'Better Call Saul' Season 1, Episode 6 - 'Five-O' Recap

This week, Jimmy took a side seat so that we could get a look at Mike's present and past: the episode shows us two days, one in the present as Mike spends time with his daughter-in-law and is questioned by the cops, and the other in the past, where Mike confronts the partners of his deceased son.

In the present, Mike's back at the swings with Kaylee, the activity he's doing when he sees her for the last time in his life. "I'm better," he tells his daughter-in-law, Stacey. "I'm sorry it took me so long."

We're still not sure at first why Mike is being held by the police, but we do know that even back at this point, he was smart and careful: he refuses to say anything but "laywer" to the cops who bring him in. The lawyer he gets, of course, is Jimmy McGill.

Mike has a plan, and it involves Jimmy spilling a cup of coffee on one of the cops so that Mike can, Jimmy assumes, steal his notebook.

During the questioning, we learn about Mike's son, Matt, who was also a cop and died in the line of duty. The cops assume that Matt's former partners, Hoffman and Fenski, were mixed up in some bad business, and that's what got him—and later, them—killed. They also seem to think that Mike killed them.

We also learn that Mike used to be an alcoholic, and supposedly doesn't remember much about the two cops. We also learn that Jimmy is game to spill coffee when needed.

Mike gleans from the notebook that Stacey called the cops and told them that she found a lot of cash that Matt had hid in the house before he died. That leads to a confrontation between the two, as Mike lays into her for even entertaining the idea that Matt was a dirty cop.

In a flashback, we see the night that the cops were questioning Mike about. Mike appeared to be blind drunk, approaching the two at the bar and slurring at them, "I know it was you."

Later, they find him on the street and offer to take him home, but it quickly becomes clear that that's not their actual motive. They take away his gun and load him in the car, taking him to an empty alley.

"You killed him," he slurs in the car. "You killed Mikey. You got him in that crack house, and you staged it. Made him look like a junkie with a gun. But I know it was you. And I'm gonna prove it."

But when they pull Mike out to kill him, it turns out that Mike was faking drunk the whole time. He puts a bullet (or a few) in both of them, with only the one shot to his shoulder to show for it.

"Matt wasn't dirty. I was. Everyone was in that precinct," Mike tells Stacey. "My boy was stubborn. My boy was strong. I told him that I was like the rest of them."

"I broke my boy," he says, tears in his eyes.

The episode features the most range we've seen from actor Jonathan Banks in this or in "Breaking Bad," and he handles it with ease. Might we see a supporting actor nomination for Banks this year? Based on this episode alone, it's a possibility.