Expenses
Written and directed by Thomas Schnauz
Air date: May 22nd, 2017
Jimmy runs into some money trouble.
"I'm sorry, it's... hard. Very, very hard. I'm just having a rough time. I just need a break... just one break."
Jimmy sidles up to a wall wearing ratty jeans and a sweatshirt. He is joined by some more scuzzy individuals before a truck pulls up for their community service. Dutifully putting on his yellow vest, Jimmy picks up trash underneath a highway whilst calling potential clients for his advertising business and his insurance provider in order to drop his now-unnecessary malpractice insurance. However, his phone dealings result in his supervisor only recording a half-hour's work; "We can make it zero,” he threatens after Jimmy argues.— Jimmy McGill
With no time to stew, Jimmy wipes himself down and changes in the parking lot for his new clientele. Although his Suzuki struggles to start, he manages to make it to his appointment on time. Sadly, his client is only interested in one commercial. Jimmy haggles with his film crew over their split before discussing the situation with Kim. He hands her a large pile of money while only tipping their delivery boy a dollar; she suspects Jimmy’s dipping into his savings.
Daniel Wormald arrives in his heavily secured home to find Nacho in his living room. He gives him the pill he squirreled away from Hector and offers Daniel $20,000 to give him the same type of capsules, only empty. Daniel reluctantly takes the offer, saying he can get them through an R&D request at work. Meanwhile, Mike dips into his truck robbery earnings to fund the construction of the playground at Stacey’s church. His insistence on working alone is ignored by the grief group’s leader, Anita, who demands that she and a couple other eager workers receive some tasks. Later, Daniel pays Mike a visit at work; he asks if Mike can get him out of his deal with Nacho. Mike refuses to get involved again.
Kim enjoys a five minute power nap in her car before she walks into work. Paige laughs about how she and Jimmy "destroyed" Chuck at the bar hearing, the transcripts released to the public. Kim struggles to contain her guilt as they discuss business, eventually lashing out at Paige: “All we did was tear down a sick man.” She apologizes for her outburst before getting back to business.
Jimmy races to pick up his crew after another round of community service, but his car won’t start. They quickly take a bus to their new client, a music store. The owners are wondering if Saul Goodman Productions is worth the money. They decide to cancel the shoot, forcing Jimmy to make a deal: he’ll make the first commercial for free if they agree to commercials for the remaining ad space. He pays his film crew out of pocket before sitting on the curb, despondent. He refuses to take the make-up girl’s share of the money.
At group, Anita proudly claims she was able to sell her husband’s clothes after eight years. Her mention of a uniform intrigues Mike, bringing back memories: her husband was a former Marine who, among other things, enjoyed hiking. He disappeared on a weekend trip through the mountains, his wife never learning what happened to him. “I wish it didn’t matter, but it does,” she quietly says. Outside, Mike calls Daniel to take him up on his offer.
Seeing Kim’s exhaustion, Jimmy takes her to a bar posing as Viktor and Giselle, amusing themselves by thinking up potential scams for the customers around them. One particular blowhard draws his ire: when he coldly details a scheme to sell him a fake credit card for $5,000, Kim asks if they’re still just talking about scams. Jimmy backs down: “It’s just talk.” Kim sees what’s on Jimmy’s mind and asks if they could’ve handled Chuck differently, but Jimmy insists that their hands were tied and Chuck's dissolution was his own fault.
Nacho is surprised to see Mike accompanying Daniel. Mike insists that Nacho walks him through his plan, finally taking him to task on how he will switch the pills back, as the discovery of doctored pills will raise suspicion. Nacho claims he's been pushed into a corner by Hector insisting on taking over his father's business. Mike checks Nacho's gas cap before telling him to proceed with caution, as Hector's being watched by a third party. He agrees to sign off on the exchange for "one other thing," pulling out a notepad in anticipation.
Jimmy visits his insurance provider to get a refund for his malpractice insurance. His representative, Ms. Valco, tells him that malpractice insurance is for his clients and therefore can't be refunded. His premiums will also greatly rise as a result of his suspension when he regains his license. Shaken, Jimmy breaks down sobbing and describes his situation to her: his "gal" is disappointed in him, his community service exhausts him, his business isn't working out, his brother broke down in court and revealed his mental illness...he stops when Ms. Valco begins to take notes over that last issue. "No, don't write," he whines, as she assures him that he shouldn't worry about what could happen. Jimmy leaves, a smirk and a scowl fighting for room on his face.
This episode contains examples of:
- All for Nothing:
- Or at least close to nothing. Jimmy only got 30 minutes logged in from a 4-hour community service as penalty for using his cell phone and he only gets $100 out of doing a furniture commercial because the store owner made him cover the airtime expenses. Jimmy also gets forced to do a commercial for the music store brothers for free when they decide to scrap the commercial altogether to save their budget.
- Doing the commercial for free was not something Jimmy did out of kindness mind you, it's that he worked hard to get the commercial ready and has 3 interns from University of New Mexico expecting to get paid with or without the commercial and that forgoing the commercial would have directed Jimmy into a more severe path of this trope.
- Ambiguous Situation: Just what happened to Anita's husband is left unanswered. It's possible to interpret his disappearance as just something that happened on its own, with Mike's response being due to his empathy for the family of the witness who Hector killed. However, it's also possible to interpret his disappearance as being the cartel's doing, with Mike's response being because he realizes that the cartel's been "disappearing" innocent passerby for years. The fact that they Never Found the Body after 8 years strongly suggests the latter.
- Anachronism Stew: Though this episode takes place in 2003, some inconsistencies can be spotted:
- Kim's cell phone, a Motorola C115, was released in late 2004.
- A sign for the telecommunication company Lycamobile can be seen in the background when Jimmy sits in front of the music store, even though the company itself wouldn't be founded until 2006.
- And Then What?: Mike asks Nacho how thorough he is in killing Hector beneath suspicion. Since Mike saw how meticulous Gus can be and how determined he is to make Hector suffer it's better making sure he can't find out someone stole his revenge. He even inspects Nacho's car to see if it's not bugged.
- Bait-and-Switch: Two men and a woman offer to help Mike lay a concrete path. He assigns the men to mix the concrete, then hands the woman a broom. She's clearly offended, until he explains that the brush is to stipple the surface of the concrete, so that it isn't slippery when wet.
- Batman Gambit: Jimmy employs one on the insurance agent, feigning (maybe, he hasn't had a good day) an emotional breakdown while leaking nuggets of information about Chuck's mental state and his "screw-ups" at work, in order to compel the agent to start looking into Chuck. The breakdown might have been real, in which case he quickly turned it around by deciding to target Chuck.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Forming between Kim and Jimmy. Kim on the one hand is feeling guilt over causing Chuck to melt down on the stand, is against the idea of actually conning the people in the bar (however much they're talking about it) and will probably not take well to the news about Jimmy sabotaging Chuck's malpractice insurance, if she ever finds out. Jimmy on the other hand is not only guiltless over Chuck but wants to hurt him further with the aforesaid insurance sabotage, and seems quite serious about the proposed cons in the bar.
- Brick Joke: Jimmy after using his phone while doing garbage duty for community service only gets logged in 30 minutes of an attempted 4 hours, and he protests, making the supervisor retort, "We can make it zero". Later on, when a Chinese food delivery boy complains to Jimmy for only tipping him $1, Jimmy replies "We can make it zero".
- Broke Episode: Jimmy struggles to get even 3-figures into his pockets.
- Bullying a Dragon: Daniel decides that confronting the criminal that just walked into his house about his stolen baseball cards is the best course of action. Luckily, Nacho prefers using carrot over stick and doesn't beat him up for what he wants.
- The Bus Came Back: Nacho reaches out to Daniel Wormald once again, this time to ask him for some pill casings – seemingly to cause Hector to take placebos and suffer the stroke that genuine pills might prevent.
- Call-Back: At the music store, Jimmy admires a Fender Stratocaster signed by Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple, the same band who wrote "Smoke on the Water" which was the song Marco often sang to himself before he and Jimmy ran a scam.
- Call-Forward: Anita's story about her husband's disappearance and how she mourned his loss for eight years. Thanks to our foreknowledge that Walt will murder Mike and dispose his remains in Breaking Bad, we have an idea of the fun journey in store for Stacey and Kaylee.
- The frantic conversation Jimmy has with his filming crew over his car refusing to start is the same Walter will have with Jesse when their RV refuses to start.
- Changed My Mind, Kid: Dark version. Mike initially refuses Daniel Wormald's job offer, since he doesn't want to get involved with the Salamancas again (not only is it dangerous in and of itself, doing so may put him on Gus Fring's bad side). However, after hearing Anita's story about how hard it is on a family to have a member vanish without a trace, he's reminded of what Hector did to the Good Samaritan after his hit on Hector's truck. His anger at Hector gets the best of him, and he calls Daniel back immediately after the grief counseling session to say he's in.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Daniel Wormald is a small time dealer of pharmaceuticals that he lifts from his pharmacy job, and he was seemingly only there for us to see the start of Mike's path to becoming Gus Fring's top enforcer. There was the plot of his baseball card collection, which creates a problem that both Mike and Gus had to solve. But his role in the story seemed to have ended for good after he's Put on a Bus. It's when Nacho devises a plan to exploit Hector's health problems that he realizes that Wormald is actually the perfect resource to put that plan into motion. He needs Wormald to obtain empty samples of the same pill capsules used for Hector's medication.
- Compliment Backfire: Paige gushes over how brilliantly Kim set up Chuck at the bar hearing, and how completely they destroyed him on the stand, unaware of how guilty Kim feels about the whole thing.
- Crocodile Tears: A mix between this and real tears when Jimmy visits the insurance agent. The real part is him being down and broke, the crocodile part is him manipulating her into upping the insurance on Chuck and HHM, especially when Jimmy lies about Chuck mixing up the numbers.
- Darkest Hour: Jimmy is having a real hard time making ends meet. He even has to offer a commercial for free as a loss-leader, and just sits on the sidewalk afterwards. The make-up artist feels so sorry for him that she offers her fee back.
- Evil Is Petty: It's Jimmy's turn to be petty, of all people, not his brother. Now broke thanks to his practice being shuttered, and learning that the premiums for his malpractice insurance will go up when his suspension finally ends, Jimmy decides to spread the misery by making sure the insurance company goes after Chuck when Chuck is already down. It's the first time in the series where we are expected not to side with Jimmy.
- Failed a Spot Check: Daniel Wormald's house might have had the security beefed up, but it is implied that leaving the back door unsecured wasn't a good idea. Mike also later points out that disconnecting the phone line disables the alarm.
- Foreshadowing:
- Jimmy manages to get his car started, not without some effort and straining, the first time he leaves his community service for a commercial shoot. It's not hard to guess the lemon will suffer a breakdown in the next instance.
- Anita's story about how her husband disappeared without a trace has a noticeable impact on Mike. Moreso on the audience when one realizes that it's exactly Mike's fate in Breaking Bad.
- The scene where Kim takes a five-minute nap in her car and suddenly wakes up in a scene transition will become important later. Punctuated later on when Jimmy tells her that she's driving, even when he can clearly see that she's dead tired.
- Funny Background Event: After Daniel's previous trouble with Nacho Varga, he's shown to have learned his lesson somewhat. His front door now sports three deadbolt locks and he has installed a home security system, which gives Daniel a scare when he finds Nacho calmly waiting inside the house. Daniel asks Nacho "How did you get in?", but the question initially remains unanswered. After they have a short discussion to conduct business, the camera pans over to show Nacho quietly exiting the house... by the kitchen's unlocked and unprotected sliding glass door.
- Heel Realization: Kim is realizing that Jimmy is pulling her into ethical territory she shouldn't be entering. It manifests when she's reluctant to help Jimmy with more Slippin' Jimmy scams.
- Heroic B So D: Jimmy hits one when the insurance agent not only refuses his request for a refund, but also informs him that his insurance premiums will more than double after his suspension lapses. Returning to legal practice will prove to be difficult at best, or maybe even impossible, even after the suspension ends. It quickly turns into snapping out of a Villainous B So D as Jimmy promptly puts into motion a plan to turn the heat up on Chuck and HHM starting with some Crocodile Tears.
- History Repeats: Nacho's desperation to save his father is reminiscent of Mike's failed attempt to save his son. In both cases, an innocent family member of a corrupt person ends up in danger because he is the type of person who would try to do the right thing and inform the authorities of illegal activity. Mike convinced his son to look away and it got him killed anyway. In contrast, Nacho decides to preemptively kill Hector so his father is not put in that situation in the first place. Mike helps out Nacho probably because he wishes that he had acted preemptively and killed Hoffman and Fenske before they had a chance to hurt his son. Mike opted for a "half-measure" and it got his son killed. He now tries to make sure that Nacho does not make the same mistake.
- Hypocrite: The owner of Duke City Recliners pleads to Jimmy not to make him purchase more commercials, but he still made Jimmy pony up $445 for the commercial's airtime.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Jimmy says the trope almost word for word in pluralized form, to justify to Kim their joint effort to tear down Chuck: "We did what we had to do."
- I Will Show You X!: When one intern orders Jimmy to split the commercial profits 4 ways, Jimmy refuses because he spent more of his own money on the commercial than the interns did.Jimmy: I'll split you four ways!
- Jerkass:
- Joey Dixon, Jimmy's intern with the glasses who handles the camera. He bullies Jimmy constantly, and you can tell Jimmy adamantly wants to fire him with great contempt. He has no problem hurting Jimmy's feelings and picking fights with his own supervisor.
- Jimmy himself acts like one throughout the episode. He berates his film crew, is rude to the delivery guy, demonstrates an almost sadistic interest in conning potential marks, and he uses Crocodile Tears to screw his brother over with the insurance company. He's having a really awful time of things, full of self loathing and just wants to spread the misery.
- The unnamed potential mark who chews out a waiter for screwing up a drink order. The worst part is that if you listen carefully, it’s clear he ordered wrong. note
- My Car Hates Me: Jimmy and his crew are running late for the music store commercial shoot and because the engine in Jimmy's car has died, they are forced to chase after a bus... only for the music store owners to tell them they're giving up on the commercial.
- Never My Fault: Jimmy insists that the outcome of the bar hearing and Chuck's subsequent problems are Chuck's own fault, never mind he was the one who forged the Mesa Verde documents, confessed to said forgery, and committed a break-in to cover up the crime.
- Nice to the Waiter: While Jimmy and Kim discuss potential marks, Jimmy spots a guy shouting at his waiter. His expression shifts to a borderline Death Glare and he starts outlining a plan to Kim in total seriousness.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Kim directs one herself. It occurs when she forcibly corrects Paige that the ratings in Utah, which are higher than in Arizona, were correctly stated the first time. She even plops the manual in front of Paige for emphasis. She realizes she's behaving just as rudely towards Paige as Chuck did during the 1216-1261 mixup, and promptly apologizes.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Jimmy's demeanor during his monologue about conning the asshole bar patron is the darkest we've ever seen him in this show so far.
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Jimmy's sound guy thinks Deep Purple made "Another Brick in the Wall".
- Pac Man Fever: Daniel is playing a Game Boy Advance in his car while waiting for Mike. A GBA is period-correct for the time period the show takes place in, but he's playing it in the middle of the night with no light source. The original GBA didn't have a backlight so you needed to play it under light (preferably sunlight) to see the system's infamously dark screen. Also it looks like he's mashing buttons to play a baseball game. Also the power light isn't on.
- Properly Paranoid: Daniel Wormald has installed many locks and an alarm since being burgled. Shame it didn't keep Nacho out.
- Reverse Psychology: Jimmy tells the insurance agent not to write anything down about what he just said about Chuck and his recent troubles, and expresses the wish that nothing at all happen to Chuck. But his furtive glances as she writes on a note pad means he's making sure she takes the bait, which she does. His face as he leaves the agent's office, filled with Tranquil Fury, means that he's intentionally seen to it that Chuck and HHM are about to be in it neck deep with the insurance carrier.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Kim seems to be suffering from a non-combat version of this. She all but breaks down in a meeting with Paige and laments over 'taking down a sick man'.
- Spot the Thread: The moment it becomes clear Jimmy's breakdown is an act? He mentions Chuck making mistakes... like mixing up numbers.
- Spotting the Thread: Mike himself through Sinister Surveillance has observed that Hector has heart or high blood pressure problems. Knowing that Wormald is selling empty medication capsules to Nacho allows Mike to put two and two together. He knows Nacho intends to mess with Hector's medication. The only point of curiosity for Mike is the motive.
- Stupid Crooks: Mike attempts to avert this with Nacho. Once he finds out what Nacho has planned, he says to switch the genuine pills back after Hector succumbs, so that the placebo pills aren't identified as the culprit – something which might cause the Cartel or Gus to suspect and kill Nacho.
- Taking You with Me: Jimmy is hurting at the prospect that he may never practice law again, a possibility that sinks in when he's informed that his insurance premiums will more then double even should his suspension lift. So he reasons that if Chuck is going to take away his privilege of being a lawyer, he'll return the favor. He then begins to leak Chuck's mental breakdown during the bar hearing, along with some Half-Truth about Chuck getting the Mesa Verde address wrong, to the insurance agent.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Being under suspension and broke has left Jimmy colder and more cynical. First is the scene in the bar where Kim becomes unnerved at his proposed con with the rude patron, followed by his dismissal of her concerns about what they did to Chuck. Then, when Jimmy meets the insurance agent, he uses Crocodile Tears while letting slip that Chuck was purportedly "screwing up numbers" for his clients so that the agent will jack up Chuck's premiums and maybe have him investigated.
- Trailers Always Lie:
- Only a small fib this episode compared to last. Nacho says that someone is a dead man – but not Hector. Instead, he is explaining to Mike that his father won't tolerate his business becoming a drug front for Hector, and will go to the cops. This will make him the dead man that Nacho refers to.
- Also, the trailer made it seem like Jimmy was upset over his difficulty paying his half of the rent.
- Visual Pun: The guy overseeing the community service volunteers says to consider the service as if it's jail. Right before this, while waiting for the van to show up, the volunteers are lined up against a wall that is painted such that the volunteers look like suspects in a police line-up.
- Women Are Wiser: The female student who interns for Jimmy's commercial crew turns out to be more sensitive and sympathetic towards Jimmy than the male interns.
- You Are What You Hate: Beginning to embrace ruthlessness, Jimmy tells a disappointed delivery man he could make his dollar tip a zero. A threat he picked up from his own cruel probation officer.
- You Owe Me: Mike and Nacho have a brief prior history of helping each other out. Mike also helps facilitate Nacho's transaction for the empty pill capsules, and even offers helpful advice for avoiding getting caught after the fact. Mike hardly skips a beat in getting the precise location of where the Good Samaritan who was murdered by Hector has been buried.
- Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: When Kim meets with Paige, Paige lauds her for the way she handled herself at the bar hearing and instigated a meltdown from Chuck, having read the transcripts. However, a few minutes later, Kim uncharacteristically snaps at Paige and then admits that in her mind, all she and Jimmy did was bring down a sick man.
