"Nippy"
Better Call Saul episode
Promotional poster
Episode no.	Season 6 Episode 10
Directed by	Michelle MacLaren
Written by	Alison Tatlock
Produced by	Jenn Carroll Bob Odenkirk James Powers
Featured music	"Harvest Sandalwood" by APM Music "Jim on the Move" by Lalo Schifrin
Cinematography by	Paul Donachie
Editing by	Chris McCaleb Joey Liew
Original air date	July 25, 2022 (2022-07-25)
Running time	51 minutes
Guest appearances
Pat Healy as Jeff Jim O'Heir as Frank Kelsey Scott as Kathy Deutsch Max Bickelhaup as Jeff's friend Carol Burnett as Marion
Episode chronology
← Previous "Fun and Games" Next → "Breaking Bad"
Better Call Saul (season 6)
List of episodes

"Nippy" is the tenth episode of the sixth season of Better Call Saul, the spin-off television series of Breaking Bad. It was directed by Michelle MacLaren and written by Alison Tatlock. The episode aired on AMC and AMC+ on July 25, 2022, before debuting online in certain territories on Netflix the following day. "Nippy" continues the story of Jimmy McGill, portrayed by Bob Odenkirk, after he changed his identity and relocated to Omaha. In the episode, Jimmy confronts the taxi driver who recognized him as Saul Goodman.

"Nippy" received generally positive reviews, particularly for Tatlock's screenplay, MacLaren's direction, and Odenkirk's performance. An estimated 1.20 million viewers saw the episode during its first broadcast on AMC.

Plot

In a flashforward to 2010,^[1] in Omaha, Nebraska, the motorized chair of an elderly woman named Marion gets stuck in the snow. Jimmy McGill, under the guise of Gene Takavic, appears and offers his assistance, stealthily snipping the chair's power cables, and subsequently offering to push her to her home. He befriends her with stories of his nonexistent lost dog Nippy. Marion is revealed to be the mother of Jeff, the cab driver who recognized Gene as Saul Goodman.^[a] Jeff arrives home and questions Gene's motives. Gene offers Jeff a chance to enter "the game" by burglarizing a department store in the mall where Gene works in exchange for Jeff's silence about Gene's true identity. Gene returns home and retrieves Marco's pinky ring he used as "Slippin' Jimmy",^[b] and begins to prepare.

Over several days, he befriends security guard Frank by bringing him Cinnabon rolls and talking about Nebraska Cornhuskers football, tracking how long it takes for Frank to eat a roll while sitting with his back to the security camera screens. He then recreates the dimensions of the department store and choreographs an efficient way for Jeff to maximize his takings. Finally, he has a box containing Jeff delivered to the loading dock to get him into the mall after hours and to stash the loot. During the burglary, Jeff accidentally falls on a slippery floor, disrupting the timing of the scheme, but Gene buys time by feigning a depressive episode to divert Frank's attention. The burglary ends up being successful, and Jeff hides in the bathroom overnight. Later, as they relish the burglary's success, Gene warns that if Jeff ever reveals Gene's true identity, Gene will report him as well as a form of "mutual assured destruction", and makes Jeff promise never to cross paths with him again. When Gene returns to the mall, he finds a Saul Goodman-style dress shirt in the department store, but leaves without purchasing it.

Production

A work conflict made Don Harvey (left) unavailable to return to the role of Jeff, a character he played for two seasons. He was replaced by Pat Healy (right).

"Nippy" is the third Better Call Saul episode to be directed by Michelle MacLaren after the first season's "Mijo" and fourth season's "Breathe".^[3] It was written by executive producer Alison Tatlock. Bob Odenkirk, who plays Jimmy, is the only actor listed in the starring credits.^[1] The cab driver Jeff, who had previously been portrayed by Don Harvey, was recast to Pat Healy due to a work conflict by Harvey.^[4] Healy had originally auditioned for the role of Jeff during the production of the fourth season in March 2018, but was not hired. He was notified of Harvey's departure after he finished shooting his scenes for Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon. Healy emphasized that the recast was not due to Odenkirk's heart attack during the production of a previous episode in the sixth season, as he was cast before that.^{[5]: 11:07–14:34} AMC released several teasers to inform viewers of Jeff's recast weeks prior to the episode's airing. The promotional material featured clips of Healy in the role along with lines of Jeff's character from previous seasons that Healy had re-recorded in a sound booth in Los Angeles.^{[5]: 4:46–5:01} Carol Burnett, who played Jeff's mother Marion, was the episode's "special guest star". She was a fan of both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and had appeared on The Larry Sanders Show with Odenkirk, but the two did not share any scenes in that series.^[6][4]

"Nippy" was filmed in October 2021.^[7] Though the story takes place in Omaha, Nebraska, the mall scenes were shot at the Cottonwood Mall in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The department store where the heist takes place was an empty space in the mall. The production designer and art department built the interior and every item in the store was created, purchased, or brought in.^[4] The first scene that Healy filmed for the episode was Jeff's nervous exit from the store bathroom. MacLaren jokingly directed Healy in that scene to "walk like you've got hemorrhoids." Healy said filming the heist scene, which sometimes meant he had to run for ten hours in a day, was exhausting. MacLaren described the work as both complicated and joyous,^{[5]: 15:34–19:20} praising Burnett for striking a balance between comedy and drama in her performance. She said of the heist scene, "when we were shooting it, I turned to everybody as I was practically falling out of my chair because I was laughing so hard."^[3]

Jim O'Heir guest starred as Frank, the security guard that Gene befriends by feeding him Cinnabon rolls. O'Heir received a box of Cinnabon rolls before he went to New Mexico to rehearse cutting them. About 100 Cinnabon rolls were brought in each day he was on set. He shot his scenes with a spit bucket by his side, though he had to swallow the food on the occasion that the shot called for him to simultaneously eat and talk. A medic was present on set to check his blood sugar levels. O'Heir and Odenkirk shot their scenes on a soundstage, where a set was built to replicate the mall's security headquarters. The bank of television screens that Gene tries to divert Frank's attention from were occasionally present on set. When they were not, they were added in during post-production. O'Heir and Healy previously worked together in the 2017 film Take Me.^[8]

"Nippy" marks a number of firsts for Better Call Saul. It is the first episode set entirely after Breaking Bad and the first to take place entirely in Gene's black-and-white timeline,^[1] an idea co-creator Peter Gould mentioned in February 2020.^[9] It is also the first of the sixth season to not follow the "X and Y" naming scheme, and marked a change in the title credits. Traditionally, the title credits of each season's tenth episode featured Saul Goodman's "World's Greatest Lawyer" mug falling off his desk and shattering on the floor. However, in this episode, the title image prematurely stops and is replaced by a blue screen, recreating the effects of a home video recording on a VCR. The music piece "Jim on the Move" by Lalo Schifrin, from the 1966 television series Mission: Impossible, is included in the episode's score.^[6] Editing was completed by Chris McCaleb and Joey Liew.^{[5]: 19:20–20:14}

Reception

Critical response

The episode received generally positive reviews. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 90% of ten reviews are positive with an average rating of 9.5/10.^[10] Crew members that were recognized for their work on "Nippy" included writer Alison Tatlock and director Michelle MacLaren.^[11] Bob Odenkirk also received praise for his performance as Jimmy McGill/Gene Takavic, particularly in the scene where he feigns a breakdown.^[6][11] Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone described the episode as an unpredictable epilogue to Better Call Saul that "brings emotional color, thrills, and fun".^[6] Steve Greene of IndieWire thought "Nippy" was a reminder that the series did not need high stakes to be entertaining.^[11]

Ashley Bissette Sumerel of Tell-Tale TV said she enjoyed the humor and watching the heist play out on screen. "Even though the tone is more somber," she wrote, "it's still great fun".^[12] Scott Tobias of Vulture called it a "brilliant and wholly unexpected stand-alone episode".^[13] Vanity Fair's Mike Hogan labeled it a bottle episode that he believed would set the stage for the rest of the season.^[14] In a mixed review, David Segal of The New York Times "found much of [the episode] unsatisfying", experienced some confusion over the recasting of Jeff, and said "it felt low-stakes and a bit broad". However, he concluded on a positive note, saying that he "would bet that the best episodes of this show are ahead of it."^[15]

Ratings

An estimated 1.20 million viewers watched "Nippy" during its first broadcast on AMC on July 25, 2022.^[16]

Notes

References

External links

• "Nippy" at AMC
• "Nippy" at IMDb