Slip
While on their grifting spree, Jimmy and Marco broke into the McGill's abandoned corner store in Cicero. Marco reminisced as Jimmy got the key to their next scam: a Band-Aid box of coins that he collected while working as a cashier, ripe for selling at the farmer's convention nearby. Marco expressed remorse that people like Jimmy's parents could lose everything, but Jimmy dismissed him: the reason he hid the coins, he explained, is that his father tried to return a valuable George Washington half-dollar. His father was popular only because people could walk all over him and they were better off without a place that lowlifes could hit up for money, he sneered, ignoring his own culpability. They took off with the box of coins when they heard police sirens.
Mike drives to the site of the truck robbery with a metal detector: evidently, the "one more thing" he needed from Nacho was the location of the good Samaritan's body. He spends hours sweeping the area, eventually getting lucky when the metal detector finds the victim's wedding ring. Mike anonymously reports the body's location to tribal police.
Dr. Cruz meets with Chuck at his home, where they discuss her psychological EHS treatment. Cruz urges him not to force himself to get better and asks how he came to realize his EHS was a mental condition. Chuck explains there was an "public incident" where he was forced to come to terms, and is eager to put this deficiency (and the actions he took under its heel) behind him. "If this isn't real, then... what have I done?"
Jimmy heads back to the music store to film another commercial, the increase in business evident when they arrive, but the owners refuse, planning on directly working with the tv station and getting another film crew. Upset at being cut out of the deal, Jimmy asks their film crew to keep rolling and drops a drumstick onto the floor. He goes up to the owners, who confirms that they won't be paying him what they promised, and "slips" on the drumstick. In great pain, Jimmy asks the store owners if they have liability insurance.
At a luncheon, Kevin asks Kim if he can assist a friend of his with resolving a interstate conflict. Kim tries to let him down gently, but Howard comes up to deliver some passive-aggressive remarks. In response, Kim goes up to him with a check covering her law-school loans in front of his peers. Kim cheerily takes up Kevin's offer. Howard confronts her with it after lunch, hissing that he's been left to deal with the consequences of Chuck's public breakdown. Kim responds that Howard concealed potentially damaging information about Chuck's condition from HHM's clients and he only has himself to blame. Howard rips up the check; her debt's forgiven, but nothing else.
Nacho gets to work at the upholstery shop. He crushes up ibuprofen (which exacerbates heart conditions) and moves it into the capsules Daniel got him. From there, he spends the night practicing slipping the pill bottle into the pocket of a coat hanging from the chair, only stopping when his father arrives the following morning. Nacho claims he was just checking invoices. That night, he climbs onto the roof of El Michoacáno and breaks the air conditioner.
Kim finds Jimmy resting on his back in his office, playing a guitar signed by Richie Blackmore. His con worked - the store owners paid for the remaining commercials - but his back is badly injured. Jimmy coldly assures Kim that he will be able to keep his end of the rent. Meanwhile, Chuck returns from a successful outing at the grocery store, keeping his EHS in check with mental exercises, when he sees Howard waiting on his porch. Despite his delight at Chuck's progress, he only has bad news: there's been an issue with his insurance.
The following day at El Michoacáno is hot and stuffy. While Nacho counts Domingo's money, he sees Hector finally take off his coat. He tells Hector that a bill looks funny when Domingo leaves; Hector asks him to bring it over. As Hector examines it, Nacho checks Hector's left-hand side pocket only to find it empty. Thinking quickly, he "accidentally" drops the stack of money and bends over to pick it up, getting the pill bottle from the right-hand side pocket. Nacho surreptitiously retrieves a bottle full of the fake pills out of the cash bag and brusquely shoos an eager dealer away. Nacho swaps the pills, his hands sweaty and shaking, and keeps the originals as Mike advised. He steels himself and walks over to Hector, offering to refill the Don's expresso, the doctored pills tucked in his palm. He successfully slips the pill bottle into Hector's pocket, forcing his twitching hands to work the expresso machine.
Jimmy's back pain interferes with his community service. Another work group member asks their supervisor if he can get off to visit his sick daughter. He agrees, but won't credit the hours he's already worked. Overhearing the conversation, Jimmy assumes that the man wants to get off work for criminal reasons ("Rhymes with mug mealer?") and offers to negotiate keeping his hours with the supervisor for $700. The man takes him up on his deal. Jimmy lies down on his back and waits for the supervisor to come over. The supervisor asks Jimmy what he is doing, and Jimmy explains that he is taking a break because of his back pain. When the supervisor, as Jimmy predicted, threatens him with not giving him his hours if he doesn't get back to work, Jimmy in turn threatens him with a lawsuit for, among other things, forcing him to work injured and "emotional distress" — he's keeping a father from seeing his sick child. The supervisor tells Jimmy that he signed a legal waiver that prevents him from suing, but Jimmy points out that waiver only protects the state of New Mexico from lawsuits; he is free to sue the supervisor personally if he pleases, and adds that he knows that getting sued can be a very drawn-out and expensive process. Getting nervous at this prospect, the supervisor relents, allowing both Jimmy and his colleague to keep their hours and allowing them to leave. Jimmy also gets his $700 from his grateful customer, smugly counting it on the ground.
Mike stares at the money from the truck robbery; it's far more than he can spend on his own or give to his family without suspicion. He goes to Gus, reasoning that he opened his restaurant due to similar concerns. Gus demurs: publicly associating with Mike, even one time only through a cash transaction, could cause even more problems with the Salamancas. Gus offers to arrange a way to launder his money "with a degree more difficulty." Understanding what this means, Mike offers 20% to avoid getting involved again. "I will not take money from your family," Gus replies. The two men shake hands, forming a fateful partnership.
This episode contains examples of:
- Anachronism Stew: A Nissan Murano can be seen in the background when Kevin and Paige are escorted to their car by Kim. Said car is a 2015 model, even though the show takes place in the early 2000s.
- Asshole Victim:
- The community service supervisor is brought to heel with the threat of Jimmy suing him for the back damage he sustained during the below Wounded Gazelle Gambit, threatening to bring in someone else doing community service to make it a class action. Though this other person is heavily implied to be a drug dealer, the supervisor had no way of knowing this and was told the man needed to see his sick kid in the hospital — so Jimmy threatens to add emotional distress to the suit. The possible drug dealer gets to 'see his sick kid', both of them get their full hours for that day's community service, and Jimmy gets $700 from the 'distressed father'.
- The music store owners weren't exactly saints just before they got flopsied by Jimmy. They did offer to pay Jimmy a meager $450 (the price the tv station quoted them) as gratitude for shooting their commercial, but when Jimmy desperately pressures them to buy more commercials for a larger price, they outright refuse to pay Jimmy anything.
- The Atoner: Mike, making up for getting the Good Samaritan shot by Hector by ensuring the tribal police find the body.
- Black Comedy: Jimmy's slip involved a drumstick being kicked into a drumset. Or, in other words: (ba-dum-tish!)
- Blatant Lies: Mike anonymously calls the police from a gas station payphone to report the location of the Good Samaritan's body claiming he was illegally trespassing and searching for old arrowheads.
- The Bus Came Back: Marco, who died in the eponymous episode, reappears in a flashback to them breaking into the store Jimmy's father used to own. It's established that this is taking place in between Jimmy's return to Cicero and Marco's death, since they very specifically reference the half dollar scam they just pulled for $110 on that guy in the bar.
- Call-Back:
- While reminiscing over one of their fourth grade teachers, Marco refers to him as a "butthole".
- Jimmy recalls to the Lindholm brothers that with "One good fall... [Slippin' Jimmy] would clear 6, 8 grand." He makes about that much here when he rips off the music store owners.
- Jimmy is playing "Smoke on the Water" with his newly acquired guitar.
- Call-Forward: The Band-Aid box that Jimmy takes when he and Marco break in to his father's old store is part of the shoebox Gene has containing some of Jimmy's old mementos.
- Cassandra Truth: A subtle one is provided by Dr. Cruz when she tries to advise Chuck. Chuck's recent progress has him convinced that he can soon dive right back into legal practice without a hitch. Dr. Cruz, with his well-being firmly in mind, tries to advise him to modulate his expectations, to continue to work on his condition, and to be careful of relapse if he pushes himself too hard. He ends up ignoring her well-intentioned advice, and with disastrous consequences.
- Cathartic Exhalation: Nacho audibly sighs with relief, and his hands are visibly shaking once he's let go of the coffee cup, after he successfully pulls off his plan to switch out Hector's medication with spiked Ibuprofen pills.
- Crazy-Prepared: Nacho has not only purchased the empty pill casings from Wormald, but he puts meticulous effort and attention to detail in executing his plan. He carefully places crushed Ibuprofen pills into the casings before sealing them. He is then shown spending a lot of time practicing how he's going to slip it into a coat resting on a chair. He next cuts the coolant line above El Michoacáno in order to sabotage its air conditioning, with the point that Hector will sooner or later be forced to take off his coat. He rushes out the small time dealers to open the windows to enact his plan. He then picks the right moments, when the next dealer is not expected for some time. The first time window is when he tricks Hector into double-checking whether a bill is counterfeit, and grabs the opportunity to search for Hector's pills in the left pocket of his coat. But the pills aren't there. It's unclear whether Nacho already planned for that possibility, or played Xanatos Speed Chess by pretending to drop the cash by accident in order to find the pills in the right pocket. He grabs the next window to count out how many pills Hector has in his bottle, and switches them out for the Ibuprofen spiked pills. The plan is fully realized when he offers to get another espresso for Hector, and successfully slips the spiked pills into the right pocket without Hector noticing.
- Cross-Referenced Titles: With the following episode, "Fall".
- The Cynic:
- Jimmy seems to be embracing this side of his personality, with his own brother having tried to ruin his career, and his commercials customers constantly trying to stiff him. He's certainly feeling less guilty about the awful things he does in his own turn. "My back hurts like hell and ... people suck."
- The music store owners are quick to dismiss Jimmy from their services after they confirm he doesn't work for the broadcast station, which Jimmy already (proportedly) explained before the initial shoot, and then proceed to take their meager “compromise" of $450 off the table when Jimmy tries to insist they have no legal right to air the ad without his consent.
- Damage Control:
- Howard is having to wine and dine clients full-time to manage the fallout of Chuck's outburst.
- Kim seems to realize that Jimmy is either an undependable source of cash flow or that he's back to pulling scams and risking losing his law license or even his freedom, so she starts taking on even more work to shore up their finances.
- Death Course: What the freezer aisle of the supermarket looks like to Chuck, as he attempts to get soy milk. However, he manages to make it out unscathed and gets home without having any breakdown.
- Double-Meaning Title:
- "Slip" refers both to Jimmy's Wounded Gazelle Gambit scheme of slipping on a fallen drumstick in the music store, and also to how Jimmy is "slipping" further down the dark path to becoming the sleazy Saul Goodman.
- And then there's Nacho, who "slips" the deadly ibuprofen into Hector's coat pocket after replacing his medicine with it.
- Due to the Dead: Mike does all he could've done for the Good Samaritan – finds his body and ensures it's returned to his family for proper burial.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The drug dealer shows a willingness to get violent with Jimmy when he suspects Jimmy may be punking him. But he truly cares for and wants to see his baby daughter, who is sick in the hospital.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Gus refuses to take a 'commission' from the money Mike wants to launder for this family, as his stated objection is that he will not steal from Mike's family.
- Evil Feels Good:
- Jimmy is really happy about his cons working, after trying to do things the legal way for the last episode didn't work.
- Averted with Nacho, who finds switching the pills on Hector a terrifying prospect and has the same hand shakes he did after Hector forced him to beat up Krazy 8. Clearly, attempting murder isn't a fun experience for him for all sorts of reasons.
- Frivolous Lawsuit: Jimmy's threatened lawsuit against his community service supervisor may or may not have merit, but the merits clearly don't matter. The important thing is the financial burden it will put the supervisor under, so whether Jimmy wins the suit or not, he still wins.
- Hard-Work Montage: An overview montage shows Mike (several Mikes by surface appearance) going over the same area with his metal detector, and digging up several holes, until he finds the corpse of the Good Samaritan.
- Hates Small Talk: Nacho clearly does when he tries to count his underlings' money. Somewhat justified since this is while he's also working to conduct the pill swap.
- "Hell, Yes!" Moment: Jimmy lies on his back like he's sun tanning on a paradisical beach after his threat of a Frivolous Lawsuit against the community service supervisor works, and he collects his $700 from the drug dealer. In hindsight it may also have been his "Eureka!" Moment for coming up with the plan to force an early settlement of the Sandpiper case.
- Hope Spot:
- Manuel seems happy to see Nacho early at the upholstery shop, even though he previously disowned him. He seems hopeful that Nacho has truly left his former life of crime behind and is now devoting himself to the legitimate business of the shop. Nacho will have some troubling news for him, and somebody else will soon show up at his business.
- Chuck was doing so well. Going out, managing his condition, going shopping. And now Howard is going to lay the malpractice insurance bombshell on him (and given insurers don't like insuring bad risks, this could even go as far as termination of cover).
- Likewise, the success of his freebie commercial means that Jimmy is just about to seal the deal for more commercials, paid ones this time, with the music store owners...and then one of them calls the station and they threaten to drop him entirely.
- Nacho audibly sighs with relief after his plan to switch out Hector's medication for spiked Ibuprofen pills comes off. But there will be complications down the road.
- Ignored Expert: Dr. Cruz advises Chuck to temper his expectations and continue to work on his condition instead of forcing a full speed return to his former life. He will end up ignoring the sound and well-intentioned advice to his own detriment.
- Internal Reveal: Howard is waiting at Chuck's house when Chuck returns home from his shopping trip. While Chuck is pleased to see Howard, Howard admits he actually came to talk about an issue concerning Chuck's malpractice insurance. Meaning that the insurance company has modified Chuck's premiums in light of Jimmy's visit.
- Match Cut: A sound variant. Nacho is shown using a knife to pierce the coils in the rooftop air conditioning units, and the hiss of gas rushing out bleeds into the sound of sizzling from the cook manning the grill the next day.
- Medication Tampering: This is Nacho's plan to assassinate Hector. He fills up empty but identical pill casings with ibuprofen (not safe for those with cardiovascular problems), then steals Hector's pill bottle and swaps out the real medicine for his fakes.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Chuck's small victory in getting milk from the shop. Never has a walk through a grocery store's freezer aisle been such a genuinely empowering moment.
- Never My Fault: Howard's turn this episode. Chuck was mentally ill after all, and Howard did keep this from the clients. So any damage control he now has to engage in with clients stems from not being open with them in the first place, and he can't pin it on Kim and Jimmy.
- Off the Table: The dickwad music store brothers offer Jimmy a mere $450 for shooting the "free" commercial after finding out that he "lied" about working for the station and purportedly "overpriced" them for the air time. When they let him know that they plan to work with the station from there, and Jimmy tries to insist they cannot air the commercial any further without infringing on his copyright, they proceed to take that $450 off the table and reshoot the ad wholesale without his involvement, even throwing his Elite Package back in his face for being too expensive for them.
- Passive Aggressive Combat: Howard and Kim have a little duel at the restaurant, with Howard pointedly reminding Kim and her clients about her time in doc review and Kim showily paying off her law school debt in front of Howard's table of clients. Both of them pull the "Sit, I insist" power move on each other.
- Pet the Dog: The Good Samaritan's family will at least now know what happened to their lost relative, thanks to Mike.
- The Reveal:
- As it happens, Chuck called for his doctor a few episodes ago because he actually wants to find out what's wrong with him.
- The favor Mike asked of Nacho was for the approximate location of the body of the "Good Samaritan" that Hector had murdered, as shown by Mike taking out his notebook last episode when talking to Nacho and this episode just before looking for the body. Turns out it was not too far from where Mike hit the truck.
- Jimmy's visit to the insurance company in the last episode has caused the insurance company to jack up the premiums on Chuck's malpractice insurance.
- Shout-Out: The drug dealer is impressed when Jimmy's threat of a Frivolous Lawsuit against the community service supervisor actually works, and says: "That was some Jedi mind shit right there." Even some members of the audience probably made the connection to Obi Wan-Kenobi using the Force to talk his way past an Imperial Stormtrooper during the first Star Wars movie.
- Shown Their Work:
- Nacho is shown filling the fake pill capsules with ibuprofen powder – and ibuprofen is not a good idea to administer to someone at risk of heart disease. Though Nacho may not know this and just lucked out with the pills he switched in.
- Genius Bonus: One of the places to do a study on ibuprofen's link to heart attacks is McGill University
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- Genius Bonus: One of the places to do a study on ibuprofen's link to heart attacks is McGill University
- Chuck repeats a mantra (identifying an object and their color) to himself as he prepares to enter the grocery, which is a real tactic used in behavioral conditioning to manage a number of conditions.
- Nacho is shown filling the fake pill capsules with ibuprofen powder – and ibuprofen is not a good idea to administer to someone at risk of heart disease. Though Nacho may not know this and just lucked out with the pills he switched in.
- Swapped Roles: Chuck is getting better, becoming (literally) outgoing and wanting to be around people, while Jimmy is falling into darkness, being shut-in due to his self-inflicted back injury and is feeling misanthropic.
- Title Drop: Slippin' Jimmy is back, pulling his flopsies.
- Ungrateful Bastard:
- Kim's vendetta against Howard is based purely on the fact that he reassigned her to "the cornfield" twice (for reasons she admitted were her own fault) and for being an accomplice in Chuck's schemes to disbar Jimmy (who absolutely should be disbarred for a number of reasons). This in spite of the fact that he put her through law school and that she owes basically all of her professional success to him.
- The music store owners receive a free commercial from Jimmy, in exchange for a promise that if they see a related increase in business they'll pay for more. They receive the increase in business, but when Jimmy presses them on their agreement they only half-heartedly agree to pay for the first commercial, then take even that off the table when Jimmy keeps pressing them.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Jimmy, when faced with the music shop clients who are going seriously hardball on him, engineers a situation where he slips on a drumstick while the camera just happens to be rolling. He ends up selling all the airspace he had to sell and got a signed guitar into the bargain - though he did actually hurt his back.
