Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 9 "Fun and Games": Learning How to Forget
Greg Ehrhardt, OnScreen Blog Columnist
I joked last week that I needed a fully charged ventilator to make it through the episode.
This week, I needed a pallet full of tissues.
It takes a truly remarkable show to be able to pull of great episodes in remarkably different styles, and make no mistake, “Fun and Games” was another all-time episode (and another episode that was titled “(Blank) And (Blank)”, like every other episode this season).
The speculation this season was all about how Jimmy/Saul would go from being a con artist with a good heart in Better Call Saul to a full-on dirtbag in Breaking Bad, and we got our answer in this week’s episode: by learning how to forget.
The big idea of this episode was seeing how each character tried (and failed) to forget a previous horror in their life.
The big idea was actually introduced in last week’s episode by Mike, when he instructed Jimmy and Kim to “keep telling the lie you’ve been telling” in order to move on with their lives, and boy they sure did try as seen in the opening montage, when they went right back to what they loved doing: doing public defender work and working the law to their advantage for society’s riff-raffs.
For Jimmy, it seemed to work, but for Kim, she couldn’t reconnect with Jimmy when it was just the two of them, as she replayed their con of Howard over and over again silently in bed, never saying a word.
We’ll get back to them later, for most of the first hour of the episode was spent on Gus and Mike, who had their own regrets they tried to forget. Gus of course has the death of his partner Max on his conscience, whose death he has always tried to avenge with the long game of course.
Gus viewed revenge has his solution to forgetting the path, but with Gus, nothing is ever immediate. Revenge gave him focus, something to keep him busy not obsessing over the loss of his partner. With Lalo out of the picture, Gus is more at ease than ever before, which allowed him to do something we have previously never seen; him enjoying a nice dinner out, albeit alone, and maybe, possibly, flirting?
Of course with Gus, we never see him with anybody, because solitude is the price he has chosen to pay for revenge. In his mind he couldn’t possibly put anyone else in danger in his quest for revenge, or perhaps, he still cannot forget Max, his (most likely) one true love.
As we saw with Saul later in the episode, some men forget lost loves by throwing themselves into emotionless raunchy sexcapades. Not Gus. Everyone grieves differently, and Gus knows, when he leaves the restaurant on a moment’s notice, that he has only one path to walk, the walk of solitude. That’s how he handles the path to what he sees as justice for Max.
Mike also sees revenge as the path to justice, in a truly heartbreaking scene where he decides to tell Nacho’s father that his son is dead. Nacho’s death is truly weighing on Mike’s conscience, to the point that he feels the only way to leave it behind is to console the relatives that justice will be served.
I’m not sure Mike totally believes this based on his history, but if he can hear Nacho’s father say that revenge will make him feel better, that probably helps Mike forget and move on. But Nacho’s father will have none of that, in telling Mike that revenge is no justice, that revenge never stops.
It doesn’t totally apply to Mike’s death in Breaking Bad, but it certainly applies to Gus, who will ultimately get his vengeance on Don Eladio and his entire network, but that also means Hector Salamanca will get his vengeance as well.
Manuel Varga was right, vengeance never sleeps, vengeance never leaves the party.
That brings us back to Jimmy and Kim. Kim could never sleep with Howard’s death on her conscience. But she also loves Jimmy too much to see him go down under Howard’s wife’s questioning at his celebration of life at HHM. (If that’s not telling of how much Howard’s life revolved around the firm, nothing is).
In order to save themselves from being trapped in a web of lies, Kim had to ruin one more life, by lying to Howard’s wife that she saw him snorting cocaine in the office.
Keep in mind, Kim’s reputation was only sullied in Howard’s mind. She’s still known by everyone at HHM as an upstanding citizen, so her confession (as well as her dig that Howard’s wife must have known Howard better than anyone, knowing they have been estranged) was the final dagger.
Kim ruined another person’s life to save her and Jimmy’s hide, and it may have broken her hide too.
She couldn’t be an officer of the court knowing she’s choosing to ruin (and sometimes end) innocent people’s lives. That’s why she resigned, and why she’s leaving Jimmy. Remember, Jimmy knew what they were doing to Howard was wrong, or at least wasn’t worth all the effort needed, but stuck with it anyways because he loved her.
Kim knew Jimmy would never end this, no matter how much destruction they caused together; Jimmy admitted this himself in their tense argument at the end of the episode. He would compartmentalize, forget everything, the way Mike had told him to.
Jimmy, er Saul, was the only person who could do that. Jimmy would become a totally different type of person to hide away his pain. He would buy a house with fake opulence, transparent riches, and a wardrobe the size of certain Manhattan apartments just so he didn’t have to remember the life he had left behind.
Kim could never do that, and neither could Mike or Gus.
Saul could create a whole new life to forget, which is ironic because he was the most sensitive of them all.
The thing with sensitive people though, is that they are so sensitive they can’t handle touching pain. The only way they know how to deal with it is grabbing it with heat resistant gloves, tucking it away in the farthest corner of their soul, and pretend it wasn’t there.
It could work with certain types of traumas.
But when it is done to forget the love of your life, well, that’s what the pallet full of tissues is for.
For the record, I don’t think this is the last we’ll see Kim Wexler, one way or another. But if it was, it would be a fitting Vince Gilligan way to write out a character, not as an emotional goodbye, but with the last realistic memory a man like Saul Goodman would ever bother keeping.
Memories are a blessing for many, but a curse for some.
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