"We all make our choices. And those choices, they put us on a road. Sometimes, those choices seem small, but they put you on the road. You think about getting off, but eventually you're back on it."

Bad Choice Road is like the final nail in the coffin in terms of Kim being "in the game", and she is absolutely the best character of the episode to me, however I thought that Nacho, Jimmy, Mike and Lalo were all amazing and seriously enjoyable. The amount of times Nacho's plotline had me grimacing was insane, there are so many times he's right about to be free to make a move right before plans change. He totally captured the aspect of thinking about getting off a bad choice road, but eventually being back on it, constantly sucked back into a world of his own consequences he tries so desperately to escape. 

Jimmy's story of adjusting back into society after having his entire mindset broken down, on top of the PTSD from being stranded in a desert and being in a gunfight and all his previous traumas that are catching up to him ever since he stopped running from them in Bagman. When he tries to shift back into his life as a lawyer it definitely felt like there was a sense of discomfort to me, like he understands this isn't his life any more since the events of Bagman showed the shedding of 'Saul Goodman' into a friend of the cartel. Mike is very tied in with his plot of course, and takes on a wise sage like role to Jimmy, providing answers that clearly come from his personal experience, likely to do with the deaths of the people that "weren't in the game" and how he got better with time at the town Gus sent him to.

I don't see people talk enough about how insane it is that nearly every major character in the cast are all at one apartment building (or the neighbouring one and the parking lot in Mike and Nacho's cases), with two of Jimmy's worlds seemingly colliding when Lalo turns up at his home. I personally did not feel much tension here, and definitely not as much as I have felt in other scenes of the show, of course this is because I'm rewatching the series but there have been more tense parts. Nonetheless, it is a very well crafted scene filled with brilliant performances from Tony Dalton, Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk, all observed by Mike's watchful eye. The decision to use the scope of the sniper for some shots definitely made things look cool, but more than that it acted as a frame of who is in the game, symbolized by being in the line of fire of a gun and being under threat. So, when Mike aims his gun at Lalo, only for Kim to walk in front of it, there is a prevalent underlying sense of upset in the norm. Kim becomes someone Mike needs to take into account, Kim becomes someone Lalo recognises the intelligence of, and Kim is now in the game, set on her bad choice road.

9/10

Specials

Season 1

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