‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6, Episode 6 Recap: The Smell Test

Season 6, Episode 6: ‘Axe and Grind’

We’ve been snookered.

At the end of last season, Kim and Jimmy talked about a plot to discredit and shame Howard, and for the last five episodes we’ve been led to believe that framing Howard as a hooker-exploiting drug addict was the point of the plan. It wasn’t. The point was to induce Howard to hire a private investigator who would photograph Jimmy conferring with a guy who looks like the mediator of the class-action suit against Sandpiper Crossing.

The particulars of the coming end game are unclear, but we know enough to ask a few skeptical questions. Like: Were all of Kim and Jimmy’s slanderous antics really necessary? If you want to cajole your enemy into hiring a P.I., is the surest approach to plant a bag of drugs in his country club locker room, then steal his car for a joyride with a prostitute, whom you kick out of the vehicle in view of an esteemed colleague?

Seems like a lot of effort, and risky, too. It was far from inevitable that Howard would think, “I need to hire a private detective and photograph Jimmy,” once he realized he was the target of a reputation-soiling scheme.

The improbability of Kim and Jimmy’s takedown operation is just one problem. The bigger issue is that viewers are not invested in this scheme. (OK, this viewer, at least.) As Your Faithful Recapper has noted before, Howard has his flaws, but he doesn’t deserve whatever the Bonnie and Clyde of the Southwest are cooking up for him. And in this week’s episode, the writers complicate the morality of this entire matter by introducing us to Howard’s wife, offering a close-up of their marital struggles. They are sleeping separately and socializing separately. Howard seems eager to make peace with the missus — he even froths a peace sign into her latte — and she seems utterly detached.

In short, Howard is decent to his somewhat aloof wife, which only adds to the sense that he isn’t a worthy target for an underhanded assault. And yet, the last scene of this episode is Kim’s highway U-turn from her drive to Santa Fe, away from a career-making meeting and back to Albuquerque.

Will Kim save “D-Day,” as she and Jimmy call this moment?

It’s hard to care, at least not in a deep, emotional way. “Better Call Saul” has always been two very different planets — the drug world and the lawyering world — with orbits that only occasionally line up. (Think of when Kim meets Mike in Episode 5, or Jimmy’s work for Tuco and Lalo.) Otherwise, they spin on their own, with atmospheres that are dramatically different. Now that the cartel plot is on a boil, the legal plot seems slapstick-y at moments, dull at others and padded at times. Can anyone explain the dramatic reason for the encounter between Kim and Francesca in Jimmy/Saul’s office? If it had been deleted, what exactly would be missing?

The episode heaves to life when the drugs-and-money part of the show finally gets some oxygen. Lalo has determined the identity of at least one of Werner Ziegler’s “boys” by reading the underside of the Lucite-encased slide rule that was a gift from the lads, and which Lalo handled during his brief visit to Frau Ziegler’s home. The piece was manufactured by a company called Voelker’s, the sticker said, and somehow Lalo finagled the identity of at least one of the boys from the company.

Specifically, he got the name and address of Casper (Stefan Kapicic) who appears to live in the country and chop a lot of wood. When Lalo approaches, Casper flees into a darkened barn. The last thing a sane person would do is enter that barn with a drawn gun, but Lalo can be impetuous, and it isn’t a huge surprise when Casper blindsides him with the axe. This advantage lasts a matter of seconds because Lalo has a razor blade behind the Volker’s sticker (or business card?) that he’s brought along, and almost immediately he is in control and ready to begin an inquisition.

This won’t be pretty, and it’s unclear what Caspar knows. He was surely in the dark about nearly everything related to the super lab construction, with a few exceptions. He knows that dynamite was involved, which wouldn’t have been necessary to build the “chiller” that Gus showed to Lalo in that staged, Potemkin-village version of the project at the chicken farm. Casper will remember that little show, and he’ll probably know that it was entirely for the benefit of the guy about to torture information out of him. (The two men were in the same cavernous room that day; hence Lalo’s “I don’t think we’ve officially met” right before he starts chasing Casper.)

It’s worth remembering what the stakes are here. Lalo wants information on Fring’s construction project, which he will eventually discover is a super lab that will produce vast amounts of high-quality meth. Fring has no plans to share profits from the lab with the cartel, and we know from Jesse in “Breaking Bad” that it will eventually produce $96 million worth of the stuff every three months. It is the money-making machine of Gus’s dreams.

Were Lalo to learn about this operation, Gus would either be murdered for his perfidy or forced to share the bounty. Given Don Eladio’s sensitivity to slights, the former seems more likely.

Odds and Ends

• For those who’ve wondered about the roots of Kim’s con artistry, or her attraction to Jimmy, the opening of this episode helps. We’re in Nebraska, where a very young Kim is helping her mother run a shoplifting scam on a store owner. Perhaps this experience, and others like it, have left Kim with the impression that love and fraud go together.

• Zafiro Añejo gets yet another cameo in this episode. It’s the pricey tequila brand that Gus will later use to poison and kill Don Eladio in “Breaking Bad” and that Kim and Jimmy order while hustling a mark at an Albuquerque bar in Season 2. Here, Jimmy buys a bottle at a liquor store and gets a warning about the sharpness of the crown-shaped top.

• That top is prominently featured in the season-opening montage of Saul’s emptied house. Either that thing will play a key role in this story or the writers are providing an elaborate feint.

• The little black book belonging to the veterinarian-cum-underworld fixer is also in the opening season montage, and now we know why it’s impossible to read without a decoder. Clearly, Saul somehow acquires it before the vet leaves town.

• A quick salute to Tina Parker, the actress who plays Francesca. She is flawless at conveying both exasperation (at Saul) and graciousness (toward Kim). Every gesture, every facial expression is impeccably authentic.

• Question of the week: What medicine does Jimmy take from the vet, and what role will it play in the plan to undermine Howard and win the Sandpiper case? We know only that the drug, if that’s what it is, will not show up in a blood test and that it will make Jimmy feel as if he had consumed two Red Bulls on an empty stomach. And we know that when Jimmy stares into the mirror, his pupils are wildly dilated.

• Huh?