An uncomfortable scene in an episode full of them.

I can’t handle an unkempt Howard Hamlin.

This is the correct take. Despite fighting it for years, Jimmy just isn’t interested in life in the legitimate, “square” world. There’s no rush, the people are too simple, too one-dimensional—there’s nothing in it for him.

Impressive.  There are events that I remember from watching BB, but haven’t really retained in a way I could connect the dots as you have done.  

You might enjoy the show more if you take the mindset that it's not just Jimmy's show. So Mike/Gus/Nacho stuff doesn't have to connect with Jimmy stuff. That's how I think the showrunners are seeing it. 

Yeah, that whole burner phone endeavor was entirely pointless, done just for ego and out of boredom. It’s not like he was pushing rare contraband goods. He was, what, sparing those thugs a trip to the strip mall?

Agreed. Jimmy came up with an untapped market for cheap phones; he knows from experience who would want those and how to sell to them, but I’m convinced he just wanted floor traffic (at first). “Networking” for his future clientele is, as I see it, not in his mind yet.

He’s selling the phones because he got bored. When he gets bored his mind starts working. His mind comes up with scams. He’s really good at scams.

There would be no reason to sell at a loss. These customers aren’t comparison shopping. They are impulse buying on the spot. Also the business model of selling something for cheap and then hoping to charge more later is tough when the product isn’t addictive (drugs), proprietary (Apple), nor scarce (collectables). But…

Here’s a thought. What if the thief had not called Jimmy but had simply hit the guy on the head with a heavy object, causing brain damage or even death? I’m thinking of the Breaking Bad episode that involved another ‘victimless’ crime involving a train and diluted chemicals… The whole idea was that nobody would know.

That fits the timeline. I’m thinking the construction phase is going to be rather time consuming. Also, I’d suspect Gus will be using several contractors, all working in the blind, to build his project. Each one will go through a vetting process like our German friend and will have no knowledge of the other. That will…

Thanks! Hire me, AV Club!

Incidentally, there’s a nice little call-out to the Cinnabon flash-forwards in this episode. In the season 3 premiere, Gene talks himself into potential trouble by telling the shoplifter to call a lawyer after he notices that the kid was arrested without being Mirandized. How does Kim snag such a good deal for her…

“There didn’t seem to be anything in it that connected to the rest of the show, and it almost felt like unnecessary (I hate using this word) fanservice or just an outtake from the previous series that was left on the cutting room floor.”

I think the burner phone was the connection between the future and present - after calling Robert Forster, Saul broke his phone in half the same way Jimmy did in the present. The phones are his ticket back to the “underworld”, and we’re finally seeing Jimmy in touch with criminals again, after only having seen/heard of…

At some point, Jimmy and Gus will be only one degree of separation from doing business together. Jimmy/Saul is the matchmaker who puts Walter and Gus together.  And Mike is the link between Jimmy/Saul and Gus.  Look at it like the brackets of a tournament.  At some point the main players all converge in the finals. 

I agree with you and the reviewer that this episode will require a little time and energy to process. The surprise cold opening caught me off guard as did the peppering of other little surprising developments such as Howard in shambles and Jimmy getting rolled. As viewers we were very much like the engineers riding in…

The super lab seemed brand new in BB (equipment was still wrapped in plastic) so I wonder about that too. As for Jimmy, his ethics are shady for sure, but while he’s great at reading people, he’s also pretty good about not judging them, either. So I don’t think he’s got a kick about people “deserving to be duped” so…

I’d say the point of the Saul scene is to draw the same contrast that’s evident in all the other storylines this week: Jimmy is the guy who gets to the end of a long, traumatic, and baffling journey and insists that it was no big deal and it’ll be smooth sailing from now on, whereas Saul is the guy who gets to the end…

I feel weird reading this review because this was the first ep of the new season that didn’t really ring with me. It was initially great to see Saul’s office again, but I don’t really get why that scene was necessary to this particular episode. There didn’t seem to be anything in it that connected to the rest of the…