Inflatable
Written by Gordon Smith and Thomas Schnauznote
Directed by Colin Bucksey and Thomas Schnauznote
Air date: March 28th, 2016
"There's no point in me doing this if I can't be myself."
"For what it’s worth, I think you’re an asshole."
— Cliff Main
Tropes
- The '70s: The episode opens with a flashback to late August 1973 of Jimmy working in his father's store. Flash forward to 2002 and Jimmy decides to don various gaudy 70's style suits.
- The Alleged Car: Jimmy is back to his old yellow Suzuki.
- Anachronism Stew: There are Psst food cans on the shelves of the McGill family store in a flashback circa 1973. Which is about 40 years off.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Jimmy's response to Cliff finally getting fed up and firing him is smarmy and disingenuous... until Cliff raises some very good questions which, for the first time in the conversation, clearly hit a nerve with Jimmy:Jimmy: I'm sorry you feel that way. I'll just pack up.
Cliff: First, do me the favor of not treating me like a fool for once. Tell me: how exactly did I mistreat you? What did I do to deserve this kind of behavior? We gave you opportunities, we encouraged you to excel, we got you a car, an apartment, hell, that cocobolo desk! Do you see a desk like that in here? You never gave this a chance. Why?
Jimmy: [rattled] ... I tried to make it work. Really, I-I did. I'm just... a square peg.
Cliff: If you knew that, why did you take the job? - Blatant Lies: Jimmy doesn't even try explaining why the gun that is neither Mike's or Tuco's ended up here with Tuco's fingerprints. All he says is that his client want to amend his testimony and if he goes to court he will stand for the defendant so the prosecution will just shoot themselves in the foot by pressing the issue. They immediately realize that Tuco's family is either bribing or threatening Mike, but acknowledge there's little they can do given the circumstances.
- But Not Too Evil: Chuck's allegations that Jimmy stole $14,000 from his father's business are given some downgrading in this episode, in order to avoid making Jimmy seem too unsympathetic; while Jimmy did engage in some Stealing from the Till, we learn that it wasn't to nearly that extent. It's revealed that his father's money concerns actually stemmed from the fact that he was a soft-touch for grifters, and Jimmy in fact tried to get him to wise up to them a bit.
- Covert Pervert: In the flashback, Jimmy hides the Playboy magazine behind the Boy's Life magazine. Clever.
- Call-Back:
- While waiting for the elevator after the meeting with the D.A., Jimmy tells Mike about his own encounter with Tuco.
- Look closely on one of the shelves in the McGills' store: it has boxes of Moon Pie cookiesnote . One of the various euphemisms Jimmy used when spinning a lie to the police about Daniel Wormald making "fetish videos" was "Full Moon Moon Pie".
- Call-Forward:
- The realtor for the new house that Stacey and Kaylee move into is Stephanie Doswell, who will later discover Marie stealing things from her open houses.
- To get himself fired, Jimmy puts on the front of an obnoxious, poorly-dressed incompetent, which will become his way of throwing suspicion away from his real schemes as Saul Goodman.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: After meeting with the DA, while waiting for the elevator, Jimmy tells Mike his experience with Tuco and tells him he made the right choice to take Hector's offer and even offers to waive his fee for his service. When the elevator arrives, Mike tells Jimmy to take the next elevator and refuses to take Jimmy's offer.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Jimmy's scheme to get fired is inspired when he happens to see a wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man. But it's deconstructed in that Jimmy's plan is both transparent and sophomoric. It only works because Cliff decides Jimmy isn't worth the time it would take to fire him with cause.
- Everyone Has Standards: After totally squandering his plush job opportunity at Davis & Main despite all the perks they've given him, and spending weeks deliberately annoying his coworkers so that he can get fired and keep his signing bonus, Jimmy feels guilty and offers to write Cliff a check for $7,000 to pay him back for the cocobolo desk they bought him.
- Foil: Cliff is presented as this to Jimmy's father; both are essentially positioned as the good-hearted "sheep" to an unscrupulous "wolf" preying on them (the conman for Jimmy's father, Jimmy himself for Cliff), but while Jimmy's father is suggested to be quite naive in his dealings with the "wolves" preying on him, Cliff makes it clear when firing Jimmy that he now sees exactly what Jimmy is, is not impressed, and is only letting Jimmy get away with it because it would take more time and resources to put Jimmy in his rightful place than Cliff feels Jimmy is worth spending. Cliff may be a "sheep" in the cynical binary world of grifters like Jimmy, but that doesn't make him a fool.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: When Kim visits Jimmy at the nail salon, look for a postcard on the mirror behind Mrs. Nguyen that says, “Thank You From the Better Call Saul Locations Team.”
- Freudian Excuse: Jimmy is a wolf because he grew up seeing what being a sheep gives you at his father's store when grifters abused his niceness.
- Freudian Slip: While Kim is finishing up her interview with Schweikart & Cokely, she accidentally refers to Richard Schweikart as "Howard", perhaps hinting that Jimmy's comparison of S&C to HHM has some element of truth.
- Impossibly Tacky Clothes: Jimmy, who is already infamous for having a somewhat tacky clothing style, deliberately takes this up to eleven during his gambit to get fired, by dressing in various suits, shirts, and ties with aggressively bright colors and patterns.
- Jury and Witness Tampering: Mike amends his statement, as Hector requested. However, the DA makes clear that they know Mike has been bribed/threatened into changing his testimony, with the implication that this is not the first time they've lost a witness in a case against a Salamanca.
- Loophole Abuse: Jimmy wants to quit Davis & Main, but he finds that his contract stipulates that if he simply resigns, he'll have to return his signing bonus. But he'll get to keep the bonus if he's fired without cause. So he goes on a series of antics to get himself fired, like wearing ridiculously flashy suits to work, using a loud blender in the break room that sprays a coworker, playing bagpipes, and not flushing the toilet. Repeatedly. It works.
- Mood Whiplash: The montage of Jimmy's bad work behavior is comedic, but his subsequent conversation with Cliff undercuts the humor by making it clear that, at least from Cliff's standpoint, Jimmy is behaving like an Ungrateful Bastard and a Dirty Coward who wants to bail on his job without losing his bonus.
- Noodle Incident: Hinted at during this episode. Kim's interview with Schweikart's firm has its partners asking her questions meant to find out more about her as a person, which is pretty standard during job interviews. But they hit her like Armor Piercing Questions, and it's obvious that they're bringing up painful memories the details of which she's uncomfortable sharing. She ends up giving generic answers about wanting something more than what a small town existence could offer her. It will eventually become a Resolved Noodle Incident when in season 5 that we find out more about her Dark and Troubled Past.
- Pranking Montage: The episode features a montage of Saul deliberately annoying and pranking his co-workers in a bid to get himself fired and keep the big bonus he'd forfeit by quitting. We see him use a loud blender in the break room, assume a janitor is Hispanic and doesn't speak English, repeatedly leave the toilet unflushed, and coming into work the whole time in obnoxiously colored outfits that look ridiculous.
- Rejected Apology: Cliff accepts Jimmy's check for the desk, but makes it clear he's not accepting Jimmy's apology for his behavior (and for making sure to keep his bonus).
- Shout-Out:
- Jimmy starts to record his voicemail message in his phony British accent, then stops, erases it, and starts over with his normal voice, echoing Mrs. Doubtfire.
- Jimmy's new "Wexler-McGill" logo, with the W fused to the M like a Siamese twin, looks like the inverse of the logo for Metzger & Wickersham, an actual law firm in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
- Shown Their Work: All of those magazines on the racks in the store in the flashback are the actual editions that would have been on the racks at that time in 1973
. Specifically: Single: For the Unmarried, Divorced, Widowed and Unattached. The Time magazine is from August 20, 1973. The MAD magazine is from July 1973. The Superman comic is issue #266, where he fights The Abominable Snowman. The National Lampoon is issue #41, from August, 1973, with cover artwork of “Ghoul Queen” by Frank Frazetta. The New Yorker is from Aug. 27, 1973, and the Psychology Today is from August, 1973. - Take a Third Option: Jimmy offers Kim the chance to become his law partner, knowing he is an Amoral Attorney, instead of making a "lateral move" to Schweikert's firm. Instead, she makes Jimmy her own offer: they'll share office space, but run separate legal practices.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: While he does eventually cave and fire Jimmy, Cliff makes it clear just how little he thinks of Jimmy and his self-serving ingratitude while doing so. Although he does accept the check Jimmy writes to compensate for the expensive desk he requested, he pointedly refuses to accept the apology and peace offering that comes with it.
- Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: After Mike caves to Hector's threats and lies to the DA, Jimmy assures him that he did the right thing, and mentions that he had also knuckled under when threatened by Tuco. Mike is clearly less than pleased by this comparison.
- Zero-Approval Gambit: This is essentially Jimmy's plan for getting fired from Davis and Main without losing his bonus.
