Coushatta
Kim sees Jimmy off as he travels by bus to Huell's hometown of Coushatta, Louisiana. Throughout the journey, Jimmy writes on postcards with different pens and in different styles of handwriting. He also recruits other riders into writing their own messages, paying them a few dollars for each letter. When he arrives in Coushatta, Jimmy gets off the bus and steps into the local post office. After dispensing with his enveloped messages, Jimmy waits out front for the bus going back home.
At El Michoacano, Nacho now fills Hector's former role of observing cash collections. Krazy-8 counts money from a bling-wearing drug dealer, who has come up short. Krazy-8 initially allows the dealer to leave, but Nacho summons the dealer over to his table. Nacho tears out one of the dealer's earrings and warns him that, "What you owe, you owe with interest." After the dealer leaves, Krazy-8 turns around to affirm Nacho's action, but Nacho asks why he didn't do it himself. Krazy-8 acknowledges Nacho's hint, and right away another dealer enters the diner, while Nacho watches calmly.
After dark, Nacho drives a muscle car to an upscale house, where two young women are inside watching TV. Without a word, Nacho gives them small bags of crack and retreats to his bedroom. There, he stashes his drug money in a safe in his closet. As he does so, Nacho looks at a pair of fake Manitoba ID cards that have been forged for himself and his father, showing that he has an exit strategy.
Mike and Werner take their workers to a local strip club, where they are entertained by the dancers, particularly Kai. Observing Werner sitting alone, Mike takes him to a calmer bar next door for a drink. Werner tells Mike that his father was also an engineer, who devoted ten years of his life to building the Sydney Opera House. When a third patron asks for hefeweizen, Werner politely corrects his pronunciation and pays for the patron's drink. Werner states that he misses his wife and asks Mike what his father was like, leading the two men to reflect on their families and making a toast to home. Nick shows up to summon Mike, leaving Werner behind at the bar.
Mike finds Nick and Arthur confronting a belligerent Kai, who has been thrown out of the strip club for making unwanted advances towards one of the dancers. The owner threatens to call the police, but Mike bribes him in exchange for allowing Kai to return home and sleep it off. Kai reacts angrily, but stands down when Mike challenges him. Mike returns to the bar to find Werner socializing with the patron from earlier, drunkenly divulging details about the secret excavation beneath Lavanderia Brillante. Concerned, Mike collects Werner and drives away.
At their apartment, Kim is reviewing Huell's assault case when Jimmy tells her that he is going to the Day Spa and Nail to "set things up." There, Mrs. Nguyen finds Jimmy in his backroom office writing on stickers that he puts on the backs of drop phones on his desk. Assuming that Kim is Jimmy's wife and that she's thrown him out, Mrs. Nguyen pours him a glass of alcohol and urges him to take her out to a nice restaurant to make up with her. Jimmy dejectedly replies that he thinks they might be "past that." Mrs. Nguyen lets Jimmy keep the bottle as she leaves.
The next day, Kim arrives at the courthouse with a team of lawyers to meet with ADA Ericsen. Kim seeks to have Huell's charge reduced to simple battery, and have his sentence reduced to several months' probation with time served. When Ericsen refuses, Kim's associates files several motions to collect evidence corroborating Huell's version of events, signaling that they are willing to begin civil rights litigation on Huell's behalf. Speaking in private with Kim, Ericsen states that she is unimpressed with Kim's "shock and awe" tactics and they won't sway her.
At the warehouse, as Werner and his crew are preparing for the trip to the lab, Mike confronts Werner with a diagram he drew for the bar patron on the back of a coaster. Werner initially claims that he did not blab about the excavation, but, under Mike's watchful glare, concedes that he was very inebriated. He tries to dismiss the possible concern that the people he was talking to will remember him, but Mike counters that a lone German in Albuquerque talking about an illegal dig site is the sort of thing that leaves a lasting impression. Mike warns Werner to consider how Gus has gone to great lengths to keep the excavation secret, and won't be forgiving to his precautions being ignored. Realizing what he is saying, Werner apologizes and gives his word that nothing like this will ever happen again.
Meanwhile, Kim and Ericsen are summoned to Judge Munsinger's chambers, where the letters from Jimmy's bus trip have flooded the judge's desk, demanding Huell's release. Kim denies playing any role in the letter-writing campaign. Munsinger, exasperated by the volume of the letters and the prospect of a threatened contingent of "yahoos" from Coushatta coming to pack his court, demands that the two women resolve the case without causing a circus.
Ericsen returns to the DA's office and orders her subordinates to comb Huell's file. Reading the letters, she phones one of the purported authors, who claims to know Huell from her church in Coushatta. One of the subordinates finds a website for the church, which is raising funds for Huell and shows photos of him in various social and charitable roles. What Ericsen doesn't know that she's actually speaking to the Drama Girl, speaking to her on a drop phone; she, Jimmy, and the other two members of Joey's film crew are in Jimmy's backroom office, where a bunch of drop phones have been set up to help make the letters look real. When Ericsen calls the "church," Jimmy takes that the call on another drop phone, with an organ music CD playing in the background, pretends to be Huell's pastor, and spins a yarn about Huell rescuing elderly congregants from a church fire. When Ericsen, finally fooled by the ruse, stops making calls on the other drop phones, Jimmy gives the film crew instructions on how to answer them as he leaves the office. Jimmy arrives at the courthouse and sees Kim negotiating with Ericsen in a courtroom. Outside, Jimmy follows her into a stairwell, where she shoves him against a wall and passionately kisses him.
The following morning, Jimmy and Kim are in bed together post-coitus, with Jimmy giving her an impersonation of his pastor character. Kim tells Jimmy that his scheme with the phones was "genius", but Jimmy credits her with devising the whole plan in the first place. It is revealed that they have forced Ericsen to agree to Huell serving four months' probation with time served. Jimmy tells Kim that he plans to spend the day looking at another office space near the courthouse.
That day at Schweikart and Cokely, a bored Kim meets with Paige, Kevin, and one of Kim's associates. Kevin, noting that Mesa Verde's Tucumcari branch gets more foot traffic because of the building's "eye-catching" design, wants to use a similar design for their planned branch in Lubbock, Texas. However, Kim agrees with Paige that a proposed redesign is not feasible, given that it would require starting the months-long approval process over again. Kevin accepts their opinion, changing the topic to a proposed branch in Wyoming, bringing up Yellowstone as he does so. After the meeting, Kim sits in her office and retrieves her Zafiro Anejo bottle cap, a souvenir from her first con with Jimmy, from a desk drawer and wistfully clutches it.
Underneath the laundry, Mike gives Gus a progress report on the excavation, briefing him on the delays caused by Casper's accident with the skid-steer. He also informs Gus that the crew have uncovered one particularly large rock that's obstructing their planned elevator shaft, and its size is enough that they will have no choice but to blast it, which will inevitably mean more time. Gus changes the subject to Werner, having already been informed by Mike about the incident at the bar. Mike assures Gus that he will keep Werner under closer scrutiny to prevent a future incident from happening, but Gus eyes him skeptically.
Meanwhile, Jimmy is looking at a potential office space when Kim appears outside and knocks on the door. Outside, Kim tells Jimmy that she has been driving around "thinking about things." Jimmy assumes that Kim is angry about the crimes they committed to keep Huell out of jail, which would have ruined them and Rich's firm if they were discovered, and assures her that they are done with undertaking similar schemes. Surprisingly, Kim tells him that she wants to do it again.
Upon driving up to El Michoacano, Nacho finds a nervous Krazy-8 sitting silently near the door. Nacho finds that a new individual has commandeered the back kitchen, cooking Mexican food while listening to loud music. The man identifies himself as Eduardo "Lalo" Salamanca, who has been sent to help Nacho run the Salamanca family's drug business. After offering Nacho food, Eduardo walks to the front of the restaurant and sits next to Nacho's seat, waiting to take collections.
Tropes:
- Actor Allusion: Possibly with Nacho. In one scene he can be seen wearing a red wifebeater shirt, just like his character from Far Cry 3.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Pulling a scam with Jimmy turns Kim on so much that she basically attacks him right in the courthouse.
- Ambiguous Situation: Did Lalo poison the food he offers Nacho? It would certainly be in-character if he did, but it would also be in character if he was just pretending so he could mess with Nacho.
- Armor-Piercing Response: After Nacho teaches one of his ring's dealers a lesson by ripping off his earring, Krazy-8 tries to butter him up by saying that he needed to learn and that Nacho was right to do what he did, to which Nacho replies, "So, why didn't you do it?"
- Army of Lawyers: Kim gets a full-fledged team of S&C associates to attempt to intimidate ADA Ericsen into dropping the case against Huell. Ericsen dismisses them, and points out to Kim that these "shock and awe" tactics aren't going to fly. Which they weren't, obviously; they're just to make sure Ericsen is already flustered enough when Jimmy's fabricated letters from Louisiana arrive in the judge's chambers.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- The previous episodes had implied that the weak link in the German construction team would be Kai. He does, inevitably, get into trouble and ends up getting thrown out of a strip club, but Mike handles the situation without lasting damage. While Mike is dealing with this, the normally meticulous Werner causes much more serious trouble by getting drunk and talking about the work with some bar patrons.
- Previous episodes have made it seem like Jimmy and Kim's breakup is coming, and the deception they have to pull off feels like the last straw, until Kim reveals how much it turned her on and tells Jimmy she wants to do it again. It turns out she was really bored by her job and their uneventful life, and finds herself really enjoying running a scam with him.
- Breather Episode: This episode mostly features Jimmy and Kim getting into various low-stake, harmless shenanigans, heavily comedic in nature, as they try to keep a friend out of jail. Tellingly, this is also the episode that introduces Lalo.
- Bring It:
- When Kai is thrown out of the strip club, he briefly fumes at Mike for sending him back to the compound. Mike just responds "Go on, try me".
- Kim gives one too when ADA Ericsen promises she's going to meet the Army of Lawyers tactics every step of the way and still win by sending Huell to jail. "I guess we'll see."
- The Bus Came Back: Jimmy hires up his old film crew to pose as fellow "parishioners".
- Call-Back: After meeting with Kevin and Paige, Kim is seen rummaging in her desk and finds the cap from the Zafiro Anejo bottle from her and Jimmy's first scam as "Giselle".
- Call-Forward:
- Jimmy will later implement the donation feature of his phony web page here to help Walt launder his drug money.
- We also get the first glimpse of the office he will use in Breaking Bad, but it's unrecognizable as it's in a severely dilapidated state.
- Character Development: In her previous appearances, the make-up girl in Jimmy's film crew had shoddy acting skills and wasn't good at keeping a straight lie. In this episode, she turns a very convincing performance as a concerned Bible thumping Southern belle who can curse out the prosecutor, and when Jimmy expresses being impressed by her abilities, she admits she's been taking improv classes.
- Do Wrong, Right: Orchestrating and falsifying support for Huell would be unethical for any lawyer. And this was Kim's idea, which she came up with as an alternative when she estimated that Jimmy was likely going to pull an even worse scam. But Jimmy takes it, runs with, and completes its execution.
- The Dreaded: Just having Salamnca as a last name would likely be enough. But we see Domingo visibly terrifed when Nacho walks in through the front door. And Nacho is himself visibly nervous when he has his first encounter with Lalo.
- Dramatic Irony:
- Judge Munsinger accuses Kim of asking the citizens of Coushatta, Louisiana to send letters of support for Huell, a scheme that was very much her idea. To which Kim says she hasn't with a straight face, since technically she's never talked to anyone from Coushatta and no one in Coushatta is actually sending letters.
- Werner tells Mike that his father was one of the engineers who worked on the Sydney Opera House, and expresses lament that his father put so much into the project only for nobody to know the names of the people who built it. Viewers who have seen Breaking Bad know that Werner and his crew's current project is destined for the same fate. Not only will the superlab be hidden underground and only be known to a select handful of people, but it'll ultimately go up in flames (literally) with the rest of Gus's empire.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Mrs. Nguyen comforts Jimmy with a drink for his relationship problems, and when Jimmy confirms that the situation is unsalvageable, opts to gift him the entire bottle.
- Establishing Character Moment: The Faux Affably Evil Lalo makes all kinds of power plays against Nacho during their first meeting together, underneath a light-hearted exuberance on the surface. Those power plays include letting Nacho guess on his own that he's part of the Salamanca family, trying to compel Nacho to eat his cooking, and letting Nacho know that he knew everything about him beforehand. And he exudes a warm smile and a frenetic cheerful energy through the whole encounter.
- Every Man Has His Price: Mike gives the bouncer bribes, one for the girl Kai assaulted and one for the bouncer himself, to avoid the police being called on Kai.
- Evil Feels Good: Kim is very turned on by the scam to get Huell off, making love with Jimmy right afterwards. The next day, when in a meeting with Kevin and Paige, she's still reminiscing about the scam, goes through her desk to uncover the bottle cap from the first "Giselle" scam, then immediately seeks out Jimmy and asks to do another one with him.
- Face–Heel Turn: After running a scrupulously honest law practice for years, Kim decides to embrace unethical and illegal tactics to get Huell off the hook and then gleefully decides to pull another scam afterwards.
- Gold Digger: Implied with the two girls Nacho has at his place. They ask him how his day's been and whether he wants them to cook him something. Their resultant smiles when Nacho tosses them money rolls pretty much says it all.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: This seems to be the reason for Werner's depressed state and why he starts talking about his work while drunk in a bar. His father was one of the engineers who worked on the Sydney Opera House and the building is a proud monument to his skill as an engineer. Werner, meanwhile, is working on an near-impossible engineering project, but the nature of the work means that he won't be able to tell anyone about it and few people will know about it. He will leave no legacy that the public can look at and admire.
- Invented Individual: Jimmy takes a Greyhound bus all the way to Louisiana to send letters of support for Huell from nonexistent parishioners of a nonexistent church.note Then, when the letters make it to Albuquerque, he knows the A.D.A. will check some of the letters' listed phone numbers, and calls them to verify. All of the calls are just going to a row of burners in the back of the nail salon, where Jimmy and his film crew are stationed to answer them using false Southern accents.
- Implied Death Threat: Mike all but threatens Werner with one for his drunken slip-up.
- In Vino Veritas: Mike has to intervene when Werner gets drunk and starts talking about his secret work with Gus to some fellow bar patrons.
- Know When to Fold Them: The ADA is initially uncompromising on the charges. However, once Kim and Jimmy's ruse works, the ADA quickly agrees to a plea bargain that lets Huell off with time served. Prosecuting a dumb but lovable home town hero on what she knows are exaggerated charges will not make her or the DA's office look good to the public, the threatened (fictional) media circus would get her on the judge's bad side, and that level of public support could even sway the jury and cost her the whole case. As the judge points out, the case is not big enough to be worth all that.
- Loose Lips: Werner gets going with fellow engineers at the pub, and after he's had a few. He goes into too many details about the superlab basement he's building for Mike's comfort, who knows Gus wants absolutely no one outside of his employment to know even a single thing about the future lab. So Mike forces Werner to call it the night.
- Narm: Huell's church photos are an in-universe example, perhaps not quite as Jimmy intended.
- Not So Above It All: Despite seeming overly dismissive of his engineers' drunken shenanigans at the strip club, Werner is shown to enjoy beer just as much as them when he's left by himself. Unfortunately, the alcohol also severely loosens his tongue, putting his whole project in jeopardy and threatening to expose Gustavo's operations.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Jimmy's bayou accent is...basically no better than Senator Tankerbell
, though it's good enough to fool the prosecutor. Kim even snarks about how unconvincing it is afterward. - Pet the Dog: Mrs. Nguyen, who has been a ceaseless nagging harridan to Jimmy during her every appearance, is genuinely kind to Jimmy as his relationship to Kim is (seemingly) falling apart.
- Refuge in Audacity: Kim and Jimmy pull off their most advanced scam ever, forging letters of support for Huell to strongarm the ADA into dropping the case. After they pull it off, Jimmy remarks that they're guilty of ex parte communication, contempt of court and hundreds of counts of mail fraud, which could have easily destroyed both them and Schweikart & Cokely if it got discovered. Which is slightly ironic, as mail fraud was the "smoking gun" that turned the Sandpiper case into a huge class-action lawsuit.
- The Reveal:
- The coloring supplies Kim bought in the last episode were for Jimmy to fabricate letters of support for Huell from a nonexistent church.
- The mysterious "Don Lalo" finally appears, and it's revealed that he was a previously-unseen member of the Salamanca family.
- Shout-Out: When Jimmy's letters come in, the exasperated Judge Munsinger asks if ADA Ericsen is trying Santa Claus, likening this to Miracle on 34th Street.
- Soul-Crushing Desk Job: Kim seems to increasingly regard her work with Mesa Verde as depressingly pointless and boring.
- Stylistic Suck: The church website — which exists as an Easter Egg — comes complete with a terrible slideshow of Huell doing staged good deeds like singing in the choir, tending a garden, and working on a DIY project. The "donate" button goes to an actual food bank in northwest Louisiana.
- Source Music: For each fake phone call, Jimmy has his crew play appropriate ambience sound on CDs. When it comes to answering as the "church", he has a CD of organ music put on right before he picks up.
- Title Drop: When Kim mentions Huell's hometown during her chambers meeting with Judge Munsinger and ADA Ericsen. Also comes up a few more times when Ericsen phones up some of the character references, only for Jimmy and the film crew to fake it as residents of Coushatta.
- Unseen No More: In his first appearance in Breaking Bad, Saul assumes that Walt and Jesse are hitmen sent by someone named "Don Lalo." The mysterious Don Lalo finally makes his first appearance.
- Victory Sex: The thrill and efficacy of their con rekindles Jimmy and Kim's sexual intimacy. By the end of the episode, Kim has been fully seduced and wants to pull it off again.
- Wham Episode: The mysterious Lalonote finally makes his appearance and turns out to be a member of the Salamanca family, while Kim slips back into being a full on con artist.
- Wham Line:
- Women Are Wiser: Jimmy is in denial that Kim is still mad at him. Mrs. Nguyen flat out tells him Kim is mad at him. She then advises him to take Kim out on a romantic dinner and apologize profusely. Jimmy at that point admits the relationship may be beyond that fix.
- Xanatos Gambit: We see here what all Gus's plans regarding Nacho have been building up to, with the latter now in charge of the Salamanca gang. Had his plans failed then Nacho would simply have been killed, thus giving Gus a measure of revenge for the attempt on Hector's life, but this gives Gus the much bigger prize of being able to use Nacho as his puppet in order to control the Salamanca operation. At least, until the unforeseen complication of Lalo's arrival.
- You Are in Command Now: Subverted by Nacho, who at the start of the episode has been left in charge of what remains of the Salamanca gang, due to Tuco being in prison, Hector incapacitated, Arturo killed, and the Cousins having been forced to retreat to Mexico after their massacring the Espinosa gang. At the end of the episode, however, a hitherto-unseen Salamanca family member, Eduardo (aka Lalo) suddenly shows up to take control of the gang.
