Talk
The episode opens in a flashback to the 1970s, as a young boy watches his father pour cement in his driveway. The father allows the boy to sign his name in the wet cement, revealing them to be Mike and his son Matt, respectively. The scene abruptly cuts to Mike at Stacey's support group, which has apparently been stunned into silence. He coldly states, "You wanted me to talk. I talked."
At night, a car drives to a dilapidated motel, and one of Gus's men, Diego, steps out with a suitcase. Diego walks through the motel, which serves as a compound for the Espinosas, a competing drug gang to the Salamancas. He is allowed into the gang's lair, where one of the Espinosas take a packet of drugs out of the suitcase. Diego returns to the car and tells Victor the delivery is done.
In the morning, Jimmy gets a call from CC Mobile, a cell phone retailer, and is offered a job as a shift supervisor for their location in uptown Albuquerque. Jimmy turns down the job, saying he's had a "change of plans." Later, while Jimmy is shaving, Kim gives him the contact information of a therapist and urges him to talk to someone, presumably about Chuck's death. Perturbed, Jimmy lies to Kim about taking the CC Mobile job. After she leaves, he calls them back to say he has reconsidered and will take the job.
At the courthouse, Kim observes a pre-trial hearing and is asked by the judge, Benedict Munsinger, to visit him in his chambers during recess. Munsinger gleans that Kim is trying to rediscover her love of the law, and tells her about a family that is suing a hospital over a botched childbirth that left the mother brain damaged. Kim realizes that he is describing the plot of The Verdict. Munsinger tells Kim that the cases he deals with every day are much less glamorous and career-altering than the ones seen in movies, and implies he will put her to work for the public defender if he finds her "trolling in his court" again. Taking the judge at his word, Kim defiantly returns to the courtroom and continues watching.
At Loyola's, Mike is solving newspaper crosswords. Anita steps in and approaches his booth. During their conversation, she asks him to befriend another member of the support group, Henry DeVore, who relates stories of his dead wife, named Judy. Mike thinks that Henry is making up Judy, pointing to a discrepancy in his story about their purported first kiss at Wrigley Field. When Anita expresses disbelief, Mike advises to her to look for Henry to give his tell — rubbing his wrists — when he talks about Judy at the next group meeting. The two agree to a ten dollar bet on whether he does so.
Jimmy begins his job at CC Mobile, but quickly becomes bored when no customers show up. He takes a call from his new boss, Robbie, and asks to be transferred to a store with better foot traffic, only to be told that all of the company's other positions have been occupied. With nothing else left to do, Jimmy begins throwing a rubber ball against the storefront window to pass the time.
Meanwhile, Nacho and the Cousins watch a silver Firebird — the one that Nacho "described" as having ambushed him and Arturo — pull into the Espinosa compound. Nacho verbally describes a plan to use a couple of Salamanca crews for a night assault, but the Cousins choose to act immediately. He watches as they kill the guards and enter the compound with guns drawn. A massive offscreen gunfight erupts and reinforcements for the Espinosas arrive. Nacho, still injured from being shot by Victor, reluctantly joins the gunfight. Coming up from behind, he kills one of the Espinosas. Inside the compound, he finds that the Cousins have slaughtered almost everyone. Nacho prepares to rescue Leonel from a couple of gunmen who have pinned him down, but Marco appears and kills them instead, taking a bullet to the left shoulder. Leonel retrieves the packet of drugs that Diego had delivered earlier to frame them for the "ambush" and the three leave the scene.
Nacho meets with Gus that night and informs him that the mission was a success: the Espinosas have been wiped out and that the Cousins have gone south until the heat dies down. Nacho verbally surmises that Gus engineered the situation to his advantage, destroying the Espinosas with the expectation that the cartel will give him their territory. Gus simply tells Nacho to get some rest, as he has some work to do.
At the group meeting, Stacey recounts her day with Kaylee, saying that she has realized that she has started going about her daily routines without constantly thinking of Matt. She expresses fear that this means she will forget details about Matt in life, which visibly affects Mike sitting next to her. Henry begins talking about Judy and rubs his wrists, just as Mike predicted. Eventually, Mike can no longer contain his anger and accuses Henry of lying about Judy, pointing to more inconsistencies in his stories and challenging him to show any official record that she ever existed. Instead of denying it, Henry leaves the meeting. Mike then turns his ire on the rest of the group, saying that all they're really doing is feeding on each other's misery. The scene ends with Mike saying his line from the teaser: "You wanted me to talk. I talked."
Nacho's father Manuel arrives home to find his back door open. Inside, he finds a bandaged Nacho sitting in his living room. Manuel moves to call the hospital, but Nacho tells him it won't be safe if he does so. He asks his father if he can rest at the house for a while.
The following day, Mike is performing another security check at a Madrigal warehouse when Stacey tries to contact him on his cell phone; he ignores the call. However, he is forced to take a call from Victor, who says that Gus wants to meet him that night.
Jimmy leaves CC Mobile and drives to a construction business, where Ira is performing his legitimate job stocking vending machines. When Ira hands Jimmy the proceeds he collected from selling Mr. Neff's Hummel figurine, Jimmy is surprised to find out that the caper has yielded more returns than he expected. Ira invites Jimmy to approach him again when he finds another job, and tells him to contact him through Caldera with a new phone when he does, saying, "You never know who's listening." Struck by inspiration, Jimmy returns to CC Mobile and paints the message "IS THE MAN LISTENING? PRIVACY SOLD HERE" on the store windows.
At nightfall, Mike drives to the Los Pollos Hermanos factory farm. Gus, accompanied by Victor and Tyrus, confronts Mike with the knowledge that he was aware of Nacho's plot against Hector and did not act to stop him. Mike counters that he agreed to not kill Hector, but never agreed to keep others from doing so. He further realizes that Gus has actually summoned him because he needs Mike for a specialized job.
Tropes:
- Anachronistic Clue: Mike can tell that Henry's spinning a lie because in one version of his story, he took Judy to a night game at Wrigley Field at a time when they didn't yet have night lighting.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Mike pointedly asks Henry that if Judy is real, then would he be able to go to the library, check the newspaper archives, and find her obituary? It doesn't take long for Henry, without denying anything, to cut and run.
- Batman Gambit:
- Gus engineered the battle between the Cousins and the Espinosas with the expectation that the cartel, having already promised not to give away Salamanca territory, would give the Espinosa territory to Gus himself.
- Kim turns up at a court of law just as an observer. The judge summons her to his chambers, tells her to get over her ennui, and threatens to draft her as a public defender if he sees her there again just observing. Post-recess, there is Kim, again observing. Is she up for a bit of PD work?
- Berserk Button: Henry presses Mike's when he compares Henry's dead wife Judy — who doesn't really exist — to Mike's son Matt, who Mike knows all too well was a real person and whose memory Henry is exploiting for his own sick gratification.
- Bottomless Magazines: Averted. The Cousins run out of ammo for their assault rifles and have to switch to pistols.
- Brig Ball Bouncing: Jimmy repeatedly throws a stress ball at the window of the cell phone store he's working at in boredom.
- Burner Phones: Jimmy gets drawn back into the criminal world when he realizes he can sell his shop's cell phones as burners.
- The Chessmaster: Gus Fring's False Flag Operation manipulates the Cousins into wiping out the rival Espinosa gang for him, ensures that the Salamancas won't discover that Nacho is his Double Agent in their midst, and allows him to claim what had been Espinosa territory as neither Hector nor the Cousins are in any position to claim the territory after the latter have been forced south of the border to avoid law enforcement heat. And his enemies, the Salamancas, are none the wiser to his manipulating events like a puppet master from a distance.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The Cousins wipe out the Espinosa gang practically by themselves.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Jimmy gets an idea for another scam when Ira says the words: "New job. New phone."
- Even Evil Has Standards: Jimmy knows full well where to find more Hummel figures (the sweet old lady whose will he drafted), but lies to Ira about the Hummels drying up. For now, anyway.
- Exact Words: Mike tells Gus that he only promised not to kill Hector himself; he never promised that he would try to stop others from attempting the same.
- Fanservice: Jimmy's Shirtless Scene definitely counts. Bob Odenkirk is in great shape, and it shows.
- Foreshadowing:
- Ira tells Jimmy he's up for doing future business with him in light of the success from auctioning Mr. Neff's Hummel, foreshadowing the eventual creation of Vamonos Pest.
- Ira also tells Jimmy he has a new phone to avoid being eavesdropped, leading to Saul Goodman's drawer full of spare cellphones (shown during the opening credits).
- Mike figures that Gus has summoned him because he wants Mike to do another job, which, given we saw Mike doing a security audit at another Madrigal warehouse when he got the call, suggests that Gus needs Mike to help him with setting up the lab.
- Guns Akimbo: Both the cousins start the shootout armed with dual pistols.
- Honor Among Thieves:
- Jimmy gets much more money than he thought for the Bavarian Boy and points out that Ira could have kept the extra without Jimmy ever knowing; Ira answers that Jimmy could have left him hanging out to dry during the botched burglary, and yet he didn't.
- The subtle nod between the cousins and Nacho may also qualify; conveying that they know he did everything he could to back them up, given his condition.
- Hope Spot: Judge Munsinger realizes Kim is looking for a new purpose in her career and tells her about an underdog client who needs help against a powerful law firm. Kim listens with interest but then realizes that the judge is just reciting the plot of The Verdict, to make his point that cases like this only exist in movies.
- In Medias Res: It's not apparent on first viewing, but the brief clip of Mike at the group session at the start of the episode happens pretty far into the narrative of the episode.Mike: You wanted me to talk. ...I talked.
- Jerkass: Judge Munsinger berates Kim in his chambers and threatens to sic extra work on her for the high crime of observing his public court proceedings. For her part, she brushes it off and continues observing.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: When Mike accuses Henry of making up Judy and challenges him to show one piece of documentation proving she ever existed, Henry doesn't deny the accusation and simply leaves the meeting.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Nacho sets up a plan to attack the Espinosa hideout later that night; the Cousins walk out in the middle of his explanation and launch an all-out assault on the heavily armed compound in broad daylight, with absolutely no planning. Even though they ultimately win, the situation gets hairy very fast and forces Nacho to join them, even though he's still seriously injured and can barely raise his gun.
- Let's You and Him Fight: Gus frames the Espinosas for ripping off the Salamancas and killing Arturo. He correctly figures that the Cousins would win the ensuing Mob War and he would get to absorb the Espinosa territory into his own drug network.
- Living Lie Detector: Mike knows that Henry is fabricating his Meet Cute stories because there's always inconsistencies in detail from one telling to the next.
- Mood Whiplash: The last shot in the Cold Open shows younger Matty and Mike doing handicraft together, then cuts to Mike in the church group talking about his loss of Matty.
- Meaningful Look: Anita and Mike share one when Henry enters the room.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The Cousins' massacre of the Espinosas takes place mostly off-camera. The camera stays focused on Nacho, who only hears gunfire and sees an explosion as their cookware gets set off.
- One-Man Army: Each of the Cousins kills about a dozen Espinosa thugs.
- Selective Obliviousness: Jimmy is in denial that he could use therapeutic help to sort out his emotions following Chuck's suicide, even when Kim suggests it to him with good intentions. So he ends up accepting the cellphone sales job he previously rejected in order to have an excuse not to call the psychiatrist that Kim recommended.
- Shirtless Scene: Jimmy gets to be seen in just a towel as he's shaving prior to starting his work as a cell phone salesman.
- Soul-Crushing Desk Job: Kim, in a way, just sitting in a court and not being part of that court's operation, as a result of her distaste for her Mesa Verde job. The judge even pulls her up on it in his chambers, saying that she isn't the first to try to rediscover a love of the law.
- Soul-Sucking Retail Job: Jimmy finds himself bored out of his mind in a cell phone store that his boss admits doesn't get much foot traffic most of the time.
- Staring Down Cthulhu: Mike knows Gus is angry with him for not revealing Nacho's plot against Hector. Mike dares Gus and his crew to move against him, not showing any trace of fear. But he knows that Gus has another job for him.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Mike rips into Henry for his phony stories, then turns his ire onto the group in general for feeding on each other's misery.
- These Hands Have Killed: Nacho's reaction when he kills an Espinoza soldier during the gunfight.
- This Is Reality: Kim goes to a criminal courtroom to rediscover her love of the law. While there, the judge describes a client who was deeply wronged and faces an uphill battle against a powerful law firm, the exact kind of case that Kim needs. Kim realizes he's just describing the plot of The Verdict, which the judge confirms he was doing to make the point that such cases only exist in movies, as the better majority of cases are pleaded out (criminal) or settled (civil) without ever going to trial, and of those that do get to trial, only a fraction of those make it to verdict (because parties are risk-averse).
- Time-Shifted Actor: It's hard to tell because his face is out of focus, but based on his movements and glimpses of his hands, it's obvious that a younger man is playing Mike in the flashback with Matt.
- Title Drop: Mike."You wanted me to talk. I talked."
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Mike was always gruff and never one to mince words. But it's debatable whether the Mike we saw fresh off the train from Philadelphia would have intentionally humiliated Henry in front of everybody else and give the whole group "The Reason You Suck" Speech, especially when he knew it would likely create problems for Stacey.
- Tranquil Fury: Gus exhibits this when he confronts Mike about keeping him in the dark about Nacho's plot against Hector, but Mike realizes it's mostly a ploy to get him into doing another job.
- Villain Cred: After seeing Nacho power through a gunshot wound to join the shootout, Marco looks Nacho in the eye and gives him a nod of respect.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Stacey's reaction to Mike's treatment of Henry, even though Mike is telling the truth.
