Kim Wexler’s turn in the spotlight, meanwhile, sees actor Rhea Seehorn turn in her best work on the series to date. At the start of her sequence of scenes in the episode, she quietly watches Jimmy’s manic new morning routine, and the question of whether the man she loves is trying to put on a brave face or has genuinely been broken by his brother’s death plays out silently behind her eyes.

Next, she travels to the offices of Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill, the firm to which she, Jimmy, and Chuck alike once belonged. She’s there on Jimmy’s behalf, to sign off on the final details of Chuck’s estate, for which his old partner Howard (Patrick Fabian) is the executor. After she exchanges awkward but sincere pleasantries with Chuck’s ex-wife Rebecca (Ann Cusack), you can see her slowly build up and then release the energy to have a full-fledged freakout on Howard for his behavior.

It’s not just Howard’s participation in laying out the terms of Chuck’s will — which as far as Jimmy’s concerned amount to a kiss-off payout of five thousand dollars, a chance to claim any objects of sentimental value from the wreckage of his burned-out house, a seat on the board for a scholarship fund she accurately asserts Chuck would never have been caught dead awarding to his baby brother himself, and a posthumous letter for Jimmy’s eyes only — that bothers her. It’s his post-funeral visit to their home, when he laid out his theory that Chuck committed suicide. “I thought I owed it to Jimmy to tell him,” Howard says in his own defense… but as Kim points out, he didn’t extend this same dubious courtesy to Rebecca.

Tears in her eyes, voice breaking, and covered in visible bruises from her car accident that make her look as beat up physically as she is emotionally, Kim bellows that Howard told Jimmy that his brother deliberately burned himself to death “to make yourself feel better, to unload your guilt.” “Kim, I don’t think that’s fair,” Howard says, taken aback. “Fair?” she all but screams in response, before laying out all the extremely unfair pain that both the terms of the will and Howard’s (in her eyes) self-centered handling of Chuck’s death would put Jimmy through.

“What can I do to make it better?” Howard asks, all but begging to be told what to do, as Fabian gets teary and shaky-voiced himself, his sincerity obvious. “Nothing,” Kim spits. “There is nothingyou can do. Just stay away.” She leaves him standing alone in the office, looking for all the world like a man who’s just been given six months to live by an oncologist. Which, perhaps, isn’t that far from the mark. The deadly battle between Jimmy and Chuck is slowly killing them all.

But the most moving moment from Kim and Seehorn alike comes at the end of the day, when Jimmy returns from his farcical job hunt, bearing takeout and churning out smiley platitudes about getting solid leads and even rejecting an offer that “wasn’t a perfect fit.” As they sit down on the couch to eat and watch an old movie, she shoots him a look that is pure love, pure pity, pure desire to see a person she cares about come through his current ordeal intact. When she moves in suddenly to kiss him and have sex, it feels like the only way she can express how much she wants him to feel better. Words simply aren’t up to the task. It’s one of the realest moments of acting I’ve seen on television all year.

I reviewed this week’s excellent Better Call Saul for TV Guide. The show is digging deep into its core cast right now, and TVG is letting me go long on it, bless them.

Tags: better call saul, breaking bad, reviews, TV, tv guide, TV reviews

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