Better Call Saul season 4 episode 5 review and recap: Was that a subtle Jesse Pinkman cameo?

I mean, how many bright red coupes with bouncing hydraulics can Albuquerque have?

A French architect endures a job interview the Gustavo Fring way (AMC/Netflix)

The cast are on board. The creators want to see it. Fans will surely gobble it up. So when are we going to get Walter White and/or Jesse Pinkman’s Better Call Saul debut?

Well, we might have just had it. It was off-screen, but you didn’t expect a show like BCS to have one of them simply walk through the door, did you?

Jimmy’s descent into petty crime took him to Dog House diner in season 4 episode 5, “Quite a Ride”. We’ll get to why, but first the (spoilery) matter at hand. As Jimmy approached the hot dog stand with a stack of burners under his arm, he passed a red coupe with bouncing hydraulics. You may remember Jesse drove one with a license plate reading “THE CAPN” in Breaking Bad season 1, before it was written off in a gunfight and he realised that a beaten up 1980s hatchback might be a less conspicuous option.

Was this Cap’n Cook himself then, parked up in a sketchy part of town and dealing meth to the same customers Jimmy was courting with his burners? If not, then the creators were at the very least toying with us. (If any car enthusiasts out there can help, it’s a 1982 Chevrolet Monte Carlo we’re trying to ID)

On to the subplots:

Jimmy McGill

If, indeed, that was Jesse at Dog House, he wasn’t the first major Breaking Bad character to pop up in the episode. The cold open consisted of a Saul Goodman flash forward, and I’m not talking “Gene” working at Cinnabon. A fully-fledged Saul, in signature garish shirt, was destroying evidence in his office and preparing to go on the lam, presumably around the time Walt and Jesse were also fleeing town.

Why this unprecedented jump for the show into Breaking Bad’s timeline? Perhaps it was to show how close we’re getting to the original series now. It was followed by a scene where Jimmy was in full Saul hustle mode back at the phone shop, selling cheap flip phones as single-use burners for people looking to evade the IRS (or worse).

He wasn’t about to hustle for the financial benefit of the largely absent owner of CC Mobile, though, so Jimmy bought a stack of phones and sets about upselling them to Dog House’s majority shady patrons. He made a nice bit of money from the scam, but was mugged by a trio of punk kids. Back at the flat with Kim, and offering her no good explanation as to why he was at a hot dog stand at 1.30am on a weeknight, Jimmy hinted that he misses when he was the kind of person to do be doing the mugging.

Serving as another dig to Jimmy’s pride that will lead him to abandon the straight and narrow entirely, this flip phone plot strand also provided a nice bit of Breaking Bad backstory: we now know why Saul’s desk drawer was always overflowing with burners.

(AMC/Netflix) ((AMC/Netflix))

Mike Ehrmantraut/Gus Fring

Indeed, the moderators on the Breaking Bad Wikia have a lot on their plate after “Quite a Ride”, as we also learned how Gus’s secret lab beneath the industrial cleaners came to be.

Gus and Mike interview two candidates for the daunting job of building a cavernous space under the plant without anyone knowing. Why the dishevelled German won out over the slick Frenchman wasn’t explained, but I think the latter’s overconfidence just didn’t chime with the ever-cautious Fring.

Howard Hamlin

Just when I thought we’d finally seen the back of Better Call Saul’s weakest character, Howard popped up in the restroom at the ABQ courthouse. That he was strung out and suffering from insomnia – possibly because of the death of Chuck, possibly for other reasons (the show’s never actually delved into his life) – came largely to the relief of Jimmy. If this guy was such a state in spite of therapy, Jimmy won’t be phoning the shrink’s number on that yellow post-it note anytime soon. Better to repress those feelings and focus on a life of crime, eh?

Kim Wexler

There was no ulterior motive to Kim’s courthouse loitering last week as it turned out. She genuinely found satisfaction in helping troubled young ABQ citizens stay out of the prison system, Mesa Verde’s profiteering expansion having apparently led her to seriously rethink her career path.

This ethical adjustment was pointedly juxtaposed with Jimmy’s own, with Kim trying to better herself while Jimmy followed his devious, criminal instincts. They’re becoming two very different kinds of lawyer, and episode 5 sewed the seeds of the collapse of their relationship. I won’t spend long mourning it – the couple have been so sexless and devoid of tactility that I’ve never fully bought them as an item.

We’ve hit the halfway mark in Better Call Saul season 4 now. Jimmy’s at the chrysalis stage of his transformation into Saul, and I’m pretty certain it’s in season 5 we’re going to see him emerge from the cocoon, a day-glo butterfly with a flop sweat.