Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 11 has just released on Netflix and AMC,
and we get a multi-timeline episode during the events of Breaking Bad
and after with Gene, to really set up the ending of this fantastic show. In
this spoiler review, I'm going to be giving you my recap of Better Call Season 6 episode 11, entitled
Breaking Bad, alongside discussing my general thoughts on it. But before I get into it,
if you want to see more videos on the final episodes of Better Call Saul, then don't forget to
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cortex videos, which is all linked in the description below. But with that out the way,
lets dive into my recap and review for Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 11.
So now that Gene Takovic has got himself back into conning following last week's instalment of Nippy,
it's clear that after this new episode, there's no slowwing down. The new episode,
entitled "Breaking Bad" begins appropriately with a flashback to a kidnapped Saul Goodman
in the back of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman’s RV, pleading to be let go. And he says the
classic line we eventually hear once the RV stops moving, with Saul shouting, “It wasn’t
me! It was Ignacio! He’s the one!” Of course, last week involved Gene and Jeff pulling off a
heist that led the former right back into the world of Saul Goodman. And this week, a
phone call that we haven't heard yet leads to him doubling down on those actions and pulling off
multiple cons with Jeff and Buddy. It's definitely an appropriately titled episode in it's series of
parralels, and it leaves us wondering what the consequences will be this time. So
let's get into everything that we saw in Episode 11 of Better Call Saul Season 6.
So after the cold open, we cut back to the black-and-white, post-Breaking Bad world, and
we check in on someone we din't expect to see. We catch up with Francesca, who is now an apartment
manager dealing with a couple of stoners. She get's in a car and drives to a phone booth,
all while anxious that she's being followed and even passes an advertisement for lawyer Bill
Oakley, who’s now a defense attorney and seemingly gone up in the world. And once she arrives at
the phone booth at an abandoned gas station, the phone eventually rings and she get's a
call from Gene, who's looking for a few updates. In order to get these, she has to first get her
money in a nearby envelope that Gene directs her to, and she then proceeds to tell Gene
that she's still being followed, that Skyler White got her deal, and that it’s just him
and Jesse Pinkman who are left. We know how things turned out with Jesse in El Camino and his
journey to freedom, so really it's just Gene who's left now. And as the call continues, he asks her
about the different money laundering operations and accounts they had, with her saying
that they've all been raided by the feds, so gene only has those diamonds he took with him
and nothing else. At this point, Francesca wants to end the call, but Gene wants to keep
talking and we get some tidbits on people we know and those who are not currently present.
She tells him that Huell is now back home in New Orleans, which is of course great to hear,
that Bill Oakley is a defense attorney as seen on that billboard and then to Gene's shock,
she reminds him that she did get a phone call from Kim. She said that she was checking in on
her and that his name came up in the conversation, asking if he was still alive.
And after Francesca ends the call, this results in him driving to another pay phone, where he
calls the operator and asks to be connected to Palm Coast Sprinklers in Florida, which we're
guessing is where Kim Wexler is at or maybe was at prior to this call. Once he asks to speak
with Kim in saying that he believes she works there, the scene cuts to outside of the booth
where we can’t hear what he says next. What we know is that it clearly doesn’t go down well,
because we see Gene breaking the receiver and eventually smashing the glass on the side of
the phone booth. So whatever he learns here motivates him to go back to the life of crime
we see in the rest of the episode. But of course, we have many questions. Did he actually speak
to Kim? Or what did he learn on that phone call that provoked his angry response? I don't think
it's to do with her no longer working there, because it wouldn't have propted such a
violent reaction from him. But it's all about what created this kind of reaction. Did Kim
refuse to speak to him or did she speak to him and let him know her feelings towards what he's
done since? Well, we currently don't know, but whatever did happen during that call
has set in motion the events that follow and Kim's involvement is clearly going to be important come
the end of this show with however Gene turns out. And when we come to events that follow,
we learn that Gene makes a return to Omaha and re-visits Marion and Jeff at their home. And
eventually, it's also a return to his criminal ways as Saul Goodman.
Jeff returns home to find Gene laughing with Marion after he helped her search funny cat
videos on her new computer. But Gene is hurrying things along so that he can pull Jeff along with
his new plan. Jeff reminds him that he last said they were done, but before they toast to being
back in business, he asks Jeff to drive a cab shift for him and we soon see this new scheme
unfold. It involves Gene becoming freindly with a rich guy at a bar and getting him drunk, all
while Gene pretends to drink, and instead, sucks his cocktails through a tube in his sleeve.
Gene then helps to drunken subject into a cab driven by Jeff, and his friend Buddy returns
to their house, once the man has drugged by the water Jeff gives them on the ride home. Jeff
puts tape across their door so Buddy can get in, and once he is in, he's takes the victim’s wallet
and removes all of his IDs and credit cards to take photos of them. He then would look
through his files and take further pictures of tax returns and statements, alongside gathering
a helpful list of their passwords. And once he leaves the house, he would remove the tape
from the front door, making the whole thing a typical con from the intelligent mind of Saul,
coming down to identity theft sold for stacks. So new partners have indeed teamed up to
perform a new set of crimes, and it only furthers our questions of what Gene heard
on that phone call and why it leads him to double down with these schemes.
And with us seeing these partners execute cons, it's only right we get a taste of the past with
previous partners that Saul Goodman came in contact with. We get our first Breaking Bad
flashback scene, and we learn that not only does this episode act as a reference to Breaking
Bad's Better Call Saul episode, but that the flashbacks also take place in a parallel way to
it. We follow the cold open with the extended scene of Saul being dragged into the dessert by
Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. Saul enters the RV and is followed by noneother than
Walter and Jesse and he quickly puts together that it's them who cook the blue stuff
and that the man stood in front of him is indeed the famed Heisenberg. Saul pushes them for
information on their operation, but Walter and Jesse deny it, and when they try to start the RV
and drive them all back, it predictably won’t start. A nice reflection back to the events
of 4 days out. So they now have time to kill and Jesse makes it an opportunity to ask Saul
why he was screaming about Lalo before. He's quick to say that he's nobody and changes the
subject by prompting Walt to start the RV again. So he's clearly still haunted by that memory
of Lalo and it's becoming clear that all the events pre-Breaking Bad have developments in
the events that take place after. Mainly in psychological ways of course. The scene has one
more great moment that comes in the cinematography that's uutilised, with us seeing the grave
dug for Saul in the desert slowly fade into Gene lying in bed before he receives a new
back massager. The shot is one that conveys what we eventually learn at the end, that Saul has
made decisions that didn't have to be made. He went the route of crime and the actions
that lead to these moments have created a ripple effect of more bad decisions. Something that he
and Walter have a lot in common with and it's exactly why they use an episode titled Breaking
Bad with the scenes that are included. And from here the bad decisions only ramp up. Gene,
Jeff and Buddy scam more drunk rich men, and we see shots of Gene slipping the drugs into the
water bottles and Jeff selling all the stolen financial data for money. This repeats and
doesn't slow down until the episode's crucial victim at the very end. And things might change,
once that victim reveals that he’s been diagnosed with cancer.
But before we get to that victim we do get another brief flashback scene to the Breaking
Bad era events and we see Saul using that same back massager that Gene just ordered, with Mike
paying him a visit at his now-redesigned office. Mike is updating him on various clients and Saul
asks him specifically about Heisenberg. Mike tells him that he’s a high school chemistry
teacher working with a former student and that he has cancer. He adds that he’s in treatment
and it doesn’t look good for him, alongside the confirmation that Gus doesn’t even know about
him because he’s small in their line of work. Saul knows that Mike is the primary hand of the
currently unnamed Gus, but Mike also does work for Saul as a way of gathering intel on the
criminals, especially after Saul purchased Dr. Caldera’s black book. More importantly though,
this scene does not go in the opposite direction when it comes to the nature of Saul’s
initial conversations with Walt. We know that Gus was already interested in the Walter's meth
because Gale wouldn’t stop talking about it. But as we learn in the concluding moments of
this episode, Saul’s interest in working with Heisenberg is entirely his own. Mike warned
Saul to stay away from Heisenberg and he seemed very intruiged by him, even telling Mike himelf
that Walter’s product is the best in the business. So he does not listen to Mike’s thoughts
there and then, and he also doesn't listen to Buddy and Jeff’s attempts to tell him he is
taking things too far, once we come to the scene that follows.
That's because during the final scenes, Gene gets a call from Jeff and Buddy, leading him
to rush over and we find out that Buddy couldn't go through with it. He couldn't scam the guy
because he learned he has cancer and he’s taking the same pills that his own father takes.
Gene is angered by this and argues that he will be dead by the time he realizes he’s been
conned. Buddy believes they've made enough money to just let this one go, but Gene is
hesistant that this goes through. And with Buddy already pulling the tape off the man's front
door, it still doesn't stop Gene from doing it himself. He tells Buddy that he’s fired
and eventually convinces Jeff to drive him back to Cancer man's house where he will finish the job.
Jeff tells him that he might be awake since time has passed, but Gene instructs him not
to worry and just pick him up in 20 minutes. We transition to the last Breaking Bad scene of this
episode and we see Saul walking past Walter White's car and into the high school in what
would become the iconic scene from that Breaking Bad episode, where Saul chooses to get involved
with Walt. And as he goes through the door, we cut back to Gene breaking the glass of the
cancer man's door to get inside. So just like the shot of the grave transitioning to Gene
lying on his bed, we now know that he has essentially dug his
own grave. Even after multiple warnings throughout the show from Chuck, Kim,
Mike, and even Jeff. Whether he get's caught or not, he is in a pit of his own making and I
very much doubt that a happy ending is possible now. There's no one else to blame but Jimmy
and the repeating choices he makes in becoming Saul Goodman. Whether this leads to a return from
Kim Wexler is up for question, but it's clear that what he heard on that call has motivated him to go
straight back to his repeating poisonous ways.
But what are my overall thoughts of Episode 11. Well, I thought this episode was a perfectly
executed handling of all of the timelines in use. Using both the Breaking Bad events and the
Gene timeline to communicate Jimmy's reflective decisions and what that leads to is something I
didn't expect in the context of how they pulled it off. Having Walter and Jesse back could
have just lead to fan service, but they chose a brilliant moment to showcase how Saul
made a decision that would lead to where he is today, and then the decision he makes at the end
of this episode is one that stresses there being quite the consequences here too. The further
teases of Kim and the ideas that these final two episodes will leave us on get me incredibly
excited to see the outcome. Thomas Schnauz did a great job of directing once again with his use of
masterful cinematography and editing across the timelines, telling us this story in a
straightforward way. I can't wait to see where this will lead and why he reacted the way he
did to that phonecall with Kim, and I expect we'll see even more cutting between these two
timelines next week. Overall, it's a great episode to heighten the tension
and we're left desperately wanting to know what will happen to Gene Takovic.
But that was my spoiler review and recap for Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 11. I'm giving
it a rating of 10 out of 10. But to those who have already seen this episode, what are your
thoughts on all the events that went down and what do you think will happen in Episode 12?
Let me know down below in the comments section.
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