TV Review: Better Call Saul "RICO"

The inevitably tragic tale of the Brothers McGill unfolds.

Review by Brandon Wolfe

One of the very few gripes I’ve had with Better Call Saul thus far is that I haven’t felt like the show has yet done the proper legwork for filling out who some of the supporting players in Jimmy McGill’s world are or what his relationship with them is like. We know Chuck, Jimmy’s brother, is a big-deal attorney for Jimmy’s law-firm nemesis, Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill, and that he suffers from a (likely psychological) allergy to electromagnetic energy, but the nature of his relationship with Jimmy has been a bit murky thus far, as has Jimmy’s relationship with fellow lawyer (and love interest?) Kim Wexler. Well, “RICO” has heard my pleas and has come to provide the necessary shading for who these people are and what they mean to our hero.

In a flashback, we learn that a younger Jimmy (read: Bob Odenkirk with a slightly fuller hairpiece) once worked the mailroom at HH&M, yet secretly pursued his law degree at nights and on weekends. When he gets the news that he has passed the bar, he goes to tell Chuck and Kim, and their reactions provide some helpful hints about how they feel about Jimmy. Kim is overjoyed, planting a big smooch on Jimmy’s kisser, and he later cites her as the reason why he decided to become a lawyer. While the two are a bit more hands-off in the future, this shows us how much she has meant to Jimmy for some time, which informs their relationship in the series’ core timeline, something which had been crucially needed for awhile.

Chuck’s reaction speaks even larger volumes. The hero worship Jimmy feels for Chuck has been evident for some time now, but how Chuck feels about his brother has been harder to parse out because his condition in the present-day has muddied the waters. But when Jimmy tells Chuck his good news, Chuck has to hide his obvious displeasure behind some forced pleasantries. It’s clear he doesn’t support Jimmy’s goals and has no intention of following through on his uneasy promise to help Jimmy get on at HH&M. Getting a better look at who Chuck was before he became a basket case gives the lopsided relationship between the two brothers a poignantly mournful air.

But the brothers end up joining forces down the road, as Jimmy’s elder-law gig leads him to catch wind that Sandpiper Crossing, the assisted-living facility that houses the bulk of Jimmy’s client base, has been bilking its residents out of money for years, overcharging them across the board and only offering them piddily “allowances” of their own social security checks. Jimmy sees the potential for a career-making fraud case here, but runs into resistance when Sandpiper finds out what he’s up to. After dumpster diving for shredded documents, Jimmy winds up gaining the hard-won participation of Chuck (who has a real knack for the impossibly tedious task of recreating documents from the shredded strips of paper) as the potential of this case seems to reactivate the dormant attorney at his core.

“RICO” really crystallizes the tenuous bond between the McGill brothers. Jimmy is the giddy puppydog eager for any sort of “attaboy” from his brother, whereas Chuck only unites with Jimmy due to the potential for major dollar signs that this case presents ($20 million, by his estimation). So focused does Chuck become on Jimmy’s case that he completely forgets about his debilitating “condition,” sauntering outside in the perilous sunshine without a care in the world. The revelation that Chuck was faking (or at least that his malady was purely psychological) isn’t exactly a record-scratching development, but now that it’s out in the open, it will force an honest dialogue between the two characters for the first time.

Still, there’s a real tragic undercurrent running throughout “RICO,” since we know from Breaking Bad that Chuck isn’t a factor in Jimmy’s life later on (or at least not a significant one), as well as the fact that a guy who nailed a $20 million fraud case doesn’t go on to work at a strip mall office beneath an inflatable Lady Liberty. The show’s status as a prequel immediately denotes that Jimmy will fail in this endeavor. And that’s the real strength of Better Call Saul, turning the resourceful weasel from Breaking Bad into an earnest guy who can break your heart, while still also being manifestly the same guy as before. No mean feat, that.

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