I waited to the end to talk about Chuck's scenes, but to me they tie together the entire idea of how well-balanced and well-executed this episode was. To see how and understand why he was driven to that point, and finally see the deal made in "Slip," was an incredibly cool and long-awaited moment. Again, Breaking Bad gives us some context for where certain relationships are going, and we know Mike will one day be in business with Gus Fring. Similarly, Mike was given a relative back seat in this episode, but that helped the larger balancing act of this episode because his few scenes were so important. Also props to the dual usage of "slip": both for Nacho slipping Hector's deadly pills in his pocket, and for Jimmy's big slip at the end. I give huge props to any sequence that can have me on the edge of my seat and holding my breath like this one, and the set up to his delivering the switch was very well done. Michael Mando hasn't had as much screentime this season as last season, but he's chewing through what he has, to excellent results. Speaking of which, that scene with Nacho trying to slip the deadly drugs into Hector's pocket was about as tense as anything Better Call Saul has delivered since Chuck's breakdown in "Chicanery." With Breaking Bad in our rearview mirror, it's easy to track where this drug switch is going to go on Better Call Saul, but that doesn't make Nacho's actions any less high-stakes or dangerous. Though Kim's arc can sometimes feel secondary, "Slip" did a great job of balancing all the characters' storylines and making them feel equal in worth, even if some have higher stakes than the others.
It's been interesting to watch her evolution over the years from someone who was very straight-laced about working within a rulebook to someone who now does see that there are times you need to come up with more creative solutions. We know from recent episodes that she has felt some inner conflict over the way she and Jimmy broke Chuck, but here she stands up to Howard with no doubt in her eyes. Her taking Howard to task was a welcome instance of her taking control of her own life and her own choices. Speaking of transformations, it's been fun to see how much of a short fuse Kim has developed this season. From the beginning, Better Call Saul has been exploring how Jimmy McGill could become Saul Goodman, and now that transformation is clearly in sight. We've seen Jimmy use tricks like these to help bad people in the past, but with him pushed into a corner by feeling like he needs to continue to pull his weight in his business with Kim, it's easy to see how he would decide to make a business out of that concept. He pulls the same sort of stunt later in the episode where, to get some cash, he uses his legal savvy to blackmail his community service supervisor to help a drug dealer get out of community service. Here Slippin' Jimmy returns to help him get his way as he slips right back into his old routine. People suck, as he laments, and his plan of trying to sell off his unused air time with his "Saul Goodman" productions keeps backfiring. Cut to the present, where Jimmy's entire journey of trying to live by the rules and do good by others hasn't quite worked as well as he'd planned. There's a lot of resonance between with the frustrations Jimmy vocalized about his father in this flashback and the way he doesn't let himself get pushed around in the present, even if he goes about that by underhanded means.
But to Jimmy - at least, according to the tale he spins here - the theft was much more innocent, and also reflected on his father's poor business savvy. For Chuck, his younger brother was a person he could blame for their father's business failure because he saw Jimmy stealing money from the cash register. But we learn that this coin collection also, cleverly, ties directly back to one of the earliest reasons Chuck started to despise Jimmy: stealing money from his father. In the flashback, we see Slippin' Jimmy gathering his coin collection, which we know played a pivotal role in his scams with Marco.
Let's start at the beginning, shall we? This opening proved that memories and what we view as objective facts are often far more subjective than we imagine. With some huge plot and character developments balanced with the same careful, meticulous storytelling and visual craftsmanship that Better Call Saul (and Breaking Bad) are known for, "Slip" moved a lot of important pieces into place. "Slip" might not be as game-changing an episode as "Chicanery," but it currently is one of my favorites of the season.
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