The Kim Scene That Went Too Far On Better Call Saul
While "Better Call Saul" boasts a lineup of bigshot lawyers, cartel criminals, and the titular criminal attorney, the backbone of the "Breaking Bad" prequel has always been Kim Wexler. Played to perfection by Rhea Seehorn, Kim is the soft-spoken but firm moral center of the show, there to scold Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) when he goes too far off the beaten moral path. But when someone does Jimmy wrong, she's equally willing to go to war in his defense. A juggernaut of the legal world in her own right, Kim started from the bottom to build up her career as one of the most effective lawyers in the Southwest.
The difference between Jimmy and Kim is that she's generally able to resist the urges that drive Jimmy — greed, revenge, anger. But occasionally, even Kim isn't strong enough to resist Jimmy's dark side and gets pulled in along for the ride. Sometimes it's a bit of harmless fun, like when the pair scam a businessman for an expensive meal. But Kim has a dark side herself, one that has revealed itself in different ways throughout the show's five-season run.
One moment, though, seems to be when Kim finally crossed the point of no return, and it happened in the Season 5 finale.
Kim decides to ruin Howard's life, and even Jimmy gets nervous
Following his harrowing escape from the desert ambush, Jimmy is shaken and takes Kim with him to a hotel to lay low. Kim insists on going to work at the courthouse, where she wants to take on pro bono cases. On her way out, she bumps into her former boss, Howard (Patrick Fabien). After Howard tells Kim about the time, six episodes prior, when Jimmy responded to Howard's job offer by flinging bowling balls into his car and hiring prostitutes to accost him at an important lunch meeting, Kim asks, "That's it?" and proceeds to burst into laughter.
Later, at dinner in their hotel room, Kim tells Jimmy that Howard "needed to be taken down a peg," and asks, "What's next? You went after his car. You went after his reputation. So, I think maybe the next thing is his hair." She suggests drugging and shaving Howard and the next thing we know, the pair of them are in bed, bonding over increasingly severe methods by which they might destroy Howard's life. But the jokes turn serious quickly, as Kim suggests framing Howard for criminal activity in order to finally settle the Sandpiper nursing home lawsuit that stands to pay out over a million dollars to Jimmy.
Fans were aghast at Kim's cruelty
"We're not talking about a bar trick here," Jimmy says when Kim once again brings up the idea of framing Howard. "We're talking about scorched earth. We would have to hurt him. Hurt him bad." Kim's plot is too cruel, even for Jimmy. It's out of character for Kim, too, who usually reins in Jimmy's toxic impulses rather than encouraging them. But Kim downplays the moral vacuousness of the scheme, saying, "We're talking about a career setback for one lawyer."
Jimmy tries out one last plea for reason. "It's not you," he tells Kim. "You would not be okay with it. Not in the cold light of day."
Kim simply replies, "Wouldn't I?" and disappears into the bathroom for a shower, making the same finger guns Jimmy once made at her back when he first registered the name Saul Goodman. The scene ends with Jimmy looking visibly unsettled.
Fans agreed it was a bridge too far for Kim. On the "Better Call Saul" post-episode discussion thread on Reddit, u/Marko_Ramius1 remarked, "Poor Howard, He doesn't deserve this." With over a thousand up-votes, u/vsimon115 quipped, "This is the moment when Kim became Heisenberg" — referencing Walter White's (Bryan Cranston) alter-ego from "Breaking Bad."
"It's amazing how prior to S5, practically everyone ... was predicting that Kim would become disgusted with Saul's antics and leave him when in reality the EXACT OPPOSITE is playing out before us right now," wrote u/sirkg. Will she follow through on her dark plans? That will remain unknown until Season 6, the final season of "Better Call Saul."