Better Call Saul Season 6, Episode 6 "Axe And Grind" Review: Is Kindness a Weakness?
Greg Ehrhardt, OnScreen Blog columnist
The following review contains spoilers for Better Call Saul Season 6, Episode 6 “Axe And Grind”.
The moment this week’s episode started with a shot of a blond teenager sitting alone in a dark empty office, I went “Uh Oh”.
We had only one flashback scene of Kim’s backstory up until this point, and given all the angst about Kim’s fate from every fan of the show, it was a perfect note to introduce more of her background given the tragic nature of it.
What we know of Jimmy McGill’s origin story is he had perfectly decent parents, but he viewed decency as weakness, and used his father’s decency ultimately to take advantage of it. Importantly, Jimmy made a choice to break bad at a very early age.
A young Kim didn’t have that choice; her mother was an alcoholic who couldn’t be depended on, leaving Kim no one to depend on for basic needs like being picked up from school. Now we learn this week her mom was also a grifter who used her daughter to steal from local department stores and also (knowingly or unknowingly) learn an early life lesson that kindness from others can be used to take what you want from others.
If Kim had the police called on her in that department store, would things be different for her now? Its hard to think otherwise as we approach the mid-season finale next week. Kim is hell bent on ruining Howard Hamlin’s life despite him being a sympathetic and depressing person by this point. Whether Howard Hamlin “deserves this” is a legitimate question; Howard’s ethos is complicated, and it all depends on whether you believe some one should always get what’s coming to them even if they evolve into a better person.
Howard Hamlin, Better Call Saul
What’s clear is whatever Kim and Jimmy are planning will result in not just kicking a man while he’s down but dropping an anvil on him from 100 feet up in the air. Howard is a desperate, lonely man. One of the trappings of wealth is its easy to have big houses, fancy cars, and attend important dinners, but if there’s no one to share them with, you will be forever isolated.
Still, Howard is still trying to make the best of his predicament with Jimmy, even going so far as to stage a boxing match last episode.
Importantly, in that episode, Howard told Jimmy that he was mistaking his kindness for weakness. What Jimmy and Kim actually think is that kindness IS weakness.
Jimmy and Kim can’t believe that Dr. Caldera, the veterinarian who has a black book full of people one might need for sticky situations, would walk away from this life to take care of pets full time.
“What a waste.
You Think?”
Kim faced this same choice at the end of the episode, where initially she was going to meet with the Jackson-Mercer Foundation, only to turn around when she heard Jimmy needed her to save the plot against Howard (this was foreshadowed when Kim had to pick the right mustache for the actor playing the judge).
We saw what she chose. She’s giving up her dream to chase a vendetta against a seemingly helpless man, or, in other words, giving up kindness, for vengeance.
She may see this as justice. After all, we saw her in the car in the final scene practicing her speech to the foundation that she wants a justice system that works for everyone.
Kindness may work for only those at the top of the food chain, which is why Howard has to be brought down.
Unfortunately, if you only view kindness in transactional terms as Jimmy and Kim do, that may be the greatest tragedy of them all.
Other Episode notes
When they opened with a shot of the woods in Germany, I was so flummoxed by it I thought AMC switched to a different show by accident. You forget how easily you are conditioned to shots of the New Mexico desert.
I live tweet every week’s episode (follow us @onscreenblog), and I made what I thought to be a fairly innocuous tweet about how the Better Call Saul folks wish they had another chance to recast Dr. Caldera. I didn’t realize that would bring out the Opie and Anthony fans, good grief (Joe Derosa, the actor behind Dr. Caldera, was a regular on the show, among other credits).
The reason I tweeted that was because the character is unusually vanilla for a Better Call Saul/Breaking Bad character. He doesn’t detract from the show at all, and I am in no position to evaluate his acting, but for a character than could be potentially dynamic in the right hands, even with little screen time, Derosa doesn’t give much flavor to the character, hence the tweet.
If you still want to @ me, feel free, but don’t mistake kindness for weakness.