Standard Of Review: 'Better Call Saul' Excels With 'Chicanery'

Last week's episode may be the first truly memorable Better Call Saul episode.

better-call-saul-key-art-560Comparing Better Call Saul with its predecessor show Breaking Bad is often extremely unfair. Breaking Bad is one of the greatest dramas of all time, with so many memorable episodes that I know many of their episode titles (such as Fly, Ozymandias, Box Cutter, and Granite State) off the top of my head. Better Call Saul is a very good show, but the moments that stick out to me have mostly been for stylistic reasons, such as last season’s montage that cut between an inflatable air man, Jimmy’s colorful suit collection, and the increasingly ridiculous ways Jimmy was attempting to be fired by his former employer, Davis & Mane. But last week’s episode, entitled “Chicanery,” may be the first truly memorable Better Call Saul episode, even if it doesn’t reach the meteoric heights of Breaking Bad (this column will contain spoilers through that episode and does not spoil this past Monday’s episode “Off Brand”).

At the end of last season, Jimmy’s brother Chuck surreptitiously taped him confessing to altering documents in order to sabotage Chuck’s firm HHM in its representation of Mesa Verde before a regulatory authority.  Jimmy’s skulduggery caused Mesa Verde to fire Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill and hire Kim Wexler instead. Chuck then provokes Jimmy into breaking into Chuck’s house and destroying the tape, in front of Howard Hamlin and a private investigator as witnesses. This leads to a hearing before the New Mexico Disciplinary Board about whether to suspend Chuck’s law license or even to disbar him.

Part of what makes “Chicanery” so great is the amount of time it spends setting up that Jimmy has something up his sleeve without revealing what that may be. After all, Jimmy is a former con man, and he has much more experience than Chuck in this arena. In the previous episode, “Sabrosito,” Mike Ehrmantraut pretends to be a door repairman so he can take pictures inside Chuck’s house that illustrate Chuck’s alleged electromagnetic hypersensitivity. Then, the opening scene of “Chicanery” flashes back to an instance in which Chuck invites his ex-wife Rebecca to dinner and Jimmy helps Chuck fool Rebecca into thinking that the power in Chuck’s apartment has gone out, so that Rebecca won’t know about Chuck’s illness. Next, Jimmy is connected with Huell Babineaux, his future Breaking Bad cohort, who intentionally bumps into Chuck before the hearing.

With all that setup, Better Call Saul takes its time getting to the punchline. The episode depicts the hearing in great detail, as the attorney for the New Mexico bar takes Howard, the private investigator, and Chuck through direct examination. Even though Kim scores a point during her cross of Howard, Jimmy becomes panicked and asks Kim to stall for time. Jimmy brings in Rebecca to sit in the audience, but that does not really rattle Chuck.

While it wasn’t the same as, say, Gus painstakingly changing his clothes in “Box Cutter,” the “Chicanery” episode does a great job of building tension to an almost unbearable level – at an ethics hearing, no less – until the other shoe finally drops. Jimmy tricks Chuck into thinking that Jimmy was trying to prove that Chuck’s condition was a lie by concealing his cell phone in his suit pocket. Chuck believes he has the upper hand by showing to the Disciplinary Board that the cell phone has no battery. But Jimmy pulls the rug out from Chuck by revealing that Huell had slipped the battery into Chuck’s pocket, meaning that Chuck had been exposed to electricity for the entire hearing without a problem. Realizing that his credibility as a witness has now been greatly been thrown into doubt, Chuck begins ranting and raving about how he is not crazy and that he knows that Jimmy altered the numbers on the documents (the correct number was “one after Magna Carta, as if [he] could ever make such a mistake”) but that he couldn’t prove it.

I rarely get to effusively praise Michael McKean, but he is absolutely masterful during this entire episode. Chuck expertly illustrates Chuck’s snobbishness and disdain for his brother, as exemplified by the condescending way he practices a line for the panel about how he loves his brother but loves the law more (and the Magna Carta reference!). And he perfectly plays Chuck’s slow realization that Jimmy has beaten him at this particular game. Chuck becomes increasingly embarrassed as the camera slowly zooms in on Chuck’s face.

While it is very subtle, Rhea Seehorn is equally terrific in a subtler way earlier in the scene when the bar attorney plays Chuck’s other copy of the tape of Jimmy confessing. As Jimmy explains on tape that he switched the Mesa Verde forms because Kim deserves the business instead of HHM due to her hard work, the slightest of smiles forms on Kim’s face. Even though she usually goes by the book and was thus incensed when she first found out about Jimmy’s chicanery, some part of her is clearly happy at Jimmy’s actions (or at least the intentions behind them).

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The “Sabrosito” episode on May 1 puts Jimmy on the back burner and primarily focuses on Mike and Gus. As I’ve written before, while I always enjoy Mike and Gus’s dealings in the criminal underworld, it does sometimes feel like Breaking Bad-light, with an increasing parade of former Breaking Bad supporting characters. Furthermore, Mike and Gus aren’t in materially different places on Breaking Bad than they are now on Better Call Saul. The ethics scene, by comparison, is fascinating partly because it is a unique story.


Harry Graff is a litigation associate at a firm, but he spends days wishing that he was writing about film, television, literature, and pop culture instead of writing briefs. If there is a law-related movie, television show, book, or any other form of media that you would like Harry Graff to discuss, he can be reached at harrygraff19@gmail.com. Be sure to follow Harry Graff on Twitter at @harrygraff19.

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