Talk about epic cliffhangers. Over the course of the Season 5 finale of AMC's Better Call
Saul, plenty happened, but nothing was really resolved. Still, the episode, ominously called
"Something Unforgivable", was overflowing with important developments. Let's break down
exactly what happened.
Rattled by the fallout from their tense confrontation with Lalo, and the rest of the Salamanca Cartel,
Jimmy and Kim decide to cool off for a couple days at a local ritzy hotel. After their first
night hiding out, Jimmy makes his first of several half-hearted appeals to Kim, urging
her to leave him. And though Jimmy claims it's the last time he'll make the mistake
of getting involved with organized crime, he doesn't seem to have a way to get out,
and he knows it.
Despite Jimmy's overtures, Kim heads out in the morning to work, where she's accosted
by her former boss Howard Hamlin. Howard tells Kim about the bowling balls Jimmy used to
destroy his car, and the prostitutes Jimmy sent to disrupt a business lunch, and suggests
that Jimmy's influence has already hurt her.
"And that's it?"
Despite his Namaste license plate, it's pretty clear that Howard still assumes that every
lawyer is in it for the money. Jimmy has to be manipulating Kim into quitting her high-profile
client. After all, why else would Kim ditch her corporate law job to take on pro-bono
work? Howard's accusation crosses the line, and back in the hotel, Kim and Jimmy jokingly
spar back and forth with increasingly elaborate plots to destroy Howard Hamlin. Until things
get serious.
"What if Howard does something terrible?"
Kim proposes setting Hamlin up for some kind misconduct that might result in "a career
setback"; anything from disbarment or imprisonment, which would force his law firm to settle the
Sandpiper case in haste. Viewers will remember that the Sandpiper case is the massive class
action lawsuit that Jimmy initiated on the first season of Better Call Saul and passed
off to Hamlin's HHM for a referral fee. Once that case settles or reaches a verdict, Jimmy
is entitled to roughly $2 million. But what Kim is suggesting is criminal conspiracy,
the likes of which even Slippin' Jimmy is taken aback by.
Kim's journey has always been a moral tug-of-war between Jimmy and Howard. While Kim has been
drifting toward Jimmy all along, she's always kept one cautious foot in Hamlin's world,
until now. Now, she's all in on Slippin' Jimmy McGill, as a way of funding her own pro-bono
law practice, for better or worse. And with Season Six being the final season for Saul,
what better way to close the circle on this conflict than to bring it all back to Sandpiper?
It all begs the question, however, why do we never hear about Kim in Breaking Bad?
Committing a crime in the name of a greater good doesn't have a history of working out
well in the Breaking Bad universe.
The more action-packed half of the episode takes place in Mexico, where Nacho Varga has
been suddenly enlisted to help execute Lalo Salamanca in his own beautiful home. Varga
spends most of the episode quietly pretending that he wants to join the Salamanca Cartel.
Lalo seems eager enough to take him under his wing, and even introduces him to the big
boss, who ultimately approves of the new recruit. Varga's face throughout all of this build-up
is as inscrutable as ever: he's either having some serious second thoughts about taking
out Lalo, or on the verge of throwing up from the pressure.
Varga has only one job: leave the back door to the Salamanca compound open so that Gus
Fring's outlaw SWAT team can get inside to assassinate Lalo. He manages to get to the
door in time and escape, but the assassination team bungles the hit. Lalo escapes through
a secret tunnel, then circles back to pick off the hitmen who infiltrated his home.
Of course, attentive viewers likely knew Lalo survived; Jimmy was still terrified that Lalo
was after him during the events of Breaking Bad.
"Lalo didn't send you? No Lalo?"
Now, Lalo knows exactly who wants him dead enough to violate the sanctity of his home.
Fring, Mike, Jimmy, and Varga all better be on notice, except, how will they ever know?
As far as anyone in America knows, the hit was complete. That's going to render everyone
sitting ducks when Lalo inevitably returns and the Salamancas bring war across the border.
We know Jimmy, Mike, and Gus survive into the events of Breaking Bad, but where's Kim?
The finale opts for the cliffhanger ending, but we can all anticipate what's ahead.
Better Call Saul is renewed for a sixth and final season, which should return to AMC sometime
in 2021.
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