Here's the most unflattering shot of Kim (Rhea Seehorn) on Better Call Saul, giddily gazing up at Jimmy's (Bob Odenkirk) new commercial like a schmuck. This after a season featuring several episodes where she was a wonderfully engaging contribution to the series. Despite bad memories from the fallout of the last commercial Jimmy showed her, she's reduced to a happy lump in the disappointing season finale to Better Call Saul's second season.
Mostly the season was good, particularly for the growing relationship--with a subtle, corresponding fracture--between Jimmy and Kim. I didn't really complain that the show's writers decided to walk back the wonderful story of personal liberation that was the first season finale. There was indeed yet more gold to mine in the relationship between Jimmy and his brother, Chuck (Michael McKean). Chuck, clearly the one with more ethical integrity, nonetheless is pettier and more unhinged due to his massive cache of resentment for the unscrupulous brother who constantly gets away with things, who isn't tortured by guilt the way he is.
But the second season finale that focuses on that relationship really just proves it's run its course. The opening scene showing a flashback of their mother on her deathbed seems lifted straight from a recent episode of The X-Files and from there everything started to feel stale. There wasn't a scene in the episode where I didn't know how it was going to end while I simultaneously was thinking, "Surely they've got something better than that." But no. Well, the season finale of Breaking Bad's second season was pretty lame, too, with all its absurd, catastrophic coincidences. I only wish I didn't have to wait a whole year for the writers to fix this.
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