Better Call Saul: S4, Episode 10 (Winner) - Patreon Version
Added 2025-12-24 16:00:08 +0000 UTC
Comments
This was a wild episode. Maybe my favorite so far. I was with Jordan, as soon as he mentioned living up to the name, I thought, that's Not your lawyer name. Your talk at the outro was so funny. Thanks guys!
Ian A
2026-01-23 03:31:53 +0000 UTCOh wow, I totally missed the fantasies about saving people from fires! And how Saul sees Jesse and Walt as himself and Chuck... It seems so obvious now!
Chandra
2026-01-19 17:37:12 +0000 UTCI think Jimmy’s crying in the car is his suppressed guilt and grief about Chuck’s death. Notice that twice in this season, Jimmy fantasizes about saving someone from a fire: First when playing the Cajun preacher on the phone in Coushatta, and now here in Winner. This is clearly meant to represent Jimmy’s sublimated grief and longing to have saved Chuck from the fire. Jimmy creates the Saul Goodman persona in order to dissociate from his feelings about what happened to Chuck. By the time we meet him in Breaking Bad, Jimmy has been living as Saul Goodman 24/7 for about four years. If you re-watch Breaking Bad now, his character is radically recontextualized. Saul really does have these stochastic moments of vulnerability where he seems to momentarily drop the act and revert to being Jimmy. Saul talks a big game about being a mob lawyer who can have people killed, but he never actually does, and in fact by the end he admits to Walt that he doesn’t know any hitmen. As far as we know, when he meets Walt, he has no previous experience with high level organized crime, outside of his semi-unwilling servitude to the Salamancas. Most of Saul’s clients that we see appear to be low level Badger and Skinny Pete type criminals. Saul’s arc in Breaking Bad is that he’s set up as a totally mercenary and cynical character, and you almost expect him to sell Walt out at some point. But in a tragicomic subversion of expectations, Saul is the most loyal and sympathetic ally Walt ever has. He’s the last one in the bunker with Walt at the bitter end. He has numerous opportunities and motivations to flip on Walt and Jesse, who routinely leave millions of dollars of drug money in his possession, but he never does. In retrospect, Saul is covertly emotionally invested in Walt and Jesse because they remind him of Chuck and himself. Saul is in over his head with Walt and Jesse, this is a massive escalation for him. What if Saul is just Jimmy doing a bit that got way out of hand?
Francesca Langer
2026-01-10 22:17:31 +0000 UTCthis is the brilliance of this show. When Better Call Saul was aanounced, one BIG question was "when does Jimmy become Saul". So many ways they couldve done this. But the perfect turning point happens to be when we all are hoping for a retcon, for Jimmy to be better, for somehow the Saul future to be a nothing but a bad dream. and then BOOM, Jimmy becomes Saul while conning us, the audience. We were all a victim of his first true scam as Saul Goodman.
Joel
2025-12-25 08:41:03 +0000 UTCMerry Christmas to you both! What a cheery episode for Christmas Eve XD just the metaphorical death of Jimmy & literal death of Werner :) (sorry - and Fred, the one and only.) The intro is such a gut punch. Kim saying that Chuck will mingle "when he's ready" suggests that he & Rebecca split around the same time that Jimmy passed the bar. This is partly why I theorise that his condition (that he didn't have in the intro) came about from the double blow to his life of his wife leaving & his con-man brother becoming a lawyer. I think you're right Chandra that Kim was hoping that Jimmy would start to feel. She was quite disturbed last episode when he said that he didn't think about Chuck or really care that he was dead. (Obviously she doesn't know Chuck's last words to Jimmy - even if they were clearly untrue). I think Jimmy was saying things in that statement that he does truly mean but it's still his hard, feelingless exterior that's in control. He knew from the scholarship awarding that the panel would be judging him regardless of what he did and so he had to look genuinely regretful about Chuck. Of course he is genuinely regretful, but that pain is too much for him to bear so he paints over it. Poor Werner. I think it's fair to say he got a bit of cabin fever. You start thinking irrational thoughts and justify things to yourself that normally you never would. And poor Mike. Werner is the first person Mike has killed since he shot the men who killed his son. Until now he'd been "the guy who won't pull the trigger" - as Nacho put it. And it had to be someone he cared for.
Max Hassam
2025-12-25 02:12:39 +0000 UTC
