Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 5 has just released on Netflix and AMC, and we get an
episode that is clearly setting up the climatic events of the midseason finale.
The focus this week is on Saul and Howard's rivalry and all
the tension surrounding Gus, Mike and Lalo.
In this spoiler review, I'm going to be giving you my recap of Better Call Season 6 episode
5, entitled Black And Blue, alongside discussing
my general thoughts on it.
But before I get into it, if you want to see more videos on the final season of Better
Call Saul, then don't forget to support this video by giving it
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But without further a do, lets dive into my recap and review for Better Call Saul Season
6 Episode 5.
So similar to last week, Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 5 is one that's more exposition-filled,
and brings everything down a few notches before we really feel the heat in the next
two.
It's one that gives us a moment to breathe, but it also allows us to have a moment to
think about where our characters currently are and where they might be headed in the
last 2 episodes of season 6 part 1.
But like I was saying last week, Better Call Saul doesn't really have filler, because it
makes the full use of it's time to convey mood, the developing
narrative threads, and more importantly, the current feelings of all the characters.
This is good leading into the more explosive moments, and like we saw with the buildup
to death of Nacho in episode 3, I can only imagine that
here it will be completely worth it too.
Breaking Bad has begun for a lot of these characters, and the events this week, really
shows that this process is well underway.
So what happened this week and what does it mean for all the central players.
So after meeting Mike for the first time last week and finding out that Lalo is still alive,
Kim like a few others, is really feeling the heat of all of this coming back to bite.
And it's only worse that she hasn't told Jimmy yet
and he seems completely oblivious to it.
We understand this right from the start of the episode, with Kim wedging a chair against
their front door, staying up smoking in the middle of
the night, and Jimmy thinks it's just because of Lalo's previous visit, saying he thanks
god that he's now dead.
Kim doesn't tell him the truth, similar to how Jimmy didn't fully explain
to her what happened with him and Mike in last season's Bagman episode in the desert.
And don't forget that it was Jimmy's original story of
events that led to the confrontation with him, Kim and Lalo in their apartment.
When Mike saw what Kim said to Lalo during that moment, it also set in motion his line
from last week, where he told her that she was made of sterner
stuff.
It'll be interesting to see how this develops from the opposite side of things with Kim
and for all we know, she must have a pretty good reason for not telling Jimmy about Lalo
still being alive.
Maybe Mike has made her believe that she is the stronger one and that she can handle this
herself, rather than scare Jimmy, potentially ruin the plan to take down Howard
and disrupt the Sandpiper settlement cash undertaking.
The thing is while Kim is fully aware and has shown her commitment to executing plots,
in the reverse, Lalo is also commited in the case of finding evidence on Gus and the whole
thing in general.
So is Kim out of her depth and will Lalo come back to bite as she descends
into the breaking bad of it all?
On one side, while she wants to help the little guy with a legal process, she also wants to
take down Howard as much as Jimmy does.
So it will be interesting to see what that really amounts
to and whether Kim can really walk out of this one.
And speaking of another character who's feeling the pressure this week, we get some brilliantly
contructed and quieter moments with Gus Fring.
Like with Kim, we see how the effects of Lalo still being alive affect him and the
kind of mindset he's put into.
We get shots of him scrubbing little bits of dirt on a bath with a toothbrush and also
that of him feeling tense at work.
He mentions the curly fries that last season he showed to Madrical and that triggers the
thought of how everything surrounding the development of the super lab with the German
workers could come back to haunt him.
The only way Gus was finally calmed down was by taking a trip to the unfinished lab, and
planning stuff over in his mind.
He measures something there and then removes what seems to be a gun from
the holster around his ankle and places it within the construction tractor that lies
in the lab.
So does Gus think that he and Lalo are eventually going to meet up there and what
is Gus really planning?
Well, we'll have to wait and see but what we do know come the final scene, is that Gus
is right about the links to Germany coming back to haunt him.
And I'll return to this once we reach that final scene which also features the return
of Lalo.
But before I get to that, we get quite the satisfying moment between Jimmy and Howard.
Through the invitation from Howard, who after being confronted by Clifford Main about the
Coke incident and kicking a hocker out of his Car,
Jimmy comes to a boxing ring where he realises that Howard's making a last attempt to end
their war.
He pretends to be client called Mr. Ward, yes I know pretty funny and lures him
in for a one on one fight.
Jimmy initially refuses but he changes his mind, and ends up getting beaten up by Hamlin.
Howard says, “you’ve mistaken my kindness for weakness, I’d like
to think tonight made a difference.
I’d like to think this ends it, but probably not.”
And he might be right, because if anything, this might
make Jimmy go the extra mile in taking him down and giving us an idea of how even Kim
might turn out by the end of this show.
Howard may soon realise that it's really Kim who is his
biggest threat and with those extra shots of Kim sat on the toilet earlier on in this
episode, reflecting of the grim looking one placed in Saul's yet to be designed office,
this might be symbolising the downfall of Kim while being
so involved and in charge of these endeveours.
And coming back to Jimmy's new office, it seems that in the next two episodes, were
going to really see it's transformation through the
re-introduction of Fransesca, who's going to be helping on the design of it.
We'll have to see, but it's clear that Saul has got a lot of bad
business opening up, and yet he needs something to shift himself out of this oblivious state
towards the road he's embarked on.
He doesn't know about Lalo with Kim keeping that from him
and Howard is making a hefty, yet probabaly failed fight back against everything he and
Kim are doing.
But what ends up being the most crucial part of this episode, actually comes in the final
sequence of events surrounding the return of Lalo.
And based on what happens, this seems like it's going to make for quite the explosion
when everything comes together.
After the episode began with a breaking bad-esque cold open, we finally see what that all meant.
In the musical opening, we see the manufacturing
of a plaque with a ruler in it and the German inscription on it translates to, "With love…
your boys”.
It's safe to assume that this is to do with Werner Ziegler and his men, with the
former killed by Mike back in season 4, after overseeing a team to develop the super-lab.
And when we come to the ending scenes, the dots start
to really connect.
Lalo is back and he’s now in Germany, pretending to be a rich businessman speaking to a German
woman at a local bar.
He poses as Ben and it's not long before she tells him about the accidental death of her
Husband, with the structure they built caving in on them.
We know this isn't true, as her husband is Zieglar, and he was killed because he was
leaking information to Gus Fring's enemies.
Lalo asks her many questions and eventually walks her back home, so he can clearly know
how to get into her house and uncover something about
Zieglar.
While she didn't let him in, the next day, Lalo break into her house while she's briefly
out and comes across the slide rule memento from the cold open.
She comes home just as he sees it and while he prepars his gun and
silencer in the chance he'd have to use it, once she arrives upstairs, Lalo has already
exited through the bedroom window and off to
potentially confront Gus Fring.
Lalo has a definitive target in mind, fighting back against the things that previously happened,
and it seems that he's really taking his time to put
that in motion.
But with Gus already seeing the lines of sight, will it be enough?
Well, like a lot of things in this episode, we'll soon find out, and it's clear that Kim
and Gus are both very tense surrounding this upcoming
threat, with Jimmy still oblivious to everything that might happen in the process.
Once he finds out though, everything should blow up and I
think that's exactly what's going to happen in the final 2 episodes.
So what did I think of Season 6 Episode 5.
Well, while Black and Blue slows down the pace of Season 6, it also feels like we've
reached the brief quieter moment before the midseason
finale grabs us once again.
And this is okay, because it's good for the viewer to be allowed to have a moment to really
feel the sizzling tension and breathe in a quite perfect season
thus far.
And while it is slower, like I was saying, it still feels heavily important because we
revisit plot points from 2 seasons ago that haven't really been acknowledged since.
And what it tells us is that Vince Gilligan, Petter
Gould and all the writers and crew, are making sure they not leaving anything open-ended.
And not to mention that it was fun seeing the
reappearance of Lalo Salamanca, alongside that boxing match between Jimmy and Howard.
It's these moments and interactions that really help you to feel the more eventful moments
that I'm sure are going to boil in the next two
episodes.
Some may be dissapointed by this and all the setup for what's to come, but I personally
think it's crucial in getting us to really care and connect the dots with everything
that's about to go down.
Like how Kim repeated the words of Howard from last week to an ex-co worker, "I'm just
getting warmed up".
And her decision to not tell Jimmy about Lalo and
almost ignore the nice comments from someone else, it tell's you that from this point on,
there's just no escape.
But that was my spoiler review and recap for Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 5.
Black And Blue is a quieter, table-setting episode that communicates no point of return
for Jimmy and Kim.
It also relates this to the tension of Gus, shows us what he could have in store for Lalo
and reversely, sets up Lalo's revenge through a returning plot thread.
It's an episode that will be looked back on as crucial if
the mid season finale does pay off, and after the greatness of the earlier episodes in this
season, I think the writters know what they are
doing and I'm fully on board.
Now it's just left to see what happens in the final two episodes before the season 6
break, and if I had to guess, I think it will be explosive.
I'm giving Season 6 Episode 5 of Better Call Saul a rating
of 8.5 out of 10.
But to those who have already seen the episode, what are your thoughts on all the events that
went down and what do you think will happen in Episode 6 next week?
Let me know down below in the comments section.
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