McWexler Parallel Shot Alert!

McWexler parallel shot alert!

No, really, this is important.

It starts with the scene in which Saul is signing the divorce paperwork.

He knows it’s coming. He doesn’t want it to happen. But he wants to make a show, and appearances are half of that.

The biggest, most obvious thing going on here, besides the signing of the paperwork, is what doesn’t happen. Saul can’t look at Kim. He’ll do anything to avoid her eyes, play obnoxious phone games, make snide small talk. She’s the one person who can still see Jimmy within, after all.

This is the closest he gets to looking at her, just half a second, and I’d bet he was looking at her forehead. But he did it - he maintained his affectation of uncaring invulnerability.

Years later, he sees her once again in court. Someone who is far more observant than I noted he was wearing a suit coat Kim had mentioned liking him in. Again, he’s keeping up with making sure he looks good in front of her.

Also, he makes eye contact with her for the first time since signing the papers. That first time, she’s enraged and he turns his head away. But once his confession begins, it’s Kim that he can’t drag his eyes from. And once she understands what he’s doing, her gaze holds his as if they’re the only two people in the room. It stays that way through the end of the scene. There’s a huge argument going on behind him about his fate in the judicial system, and he ignores it to look at Kim.

And months later, when Kim pays him an unexpected visit, his eyes hardly leave her at all. It’s unbelievable that she’s there, after all.

And once Kim leaves the prison, she glances over and sees Jimmy across the way. He doesn’t try to talk, that’s likely forbidden by prison rules. But he follows her, pushing himself up to the corner of the fence, not willing to forego a moment of seeing her.

It’s a complete reversal of their divorce scene, is what I’m getting at. Saul’s gone.

Jimmy’s there, and he’s going as far as he can go to keep looking at her, to reverse that mistake from their divorce.

He can look at himself and his faults squarely and deal with them. It means he also gets to look at what and whom he loves unblinkingly.