In a flashback, a teenage Kim waits outside her Junior High School in Nebraska, holding a cello. Kim's mother, who is obviously driving under the influence, finally drives to the school to pick up her daughter, but a sensible and frustrated Kim is reluctant to get in the car. Kim's mother attempts to convince her that she is sober, but Kim decides she will walk home, at which point her mother tells her "you never listen" and drives off.
At the nail salon, Jimmy presents Joey's film crew with a project to edit an old Mesa Verde commercial in which a young Kevin and his father appear. Jimmy wants to produce the video for the next day, so the crew tinkers with a green screen and hires a few locals to shoot that night in the salon. Remorseful, Kim goes to the salon and pitches Jimmy a $75,000 deal favoring Everett Acker, offering to supplement from her own pocket any amount that Mesa Verde will agree to pay in order to quickly close the case. A surprised Jimmy tries to dissuade Kim but ends up accepting the decision.
At an abandoned warehouse, Nacho meets with Gus, Victor and Mike, the latter of whom he pretends not to know. Nacho informs them of Lalo's latest activities, which are intended to undermine the cartel's trust in Gus by sabotaging his legitimate and illegitimate operations. Gus informs Nacho that he will report directly to Mike from this point on. After he leaves, Nacho warns Mike about Gus' ruthlessness, but Mike reminds Nacho that he warned him of the risk he took when he tried to kill Hector. When Nacho reveals that Gus is threatening his father's life, Mike promises to discuss it once they've taken care of Lalo.
Kim, Rich, and Viola attend a conference call with Jimmy and learn that Acker has agreed to settle the case. Afterwards, Kim apologizes to Rich for the scene she made after he tried to pull her off of her Mesa Verde work. Rich accepts her apology, but warns her to never make a dispute with him public in front of the rest of his staff again. The two agree to go to a lunch meeting together in order to project unity within the firm.
In his car outside a public library, Mike reads the case file concerning Lalo's murder of Fred Whalen and his arson of the Travel Wire office. Mike comes across a witnesses statement by one Lily Simmons. Inside the library, he purchases a stack of children's books from a bargain bin for Kaylee. This is pretense for him to approach Lily, claiming to be a private investigator representing Fred's family. Under Mike's questioning, Lily is able to identify Lalo's 1970 Chevrolet Monte Carlo as the unusual vehicle she saw near the Travel Wire on the day of the murder.
At the courthouse, Jimmy has gotten two sex workers a light sentence of three months probation. He pays them into acting as his accomplices in another prank on Howard, having them approach him in the middle of a business lunch with Cliff Main at the Forque Kitchen and Bar and publicly accuse him of using their services without paying. An amused Jimmy watches the unfolding scene from his Suzuki, then makes a cell phone call in relation to an upcoming meeting with Mesa Verde.
Mike walks into a police station, where he compels an office clerk to deliver the Whalen case file to Det. Tim Roberts. After he receives the file, Roberts' partner informs him that Lily has called in identifying the car she had seen at the Travel Wire, which matches the description of a car which rammed a motorist at a public parking lot on the day of Fred's murder. At the parking lot, the motorist states that he can identify the driver of the other car, giving them a lead linking Lalo to the murder.
Meanwhile, Jimmy meets with Kim, Rich, Kevin and Paige at Schweikart & Cokely to negotiate Acker’s settlement, stunning everyone in the room by demanding $4 million. When Kevin balks this demand, Jimmy shows them his video, which consist of rough cuts of television commercials seeking plaintiffs for class-action lawsuits against Mesa Verde, which make outrageous allegations against both the bank and Kevin’s father. Jimmy also takes advantage of Kim’s insight from the photos taken from inside Kevin's house, which is that Mesa Verde’s cowboy logo is based on a photograph which the bank did not obtain permission to use; on top of the lawsuits, Jimmy threatens an injunction against displaying the logo.
After Jimmy leaves, Kevin's legal team struggles to figure out how they can deal with his threats. Kevin excuses himself from the conference room to surreptitiously make a phone call to Jimmy and agree to a deal. Meeting with Kevin in a parking garage, Jimmy lays out his terms: Acker is allowed to keep his house, receives $75,000, and a public apology from Mesa Verde; while the photographer receives $100,000 for future use and credit for the bank's logo. In exchange, Jimmy agrees to never broadcast the commercials attacking Mesa Verde.
That night, as Lalo is driving south, Nacho phones Mike and tells him about his whereabouts. Mike uses a radio to tap into the police department's channels and calls in the car. As Lalo is coming to a stop at a light, he's spotted by a patrol car. Lalo briefly contemplates using his gun to escape, only for several more units to arrive and box him. Realizing he is outmatched, he surrenders on the spot.
At Kim's apartment, Jimmy waits for her to come home, feeling apprehensive over how she will react to what transpired at the meeting. When she arrives and confirms that Kevin took the settlement offer, Jimmy insists that the outcome was a win for everyone and is a cause for celebration. Instead, Kim angrily states that only Jimmy won from the scheme, denounces him for going back on their previous deal of not using the blackmail video, and says that he made her the "sucker" for his con against Mesa Verde. To Jimmy's surprise, Kim insists that they either need to end their relationship — or get married.
Tropes
- Alcoholic Parent: Kim's mother is shown in a flashback, rolling in to pick Kim up from school very late at night, driving rather slippery, and the car reeking of alcohol. She keeps insisting she only had one drink, but Kim decides she'd rather walk home, which only serves to irritate her mom in the process.
- Ambiguous Situation: Jimmy claims that he filed an injunction against Mesa Verde's logo on grounds of copyright infringement. However, it isn't clear if Jimmy actually did, or claimed so in order to provoke Kevin into settling the matter with Mr. Acker outright.
- Bad "Bad Acting": Downplayed, but the actors for Jimmy's ads are supposed to be portraying serious, fictionalized (or not!) qualms with Mesa Verde, yet struggle a bit and usually end up relying on his direction. Their deliveries tend to just be serviceable, despite only needing to directly talk into the camera. Jimmy also makes things easier by letting them read their script on nearby cue cards.
- Batman Gambit:
- The commercials that Jimmy puts together for his meeting with Mesa Verde would definitely damage the bank's reputation if they aired, but the goal of showing them to Kevin seems to be more about annoying and frustrating him into making an actual mistake. When Jimmy pulls out the real secret weapon, a photograph from a local photographer that looks almost identical to the Mesa Verde logo, Kevin is incensed enough to ignore Kim's advice to keep quiet and insist that his father bought a copy of the picture years ago, making it clear that it was the inspiration for the Mesa Verde logo. Of course, the Wachtell's owning a copy of the photograph does not mean they own the rights to it, meaning their use of it in their logo qualifies as copyright infringement. So Jimmy manages to get Kevin to walk right into an admission of grounds for a legitimate lawsuit that should carry far more weight in court than the false and baseless accusations in his commercials, and at the very least will force Kevin to cover up or take down all instances of the logo for the years it will take for the case to play out.
- The gambit also banked on Kim feeling and displaying real raw anger at the realization that he's plowing ahead with his game plan, despite her telling him beforehand to cancel it. That in turn is mean to shield the both of them of any suspicions of conflict of interest from either Rich or Paige.
- Bavarian Fire Drill: Mike convinces Lily to amend her testimony by pretending to be a private investigator hired by Fred Whalen's family. He later shows up in the police department's offices with nothing but a coffee mug and an attitude to make sure the info gets to the detectives investigating Lalo. Despite having no credentials to justify being in either situation, he only needed his stoicism to get people to trust his authority on the matter.
- Blackmail: Saul uses the potential publicity damage of several different cases against Mesa Verde for a favorable outcome for Mr. Acker. Kim points out that leveraging cases this way is illegal and amounts to blackmail. Kevin acquiesces anyway, viewing it at best as a legal game of chicken with Saul he's not willing to play.
- Blatant Lies: Saul Invokes this, as his commercials depict ludicrous claims about Mesa Verda's practices using false testimonies from different actors. While they'd be easy to disprove, broadcasting these commercials would be enough to hurt Mesa Verde's reputation by merely suggesting something's wrong with the bank, effectively threatening them with the potential for a class-action lawsuit.
- Both Sides Have a Point: Mike reminds Nacho that he warned him that Gus would come for him if he was discovered to have played a part in Hector's health decline. However, Nacho counters that Gus is threatening not only him, but also his father, whom he was trying to protect in the first place, yet is now unknowingly in more danger than ever before.
- Call-Back: Once again, a McGill manages to sideswipe Schweikart by mentioning a proposed settlement cost in the upper millions.
- Call-Forward:
- We see the rise of Saul's preference for Kitschy Local Commercials in this episode, showing why he began Cutting Corners on production costs unlike his previous ads as Jimmy McGill.
- Saul's meeting with S&C and showing them the smear campaigns is similar to the tactics he'll pull to help Jesse buy his aunt's house from his parents for half-price. Saul does all the research, immediately rejects Mesa Verde's first offer, the client wants to hear Saul out (despite their legal counsel staying firm), Saul counters with an absolutely ridiculous offer, gets laughed at, and then blackmails his way to winning. He'll certainly refine himself a bit and be more subtle, going down from "Bare genitals!" to "I thought some allowance was in order once I heard about the meth lab."
- A real subtle one. Detective Tim Roberts is seen on the phone with someone who claims that there might be an opossum or dead body underneath their house. It's similar to an anecdote Jesse brought up in Fring's lab, where his aunt kept complaining about an opossum taking residence under her house long after it was removed.
- The Cameo: Detective Tim Roberts, Hank's buddy in the Albuquerque Police Department, turns out to be the lead investigator on the Travel Wire homicide.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Lily Simmons turns out to be the individual that Lalo had to shoo away while he was combing the Travel Wire surveillance footage and looking up details on Werner's whereabouts, and Mike jogs her memory to get a description of the vehicle that Lalo drives.
- Continuity Nod:
- Nacho mentions how Gus had him shot as part of the move against the Salamancas after he and Mike are alone. Mike frankly reminds him that he warned him about the dangers of going against the cartel, and more specifically, Hector.
- Mike uses the "Dave Clark" alias when asking Lily Simmons for information about the Travel Wire homicide.
- Cliff and Howard discuss unscrupulous tactics by Schweikart and Cokely, an indication that the Sandpiper Crossing case is still an ongoing concern.
- Convicted by Public Opinion: Invoked by Saul. His slanderous commercials against Mesa Verde are filled with ridiculous claims against the company by obvious actors with zero evidence to back them up and would be easily disproven in court, but Mesa Verde's reputation would be greatly damaged if they aired, even if the claims in the ads are clearly faked.
- Cutting Corners: As it happens, this is why Saul started doing his green screen-filled commercials: when drafting up his Mesa Verde smear ads with his film crew, they begin voicing their problems with his request of finishing them by tomorrow: there's too many shots, they would need proper payment, midterms are coming up at UNM, so on. As such, in order to speed things along, Jimmy proposes using a green screennote to get the job done. We then cut to the nail salon, with Jimmy making a homemade green screen with a tarp and spray paint.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: It's 2004, the War on Terror is in full swing, so one of Jimmy's smear ads against Mesa Verde has a "customer" claim that the bank was "funding terrorism".
- Didn't See That Coming:
- Kim's reaction the moment Jimmy says that the settlement should be $4 million, as well as Jimmy's whole act with the anti-Mesa Verde advertisement. Jimmy later explains that the whole point was to catch Kim off-guard sincerely, so as not to implicate her in the whole setup.
- It's subtle, but Jimmy is taken aback when Kim states towards the end of her rant, given how she feels that they have reached the breaking point in their relationship due to his actions, the only options they have left are to either break up and move on from each other... or get married.
- Enforced Method Acting: In-universe, Jimmy claims he went behind Kim's back to get a settlement for Mr. Acker because, if she genuinely didn't know what he would do, her reaction to his stunt is real and thus likely to get her off any hook she might be on with Rich Schweikart concerning conflict of interest.
- Et Tu, Brute?: Kim is NOT pleased when she realizes that Jimmy is going to plow ahead with the blackmail stunt on Kevin Wachtell, despite her telling him not to the night before. And that anger persists into the night after Jimmy and Kevin shake hands.
- Evil Is Petty: Once again, Jimmy is pulling some tricks to make Howard miserable after he merely made him a job offer. This time, he pays two hookers he had just represented in court to stroll right up to Howard in a public restaurant while he's having lunch with Clifford Main (who Jimmy is also all too happy to embarrass) and pretend that he's indebted to their pimp and refusing to pay up for all to hear.
- Exact Words:
- Played with. While the meeting after the screening says "Mesa Verde" was never spoken in Jimmy's smear commercials with the logo being shown to make the implication that Mesa Verde is the bank the customers are talking about, Mesa Verde is mentioned 3 times in each commercial. note
- It would be illegal for Jimmy to say that he'll never air the commercials he made and drop the injunction against Mesa Verde's logo if Mesa Verde stops trying to evict Mr. Acker, as lawyers can't play one case against another. So Jimmy is careful about what he says when meeting with Mesa Verde and their council, insisting that the issues are completely separate from each other, although it's clear to everyone what Jimmy is attempting to accomplish with his threats. Even when Kevin caves, Jimmy makes sure to word everything so it's not a quid pro quo exchange, but rather both parties agreeing to back off.
- Failure Gambit: Gus intends to play along with Lalo's plans to sabotage his legitimate and criminal operations by turning the odds and circumstances into his favor, making sure the losses aren't meaningful. This time, he protects his actual dealers while trying to figure out what they should do against Lalo.
- Fiery Cover Up: While originally unable to be shown due to time constrantsnote , it's finally confirmed here that Lalo burned down the Travel Wire after he killed Fred in order to cover his tracks.
- Fully Automatic Clip Show: The montage of Jimmy's interactions with the actors and the creation of his commercials overnight.
- Gossipy Hens: Cliff and Howard serve as male examples in the lawyering world, eagerly chatting over lunch about a nearby Judge's plan to retire with a law clerk decades younger than him.
- Impersonating an Officer: Mike pretends to be an Albuquerque Police detective to slip an inter-office memo to Tim Roberts that includes the Travel Wire witness' updated statement, ensuring the police put two and two together between the incident at Travel Wire and the hit-and-run at the parking lot when Mike shook Lalo off his tail. With the police given a description of the car, Mike later taps into the police radio and calls in Lalo's plate number.
- Internal Reveal:
- Nacho is shocked to see Mike coming out of his Chrysler alongside Gus and Victor in their Cadillac, having not known Mike was one of Gus' men now. He then pieces together that Mike is the same "gringo Michael" whom Lalo had been obsessing over.
- Mike brings further information to Lily, eventually bolstering what the police have on Lalo.
- Kick the Dog: Jimmy decides to screw with Howard once more, despite having very little reason to do so.
- Kitschy Local Commercial:
- The Mesa Verde commercial shown at the start of the episode, starring Kevin's father, has noticeable audio warbling.
- The Saul Goodman commercial about Mesa Verde plays the "obnoxious local lawyer" shtick to the hilt, and was made literally overnight.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Jimmy's cameraman "corrects" him by saying they need a green screen, not a blue screen. Really, either would've worked just fine.
- Know When to Fold 'Em:
- Kevin was initially willing to fight with fury and brimstone to keep his call center on the same plot, saying his father never gave up a fight and he won't either. However, Jimmy presents him with a such a multitude of legal and PR headaches with his commercial campaign and copyright injunction that Kevin finally walks down to him in private and asks what it will take to make it all go away. Kim then reveals later that he did indeed shake Jimmy's hand and agree to all of his demands.
- Kim also tries to fold in her own plan, realizing after her outburst at Rich that she was going way too far and tells Jimmy that she just wants to pay (even out of her own pocket) whatever it'll take for Mr. Acker to settle. Unfortunately, Jimmy goes behind her back and pulls out all the stops anyway to attack Mesa Verde with barbs and ultimately convince them to move their call center and pay the Native American woman retributions for using her photo in the company's logo.
- Lalo sees a police car roll up behind him, and the officer gets on his megaphone to order him out of the car. Lalo grabs a gun from the underside of his seat, clearly ready for a potential gunfight. But then several more squad cars show up and box him in, and he finally decides to just put the gun down and surrender.
- Malicious Slander: Jimmy's commercials are purposely slandering Mesa Verde, with increasingly ridiculous and heinous charges like giving customers black mold, Wachtell Sr. being a sexual predator, and Mesa Verde deliberately funding terrorism.
- Manipulative Editing: Jimmy intentionally takes Don's drawling "YUP!" from the old Mesa Verde commercial shown at the start, and uses it in his smear commercials in relation to "customers" of the bank complaining about the fictitious acts done against them. One particular commercial sees an elderly "customer" "recounting" how Kevin's father flashed her."Customer": I went to my bank to open my safety deposit box, and this *BUZZ!* was standing there, with his pants down! Bare genitals!
Don: YUP!
Kevin: [pissed] My dad never ever did anything like that! - May–December Romance: Cliff brings up that a judge whom Howard is on first-name basis with is retiring to be with his 22 year old law clerk.
- Meaningful Echo: Mike reminds Nacho of what he said when they met to discuss the pill switch back in "Expenses" that others had eyes on the Salamancas that Nacho would need to be aware of.
- Moral Myopia: Throughout the show, Kim has been happy to play along with Jimmy's various schemes. Here, however, she is outraged to find herself on the receiving end of one of said schemes.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Mike gets this when Nacho mentions his father's life is on the line, especially hitting home given how Mike only got involved with Gus in the first place due to the Salamancas threatening Mike's family.
- Never Trust a Trailer: At one point during the promo for this episode, a shot of a cop car pulling up behind another vehicle is followed by a shot of Jimmy, in his car, grimacing. These two shots are completely unrelated to each other: the car the cops pulled up to was Lalo's, and Jimmy grimaced because he was about to go against Kim's wishes about aborting their plan against Mesa Verde, and call up one Olivia Bitsui.
- Nominal Hero: Mike may actually get justice for the Travel Wire clerk's family if Lalo gets arrested – but he wasn't doing it for that purpose, but rather to allow Gus a small victory over Lalo.
- Not So Above It All: Clifford Main, during the first two seasons, had been presented as arguably the most straight arrow and moral character to appear in the series thus far. But even he can't help but get a good dig or two in on the judge retiring with his 22 year old clerk along with Howard.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When Kim recounts to Jimmy how her meeting with Kevin went after he agrees to Jimmy's settlement terms, he wants her to put on the imitation again but because she is still angry at how he went off-script on the meeting, she just continues in her regular voice. Jimmy is too ecstatic at the outcome to notice the omission.
- Plagiarism in Fiction: As it turns out, Kevin's father Don, in the early days of Mesa Verde, had purchased a photograph from one Olivia Bitsui of a cowboy on a horse in the desert, and based the company's logo on it. As Jimmy points out as part of his meeting at Mesa Verde, Olivia was neither credited nor compensated for her intellectual property. As part of several settlements between Jimmy's clients and Mesa Verde, Olivia is awarded $200,000 and gets her name attached to the logo going forward.
- Precision F-Strike: It would appear that this season has more than one allowed F-bomb this go around, given this bit towards the end:
- Refuge in Audacity:
- Jimmy ensures Acker gets his way by suddenly denying Mesa Verde's settlement, sideswiping them with a ludicrous demand for millions of dollars, then following both up with the threat of a smear campaign. Said campaign would use a cavalcade of low-quality commercials pushing ridiculous claims as its foundation, but could potentially lead to a class-action lawsuit no matter how unfounded the claims may be. Finally, he tops it all off with a case for copyright infringement over the bank's logo, all while keeping Kim in the dark about his intentions. Though leveraging several cases is tantamount to blackmail and even illegal, the mess causes such a big enough headache to make Kevin actually relent to a more reasonable outcome.
- Mike pretends to be a police detective to trick an actual detective to deliver some leads to the guy investigating the Travel Wire case. The only thing he needs for this is a suit and a bossy attitude. He doesn't even have a name tag! Granted, he was a cop once, but it's unlikely that anyone would recognize him, given he's retired and worked in a completely different area.
- The Reveal: The previous episode showed Kim and Jimmy hiring Sobchak to look into Kevin in an attempt to find something they could use against him. Sobchak didn't seem to find anything of use, and even notes how clean Kevin seems to be legally, even after breaking into his house. Kim, however, spotted something in one of the photos Sobchak took inside Kevin's house that she believed they could use, but no details of what it was were given until this episode. Turns out, she saw a photograph hanging in Kevin's office almost identical to the Mesa Verde logo, and when it turns out that the photo was taken by a local photographer named Olivia Bitsui, they're able to use it to threaten a credible lawsuit against Mesa Verde for copyright infringement.
- Shoot the Dog: Kevin is infuriated that Jimmy defeated him, but he doesn't seem that upset at the terms, perhaps because he agrees the Native American lady deserves to be paid for her work.
- Streisand Effect: Used in-universe as part of Jimmy's blackmail ploy. The "What is Mesa Verde Hiding?"
ad campaign is tasteless libel, with most of the charges chosen for maximum shock value (black mold, sexual harassment, al-Qaeda sympathies) over any basis in reality; unfortunately, this also means that even a denial, which the nature of the claims would force them to make, would result in negative publicity by acknowledging and spreading the allegations further. Worse, if someone was inspired to file a class-action lawsuit over one of those claims in the hopes of easy money, the incident would be disastrous for Mesa Verde's public image. - Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In “Winner”, Lalo used his car to smash someone else’s car through a barrier, drove a couple miles away, forced his way into a store, killed a man during broad daylight, and used a distinctive car to drive to and from. The fact that he wasn’t caught immediately was mostly luck. Mike has to plant a couple of leads to get the police to connect the dots, and when they do, Lalo is quickly arrested.
- Too Dumb to Live: Kevin's pride winds up playing right into Saul's hands, not only refusing to listen to Kim's suggestion of leaving the room as to not see the smear advertisements, but also refusing to be silent when Saul produces the cowboy photo that his father had purchased and (as Jimmy reveals) co-opted for Mesa Verde's logo.
- Tranquil Fury:
- After Nacho reveals to Gus that Lalo plans on sabotaging his restaurants in order to make the cartel lose trust in him, Gus is visibly ticked off that Lalo would dare mess with his legitimate business, but he maintains his composure and instructs Nacho to report directly to Mike from this point on.
- Kim is practically dripping this trope when she arrives home to Jimmy just hours after his whole routine.
- Tuckerization: Olivia Bitsui is named for Jeremiah Bitsui (Victor)'s daughter.
- Unreadable Disclaimer: Saul's commercials badmouthing Mesa Verde always start with a small and brief statement that the stories depicted may or may not be true, which scrolls across the bottom of the screen very quickly.
- Weasel Words: Every "customer's" testimony in Saul's commercials is accompanied by a quickly-scrolling disclaimer saying, "ACTOR PORTRAYALS BASED ON ACTUAL INCIDENTS OR FICTION".
- We Have Reserves: When Nacho relays how Lalo plans on ratting Gus' dealers out to the DEA through Domingo, Gus responds by using low-level dealers or finding new ones to have them arrested instead of his usual workers.
- Wham Line: Kim holds no punches back when yelling at Jimmy over the stunt he pulled in this episode, getting sick of falling for his tricks, and being fully aware that all Jimmy is now is just a series of non-stop lies, and how "this" needs to end... and then she drops this bomb:Kim: You know this has to change. If you don't see it, I don't know what to say, because we are at a breaking point–
Jimmy: [wipes hands across face] Oh God.
Kim: Either we end this now–
Jimmy: [freaking out] NO!
Kim: Either we end this now and [near tears] enjoy the time we had, and go our separate ways, or w- we'r-...
Jimmy: Or what?
Kim: [stammering] Or we're- we'r- I mea-... [shaky inhale] or maybe w-... ... ...maybe we get married.
