What did you think of Better Call Saul’s series finale?
Now that Saul's gone, let's pick apart "Saul Gone"
TV Features Better Call Saul
[Editor’s note: This piece contains spoilers of the series finale of Better Call Saul. Obviously.]
We bid adieu to Better Call Saul last night in an episode that, while still keeping Saul’s distinct pacing and aesthetic, actually packed in quite a lot, including a bunch of blasts from the pasts in the forms of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), Chuck McGill (Michael McKean), and Marie Schrader (Betsy Brandt), not to mention some classic Saul courtroom trickery, as well that big reunion we’d been hoping for. So now that we’ve had several hours to sleep and digest what we saw in that Peter-Gould-penned-and-directed sendoff, let’s get into it and answer, simply: What did you think of Better Call Saul’s series finale? As always, let us know your takes in the comments.
William Hughes
Gene Takavic, the cornered rat, hurls himself into a downtown Omaha dumpster, desperate in his pursuit of one last second of miserable, monochrome freedom. Saul Goodman, the polished conman, spins tales, and sows doubts, for a crew of government lawyers who should know, should know down to their very souls, that they’ve got this bastard dead to rights. But it’s Jimmy McGill, in the end, who took the stand last night. Jimmy, the honest crook. Jimmy, the guy who always does the worst things for the best possible reasons. And so he does.
Is there a whiff of fan service to last night’s Better Call Saul finale? To seeing James McGill answer at last for the crimes he committed on behalf of Walter White—echoing, in the process, the man’s own bracingly honest “I did it because I liked it” from the Breaking Bad finale, nine years earlier? And also answering for the crimes that are not crimes, that only he, and we, know have been corroding his soul since the day his brother died? Maybe. It’s difficult, for instance, to fully connect the bitter, ruined man who came within a moment’s bad break of strangling poor Marion with her own phone cord just a few days earlier to Jimmy’s final act of showmanship/self-immolation/self-sacrifice. But so what? Wish fulfillment is rarely this elegant, at least, as “Saul Gone” threads in farewells to Jonathan Banks, Bryan Cranston, and especially Michael McKean, showing Jimmy and Saul unconsciously desperate to have conversations with Mike and Walter that he could never bring himself to have with Chuck. And it’s not like we’re promised redemption here, or absolution, not really—even as Kim offers Jimmy one last quiet smoke break deep within a friendly shadow. All we get is a flicker of flame—the only color in the entire world—and a final parting look. And it’s the kind of look you give someone you don’t expect to see again.
Saloni Gajjar
Gratifying, excruciating, beautiful. Yeah, that about sums up how it felt to watch Better Call Saul wrap its meritorious run. Jimmy McGill finally letting go of Saul Goodman and Gene Takovic is an honest representation of who he is at the core. Ultimately, he’s a small-time shady lawyer from Albuquerque who no one thought would be any good, not even his own brother (for some wise reasons, of course), until Kim Wexler came around. Their complex relationship evolved into the show’s driving force and how Jimmy functions. Kim was the thin line separating him from going full Saul, after all. So to me, it rings true that learning about her coming clean is a pivotal moment that inspires him to do the same. Could he have gotten away with that seven-year sentence? Hell yes. But would he be able to live with himself knowing that any contact with Kim thereafter might be a repeat of the disastrous phone call they shared? I don’t think so. As he says in the courtroom, he already has to live with knowing what caused Chuck to kill himself, and that if he didn’t defend Walter, several people would still be alive. His regrets go beyond that “slip-and-fall” incident. And he tries to rectify some of it in “Saul Gone” without the writing fawning over any redemption.
The most striking shot of the episode was when Kim leaves the prison, and the two of them look at each other with the barbed wires separating them. The distance speaks volumes despite their previous interaction of sharing a cigarette. (That scene, too, is so well-lit and sexy, it made me think the two are going to bang it out. Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn’s chemistry was on fire.) BCS’s closing moments reminded me of a couple of my favorite series finales of all time, The Americans and BoJack Horseman, in how the protagonists run from their pasts before finally reckoning with them from a place of acceptance. There’s empathy but also an understanding that it’s the tragically right conclusion. Jimmy deserves to serve time for his horrible actions, and it’s worth arguing that living as Gene was nothing short of jail time either (a black-and-white existence with nothing to do except managing a mall Cinnabon). At least he won’t be running anymore.
Matt Schimkowitz
Caught in a dumpster, covered in slop, you can bet that Jimmy McGill wished he had that time machine.
The finale is a gratifying, heart-wrenching, and haunting last trip via time machine to three versions of Jimmy: Saul, the lawyer who thinks wealth equals freedom and respect; Gene, the tactful, quiet, and pathetic manager; and Jimmy, a simple brother to a disturbed but revered genius. If dumpster Jimmy had a time machine, he’d probably go back to this moment with Chuck. Maybe things could’ve been different. We know that’s not what happened, and the possibility for change (to not take that bribe, to not fixate on lost fortune, and to spend time with your brother) are all opportunities lost to time. All that’s left is a wall.
In the final, brilliant half-hour, Jimmy is all three. He’s the conniving lawyer, the sad sack, and the likable motormouth that keeps Kim Wexler coming back to him. She sees the whole Jimmy, not whatever suit he has on that day. And then, there they were, Kim and Jimmy, back at the beginning, up against the wall and plotting to break bad. But a wall isn’t a time machine. A wall is just a wall. And Jimmy’s going to be staring at the same one for some time to come. It’s a haunting final shot as the camera leaves Jimmy behind a slab of concrete. There’s no final smile like Walt got. It’s no longer all good, man. Those finger guns are holstered as our TVs cut to black, leaving Jimmy behind and an uncertain future for Kim ahead.
Tim Lowery
All that time-machine and regret talk between Walter and Saul took me, not so surprisingly, back to watching the Breaking Bad finale nine years ago. Back then, I took in Walter White’s demise at a bar in Brooklyn on a crisp night. You could only hear the soft clinking of glasses in the packed place, the crowd of others who didn’t have a good TV and/or cable keeping incredibly quiet and polite throughout, save for a rupture of applause as Jesse finally fled. Last night, I found myself on the opposite coast, watching it alone with the AC running and the blinds down to block out the Los Angeles sun. We’ve been in the BB/BCS universe a long time and leaving it hit me harder than I anticipated.
But enough about me and my viewing habits and the passage of time. In the finale, I actually didn’t love that Cranston scene. It was…fine. Funny, for sure, although Cranston’s performance was a bit loud and, eventually, I was just hoping to get back to the present. As far as those three man-to-now-dead-man flashback chats that we were shown, the one with Chuck had by far better acting and more to say, not just about how others see Jimmy but how Jimmy sees himself. But the best trick “Saul Gone” pulled was, like any good ending, serving up one that was surprising but believable. I was genuinely thrown when Saul, asking to be addressed as such and in full ridiculous Saul garb and after already having beaten the man once again, finally dropped the act and fessed up to the guilt, ballooning his short seven-year sentence into a life behind bars. And then there was that ending, with him and Kim sharing a cigarette in (mostly) silence, like they had in season one, and leaving what they were and what it meant unsaid, in classic Kim-Jimmy fashion. Those looks they exchange in that final bittersweet moment, worlds apart, will stay with me a while too.
110 Comments
I loved it. I think the question this finale asks, to some extent, is what is freedom?For Jimmy, it was freedom from Saul. A lot of people are hung up on the prison sentence, but the reality is, as Saul, Jimmy would never be free. Sure he’d be “free” in six years, and probably find a second act as Les Dothis, Myrtle Beach timeshare salesman, but he wouldn’t be free. He’d forever be trapped as a character, an act that could never connect with anything or anyone in a real way.Which leads us to the next question: What did Jimmy actually have? Sure, at one time, there was money, houses, clothes, connections, but all of those were largely manifestations of Saul — they were a meaningless result of an act he played. The only real thing Jimmy McGill ever had was his love for Kim. Which Saul Goodman killed. So to get back to the real, he had to kill the fake.Honestly, I’m not sure Jimmy ever had any intention of taking his plea deal. Instead, I think it was sending Saul out with a bang — the guy’s still got it! Seven years, what a bunch of suckers! Ah, man, that was fun.And with that, it was time for Saul to leave and for Jimmy to come back. Legally he was screwed, legally he did absolutely nothing to help Kim here, but that wasn’t the point. It was that spiritually he regained his personhood, finally took responsibility for his actions, acknowledged them for what they were, accepted his fate, and put the past to rest.And so then, as has been mentioned elsewhere, Saul did get his time machine. If you could go back in time, what’s the one thing you’d change? Jimmy’s was obvious: I’d have never destroyed the one real thing, the one important thing in my life: Kim’s love and trust. And the cigarette burns in color. IMO, it was perfect. The ultimate irony: Jimmy lives out the rest of his life in prison as a free man.
Hmm… I like this, but I would quibble with one thing. I think he was perfectly willing to take the deal until he found out about Kim.
Saul as Gene had to have this contingency in mind. Somewhere, deep in his scotch and doing the Cinnabon performance reviews at home, he had to think, “OK, what’s my defense if I got caught” and settled on the “I was afraid” defense.He’d get a manageable sentence, do his time, get out before he turned 60 and maybe go find Kim again and he’d have the “I paid the price” card. Maybe, in his dreams, he’d win her back.
Except he realized that would never be good enough for her. That wasn’t what she wanted or needed. She needed to suffer and she still always will.But by doing what he did, he ensured she didn’t suffer alone and legally made it less likely (though still not guaranteed) that Howard’s widow wouldn’t spitefully squeeze every last drop from Kim over a man she’d stopped loving and barely respected.
I don’t know if Kim can pass the Florida bar and do real lawyering. An outfit like that pro bono place, she may just end up doing all the legal work and let an accredited lawyer sign the letters or make the court appearances. I’m confident Jimmy will be a prison lawyer to anyone looking to knock off a few years or even to get out of a bad rap.
That’s the ending I always anticipated—Jimmy McGill, Jailhouse Lawyer—with his own little office in the back of whatever shop he was assigned to. He’d be doing free legal work for everybody, prisoners and guards alike. He’d be a regular Andy Dufresne.They didn’t show that happening, but I think it’s a safe assumption. Jimmy will need something other than baking bread to fill his time at ADX Montrose. Like Red Redding said in The Shawshank Redemption, “…in prison a man will do most anything to keep his mind occupied.”
Hmm… I like this, but I would quibble with one thing. I think he was perfectly willing to take the deal until he found out about Kim.A perfectly valid take, and perhaps the correct one. It wasn’t, and still isn’t, clear to me whether the entire plea was a long con to create the situation it did or whether Jimmy, with everyone and everything in his life now either dead or gone, just went full nihilism and planned to go full Saul forever, con after deal after con after deal after con until one way or another he ended up dead. But regardless of how the switch flipped, it did. And I don’t think it was so much that Kim loved to suffer, it’s that she had a conscious and took responsibility for her actions. But Saul did not and could not, and that’s where they truly parted ways.For both Jimmy and Kim, the con was far more about the game than the payoff — they loved the process; the win or windfall was just a result. And while it was sometimes the outcome, harm was less the intent than was evening the score, and physical violence was never even considered. So both were obviously horrified that Howard was murdered. Kim accepted her role in it, took responsibility and decided to take herself out of a position to harm anyone else by leaving her entire life behind to live the most banal, benign existence possible.Jimmy didn’t. In his mind, yeah, that was awful, but I mean, we didn’t mean to kill him, it wasn’t us. And now, Salmanca’s gone, we covered our tracks, matched our stories, we have a clean apartment, a viable story and there’s no body — we got away with it. OK, let’s move on.So he was furious that Kim did this. The con worked, we’re fine — what the hell are you doing?! And so Jimmy went full Saul. The game was replaced by greed. And he did harm people.And then he finally realized that being a dead soul wandering the earth outside a jail is a poor substitute being a free, whole person within one. Kim and Jimmy will never be together again, but each knows the other did the right thing and are willing to pay the price, so even apart, they’re now together. I mean, that’s a pretty good ending, no?
I like what you said but while Jimmy is not Saul, Jimmy still had the heart and soul of a conman. The person who eventually drove Chuck to kill himself was Jimmy and not Saul. What Jimmy became at the end was a Jimmy who was free of all his demons and guilt. He accepted responsibility for what he did and why he did it and was at peace with all of it. He was, in a way, a whole new character at the end.You could even say that being in prison was the best possible outcome for him. Being Gene was a more hellish existence and being dead isn’t a great outcome either so in this case, Jimmy gets to spend the rest of his life in a safe place where he is liked and respected and can no longer bring harm to anyone
Everyone in prison called him Saul
Reminds me of Walt’s line in the season 2 episode with the Badger/Jimmy In-and-Out sting: “There’s more than one kind of prison.”
Ultimately, he’s a small-time shady lawyer from Albuquerque who no one thought would be any good, not even his own brother (for some wise reasons, of course), until Kim Wexler came around.I swear people seem to be forgetting what Chuck was actually like as a character. He was an egotistical and arrogant man who manipulated everyone around him into being who he wanted them to be. Howard was the underling who’d be the public bad guy to save his face, Kim was the beneath him assistant who wasn’t that good at her job and didn’t deserve good clients, and Jimmy (even after finding HHM’s biggest case in years) was never going to be allowed to be anything but the mail-room guy Chuck was kind enough to let even have that lowly job.Jimmy certainly never did all that much to turn off of the “bad choice road” in later years but Chuck was the one who for years happily drove him along it and did everything he could to stop Jimmy actually turning a corner and becoming a better man.
Truth Bomb.
I think Chuck is a fascinating example of how basing your actions off the most rational endpoint in your personal logic can ironically bring out the worst in a person. No matter how justified your anger may be, sometimes it’s just easier to let go instead of influencing someone you don’t believe can change. Especially when it comes to family.
Chuck had some valid reasons to “hold Jimmy back” from law at least, knowing of his past cons and the fact that his stealing exacerbated their dad’s death. But at least in that case Jimmy didn’t mean for that to happen, and Chuck didn’t have to bail Jimmy out in his youth too or depend on him for care when his mental health declined.
Were they valid reasons though? Chuck resented Jimmy for what happened in his dad’s store but Jimmy was a child.It reminds me of Jimmy’s speech to Kristy in season four, the girl who made one mistake as a child and as a result has basically been blacklisted for life, and how that speech was really just as much about him and how Chuck viewed him.
Are we sure Jimmy stole all that money? I know Chuck thought so, but I think it was a mixture. Like what we saw in the flashback to the store. The money their dad gave to that scammer probably didn’t get entered into the books. Then Jimmy also takes some. I think it’s easier for Chuck to blame Jimmy for all of it, than accept that his dad was a sucker and that also contributed to the store’s failure.
Yeah it’s probably a grey area where his dad was too generous to others and it caught up to him
I think the fact that Chuck even thinks it’s his place to “hold Jimmy back from the law” is a sign of his supreme arrogance.And we have mountains of evidence that more than anything Chuck resents Jimmy and needs to feel superior to him, and Jimmy becoming a lawyer puts them on more even ground in a way that he literally cannot psychologically handle.I think at the least, for how much Jimmy took care of him during his psychosomatic illness, Chuck owed Jimmy honesty about not wanting to work with them. At the least.
Chuck was right that Slippin’ Jimmy with a law degree was like a chimp with a machine gun. But he was wrong about whether Jimmy could change, and his own hangups and insecurities and arrogance helped destroy their relationship (and his own life) and pushed Jimmy toward becoming Saul.
Thank you! Chuck never let Jimmy forget that he thought he wasn’t a “real lawyer” and that everything good Jimmy had he owed to Chuck. He worked real hard to keep Jimmy in a position where that would always be true.
Chuck is actually to Jimmy what Walt thought those chemical company partners were to him.
I loved the mini-callback to Chuck when Jimmy mentions him in court we get a shot of the ‘EXIT’ sign in the foreground, humming with all that juice that so terrified Chuck. Subtle and beautiful.
The Chuck and Jimmy relationship is so great in that they’re both right and they’re both wrong. Or it’s a chicken vs the egg kind of thing. Was Chuck right in what he thought of Jimmy (probably) or did he drive Jimmy to become what he became (probably). Just a really toxic, complicated, well done piece of writing and acting
I’ll always fall down on it being Chuck who’s at the most fault. He decided Jimmy could never change and then made sure there was never any chance for Jimmy to change.It was like the school to prison pipeline in human form at times.
ExactlyI think people also forget the extent that everyone at the firm catered to his every request. I think we got used to watching everyone disconnect themselves and the meeting rooms from the electric grid like it’s the act of rational people.Chuck was never a decent person.
I think there’s an interesting contrast to the most popular genre of ‘10s golden age television: the man who can get away with anything. Walter White and Don Draper had their entire empires crumble at their feet but in the end they still got some kind of a “win,” sticking with their pride and going out with either a bang or a… cloyingly obnoxious Coke jingle. Whereas with this show, and I’d argue the finale of Bojack Horseman, we see a character who finally have every bad thing they’ve ever done catch up with them and instead of going into hiding or trying to do “one last job,” he genuinely choose to face the actual consequences. Both Jimmy and Bojack choose to admit wrong, go to jail, and have to say goodbye to the only people that ever cared about them.
Considering that there was so much talk and speculation that Kim was going to die; the fact that she lives, reunites with him, and became the characters from the golden age films they used to watch, is the saccharine, happy ending we typically don’t see on shows like this. I’m okay with it.
Well, it wasn’t totally a happy ending—Jimmy is in jail for the rest of his life. And Kim could be getting sued into next week.
Well considering that literally everyone else is dead or disappeared except for Jesse, Skylar, and Marie, this is as happy as you can get for the BB universe. Especially when both of them chose their fates.
Kimmy now lives in Florida where it’s really hard to collect on a civil suit. Didn’t seem like she had much to take anyway. It’s a worry but I don’t know what they could do to her.
I think the fact that Jimmy is in prison may go a long way toward Cheryl feeling satisfied that someone is paying for Howard’s death. She didn’t like Jimmy anyway.
Kim was clearly going back to the thing she loved doing the move — low paid legal aid work. Even if the law suit was filed and she lost all her savings, it couldn’t take that away from her, and she’d still be allowed to retain enough of her meager income to keep food on her table.The show made it abundantly clear that unlike Jimmy, money meant very little to Kim anyway (i.e. not collecting on Sandpiper).
The moment they shared that cigarette felt like a great noir ending to me. Except the ‘villains’ didn’t die for their sins.
Now that you mention it, it definitely had a Bogart/Bacall feel to it.
I was happy this show didn’t go off the rails in the way Breaking Bad did for its finale. I did like their finale but it seemed slightly unrealistic
I’m glad I’m not the only person who disliked the last season or so of Breaking Bad. (My favorite seasons were the first 2.5 or so, which puts me in direct conflict with most viewers according to the available data.)
In my perfect Breaking Bad finale, the only thing I would have changed from the original is that right the the end, as Walt was cornered with all hope lost, he choose to end his life by overdosing on his own creation.I understand all the arguments against such an ending, but I thought it would have been a cool way to finish it.
I’m pretty happy with Kim’s fate. The thought of her living out her life in a self made prison of banality made me as sad as the possibility of her dying to getting strung out on drugs or something. The fact she found the legal aid as an outlet for her meticulous nature and a way to help the underdog was as good of an bow on her character as one could expect.
I agree, it made me so happy to see, although personally I think “hopeful” or (to use Peter Gould’s word in an interview i read) “optimistic” felt more accurate to me than happy. I agree with whoever said it in this article, I don’t think I’ve felt such a bittersweet mix of sadness and hope since BoJack ended (altho at least I didn’t bawl my eyes out this time lol)
“Considering that there was so much talk and speculation that Kim was going to die; the fact that she lives, reunites with him, and became the characters from the golden age films they used to watch, is the saccharine, happy ending we typically don’t see on shows like this. I’m okay with it.”I don’t think you fully grasp federal prison
The one misstep for me, was that scene where Saul is working out is plea deal and asks for Marie Schrader to sit in, and then he gives the “I was working under threat of death) spiel to her, and then like a switch is able to flip it off and reveal how coldly calculated he can be. Doing that, in that moment, in front of Marie, felt cruel to the point that his later about face felt too abrupt of a character shift. Assuming of course, he’s not also in that moment still manipulating people, namely, that he’s manipulating Kim in that moment so he can know he has impressed her, and that his redemption is all for show. I don’t know, I’m still processing it all. I just felt like Marie being there, he doing it in front of her, was a bit too much, too cruel. I’d have rather she make her appearance at the hearing solely, and Saul does his spiel in front of the feds alone.
This is a good point. Not only was it needlessly cruel, but it was arguably counterproductive. Marie could have just as easily looked at AUSA Poor Man’s Garry Shandling and said, “If you take this fucking deal, I will bury you in the press, get Hank’s old Rolodex and every single DEA agent from San Diego to Key West will be up your ass.”
Maybe that was actually what he was hoping, that Marie would bully the guy into going to court and Jimmy would get off with no years.
If anything I thought her presence should have worked against him in the deal-making. There was no way she was buying his nonsense, which should have put pressure on the feds to not bargain with him. It was nice seeing the character again, but the whole thing didn’t really fit together well from my perspective. Ultimately, getting down to 7 years just didn’t strike me as believable.Aside: I also thought some of the shots when Marie was speaking were odd. They were framed with her on one side and an attorney next to her just sitting there.
I think Covid messed up their schedules a bit so that might be why
I think Covid messed up their schedules a bit so that might be why
It was cruel. Just like it was cruel for Kim to tell that one ‘last’ lie to Howard’s widow, when she didn’t need to do it. But, Kim knew it was the wrong thing to do and threw herself on the mercy of the widow eventually.Jimmy mirrors what Kim already did and what she already learned: they couldn’t go on living without accounting for their deeds. Could they have gotten away with it for the rest of their lives? Sure. But what made them different from Walt, in the end, was that they refused to deny their humanity. They couldn’t live with knowing they cost others so much of their lives, while Walt couldn’t live without showing others how superior he was in some way. (Remember he was scott-free until he saw what he thought was grand-standing by his ex-business partners in the med-tech industry.)
I saw it as a “flex”, by asking Marie to it in person showed the AUSA, that he is not intimidated at all, bring it on, Saul is still going to get a good deal.
It was cruel, though I do in some ways think her understandable grief being directed at him (when Hank’s death was one of the few things Jimmy had no involvement in) probably came across to him as cruel too.
He wasn’t directly involved, but he introduced Walt to Todd and by extension, Hank’s murderer. Marie isn’t wrong about Saul’s help leading to her husband’s death, and there’s no one else left to blame anyway – Jesse’s in the wind and everyone else is dead.
He introduced Walt, Mike, and Jesse to a vermin extermination business as a cover where one of the employees just happened to have a neo-Nazi uncle with a biker gang and at a later time without his involvement Walt chose to have this uncle murder half a dozen people and take Jesse in meth slavery.That’s no involvement.
This episode did lead me to question how exactly I view Jesse in the end. I feel like the two shows and movie are meant to portray him as a victim, but I’m beginning to wonder if he’s more culpable than I had previously thought.
It was cruel for him to do the speech (as we saw, it turned out, was a practice run for court) in front of Marie. But I think Saul IS kinda cruel, and he was upping the ante by demonstrating to her and to the lawyers, that he could get one juror (at least) to fall for it. The speech was more for the lawyers than for Marie – and it worked and probably because she was there it showed them just how calculating Saul’s version of events was, and how it would play in front of a real jury.
If I were Saul I wouldn’t feel responsible for Hank’s death. He had nothing to do with that. He was laundering Walt’s money, and Walt accidentally got Hank murdered by Nazis.He has plenty to feel guilty about, but that was not his fault at all.
I saw it as him giving Marie what she actually needed, an obvious bad guy who was still alive to face the full consequences of everything that went down.
I think he was just showing everyone what a great con man he is and get them to lower the sentence. A power flex. The fact he was able to fearlessly say all of that in the way that he did to someone with a direct connection to one of Walter White’s victims is to give everyone a glimpse of what he was could do in a trial.
It was definitely cruel and vengeful but I think that was to show us that he was fully in Saul mode. Saul doesn’t care who gets hurt to get his way. They had him walk by Marie to try and shake him so he turned that on them by not only showing that it had failed but making her witness to exactly *how* he would get away with it. Only finding out about the risk to Kim was enough to truly shake Saul and open up the cracks that would let Jimmy escape. Does his final return to Jimmy and falling on the sword redeem that cruelty? Not at all. But I don’t think we’re supposed to see him as a redeemed figure by the end of this. We’re supposed to see him as a complex one who is *trying* to be better – but what he was is still part of him and not yet paid off.
EXACTLY. This whole turn from devil to angel did not fit what was going on with the episode or with his overall arc. It does to the extent that, yet again, he is manipulating things to get what he wants. It just happens that in this case the thing he wants really badly is Kim, and he’s willing to barter his freedom for it, but he did not turn good as I think the episode or many commenters (and reviewers) want us to believe. This wasn’t “good Jimmy” making a comeback. This was Saul Goodman just doing what he does, making trades to get what he wants. A dude who’s good at heart wouldn’t have done that to Marie Schrader with such glee. He had more resistance to hurting that tax couple and even Howard, and it was completely absent here.
I think until he found out that Kim confessed, he had every intention of staying Saul and taking the seven years, cushy Club Fed prison and trying to finagle that weekly pint of ice cream. But in that Penultimate episode, when they’re on the phone, Kim tells him to turn himself in and he says, “Why don’t you turn yourself in?” That’s his crutch – even Kim, the smarter, more honorable person in their relationship won’t own up, so why should he? He can keep the “everyone is only out for themselves” worldview because if Kim won’t confess -even after all her regret and breaking up with him over it- then nobody needs to own up to anything. But then he finds out that she does, and that’s what changes everything. Kim is always right, so he has to confess too – he just has to figure out a way to make sure she’s there in the courtroom.
It reminded me of the ending of BB in that it felt about as happy as it could possibly be given what had preceded it. I also thought it was just a very skilfully put together episode, with the flashbacks managing to not feel too fan servicey.But this…“It’s difficult, for instance, to fully connect the bitter, ruined man who came within a moment’s bad break of strangling poor Marion with her own phone cord just a few days earlier to Jimmy’s final act of showmanship/self-immolation/self-sacrifice.”…was a bit of a sticking point for me too. It just felt a bit too much of a leap to me.
I think a key point is being missed when people criticize Gene’s behavior as going too far and feeling out of character. Similar to how rewatches of the whole show lead us to reassess characters like Kim, Howard, and Chuck, the reveal of what Kim told Jimmy in the phone booth leads us to reassess his motives in the prior episode. “I think you should turn yourself in.” After that phone call, which we initially didn’t know the details of, you could assess everything he does afterward as his calculated way of getting arrested and providing himself his proper comeuppance with Kim in the same courtroom. Even in the scene where he threatens Carol Burnett, I think he only wants to go far enough where she feels threatened to call the police and wouldn’t actually hurt her. Doesn’t excuse his behavior, but there’s a motive underneath the inherent need to do everything sleazy.
I am someone who loves fan service. My theory is that I am a fan and I have a fanhood and it needs servicing. I don’t know when this became a bad thing, but it is tiresome when I see it in reviews.
I’d like to have seen Skyler, fresh with her deal, ready to poke holes in the theory that Saul was afraid. Hell, I’d have liked to have seen Jesse reading some page 12 item in the Anchorage Daily News about Saul.
Lastly, I really wish we’d have gotten my one bit of fantasy casting. One more shot of the Cinnabon, where a new manager has taken over. It’s a striking redhead with very sad eyes. She’s in her late 40s.She sighs, puts on an apron and hears a voice. “Paige…”
*Takavic
I thought it was a serviceable ending. I didn’t hate it, but I wasn’t captivated by it or anything. Like Breaking Bad, I felt this show also dragged out the final episodes. Both shows could’ve edited out an episode’s worth of content in the final season and still had the same impact in the end. As it is, I found myself “done” with the characters before the final bell. Near the end of the show I just found myself thinking:
It was a weird thing about this and the finale. The show was never meant to be some sort of big, prestige-y show with a huge online presence. Kind of like how Breaking Bad became. Since it did, it was like the show runners felt the need to do some sort of big, epic, grand finale because it became the kind of show people expected it of. I really enjoyed the last few episodes but I could see an argument in that it took on more weight that it should have or needed. It would almost have been fitting if it got a more conventional finale.
I’ve been meaning to try and rewatch Better Call Saul because I remember finding the first season or two interesting but very, very slow.It’s been noted that the show took almost perverse delight in withholding what the audience wanted/expected.
I’m with you on that. I always enjoyed it, but it took quite a while before I started thinking of it as being on the level of Breaking Bad.
Gene went into the dumpster, Saul came out, Saul walked into the courtroom, Jimmy walked out.
Except the suits, I don’t see much difference between Saul and Slippin Jimmy.Jimmy was a con man, not some stand up guy like people seem to think.
Jimmy was a con man, not some stand up guy like people seem to think.Where are you seeing this sentiment?
Slippin Jimmy cons a person, Saul games the system.
Jimmy was a small-time conman. He ran penny ante cons for fun.Saul was a big-time criminal. He was laundering huge sums of money and providing legal advice to murderers.
I’m sure it was swell!Have ya seen the new SPR3 video?
Joe Biden is doing a great job with his TV career.
Ive seen a lot in my time, good shows come and go like the seasons. But I’ve seen two finales done by the same team that defied expectations in both being predictable and unpredictable, conventional and not. All good things end, knowing when to end it is hard. There’s an Orson Welles quote about how any story can have a happy ending depending on where you end it. It was the perfect ending for the series, a fond farewell, I enjoyed it all the while. Fare thee well ABQ, I’m glad I lived to see two finales worth remembering.
I expected a lot of death. Didn’t get it!
Having Gene get captured almost immediately was of course what would happen. Jimmy/Saul/Gene never magically absorbed Mike’s tactical genius. Skills that even failed Mike. All gun fighters know that luck or skill will eventually fail them. The true chance for Jimmy to fight for his life was in the legal arena and he sure did by backing the feds in to a plea deal box.Jimmy’s love for Kim and his regret over inevitably repulsing her were the only true things left in his life. He obliterated anything else. Chuck, Howard and Hank being the most glaring examples of destruction. Demonstrating his love to Kim by confessing at the sentencing hearing was his one shot at redemption.
5/5 Blue Bells
“It’s really good ice cream.”I grew up in Texas and can attest that Blue Bell really is really, really good ice cream.
I loved it. That episode four instalments ago when Jimmy woke up as Saul could easily have been the finale but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the extra coda. One thing that occurred to me was that while Jimmy took the blame for Chuck’s suicide, should Chuck’s soul be offered a time machine, he might want to go back to when Jimmy brought the Sandpiper case to HHM. The way Jimmy was treated at that point could have altered the trajectory of the rest of his life. I did enjoy the (somewhat revisionist) reuniting of Chuck and Jimmy, however. Michael McKean was amazing in that role.
How is it revisionist? It’s one single moment.
I felt it suggested Chuck was genuinely interested in Jimmy’s work and in really helping him in a way that he hadn’t seemed to before. However, I’ve only ever seen each episode once and I’m getting g old so I’m fully willing to admit, I might be wrong about that. I’m looking forward to bingeing the whole series at some point without months/years of gaps.
Paraphrasing but Chuck asks Jimmy to stay and tell him about cases, to talk strategy, and Jimmy rebuffs him with a “you just want to tell me what I’m doing wrong”. It’s a flippant remark but the expression on Chucks face, subtle as it is, is a genuine “yes, I do”.
I think the whole deal negotiation served two purposes. First, Saul earnestly wanted to get the least time possible in the cushiest prison he could for his crimes. Bringing Marie to the table allowed him to show just how good he was at swaying opinion—he even had Marie, of all people, beginning to view him as possibly more of a victim than a villain.Second, he was doing it because he could. For him, this was like a seasoned pro coming back from an extended stay in the minor leagues for one last hurrah. Against a roomful of federal prosecutors, he had them down to negotiating a pint of ice cream every Friday.Finding out that Kim had already confessed for her part in Howard Hamlin’s disappearance and presumed suicide changed everything. During his flight to the ABQ he realized that it didn’t matter how much time he got prison if he couldn’t ever see Kim again. That’s when he hatched his plan to torpedo the deal in front of the judge and confess all his sins.He ended up adding 79 years to his sentence but, as Elvis said at the end of Bubba Ho-Tep, at least he’s got his soul.
He called his cinnabon to make sure the work schedule got put out and to tell them they needed new manager. What a mensch.
Not unlike Gus calling Lyle to make sure things were gonna be handled at Pollos before getting bullets taken out of him.
I felt a heavy heart for a good couple hours after the show ended. I still can’t shake the idea of what Jimmy (or anyone) could change if it was possible to go back in time.The first scenario I thought of was, instead of hiring mercs, Mike and his guys personally see the hit on Lalo through successfully. This would have a dramatic impact on everything, number one being Howard being able to go back to try and fix his life, probably not saving that icy marriage, but keeping HHM afloat and making those cocaine rumors irrelevant. Kim and Jimmy would feel a twinge of guilt from Howard’s shaming, but they would go back to how things were. This version of Saul Goodman might not play up the goofy commercials and the larger than life persona that required a new wardrobe, car, and office to match, but still serving the same kind of underprivileged clientele that Kim’s been representing the entire time, and I see them eventually becoming that Wexler/McGill practice Jimmy’s always wanted, although maybe it would become something like Goodman Wexler & Associates. There would still be scams, but none as big as the ones we’ve seen. When Badger gets caught selling Blue Sky, maybe Combo will recommend Kim as representation instead of anyone wanting the funny commercials guy. She would get his sentence reduced and there wouldn’t be a pretend Heisenberg to take the fall.Lalo dying early would embolden Gus’ empire, and maybe facilitate a quicker end of the Salamancas and the rest of the cartel. Nacho would still need to go on the run, but he would safely get to Canada. There wouldn’t be a Gus/Walter partnership. Walter and Jesse’s operation would stay small time without a distributor. Hank wouldn’t go on a downward spiral without having to kill Tuco or take on the twins by himself and he would have moved to El Paso. Walter would make enough money to pay for chemotherapy and a few bills, but would succumb to his cancer before being able to produce any worthwhile inheritance. Jesse might learn to make his product as pure, but he would get busted by Gomie. He would never meet Jane, but Jane would eventually relapse and overdose on her own, probably not causing another midair collision. Jack and Todd and their gang, Declan, and Lydia all survive, but so does Andrea and Tomas.It’s equally likely everything still happens mostly the same as it did. Gale Boetticher’s scientific curiosity about Blue Sky might have made a more fruitful partnership with Walter, but Gus pitting Jesse and Walter against each other would still lead to an inevitable showdown, even without Saul as a middle man.
There’s a time travel theory that says that while you can change small events in the timeline, it will ultimately correct itself and play out to the same conclusion. The Salamancas could have killed Nacho for some other reason. Howard could have in an accident. And so on. You can postpone the inevitable, but it’s called the inevitable for a reason.
All crooks, fictional or real, especially crooked lawyers and drug runners, can fuck themselves.I’ll probably watch these shows one day so I can watch these characters burn.
-An Anonymous Nerd
One time, doin time…for a LONG time.
I loved how the final sequence seemed almost like an homage to the end of the 1957 noir film “Double Indemnity,” which similarly ends with two foes / lovers sharing a cigarette while the law bears down.
Spoiler Alert!! Double Indemnity is on my watch list!: )
It was poignant but rather anticlimactic based on the early capture. I liked it overall and him getting caught was fitting. I like the call backs and the set-up for his pivot but I just can’t get beyond him trading his life away for redemption in Kim’s eyes vs. the potential to get out and have some % of a chance at some form of reconciliation with her. There was too large of a gap between 7 and forever years to make this plausible for me. He didn’t do anything to spare her anything in the end and may have opened her up to more legal peril. I don’t believe that she would’ve wanted him to make this trade or even allowed it while she was in the courtroom. Wanting someone to free themselves from something by being honest and accountable isn’t the same as wanting someone to throw the remainder of their life away to do so when it changes nothing about the past.
You really think she’d take him back if he skirted his sentence that much after all the suffering she’s put herself through? LOLAnd you thought she should have stopped him? The person that told him to turn himself in two episodes prior?
No, I don’t think they’re just getting back together. That’s why I said some form of reconciliation. There was the potential that she could be in his life somehow or at least he could reasonably hope for as much. I’m not saying she doesn’t think he’s doing the right thing but when presented with the potential that’s he’s facing life vs. being forced to bury Saul or otherwise atoning, I don’t think she’d want that. I think there’s a difference between the idea of “turn yourself in” and experiencing the reality of him dying in jail. I think most people who love someone enough to marry them would have a reaction when they see them more or less voluntarily throwing away their life in front of them. They asked what I thought. You do you.
There could have never been any form of reconciliation unless Jimmy did exactly what he did, and even then, it was a longshot. Because we’ve been so involved in the pre-BrBa world, it’s easy to forget that post-Kim Saul was a monster. As a huckster, Jimmy had one of two goals: Get even with someone for some real or perceived slight, as was the case with Howard, or dupe a mark because they put themselves in a position to be duped, or because their hubris or arrogance blinded them to the fact that they were the ones who were actually being taken advantage of. Oh, and have fun doing it. It was game. Sure, the indirect result was sometimes harm, but it was never really the direct intent — people got what they deserved; the consequences were theirs. And with Howard, his being killed was more a tragic coincidence than outcome Jimmy ever imagined was a remote possibility.Saul, on the other hand, did hurt people. He helped people who he knew were making a poison that ruined lives and he didn’t care. He knew that these people murdered people all the time to make it and he didn’t care. He recommended actions that he knew — knew — would result in people being killed and he didn’t care. If he won a case or got a check, it’s all good, man.That’s who Kim couldn’t reconcile with. And that’s who initially showed up in court. So killing both his plea deal and Saul in front of her was the only possible way to redeem himself in Kim’s eyes. So that’s what he did.
“Jimmy, the guy who always does the worst things for the best possible reasons.”That’s…not really true though.
Somewhat oddly, I find myself thinking a lot about The Shield in relation to last night’s finale. They’re quite different shows, of course, but as the great former AVC commenter Wallflower often referred back to in his excellent analysis of the earlier series, there’s a specific line of dialogue in that show that ties them together:“Admit you’re evil.”That’s what Jimmy did in the courtroom. After years of running from the consequences of his actions (both literally and figuratively), he finally owned up to everything he’d done. He admitted his role in Chuck’s suicide and Howard’s murder, and acknowledged that Walt couldn’t have become the monster he became without Saul Goodman helping him every step of the way.Naturally, there are a lot of people whose reactions boil down to “he threw away his deal for nothing lol wtf dumb.” They’ve missed the point entirely. To have followed through taking that deal for on a light sentence in a minimum security resort prison would have meant that he’d learned absolutely nothing, and would have meant never making amends with Kim.Instead, he went out on his own terms. He owned the hell out of the government’s lawyers, he unburdened himself, and he earned some measure of redemption in Kim’s eyes. He didn’t get a happy ending, because he didn’t deserve one. But he’s happier and freer being Jimmy again in prison than he ever was being Gene.(That bus scene was some weak shit though.)
I dunno … I think the bus scene was pretty brutal and more punishment for him. He’s just disavowed Saul. Wants to be known again as Jimmy. But nope, he has to deal with what he created for a much longer time all while being locked up. He can’t escape Saul.
I get what they were going for, just found the impromptu chant and foot-stomping to be jarring, corny, and over the top. If it had just been the first half of it with a handful of the prisoners recognizing him, I think it still would have made it clear that he’s not going to be able to shed that identity in their eyes, and also that he’ll be pretty well-liked despite the concern he voiced over being put in gen pop.
For me, the best shows and the best films are the ones I find myself thinking about for several days afterwards, and this finale has done just that. Better Call Saul is one of my favorite TV shows of all time, and the finale was a great ending. As much as I wanted Saul/Jimmy and Kim to have a happy ending, that would have been too unrealistic, and the writers would have really had to force it. Instead, somehow they found a way to end the show in a way that somehow seemed right, but not depressing, even though Jimmy is basically now stuck in prison for the rest of life and likely will never see Kim again.Truly a masterpiece of a TV show.
“Felina” still wins for Badfinger playing Walter out. That was just epic.
I am seasons behind on this show, but that still at the top of the review makes me think only one thing:Triples.
Triples is best! 😉
I think the show died with Howard ,who was really the only good person in it.Spin off time . Mike is not dead . Walter left and a hiker came along ,found him and took him to a hospital.
The meta-ness of the time machine thought experiment and the show actually being a time machine into Jimmy’s life – and the fact that they didn’t crack you over the head with it, feels subtly brilliant. (Or they did actually crack us over the head with it, but what a velvet hammer it was.)Having read some of the takes, I think Jimmy did do a kind of manipulation of Kim. His look to her in the courtroom for me read as “See what I’m doing? Just like you did, right? I’m confessing. Am I doing this right?”And I think that last scene and finder-gun salute indicated that Kim knew what was up with all Jimmy’s courtroom antics, and that rather than a burnt bridge between the two, Jimmy at least earned himself a visit with the possibility of a few more. Kim came to acknowledge that. 72 years bought him a reset with Kim. If nothing more comes of it beyond that one visit (pew pew) it’s all good.
I thought the finale was good, but I think I fell too in love with the idea of Jimmy representing himself, because I really, really wanted to see how that was gonna play out! We’ve watched so much of him being a con man, but I like him best in action, as a lawyer. Especially here for the final hurrah. It’s why episodes like “Chicanery” and “Wexler v. Goodman” rank a lot higher for me. I love watching Jimmy/Saul at the top of his game. When it was just a confession speech, and I realized, ‘oh , we’re really doing this’ it took the wind out of my sails, because of how anti-climatic it was. And its too familiar. I felt like an excited viewer who’d already seen the thing before. Like that tourist on the bus in Speed… But again, I still liked quite a lot about the finale, especially the thought experiment. I’ve read some people point out that while Jimmy never tells Mike or Walt what he’d change if he had a time machine, we see it for ourselves, and it all goes back to building a better relationship with Chuck. It’s really quite amazing. Nevertheless, if I had to choose, I’d say Breaking Bad’s finale was more satisfying for me, personally. I also really loved The Americans.
I’ve enjoyed reading so many thoughtful reviews and reactions to the finale in this thread. While reading one of them that mentioned Jimmy baking bread in prison, I think I may have found another Easter egg type of thing. Baking bread is an anagram of Breaking Bad. Baking bread is one of the last things we see in the Breaking Bad universe. Apologies if this has been mentioned before. Damn, those writers are good.
Loved it.
Jimmy worked it out to get what he thought he deserved. I wanted him to go away for life too. But … a small part of me was curious how he would have re-invented himself yet again if he had taken the shorter sentence.
The thing is though, he did reinvent himself. Going back to The Shawshank Redemption, Jimmy’s an institutional man now.
I think he fully intended to follow through with the light sentence and was honestly enjoying messing with the judicial system. It wasn’t until Kim was threatened that he decided to give it up. I think redemption in the eyes of Kim and drawing fire from Howard’s widow changed his mind. Howard’s wife isn’t actually hurting for money, she’s hurting for revenge and accountability. Jimmy makes a much better target, knowing he is in jail and maybe even suing him for whatever meager resources he has left is more satisfying than going after a contrite Kim. So hopefully Kim is in the clear.I think what surprised me most in the episode was the lack of any last lawyer bits in his prison life. After the bus scene, I thought for sure we would see or get reference to the fact that he was keeping protected and getting some measure of fulfillment by being a legal guru for his fellow prisoners. I love the parallels that the baking duty provides, he’s still spending his days baking in a boring prison of his own design, just as he was as Gene. But I expected some last spark of the talent that was always there under Jimmy and Saul.
The Ameticans is a show every bit as good as BCS, and also one of the best shows in the history of televsion.It’s final season felt a bit like a checklist, making sure everything got wrapped up without leaving anything undone.BCS wraps up everything without feeling like that. I think Bringing in Jeffy and Marion as a catalyst that pushes Jimmy down his final path kept it all fresh to the end (and how great is Carol Burnett?).Anyway, good job BCS, you are a show for the ages.
The time machine framing got down to what this show was about. Walter, in his own churlish way, pointed out the problem with a time machine premise. What use is such a device if you’re not able to make different decisions, if you cannot be a different kind of person? Jimmy got to remake his life several times over and yet always fell into the same destructive patterns. A time machine can’t fix that.
“he already has to live with knowing what caused Chuck to kill himself”Except what he can’t know is that the insurance con didn’t actually cause Chuck to kill himself. It was Chuck’s own act of telling Jimmy he never really cared about him. It was that obvious lie that ate away at him, in the form of an imaginary spark of electricity he tore his home apart to find to no avail. Honestly, if he hadn’t had that final conversation with Jimmy, he might have still fought Howard and HHM. The nagging guilt of tearing Jimmy apart emotionally, not only then but for years, was what finally killed him.
I loved Walter’s complete exasperation at the mere thought of time travel.