![]() “Why did Lalo send you?” he asks Kim, who replies that Lalo originally wanted to send Jimmy, but Jimmy “talked him out of it.” Gus knows that Lalo isn’t the type of guy who could get talked out of anything, which signals to him that it genuinely didn’t matter to Lalo who was dispatched on this mission that was 100 percent certain to fail. When Kim inevitably fails and gets dragged into Gus’s house by Mike and his security goons, Gus doesn’t need to hear much from her to pick up on what Lalo is doing. What neither of them realizes is that this assassination attempt is not something Lalo actually expects to succeed like Jimmy and Kim’s three transparent efforts to link Howard to cocaine, it’s just part of a greater ruse. It’s a simple job that Jimmy persuades Lalo to let Kim do instead, because it seems to him like her survival is at least within the realm of possibility. Lalo wants Jimmy to drive his car to Gus’s neighborhood, park down the street, grab a revolver and camera from the glove compartment, knock on the door, and shoot the docile “house cat” who’s Black and medium height with short hair. Even in the little time he has left on earth, Lalo will have forgotten about it.ĭespite Jimmy’s protests that he never turned on him, Lalo has settled on a plan to kill Gus, so it doesn’t really matter anyway. Their lives are changed forever in ways they (and we) can only begin to contemplate. But Jimmy and Kim are seeing a person they knew murdered up close, and their reaction is so piercingly human against Lalo’s serene bloodlessness. That moment is itself a disturbing study in contrasts: Howard means nothing to Lalo, who dispatches him with the casual swiftness of a business executive brushing lint off of his three-piece suit. ![]() The rest of the episode picks up right where the mid-season finale left off - with Jimmy and Kim screaming over Lalo nonchalantly shooting Howard in the head. Only the cold open, with its elegant shots of Howard’s dress shoe lapping against the shoreline, offers any moment for peaceful contemplation. ![]() ![]() They’re trapped in the tangled web their grand deception has woven.īut “Point and Shoot” doesn’t leave much time for Jimmy and Kim (much less the viewers) to marinate in these consequences. That’s what the title Breaking Bad means, after all, or a nickname like “Slippin’ Jimmy.” The cost for Jimmy and Kim’s transgressions may be unreasonably high - there’s a sound argument that Howard had it coming, in fact, and that justice was done on behalf of his elderly clients - but they still have to pay it. They’re told that traces of cocaine will be discovered on the upholstery, because “that’s the story you were setting up for this guy.” Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are keyed into inflection points like this when their characters make choices that set their lives on a dark trajectory. They’re told that Howard’s Jaguar will be found on a beach a few states over and that his death will eventually be considered a suicide, which will seem plausible given his personal and professional setbacks. That’s Mike, counseling Jimmy and Kim about how they’re going to handle Howard’s death. “You keep telling the lie that you’ve been telling.” Photo: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony/B) 2022 Sony Pictures Television & AMC Film Holdings LLC. ![]()
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