"Better Call Saul" Recap: "Klick"

​Written by John Edward Betancourt

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

Perhaps the greatest achievement to date when it comes to Better Call Saul and its top notch storytelling, is the fact that it is one of the most deceptive shows out there, in a good way. Often times the show seems to be leading us in one particular direction before out right surprising us and taking a hard left turn another way, and that lovely misdirection was fully on display during Monday night's season two finale, "Klick".

After all, it seems for the last ten weeks we have been building to the grand moment everyone has been waiting for...the birth of Saul Goodman...but it turns out that was not the case. Despite the fact that Jimmy pulled off an incredible felony that cost his brother's firm lucrative business with Mesa Verde in the shadiest of fashion, Saul never arrived on the show this week and we quickly learned that season two was never about the birth of Saul, but truly learning who Jimmy is on the inside, along with all of his weaknesses and what a petty monster his brother Chuck has turned out to be. 

If anything the events of this episode truly left me wondering one particular thing, why exactly does Chuck exhibit such incredible disdain for his little brother. Don't get me wrong, I completely understand that Jimmy is no model citizen, but this kind of borderline hate that Chuck oozes out has to come from some deeper place and it seems that this episode hinted at the possibility that part of it comes from the silliest of things...the fact that people outright seem to like Jimmy and respond to him better than they do Chuck. We know now how much of an ego Chuck has and how important it is for him to be seen in perfect light and one has to wonder if the dinner scene from earlier this year where Jimmy was able to get Chuck's wife to respond to him, in combination with the opening scene this episode, where their dying mother's last words were "Jimmy" could serve as proof of this fact. It can't sit well with the quite refined Charles that people love his morally questionable brother more than him. 

Either way, that incredible resentment has come to a boil, and I've never seen a revenge plot put together as intricate as this because Chuck played his baby brother like a fiddle this week. I made mention of this season showing us more about Jimmy's weaknesses and his greatest one, is his love for his brother. Chuck really is all the family he has left and despite how much he wants Charles to pay for what he did to Kim, to see him bolt in, do the right thing and even be gracious about ending the Temporary Guardianship when we all know Chuck needs major psychological help speaks to that love and remaining desire to find approval with his older brother, and it makes those final moments, where we learned that Chuck used his illness to his advantage to pull a confession out of his baby brother...all the more heartbreaking. Chuck knew if he made his condition look worse, if he made it look like guilt and pain drove him into the depths of madness Jimmy would tell him everything he needed to know.

​It's stunning to know that he went through with such an act just to prove he was right all along and the fact that he recorded the conversation, well we all know that will end badly at some point soon in Season Three. Is that what leads to the creation of Saul? Honestly, at this point it doesn't even matter because suddenly that iconic moment has taken the back burner since we are embroiled in an ugly and fascinating case of sibling rivalry and the fact that Charles McGill is willing to go to whatever lengths to kick James McGill while he is down and teach him what he thinks is some sort of lesson...and that made this season finale absolutely and utterly devastating and I honestly cannot wait for Season Three, simply because I have to know where the story between these two brothers and their shattered relationship goes from here. Until next time.

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