We all arrive to that intersection where Kim Wexler currently sits, that place in our life and careers where we wonder what the hell happened and what we’re doing. Some people chalk it up to midlife crisis and refresh their hair, their wardrobe, maybe upsize their cars. In “Better Call Saul” Kim Wexler, played by Rhea Seehorn, re-traces her steps to her starting point, or a version of it.

In the fourth episode of season 4, Kim visits the courtroom of Judge Munsinger (Ethan Phillips) purely to observe. The good judge summons her to his chambers and proceeds to slap down her search for meaning in a way that indicates he’s done this countless times with a thousand other lawyers on mid-career quests for meaning.

Advertisement:

He assures her that the answer is not in his courtroom and that she’d be better served using her law degree in the way most attorneys do, which is to put in exorbitantly priced billable hours and retire wealthy. If he sees her lurking around afterward, Munsinger warns Kim, he’s liable to put her to work as a public defender representing the great unwashed for peanuts on the dollar.

Not surprisingly, when the judge looks up later there’s Kim in the gallery, still observing what’s going on.

Four seasons ago when “Better Call Saul” first premiered, Kim registered as a co-worker of Jimmy McGill’s (Bob Odenkirk), a fellow up-by-the-bootstraps success story who, like Jimmy, worked her way up from the mailroom to become a litigator. But Kim didn’t have family animus in her way, just the standard issues women face when they don’t play the game to the boss’ liking.

Advertisement:

The more Kim is sidelined in “Better Call Saul,” the more central her importance to the story and the viewer becomes. Though Seehorn and Odenkirk always played the characters’ relationships as some kind of romance — possible in season 1, then cemented as the series progressed — their personal partnership has become more meaningful.

Much of that progression has to do with Kim’s shifting sense of what is right, and what is fair. For much of the series, Kim has been comically adherent to the rules, serving as the true north of Jimmy’s malfunctioning moral compass. She's loyal, devoted, a team player even when the team — i.e. Team Jimmy — costs her dearly. She’s also seen how following the rules hogties Jimmy, and experienced the effects of getting screwed by her bosses in the name of paying dues and paying penance.

What’s been exciting in this new season is to watch her righteous anger flare and arc as it dawns on her how much wrongdoing can be accomplished by the men who play within the rules, specifically her former boss Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian) who arrogantly held her back and took advantage of her skills for his own gain, only to screw Jimmy even as he’s in mourning.

Advertisement:

Do yourself a favor and watch Seehorn’s primal scream of a speech she delivers in the second episode of this season, as Kim dresses down Howard for heartlessly inviting Jimmy to dig through the burned remains of his brother Chuck’s house to retrieve any personal items he might want. This is in addition to proposing that he serve on a scholarship committee to allocate money from Chuck’s fortune, from which Jimmy receives a pittance. Howard weakly explains that he’s trying to be fair.

“Fair? Let's talk about fair! Hey, let's let Jimmy dig around the fire-damaged wreck where his brother died screaming, and then let's let him pick up a keepsake or two! That's so, so fair!” she seethes. “And did I hear you right: You want him to serve on the board of a scholarship committee? A scholarship that Chuck in a million years would never have given to Jimmy. Never!”

Advertisement:

READ MORE: I'm not running scared

At this point in “Better Call Saul,” what Kim represents may be just as important as the central mystery of how and when Jimmy McGill will make the full transformation into Saul Goodman. Among a rogue’s gallery of characters who equate success with money, risk, and how far they’ll go to get away cheaply, if not unscathed or cleanly, Kim Wexler is the personality type who is coming around to the conclusion that the point of it all may be satisfaction.

And oddly enough, this appears to be the result of living with a man who, try as he may to shed his skin, simply can’t help but play life as a series of con jobs.

Advertisement:

The typical “Better Call Saul” viewer’s obsession is locked on to Jimmy of course — and fellow “Breaking Bad” alumni Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) and Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), whose storied relationship has only just begun. Fundamentally, in fact, the most recent episode, “Talk,” kicked that journey into a higher gear.

Compared to the deadly drama unfurling with Fring, the Salamanca family and Nacho Varga (Michael Mando), recent survivor of a bloody firefight, the midlife crisis of Miss Kim Wexler seems all too ordinary.

But that is precisely why Kim has become the low-key heroine of season 4. With her signature ponytail, her sensible bargain-rack suit separates and heels that are low enough to polish her look but high enough to suggest a whiff of danger, Kim is a stand-in for every cubicle dweller who takes pride in working hard and doing a job well but at some point realizes that it’s not doing enough.

Advertisement:

That at the end of all the shoveling, the reward of being excellent at what she does doesn’t amount to even the smallest pile of crap. In Kim’s case, the shoveling takes the shape of contract work with a local financial institution, Mesa Verde bank, that was secured on her behalf by Jimmy fighting dirty and driving his brother Chuck crazy in the process.

The very lawful Kim felt guilty about what could be seen as ill-gotten gains, at first. But the psychological reset that is the result of flawlessly sticking the landing with Mesa Verde -- leading to more contract work, recommendations and a steady stream of wealthy clients with boring asks feels much closer to the average person’s reality than the goings-on among a circle of characters destined to fall into Walter White’s web.

She’s making an excellent income by, as she says, “helping a mid-sized local bank become a midsized regional bank.” But on a gut-level she knows it means nothing.

Of course, “Breaking Bad” and its prequel are all about work, clean and dirty, and how it slowly chips away at the spirit and makes us acutely aware of how little time we have on Earth. What else is there but satisfaction? Mike gleans it by using the skills he learned as a cop to read people and take advantage of the information they let slip without saying a word. Nacho enjoys little of it; he’s working to survive — literally — and when he can’t resist the slim chances he’s afforded to shed the weight of the criminal life ensnaring him, he only sinks in deeper.

Advertisement:

The excellent actors play each step of their part to maximize tension and amplify the stakes, but if you remove the dressing of performance, their jobs are really just as tedious as Kim’s. The difference is in the adrenaline rush.

And the addiction to that makes Jimmy so endlessly entertaining and tragic. He can’t help but unleash the con man every now and then, flirting with danger even when a prime, grade-A slab of the good life is handed to him on a plate. Even his latest straight job, as a manager of a nearly-deserted mobile phone store, requires a spice of unseemliness to keep him interested. In “Talk,” Jimmy paints an ad in the window designed to lure a specific clientele by advertising his inventory of burner phones with “IS THE MAN LISTENING? PRIVACY SOLD HERE.” (As a reminder, the current season takes place in 2003.)

Finding a higher cause simply isn’t in the cards for criminals like Nacho, Mike or Gus, or frequent scofflaw Jimmy, whose license to practice law remains suspended.

Kim, on the other hand, has a shot at discovering her meaning. Her character doesn’t appear on “Breaking Bad,” leading to fretful speculation that she may not survive her relationship with Jimmy McGill. But don’t be so sure.

Advertisement:

In the third season’s finale Kim, fresh from an accident that breaks her arm, recuperates by watching “To Kill a Mockingbird” over and over again. “I loved Atticus Finch,” she tells Jimmy, who observes that "every girl was in love with Atticus.”

“I wasn’t in love him,” she replies. “I wanted to be him.”

“What, fight the good fight? Change the world?” Jimmy asks.

“Yeah. Didn’t you?”

Advertisement:

We know Jimmy never did, not really. Kim, though, is in the process of reconnecting to that dream. One suspects she’ll find it again, and with it, her ticket out of this place, maybe even out of this story’s grim ending. Kim Wexler deserves better. Don’t we all.