow seems to foreshadow the disconnect that Jimmy is having from elder law.
- Scarily Competent Tracker: The man tracking Mike, although Mike turns the tables right back on him and becomes one himself.
- Shout-Out:
- The scene where Mike is searching for the tracker in his temporary car is a reference to the scene in The French Connection where the cops search a car for drugs, with the same results in both cases. After the cars have literally been completely taken apart to no avail, just when on the verge of giving up they find what they were looking for in the last place they thought of looking.
- The inclusion of The Adventures of Mabel into act one is an oblique shout-out to Vince Gilligan's mother, who read the book to him when he was a kid.
- Shame If Something Happened: Chuck uses this technique to gently intimidate Ernesto into keeping his mouth shut about the tape.
- Significant Anagram: "Mabel" is an anagram of "Blame", foreshadowing a recurring theme throughout the show.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Gene's encounter with the shoplifter. This starts a chain of events that unfolds throughout the rest of the Gene scenes.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Guerrilla filming can get you in trouble, especially when you use false pretenses in this case to get access into an Air Force base, which is obviously seen as a major breach in security given this episode is set a year after 9/11.
- This Is Unforgivable!: What Chuck thinks of Jimmy's address scheme regarding Mesa Verde.
- Title Drop: When Jimmy finds a book, The Adventures of Mabel.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- Jimmy faces verbal consequences for his stunt with the phony war veteran, he what-the-hell's the Group Captain right back by threatening to involve his Commander for letting him on the premises.
- Howard is also understandably pissed at both brothers for A) Jimmy doing the scheme in the first place, B) Chuck for faking retirement and making Howard freak out.
- You Were Trying Too Hard: Mike takes the car to a junkyard to look for the tracking device, pokes into every nook and cranny, opens up the gas tank to look inside, removes the wheels, dismantles the engine, tears apart the interior and finishes with the car in bits and no sign of the bug. Waiting for a cab, he spots a rack of replacement gas-tank caps and goes back to find that all he needed to do was take off the gas cap and pry it open.
