Layers of Kim Wexler’s Finger Guns and What’s Next?
When Kim Wexler started floating vile ideas to her husband in Monday’s season five finale, I thought she was just placating Jimmy, stooping to his level to lighten the tense mood. Then the ideas got shadier, they knocked some boots and it got super real. “You would not be OK with it,” Jimmy said, referencing a plan to torpedo Howard Hamlin. “Wouldn’t I?” she responds (while rocking a Kansas City Royals tee).
It was Kim’s Bash at the Beach moment (and also another one of her Emmy moments). Jimmy is The Outsiders, Kim is red-and-yellow Hulk, and the finger guns that closed the frame are the leg-drop on Randy Savage. She wants in on the N.W.O. She broke bad, officially, her finger-gun finale scene matching Jimmy’s in the season four finale when he officially became Saul Goodman. His and her finger gun scenes. Some couples do bathroom sinks and wedding bands, the Wexler-McGill clan does finger guns and heel turns.
Jimmy looked sick the entire time. He doesn’t want her to be OK with it. Even though we as viewers know she’s pretty much in the game — either willingly or unwillingly — he wants to keep the worlds from colliding, a la George Costanza.
“The show, it’s called Better Call Saul,” Bob Odenkirk told The Ringer, “but the real show is, Who the Hell is Kim?” I like how Jackson Maher put it: “She’s his mirror image. Jimmy is a crook trying to fit in a lawyer’s world while Kim is a lawyer trying to find a spot in Jimmy’s crooked world.”
Just when you think one of Jimmy’s scams, fuck-ups, or shady deals is enough to break her and their relationship, she takes a second to devise a plan instead of flying off the handle. We’ll get married to solve this, I’ll break bad to solve that.
The season finale was called “Something Unforgivable,” a title that works on a few levels. There are plenty of unforgivable things happening here, just take your pick; Kim’s crossing the line mentally, while also verbally discussing a plan that’s unforgivable from a karmic standpoint, and in the B story, Nacho is secretly setting up Lalo to get whacked (also unforgivable, right?).
Kim Wexler (played by Rhea Seehorn) is getting rave reviews for her season five performance, her finale guns yet another example why trophies are in her future. Yet, Bob Odenkirk deserves a serious hat-tip for his own performance. He’s been fantastic in the prototypical Saul role for over a decade, but he was totally stripped down of the color and personality in “Something Unforgivable” and he played it to a tee. When it was happening, everyone could relate. He cares about Kim and knows she’s making a questionable call.
Where we go from here is a mystery. We know Lalo is coming so that usually equals guns and shit, but the biggest question revolves around Kim. Plenty of people think she is gonna get whacked or die somehow. As brazen as the Better Call Saul writers are, I don’t know if they can actually let her go out like that. We know she’s not in Breaking Bad, and those worlds are getting dangerously close to clashing, so what are the other options? Does she get the Robert Forster treatment? Maybe that’s how Jimmy/Saul knows of him come BB time. Or maybe her conscience comes into play (cue: “Guilty Conscience”) and she splits. I mean, does Saul seem like a widower in Breaking Bad? Not really, right? Or am I crazy? And Saul wants to go to Nebraska at the end of Breaking Bad…and Kim is from Nebraska.