Better Calls Saul’s final season opens with a duo of tense, thrilling episodes
It’s Saul Goodman’s world, but Kim Wexler might just be the new sheriff in town
TV Reviews Talk
If you thought Kim and Jimmy’s plan to disgrace Howard Hamlin and get Jimmy’s cut of the Sandpiper settlement sooner was just pillow talk, think again. This opening pair of episodes for Better Call Saul’s final season proves Kim was serious about every decision she made in season five, be it her commitment to pro-bono legal work or being Mrs. McGill (Mrs. Goodman?) and all that entails.
Currently, that means she’s happily drowning in 20 public-defender cases, plotting the downfall of her former boss, and nudging her hubby back into cahoots with the Kettlemans (they’re back!), then saving his bacon when that goes askew. Jimmy deflates when Kim makes a call that blackmails the Kettlemans into keeping their mouths shut about the effort to ruin Howard. It’s a very cocky Kim then who leaves the Kettlemans and their seemingly squashed scam behind. “Wolves and sheep,” Jimmy mutters as he and Kim drive away. But who’s who in that grumble, as he grows increasingly uneasy with his wife’s willingness to operate like, well, him?
In this fast-paced two hours that felt like a mini season, we catch up with Lalo, who has nothing on his mind but catching up with Nacho. He knows Ignacio is responsible for letting the mercenaries onto his estate, and any charm that was masking his Hector-trained viciousness is dropped. A local neighbor becomes his stand-in when he needs a body to fool everyone into believing he was killed in the attack, and he apparently went so far as to plan for that very scenario: We learn he had paid for the man’s extensive dental work, presumably to make dental records match.
Showrunner Peter Gould wrote the opening script, and he knows Gus would not accept the news of Lalo’s assassination without irrefutable proof. Lalo knows that, too, which is why the long play of the sacrificial neighbor and the dental work is completely believable. Gus, in fact, doesn’t accept Lalo’s death, and ultimately outsmarts Hector into confirming he is alive.
That’s all bad news for Nacho, who is on the lam and reliant only on phone calls with Tyrus to steer him towards safety. Mike, still smarting from what Gus ordered him to do to Werner Ziegler, can’t bring himself to answer Nacho’s calls. He thinks Nacho’s loyalty to Gus should be rewarded, but Gus has him setting up Nacho to be Gus’ own scapegoat should Juan Bolsa and Don Eladio get proof that Gus paid the hit squad to kill Lalo.
Nacho makes his way on foot to a little motel hours away from the massacre at Lalo’s. Tyrus tells him to stay out of sight, as two men in a truck are on their way to save him.
But with everyone else, from Jimmy and now Kim to Gus and Juan Bolsa thinking they’re running things, only Nacho seems to realize he’s sitting in wait for his own death. Trapped in a hot, dark room with no AC and a man across the way spying on him, Nacho decides to take action.
What results in the Vince Gilligan-directed “Carrot and Stick” is the most hold-your-breath action sequence from this world since Hank’s showdown with the Salamanca cousins in the Breaking Bad classic “One Minute.” Nacho uses a truck to save himself in a shootout with Juan Bolsa’s minions and, in a brilliant callback, The Cousins. Now trapped inside the truck, Nacho floors it straight towards Leonel and Marco, shooting at them through his windshield. He makes it outside the motel parking lot, but we don’t know if he’s alive after that, after so many Salamanca bullets went straight at him.
Or maybe we do. In a gem of a cliffhanger, Mike is in a standoff with Tyrus and Gus over his refusal to deliver Nacho’s father to Gus. Tyrus’ gun is pointed straight at Mike when Mike gets a call. He says it’s Nacho, and this time he answers. “Not my call,” he tells Nacho, before holding out the phone to Gus, and telling him Nacho wants to talk to him. But does he? Is he really on the phone? Did Mike set his phone to ring when he briefly stepped to the trailer door to lock it? Or did he just happen to get a call at that moment?
“Whatever happens next, it’s not gonna go down the way you think it is,” Mike tells Tyrus. That’s probably true for us nervous viewers, too, but we’ve been warned that it’s not going to be a smooth ride.
Stray observations
- Kim is making performance art of her con work with Jimmy. Funniest Kim scene of the series: her, binoculars trained on Howard and Cliff at the golf course, very seriously retrieving a piece of gum from her bag, removing the silver wrapper, and popping it into her mouth without taking an eye off of her marks. It’s a small but deliberate choice that is the hallmark of Rhea Seehorn’s performance, which continues to beg an Emmy nomination at last.
- If there was an Emmy for the actor whose performance and whose character’s impact has only grown more memorable and impressive throughout the series, it would definitely go to Nacho portrayer Michael Mando. Nacho has seemed doomed since Gus drew him into a double agent role against Lalo, but in this ominous universe of unlikely happy endings, wouldn’t it be grand if Nacho and his dad were able to make a getaway together?
- Each previous season has begun with a Gene flash forward. Season six instead opens with what we can only assume is a group of legally-appointed movers confiscating the contents of Saul’s home after the Walter White saga becomes public. The most notable goodies in the garish collection: a bulletproof vest, lots of prescription pills, a gold toilet on a throne, a life-size Saul cutout, and the fancy stopper from a bottle of Zafiro Anejo tequila. It is the home’s only sign that Kim might have ever lived there or been part of Saul’s life.
- In addition to Jimmy being shaken by Kim’s newfound confidence after her takedown of the hapless Kettlemans, in “Wine and Roses,” Gould further telegraphs Jimmy’s descent into the nervous criminal butt-kisser he becomes as the Saul Goodman we’re introduced to in Breaking Bad. When Jimmy runs into ADA Khalil and APD Detective Roberts at the courthouse, he’s so rattled by the unexpected confrontation about “Jorge de Guzman” – the alias Lalo used when Jimmy argued for him to get out of jail on $7-million bail – that he goes on a rant in which he accidentally mentions his client by the name Lalo. He quickly covers (successfully?), but has to go to a quiet room to calm himself afterwards. Buck up, Jimmy; it’s only going to get worse from here.
- Hector Salamanca is a bitter, arrogant man who schooled all of his nephews towards the most violent ways of life. We know the outcome for Tuco and The Cousins. But whatever happens to Lalo, it’s still pretty incredible to think about how, with all his protégés, each smarter than the next, it was Salamanca who finally shut down Gustavo Fring (with a little help from Walter White).
- Just as it did when Jimmy needed an additional writing surface in that Sandpiper bathroom, toilet paper once again saves the day for him, when Kevin Wachtell gets on his Huffy bike and nearly ruined the caper at the golf club. Hooray for Team Saul’s appreciation for the versatility of TP.
195 Comments
Wow, Kim has gone off the deep end. I mean, those people were ripping others off, but she had no compassion at all. Even Jimmy was disturbed, lol.I’m really starting to think this ends with Kim in jail, which is preferable to her being killed, but not much else.
Maybe he visited her on weekends during Breaking Bad.
The amount of wealth that was shown in the cold open.. I’m not sure Jimmy has the drive to achieve that. I think any empire might have come from Kim.
We know he has the sandpiper money, plus what he gets from Walt and Jessie.
The money he makes with Walt is insane, especially after Jesse leaves and all goes well for 3 months or so with Todd. In the montage in “Gliding All Over”, we see him getting drop-offs after drop-offs, which are bigger than his forced upon 5% from when Walt worked for Gus officially (he made a bigger cut from the meth Jesse and Walt cooked and sold for 1.2 million, I think Walt says it’s 20%. He has the money and..ambition…think of the house he’s shown Kim last season. Right now he’s keeping it on the DL, true, the rented Ford Taurus, not wearing his very expensive clothes…not having the urge to get a white Cadillac just yet like Kim is hinting at…but it will come…later on he’s pretty much all about the money as we’ve seen.
Gotta love the callback to Breaking Bad season 5’s bonus scene that seems to happen after Jesse meets Walt to know what happened to Mike (while Mike is dead in Walt’s car trunk), Chick’n’Guns, when he’s talking a bit about how awesome Don Eladio’s hacienda was and maybe he had a “golden toilet”, saying he might have had one even, when Skinny Pete says that aside form girls, that it’s second best thing to acquire in life. lol.
We all know how that went for a certain ex-President.
Gold toilets and Kim are mutually exclusive.
By far the best evidence that Kim isn’t around, for sure! She also just outed herself as the inspiration behind the classic Cadillac. If she is all the way in on the presentation of Saul as a character (and when is Kim not all the way in), I suppose it isn’t impossible she’d be fine with living in that place, either.
He would have been making absurd amounts of money with Walt by the time it comes crashing down.
She saw what the Kettlemans were doing to vulnerable people, like the little old lady she sees in the parking lot. So she does have compassion – just not for the Kettlemans.
That’s one way to look at, but it seemed that the way they framed that entire scene with Jimmy looking disturbed, that we were supposed to feel for the Kettlemans. Otherwise, to me, the scene doesn’t really make sense, unless its some kind of commentary on how Jimmy only lives in the moment and never sees the big picture.
It’s true and I expected it, Jimmy doesn’t like violence, literal or even used in words, he rather con people with a smile or at least even self-pity (which he did to get rid of the Kettleman problem in season one. Kim acted like an enforcer here. She gained a hell lot of self-confidence during her almost year at S&C….plus that time with Lalo….she stunned him with her Criminal Lawyer skills, so much so that he just left, stunned, a bit mad still but…he knew when he was beaten mentally…and Lalo is very smart, so that’s why he left, giving respect to her I guess. After that, she started getting very manic, like if something from Lalo rubbed off into her.
This season’s gonna be treat.
I didn’t get the feeling that Lalo was intimidated/stunned by her at all—-more like, he couldn’t prove what she was saying was false in that moment, and he could see a use for her in the future, or at least he saw no benefit to slaughtering both Jimmy and Kim at that moment.Lalo isn’t a brainless thug which is why his character is so fascinating. He’s cold and calculating with an occasional outburst of sadistic violence (like slaughtering those border smugglers last night).
Next morning at the hotel “Hey did you pack something with Aloe in it?” Don’t tell me that wasn’t on purpose.
I love Lalo. A true gentlemen. Having dispatched the border smugglers, he gracefully removed the plastic beer crate for the other immigrants to use as a step-down
….plus that time with Lalo….she stunned him with her Criminal Lawyer
skills, so much so that he just left, stunned, a bit mad still but…he
knew when he was beaten mentally…and Lalo is very smart, so that’s
why he left, giving respect to her I guess.
I don’t think that’s what happened. Kim talks about how Saul was the only one Lalo could trust with the money and how if he doesn’t trust his own people that’s his real problem.
In that moment Lalo realizes the value of Ignacio, and that’s why he changes his plan and takes Nacho to his home with the intent of having him promoted to run things for the Salamancas north of the border. At least until Tuco gets released.
I agree. Taking advantage of desperate people is taking advantage of desperate people, even if the desperate people are criminals. She wasn’t screwing them over because they screwed other people over. She did it because she needed their obedience. It was nasty and even Jimmy could see that.
Did you notice that the same old lady leaving the Kettlemen’s trailor in the last scene was driving the same white Cadillac that Saul apparently drives in the cold open?
Oh, i thought that was someone trailing Jimmy and Kim
Somebody was trailing Jimmy and kim. Not the car I’m talking about though. When Jimmy and Kim arrive at the kettleman’s, an old lady is entering a white Cadillac. The camera actually goes into close up on her as she’s unlocking the door. I dunno how, but somehow jimmy is gunna endup with that car.
Same. I watched it a few times to try to figure out who it was.
You just couldn’t keep yourself from spilling the beans, could you? :)I’ll go back and rewatch, but this would be before Jimmy has the car, right? I’m curious if/how that gets explained.
I can game it out. At some point jimmy will return to the kettleman’s business, he may also be in need of some new wheels for whatever reason. The same old lady will be there, and in typical jimmy fashion he’ll offer to buy her car on the spot with a wad of bills.
Okay, that works for me. Now, please explain Jimmy’s/Saul’s hideous home decor taste! Nothing we’ve seen previously suggests this is what he likes.
What possible compassion would someone owe the Kettleman’s? They stole $1.6m and played the victim card throughout – they still believe themselves innocent. And now they’re defrauding helpless people of money. They are absolute trash people and deserved the takedown Kim gave them – honestly they deserved to be put in jail.
It’s just that we’ve also seen her run scams on people who didn’t “deserve” it, so we know she’s not driven by a desire to only hurt criminals. She hurts people when she needs something from them, regardless of whether they’ve done anything or not. Those people did deserve to be put in jail, and if Kim was any kind of noble she would have followed through and had them investigated. But she doesn’t actually give a shit that they’re defrauding people. She only cares about them insofar as they are useful to her.
I don’t think there is a question Kim has become corrupted by Jimmy but I don’t think it is that black and white. Kim didn’t need to blackmail the Kettleman’s into repaying the people they defrauded and ceasing their illegal activities. She does that because she does care, to some degree, to help those who can’t help herself. I mean that’s clear in the fact at how happy she is taking on pro bono cases.I think Kim’s ultimate goal is to help other people but she has fooled herself into think that end justifies the means to get there. She knows she needs money to fund the work she wants to do and thinks that using people she sees as bad to get it is OK. But I don’t get the impression she doesn’t give a shit about the everyman being taken advantage of.
I’m not sure sure Kim has been corrupted by Jimmy. I’m starting to understand Kim and Jimmy have been two sides of the same coin all along. They’re both con-artists with chips on their shoulders. She just tried harder to appear normal than Jimmy ever did.And make no mistake—she didn’t blackmail the Kettlemans into repaying the people they defrauded. She blackmailed them into playing ball with Jimmy. Having them repay their victims was just icing; that wasn’t the purpose of the blackmail. It’s just part of her “I’m a good person who does bad things for good reasons” mask, which is the same lie Walt told us and himself for all of Breaking Bad.I’m not sure she’s as interested in helping people as she is in just playing David to the world’s Goliath. She could have helped people at either of her old firms. With Schweikart (or however it’s spelled) she had pretty much carte blanche to take as much pro bono as she wanted. But she had unlimited resources and prestige and power, so that wasn’t David enough for her, even though the work was the same.
Hmm, she has the Kettlemans give those poor people their money back and explain to them what they actually did. They didn’t go for the Jimmy’s “carrot”, ie more gentle approach, which didn’t work originally, he had to con them into accepting the deal back in season one, to help Kim keep herself in the good graces of Hamlin. It’s always been about Hamlin from almost the first scene (shredding over 26k cheque to Howard who wanted to keep Chuck as far away from the office as possible).
I meant “sent to Jimmy” instead of directly to Chuck. That 26k cheque is the original sin, the extremely well-meaning Jimmy wasn’t gonna have his brother take that little money from his own firm, one where he didn’t work at anymore.
Well now wait a minute. She didn’t have them explain what they actually did. She said something like “tell them you made an accounting error, or tell them you cheated them for all I care.” So she didn’t really say they had to confess. And she has no guarantees that they won’t or can’t continue carrying on this fraud. She said she’d be watching the, but will she really, and how? Is she going to go in and check their computers for fraudulent returns? Nah.
didn’t mean to post this twice…please delete.
Look at the scene again, she asks how many illegal pocketings they made out of their service “a hundred?” then they first surprised then kind of “more…” without saying it, then when says “two hundred?” they look down ashamed.
It’s very reminiscent of how Walt admits to cooking meth to Skyler without saying it at first…. he just does those faces when she says “marijuana..that pinkman kid…” “no? oh my god Walt…cocaine??!?”…Walt remains silent but it’s written in his face that Skyler isn’t wrong and she catches on too until Walt thinks saying “it’s methamphetamine…but I’m not a dealer…I’m a manufacturer…per se…” He says more than these 2 but it’s clearly inspired. Kim unleashed with those smarts…Sure it’s gonna be a rocky road…especially with those spoilers we got at the end of the episodes…Saul telling Oakley “good luck proving it!” and Kim saying “you’re trying to build a case against Jimmy?”..she’s obviously talking to Howard there.
So no, not saying it’s a perfect plan at all, but everything ends up well for Saul for a very lucrative 5 years when the series done, we know that for sure…now poor Kim might be outsmarting herself sometimes in the future…I agree.
The Kettlemen’s should be in jail, and their kids sent to state colleges (after graduating from a public high school).
Kims downfall will probably involve her somehow (unintentionally) screwing one of her precious pro bono clients over.
I was watching the “usually” misleading upcoming teasers at the end and it almost seemed like they were trying to set up Kim to take the fall (legally) for something Jimmy did.Then again, like I said, BCS has almost always had misleading or very vague teasers.
I was just as disturbed as Jimmy! I think Kim’s public defender work is evidence enough of her compassion, but with the Kettelmans, she had to play Bad Cop to Jimmy’s Good Cop. I really enjoyed the Kettlemans this episode (“press 9 to dail out”) but I was losing my patience with their stubborness too. Kim went hard on what I believe was still a bluff, and they blinked, as she knew they would.
I don’t think her public defender work is evidence of compassion. I think that’s what we were supposed to think, but now we see that it’s just a band-aid. She does it because she desperately wants to appear noble, and desperately wants to believe she’s noble. But she might just be scum. When we see her understand that she is just scum, she’ll stop pretending.
The turn from Season 5 to Season 6 is also the turn from Jimmy pulling Kim along to Kim pulling Jimmy along. I’m starting to feel more bad for Jimmy than Kim. Even now two episodes into Season 6 it’s clear Jimmy really doesn’t fully want to be Saul.
She’s becoming Lady MacBeth.
…except for the 20 pro bono cases.She has compassion for those who deserve it.
But…they are pro bono criminal cases. A lot of them were guilty. How are they more deserving of help than the Kettlemans?(I obviously believe that even guilty people have the right to a good lawyer, but if the claim is that people who commit crimes don’t deserve compassion, I have a hard time seeing how her clients automatically deserve it.)
What did Kim do to the Kettleman’s other than threaten to expose their criminal behavior? They were ripping off working class people. No one said people who commit crimes are not deserving of compassion. Kim has a lot more compassion for the people who were ripped off and little compassion for people who refuse to be honest about the things they have done.
It’s not that she threatened to expose their criminal behavior. It’s that she threatened to expose their criminal behavior so that she could engage in her own criminal (or at least really bad and immoral) behavior. She blackmailed them. If she really gave a shit about their criminal behavior and their victims, she’d just turn them in, let them be punished, let their victims get restitution, and be done with it. But she doesn’t care about their being punished or stopping them from doing this to other people. She just cares about getting what she wants, and what she wants is to ruin someone’s career and life who absolutely does not deserve that. The Kettlemans are just a means to a shitty end.
She gave them a chance to pay their victims back. I do believe she will follow up on that,
How will she follow up on it, though? How would she know? And what about next year and the year after that? What if they move to another state and start tax preparing in Ohio? The only way she’ll come back to check up on them years from now is if she needs their cooperation with something again.
I think she’s relying on fear mainly, but bit would be easy enough to google them and hire someone to check up on their business.
She’s definitely relying on fear, but my point is if she really, actually cared about stopping their bad behavior, vs. just blackmailing them into doing what she wanted them to do so she could ruin Howard’s life for no reason, she would have just turned them in. But she doesn’t, so she didn’t. She scared them into doing what she wanted right now, and that’s truly all she cares about. Fear only lasts so long. They were already caught committing fraud once and had to pay a hefty penalty—if fear of paying that penalty again didn’t last long enough to stop them committing fraud again why would fear of Kim stop them from committing fraud again? It won’t, and Kim’s not gonna do shit unless and until she needs them again.
The other fact that you are not considering is that the Kettleman’s would have no reason not to report on what Saul was doing if they were turned in. She is trying to protect Jimmy as well.
Well of course she’s trying to protect Jimmy, 1) because she loves Jimmy and 2) because if Jimmy gets reported than her big plan to ruin Howard’s life is gone. But whether she did it to protect Jimmy or to protect her plan, neither of those reasons is “to protect the Kettlemans’ victims,” which, again, are nowhere close to the top of her list of concerns.
Or, the only thing stopping her from turning in the Kettleman’s is the fact that Jimmy could get screwed if she does.
Nah, the only thing stopping her from turning in the Kettlemans is that her plan to destroy Howard gets screwed if she does. If she knew they were defrauding their clients, she could have turned them in instead of having Jimmy approach them in the first place. She’s the one who put Jimmy in play and thus in jeopardy. She could have turned them in without their ever having been involved with Jimmy.
I do not believe either Jimmy or Kim knew what the Kettleman’s were doing prior to Jimmy approaching them. If they did, I missed it.
Then when did she figure it out? They talked about the “carrot and the stick” early on in the plan. If they didn’t know then what was “the stick”? And regardless of when she knew, she at some point found out, and she chose not to turn them in and let them continue doing it because her motivation wasn’t her desire to stop them from committing fraud. It was to protect her plan to destroy Howard. That’s the part you keep ignoring.
Yeah I think it was hinted at before but now as we enter the endgame, it is apparent to me that whatever happens to Kim (jail, death, completely disappears) is what finally makes Jimmy “break bad” fully into Saul. What I wonder is if this first part of the last season is strictly what happens right up until Kim’s fate and his full turn to Saul. Then the last half is him a few eisodes as Saul in BB timeline and then we see the ultimate fate of Gene.
I think knowing they were ripping people off, knowing how utterly horrible they are, she could not abide the idea of Jimmy giving them money. Jimmy is in this for the game of it a lot of the time. Kim has a righteousness in her motivation.
I guess I could buy that except the entire scheme she’s running right now which involved the Kettlemans is to take down a guy (Howard) based on some case of misguided personal vengeance.She’s not exactly noble in these pursuits.
I remember last season not being convinced at her “turn” in this situation. I still don’t.
Poor Kettlemans, with nosy Parker’s like Kim, it’s like they can’t find a quiet corner of the world to rip the poor off anymore.
Any sympathy for what Kim did to the Kettleman’s is absolutely baffling to me.
You do realize the only reason she was even there in the first place was to keep the revenge train going on Howard, right?
Is that supposed to make me feel bad for those awful people?
The one thing about Kim’s behavior that did not disturb me was the treatment of the people ripping off working people. She should call the IRS on them anyway.
I’ve hardly been back to AVC since the big firing, on principle, but I came here to check for Donna Bowman. I’m sure you’re nice Kimberly, but I’m out for good most likely.
*Cough* Check her Twitter. *Cough*
Hey, hey, hey now … enough of the Episodic coughing.
What???
See above
It’ll be hard not to consider how much the show has been handicapped by the loss of Robert Forster, who it’s been confirmed was intended to make at least one major appearance in this season.
Forster knew his time was short, yet he did all the work for El Camino and left enough audio in the can for those conversations with Gene last season. I’m betting he shot a few scenes for future BCS episodes while he was shooting El Camino. The man was a pro.
where did they confirm that?
I never saw it confirmed, but it seems fairly obvious they intended to have Jimmy introduced to the vacuum guy at some point. I always thought it would be for Nacho.
Oh, was he the “vacuum repair guy”?
My favourite theory was that Kim gets in too deep and uses the vacuum cleaner guy’s services to disappear, leaving Jimmy/Saul/Gene with no way of contacting her. They finally get together in the end under their new identities, running petty scams like the old days. Forster’s death probably made that impossible.
He did, in the scene where Gene called him after the cab driver confronted him at the mall.
I’ll follow along here for the season. But folks, if Donna Bowman’s writing on BB/BCS meant anything to you over the years- as it very much does to me- I’d encourage you to check out her new home for tonight’s episode and the rest of season 6 to come. You might recognize someone else there too.https://episodicmedium.substack.com/p/review-better-call-saul-wine-and?s=r
Thank you for this!
Thanks. Hopefully my comments there won’t be ignored.The new crop of writers here at AVC basically ignore 99 percent of my comments.
Thanks! I think Vince got a little carried away with this premiere. Everything about Nacho’s situation and Gus’s plans concerning him in that Motel was confusing as fuck. So I checked out your link to Donna’s recap looking for clarity, and turns out she was just as confused about it all herself!!! I really hope the rest of the season isn’t like this. Going full turbo to the finish line while leaving the audience behind scratching their heads. That’s the same problem BB season 5 had…rushed. Anyways looking foward to Saul meeting finally meeting Gus, and the superlab being a thing again.
That’s the same problem BB season 5 had…rushed.WHAT?!! They literally cut Season 5 in half. Stretched it out as much as possible. It couldn’t have been more deliberately paced.
It was rushed. Just cuz BB5 was arbitrarily split in half and dolled out by AMC execs doesn’t ’t matter. We got two split, rushed batches of BB episodes sprinting to conclusion. The complete opposite of deliberate. BCS has been COMPLETLY deliberate since S1 (entire years pasts by in previous seasons), but now suddenly the remaining episodes are being crunched too fast i fear, from the vibe of this premiere.
You couldn’t be more wrong
Btw, watch the tiny old lady leaving the kettleman trailer in the last scene. The car that she enters might be important… or at least familiar.
This season … also cut in 1/2 with second 1/2 starting in July.
The break in between the two is pretty short. It’s only so the show can be nominated at the Emmy’s twice more, since they missed a year due to covid.
Indeed. There are glaciers that move faster than BCS.
Splitting it into two parts doesn’t mean the overall season 5 was well-paced.It wasn’t.
I wasn’t confused at all, he was told there would be eyes on him, from everywhere, and he was going insane waiting in that extremely hot room with no working AC, no sleep for days, so he looked out the window for anything out of the ordinary. If you rewatched season five you would have known Lalo was going for the I’m dead to everyone except Hector kind of angle when he had the mercenary call his boss to tell him it was a difficult job, but it was done. I don’t know what’s confusing. Donna was great but sometimes she was missing the obvious and found myself correcting her in the comments. One trick, watch Fargo season 1,2,3, it helps a lot at becoming detectives about what’s actually going on when not much seems to happen.
And after 5 seasons if you still don’t care about Nacho, you’re watching the show for the wrong reasons, it wasn’t going to be solely Kim and Jimmy and 5% of the time everyone else. Got a lot of sympathy for Nacho like a lot of other viewers, imagine how many good people are trapped in crime, wants to get out, but are trapped by the big bossmen, well that guy was trapped in two ways after trying to get rid his vile “friend” and then his uncle. He’s practically the Jesse of this story…we needed one.
I wasn’t confused at all, he was told there would be eyes on him, from everywhere, and he was going insane waiting in that extremely hot room with no working AC, no sleep for days, so he looked out the window for anything out of the ordinary. If you rewatched season five you would have known Lalo was going for the I’m dead to everyone except Hector kind of angle when he had the mercenary call his boss to tell him it was a difficult job, but it was done. I don’t know what’s confusing. Donna was great but sometimes she was missing the obvious and found myself correcting her in the comments. One trick, watch Fargo season 1,2,3, it helps a lot at becoming detectives about what’s actually going on when not much seems to happen.
And after 5 seasons if you still don’t care about Nacho, you’re watching the show for the wrong reasons, it wasn’t going to be solely Kim and Jimmy and 5% of the time everyone else. Got a lot of sympathy for Nacho like a lot of other viewers, imagine how many good people are trapped in crime, wants to get out, but are trapped by the big bossmen, well that guy was trapped in two ways after trying to get rid his vile “friend” and then his uncle. He’s practically the Jesse of this story…we needed one.
Even though Donna’s no longer writing for the AVClub, I was a bit surprised to see no mention of it in the reviews. Didn’t have to be a link to the new home or anything. Just a “thank you to Donna for fourteen years of writing about the New Mexico drug trade. I know I’ve got big shoes to fill but I hope you’ll read along” sort of thing.
Anyone who would have written that wouldn’t have taken the gig to begin with. (I don’t think anyone who writes for the site right now is inherently a scab, it’s hard out there for freelancers and I don’t begrudge anyone who makes that decision, but I do think anyone with an emotional investment in the idea of The A.V. Club as a community would never).
You expect a GO/Media scab to link to Donna’s paywalled site?
My guess is management won’t allow anything like that as to not call attention to how they shoved out all their previous writers due to GMG’s crappy labor practices.
This saddened me as well, same thing with Perkins’ SNL reviews. I’m pretty sure it used to be a fairly standard AV Club thing to hand off in that way, too.
It wouldn’t make much sense to link to your competition.
Was hoping she was still at it! Thx.
Thank you so much for the heads up on this. I dropped The AV Club with the Chicago exodus but clicked in to see if they were still going to cover the end of BCS out of curiosity. Will definitely be shifting over to Donna’s reviews.
Not free, unfortunately.
There was pretty much 0 substance to this review/whatever you’d call this. This was over 2 hours of TV and it wasn’t much more than a summary of the events. Wild times at AVC.
I get that Donna left massive shoes to fill, but goddamn. This place is a wasteland.
https://episodicmedium.substack.com/p/review-better-call-saul-wine-and/comments?s=r
Wild times do be happening on GMG, the Thor trailer screen grab is pretty hilariously bad on gizmodo.
Have you checked out kotaku recently? Ever since they came back from their strike, they’ve been forced to publish at least 4 Elden Ring articles EVERYDAY SINCE FEBRUARY.
—The moment when Saul and Kim arrive at the courthouse and they give each other that hand squeeze. Aaaw.
—I was expecting Saul to scream out “Come see the violence inherent in the system!” when Kevin Wachtell almost accosted him in the club.
That hand squeeze- we haven’t seen that from Kim in that setting before. She’s getting really comfy with new Kim, and her guy- who cares if some stodgy colleague sees her being that warm to flashy Saul.
I had the exact same thought regarding the club.
I understand this almost certainly doesn’t end well for Kim, but I’d like to think somewhere in America there’s a smiling blonde woman in a garish pantsuit with a law office in an anonymous strip mall, just straight-up killing the game.
My wife sat down in the den just as Jimmy/Saul was stuffing the toilet at Howard’s country club. I explained that a lot of events in this series happen in restrooms, citing how he wrote a binding legal order on a roll of toilet in the Sandpiper case. Quirky things like hand-written briefs really are a thing. I used to work for a company that provided litigation support for big law firms and saw numerous examples—usually from incarcerated legal experts who didn’t have access to typewriters or computers. I remember one guy in particular who produced work that could legitimately be considered art. This was far more than simply dotting every “i” and crossing every “t.” Everything about these documents was spot-on; margins, line spacing, font size, formatting, alignment, everything you can think of for a legal document but hand-written. They must have taken hours to prepare, but then, time is the one commodity you have plenty of if you’re in prison.
the fancy stopper from a bottle of Zafiro Anejo tequila. It is the
home’s only sign that Kim might have ever lived there or been part of
Saul’s life.
There was some woman’s clothing, no? Or was that Saul’s pink thong?
I wouldn’t put it past him to have one handy just in case he needed to hatch a crossdressing scheme.
I wouldn’t put it past him to have one handy just in case he needed to hatch a crossdressing scheme.Or a Hoboken Squat Cobbler scheme.
They’ve done a great job bringing back characters I thought we were done with. (Kevin, Erin, Clifford) I hope they can find an excuse to being the squat cobbler back for a small role.
Ive been trying to get my wife to give me one of those, but she doesnt feel very well.
I mean, it probably wasn’t Kim’s, given what we know about her fashion choices and personality. Most likely it belonged to some other special lady with whom Saul shared a bath.
I don’t know, I thought I knew Kim until late last season.You’re probably right, just with all the talk about how this season will change how we view Breaking Bad I expected to learn she was there the whole time, encouraging Saul to pursue Walt’s business after their first encounter for example.
I thought it was an eye cover thing people wear when they sleep. Might have seen it wrong tho
And some weird leopard-print silk bomber jacket? I can’t even imagine who would wear it.
He makes it outside the motel parking lot,
but we don’t know if he’s alive after that, after so many Salamanca
bullets went straight at him.
Or maybe we do. In a gem of a cliffhanger…Previews aside, we know he’s alive and on the phone with Mike because the Cousins specifically said they want Nacho alive, going as far as killing one of their own henchmen that was shooting to kill Nacho. The Cousins also shot at the tires of Nacho’s truck, flattening them as he crashed into another truck. We never see what happens after that crash, but its safe to assume Nacho didn’t get far with flat tires. So with him on the other end of the phone, the question is actually did Nacho somehow get away (doubtful) or was he captured and is being pressured to call Gus.
There was no way they killed off Nacho in the second episode. There’s way too much rich, rich tension ore to mine in this story arc. Nacho has become a POV character for us—the essentially good man who’s caught up on a nasty, deadly game. He’s been in over his head for so long at this point that it’s truly a miracle that he’s still alive.Also, there are two people Lalo wants dead, Nacho and Gus. He’d very much prefer to kill Nacho himself.
He’s got one flat tire, yes. But with his very A1 skills in car thieving, I’m sure he’ll manage to get out of Mexico….although Chihuahua is down in central Mexico, pretty far from the border. It might be better for him to get to Mexico City and take a flight from there. Anyhoo, if he dies, he won’t die in this first stretch of episodes, if one guy who’s not in Breaking Bad (seems like Kim was, behind the scenes, since we knew nothing of Saul outside his work) who deserves to get out of something he’s been trying to get out of (criminal underworld) since over a year (back in season 2 for us), it’s Nacho. The efforts he made to kiss the ass of Gus and then Gus and Lalo at the same time…needs to be more dramatic than getting killed by the cousins while in Mexico.
He’s got one flat tire, yes. But with his very A1 skills in car thieving, I’m sure he’ll manage to get out of Mexico….although Chihuahua is down in central Mexico, pretty far from the border. It might be better for him to get to Mexico City and take a flight from there. Anyhoo, if he dies, he won’t die in this first stretch of episodes, if one guy who’s not in Breaking Bad (seems like Kim was, behind the scenes, since we knew nothing of Saul outside his work) who deserves to get out of something he’s been trying to get out of (criminal underworld) since over a year (back in season 2 for us), it’s Nacho. The efforts he made to kiss the ass of Gus and then Gus and Lalo at the same time…needs to be more dramatic than getting killed by the cousins while in Mexico.
I was worried he was killed with that giant crash on the way out. That was hard for a guy in a truck with no airbags and not wearing a seatbelt. I’m sure they wouldn’t kill him off that unceremoniously though.
The premiere really hit the ground running. I needed a refresher (tried AV Club’s recap article, but it just boiled down to “‘Bagman’ was great” and “Will Kim die?”) Anyway, I loved Jimmy making a scene at the country club
Forbes did a nice round up.
Terrible refresher indeed…yes bagman was intense, yes kim is prolly doomed. NO SHIT, great recap!!! The current avclub scab who’s assigned to this beat probably spent the entire weekend binging season 1-5 for the first time.
“The current avclub scab who’s assigned to this beat probably spent the entire weekend…” reading Wikipedia summaries of “season 1-5 for the first time.”
Old lady leaving seen leaving the kettleman buisness in last scene, she entered into the exact same white Cadillac we saw at Saul’s compound raid from the cold open. LWYRUP!
BCS has been way more consistent in its run than BB ever was (ex: remember season 2?) I hope they pull it off with the most elegant conclusion. So far, BCS has been doing a masterclass on prequels. Hell, if you told me back in 2014 that Saul would end up running longer than BB, I’d prolly run you over in my Suzuki!
S2 was best season of breaking bad, season 5a the weakest by far
I think BB really fell apart in the last season. Hoping BCS can stick the landing.
“The Days of Wine and Roses” is so on-the-nose it’s practically the elevator pitch for the series. Awesome.
Great line “Kevin Wachtell gets on his Huffy bike” evokes so much about him and his worldview. Don’t remember ever seeing his Eagle Scout commendation but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Can’t even bother to proofread the headline LUL
Proofreaders are apparently just as prohibitively expensive as editors.
Wow, this comments section is not what it used to be. Glad the show is back, but a lot has changed around these parts in the two years since season 5…
It’s fucking sad. BrBa’s comment sections (and by extension, BCS’ as well) were flooded with great discussion and interpretations from fans, followers, and other staff writers.
It’s wild that the herby one looks at diverse and lively comment sections and thinks ‘that’s bad business’.
Those Kettlemans were just pitch perfect, and I liked the decorative touches connection from their tacky trailer office to Saul’s strip mall office. But their outraged sense of white privilege was too spot-on, it was almost infuriating to watch.Also great was the satirical American Greed extra you can watch on demand, it was hilarious!
I’m not quite sure what it is, but Julie Ann Emery’s domineering, neurotic, harmlessly-villainous Betsy Kettleman like, totally revs my engine? I am entranced any time she’s on screen with dumb noises coming out of her mouth.
“Our kids have to go to public school!”
GASP!
I need to get into therapy because I never remember Betsy Harrington being that hot in season one
No Gene to start the season!Wonder where he fits into this narrative…
There’s 2 episode of only Gene, I imagine that will be at the end, to finally close out the loop…hopefully where the “future” (it is the past to us now, but I imagine it’s not much farther than 2012, BrBa ended in 2010 so…)
Also remember what Forster tells Jesse in El Camino, about how he has no pity for him considering he dug his own grave, including his partner…and his lawyer. Obviously, Mr. Hajji Quick Vanish doesn’t know what Jimmy Gene does when he says he changed his mind after calling him on impulse…so maybe he was just implying as to how down of a slope he went from..now that we’ve seen his ex-house and where he is now, and his soul-crushing boring job in Omaha where he can’t even use much of the money he has.
Where was it confirmed there’d be two episodes of only Gene?
Some link I got on reddit last year. It’s obvious we will be back to Gene eventually in any case to make it full circle.
Fuckin love Lalo. By far the best Salamanca
I’m not sure if the stopper is a sign that Kim is alive, or if it’s a momento like Marco’s ring to remind him of Kim. The thong could be hers for all we know. But judging by the big box of viagra and the minoxidil (erectile dysfunction and male-pattern-baldness), more likely casual sex with much younger women, possibly multiple partners.
The hay truck scene… Let’s say I live in a state who’s governor complains about the border, and pulls stunts with truck inspections that literally cost us economically. Lalo’s message, where he told those people “Find another way to get across,” carried a different sort of weight for me. Now, I don’t know the show’s politics, and I doubt it even wants to be political, but killing guys who illegally bring folks across the boarder felt very *loaded* to me…
take your TDS somewhere else.
He killed the guys because they were assholes who tried to rip him off, “another damn wetback”, and not because he was making a political point.
The people in the haystack were damn lucky that they didn’t meet the same fate that happened to the ones riding with “The Cousins” in Season Three of Breaking Bad.
They’d seen his face he was going to kill them on the other side of the border if he did go with them anyway instead he took their truck
I think it just felt like a psychopath who kills people who piss him off, but then again I don’t live in a border state.
This is one of those shows that I’m so far behind on, attempting to catch up sounds exhausting.
It’s great. And it’s probably the last of its kind given trends on Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime etc. All we’re going to get from now on is shitty crime dramas, 12 episode remakes of classic films, etc.
Holy shit, fuck off
Trapped in a hot, dark room with no ACDidn’t he kick out the AC unit to escape the room?Also, I need to stop multitasking while I watch this; I completely missed that he wanted the neighbor to shave to make him his body double 🙁
There was a shot of Nacho sweating and fiddling with the AC in frustration, seemingly to indicate that it wasn’t working.
I give this show my full attention and I still didn’t catch that Lalo was using the neighbor for a body double.
Right? I somehow missed that too. And this is one of the few shows I don’t look at my phone during.
Very subtle…first suggesting he shave, but keep the mustache and soul patch, then the off-handed comment from the wife about how kind it was for Lalo to pay for his dental work. Later Tyrus says to Gus, “it’s him, even the dental records match”. Got to admit, I missed this too, but remember the weird dialogue that seemed throwaway at the time.
It makes sense, but the timeline wasn’t clear so I didn’t really make the connection either. I thought the burned body was from the night of the “raid.” But it’s been so long since I saw season 5 so I couldn’t really remember how it all went down.
There was a shot of the
neighbour looking in the mirror with a smile, and Lalo standing behind him,
were the two looked extremely similar. That’s the moment where the
audience needed to go: ohhhhhh.
I noticed cause I’ve been confused by the previews where they showed Lalo, then Lalo’s face coming up from the sink in front of Lalo.
It finally makes sense.
But how did he get that body back to his ranch? That’s a bit confusing to me. And the dental records bit.
They mentioned Lalo sent him to his dentist. It still didn’t make sense that a dentist could make the stand-in’s teeth match Lalo’s, but then I realized the dentist could simply send the stand-in’s records to the coroner with Lalo’s name on them. All it’d take is a phone call to the dentist.
Easier to make the Xrays match the teeth, than make the teeth match the Xrays.He could’ve used the couple’s vehicle to get the body back.He would’ve had to murder the wife too, which might be the lowest thing he’s done. She was so sweet to him. He kept asking her about the things he gave her, like that evens things up.
I’m not the first person to ask this, but I haven’t seen any great answers besides it being convenient for the plot – why is Tio Hector Salamanca in a nursing home rather than in his own place with nursing staff?
I’d forgotten all this, but in skimming a plot summary, Gus was paying for special treatment for Hector in order to get him to recover just enough from his stroke to continue suffering. Once Hector got to his bell-ringing status, Gus took him out of special treatment, and I guess had him sent to Casa Tranquila? From there, he just seems to live there now, and no particular reason is given why Lalo/the Twins/anyone else from the cartel isn’t getting him out of there. It does seem like a plot oversight that Hector wasn’t just moved down to one of the compounds in Mexico, but I could also see the cartel abandoning someone once they no longer have any earning ability.
I kind of think Hector likes the place. Not being forced to live like that, but the camaraderie. Plus the ample bottoms.
Or he isn’t seeing himself as impaired and wants to be close to the action.
Well we do know that he ends up living at Tuco’s place during the time of Breaking Bad so it’s probably only a matter of time before he’s out of there.
Main problem with this show, and really the only one, is I can’t help but laugh when I see “The Cousins.” They dress the same, walk the same steps, and if they ever said anything, would probably talk the same. I get that they are bad asses, but they really seem cartoonish compared to basically every other character in the BB/BCS world. They’re like a pair of really well-dressed supervillains out of “Preacher” or something.
That character type/cliche also annoys me. Anton Chigurh, Omar, the twins, etc. The Olympic class, “Greatest Hitman in the History of the World” type. Especially in a realistic show. If there ever were such a thing it would insanely rare.
Omar? Doesn’t really fit with the others. Not even a hitman! Just a thief with above average intelligence and few other opportunities.
They also have a stupid, unjustifiable habit of walking as slowly as humanly possible right at the moment when they most need to accomplish something quickly.
Main problem with this show, and really the only one, is I can’t help but laugh when I see “The Cousins.” They dress the same, walk the same steps, and if they ever said anything, would probably talk the same. I get that they are bad asses, but they really seem cartoonish compared to basically every other character in the BB/BCS world. They’re like a pair of really well-dressed supervillains out of “Preacher” or something.
It is very preacher – both western inflected, I assume the cousins reflect some sort of trope from the genre
I was surprised to see the kind of digs Jimmy opted for, as shown in the open. That house he showed Kim last season had some flashy touches, but it didn’t look like the garish gold-plated drug kingpin crapfest we were shown here. I understand dressing in a tacky manner when you have a particular image catering to a certain clientele, but this went way beyond that- and the clients aren’t going to see what your house looks like, anyways.
*ThrillingI guess we’ve seen different episode…
In the Kingdom of the Blind… holy living f__!! @weallknowthisisnoth, thanks for the Donna Bowman link. KPott’s … is like the fresh-person essay that needs serious editing beyond care or pay-grade: simplify. focus on argument. and have some consideration for your reader, rookie! You are getting paid, and that is a good thing. Now please, as Bill Hicks says, write from your F_’n HEART!!!!
I see that we are now referring to very basic plot summaries as “reviews” at the AV Club…
The neighbour was being groomed to be Lalo’s death double. Lalo even had the guy’s teeth fixed to pass as his own.
Oh, poor Kettlemans. They think they’re a laugh, but they’re really a cry. They seriously bought for a minute that they could get exonerated. Yet Kim figured out their scam without any evidence.
The Better Call Saul Insider podcast is fantastic. I’ve been listening since season 1 and they uploaded 2 new episodes on Monday discussing both new episodes of BCS. If you like the tv show and want to hear all the insider stuff, the podcast is for you.
“Did Mike set his phone to ring when he briefly stepped to the trailer door to lock it?”Is this a thing you can do? Just set your phone to ring?
As an alarm clock, yes. Especially on old cell phones back in the mid ‘00s where the show happens.
I thought of that and dismissed it but forgot this was set back in the day. My “ring” vibrate is different from my alarm vibrate, but that wouldn’t necessarily have been the case on old-school phones, so you’re right.
I love the dialogue.Betsy Kettleman (about Jimmy/Saul): “He’s a crookedy crook!”
Jimmy/Saul: “The devil’s dandruff.”LOL!
“A local neighbor becomes his stand-in when he needs a body to fool everyone into believing he was killed in the attack, and he apparently went so far as to plan for that very scenario: We learn he had paid for the man’s extensive dental work, presumably to make dental records match.”Oh man, I was wondering why he was gonna kill that guy. I totally missed that the body was his.
The opening sequence of 6.1 was magic (Days Of Wine And Roses… heaven). The rest: not so much. Both episodes could have been condensed into one clocking in around 45 minutes. Storytelling is often unnecessarily complex or overly subtle, so that the ‘huh? Why are they doing that/how did he know that/how did that come about’-reaction throws you out of the show far too regularly. The action sequence in episode 2 was too short and nothing special. And Nacho really isn’t a good shot – unloading two entire pistols in one target? What, is he in a John Woo movie now? Unfortunately for him, the infinite bullets which ruin Woo’s work weren’t part of the package. There’s only 11 episodes to go and Jimmy STILL isn’t the go-to gangster lawyer, with a huge palatial mansion, his own violent goons, hated and feared by law enforcement and a media personality. Frankly, I don’t give a fart about the Gus Fring/Salamanca war – that’s been set up, there’s no need for the glacial tempo at which this unfurls (ironic since New Mexico is so blazing hot). It’s both too much and absolutely not enough. And though BCS is among the most beautifully shot shows ever, and has episodes and sequences that are sometimes unequalled by anything else, I keep mourning for the show I actually wanted to see: a quippy, fast-paced show about an extremely shady lawyer, the shenanigans he gets up to and the tapdance-on-a-tightrope he has to do to keep ahead of both the law, the underworld and his shitty clients. At least Kim Wexler is as great as ever. But apart from that: not happy with the start of the season at all.
“(ironic since New Mexico is so blazing hot)“lol fuck off
Sounds like someone who hasn’t spent a lot of time in New Mexico. 😀
I keep mourning for the show I actually wanted to seeThat’s not the show they ever intended to give you, though. You have to address the work on its own merits.
This is definitely not the show you were looking for.
Sorry Saul. Don’t care anymore. You were gone waaay too long. I don’t really remember enough to follow along anymore. Besides, I thought you were kind of overrated and an excuse to satisfy those looking for more Breaking Bad stuff, like the truly annoying Mike Ermantrout.
Does what has happened with Lalo so far really make sense? So he happened to have a guy near his compound who he had been grooming for some time as his corpse double, in case he needed one? And then he killed that guy, but only went back later to move his body to where it might provide evidence that Lalo had been killed? Meaning that he basically killed him without reason, and then subsequently was like, “Oh, wait, I could make use of the fact that I killed that guy”?