"He was an incredible lawyer. The most brilliant guy I ever met, but he was limited. I tried,
i could have tried harder."
Hey guys, Pete here. Today I'm going to talk about the ending of Better Call Saul and this
video will absolutely contain spoilers for the end of the Breaking Bad universe if you haven't
watched the finale (episode 613) yet. I imagine at some point there was a meeting where Peter Gould
explained a vital piece of information to his costume director, I'm gonna need you to find a
suit that goes so hard that it drips Saul Goodman even when we see it in black and white. after all,
this is a man getting dressed for his own funeral. "Saul Gone" is the rare tv series finale where i
got everything that i wanted and then some it managed to give me more than what i was willing
to expect for fear of being disappointed i may not have necessarily been hoping to see gene turn
so hard into being saul but what i thought was brilliant in the way this was put together was
that the writers led me on a journey where because of what i know about the characters i could more
or less anticipate each step and it all felt right once again they managed to make it exciting even
though ultimately the characters do what we expect them to do and to be fair it's a lot more cerebral
than what i imagined some people were wanting so i guess i could see how it might not land for some
but i'll come back around to my thoughts about why it worked after i recapped what happened spoiler
alert because jimmy didn't get away with it and still found redemption from the only person that
matters to him episode 13 opens with the first of three flashbacks which in his interview with alan
seppenwall peter gould compared to a christmas carol in the episode we watched gene become saul
and he's visited by three ghosts the first is mike ehrman trout which happens during their
trek through the desert back in episode 508 bagman i guess if we really wanted to put this in context
for the timeline since he still has his urine in the davison main bottle when he finally gets phone
service this would have to be after they make contact and no help is on the way jimmy brings up
the idea of keeping the seven million dollars and when mike explains why that would be a bad idea he
lays out his plan take the first 6 million and build a time machine that leads to the question
of where's the first place you'd go mike says back to december 8 2001 which i presume is the
night he killed his son maddy's murderers based on the timing of things but he quickly updates
that to the first day he took a bribe and became a crooked cop what's more important than his answer
is that he's being honest which jimmy shows is something he's incapable of when he talks about
going back to invest the rest of his money this is before howard died and before kim left him and
so before he ever decided to go full saul to try to relieve his pain so we know his answer is bs
this lack of honesty will continue through the second flashback where we go back to ed
the disappears basement during the events of the penultimate episode of breaking bad before saul
was carried off to become gene in omaha and walt was stashed away in new hampshire they spent some
time together and saul brought up the time machine question again walt being the arrogant prick he
is dismisses it as a meaningless question because that kind of time travel is impossible as it would
violate the second law of thermodynamics this takes us a step closer to what the whole thing
is about when walt calls it what it is saul is asking him about his regrets mr white almost gets
there when he mentions gray matter but quickly shifts the blame away from himself by saying
that his partners were artfully maneuvering him into making his decision saul still can't come up
with anything real so he brings up a slip and fall that still gives him pain and to that walt says so
you were always like this this sounds a lot like the third ghost his brother chuck and is something
that would later be echoed by howard hamlin right before he died and i do think this is crucial to
what they're trying to say with this story so i will definitely come back to it at the end
before we get into that this finale is about change and before that can happen jimmy slash
saul jean has to make a choice to get us there the present day timeline picks up right where
episode 12 left off we saw a glimpse of jimmy when he didn't stop marion from pushing the button on
her life alert but now he's fully gene in survival mode trying to escape on his way out in her last
dramatic contribution marion is able to get his license plate number which means it doesn't take
the police long to track him down there's a short chase where it seems like he might have a chance
to get away i mean he still has those diamonds and ed's number right yes but no his escape ends
in a dumpster which is a nice reference to the beginning of the sandpiper case back in season 1.
in case you weren't sure where his head was it can be kind of confusing his first call is to cinnabon
to tell them they'll be needing a new manager after that he sort of falls apart in the holding
cell and at his lowest point looks up to see my lawyer will ream you as carved on the wall he
starts to laugh and in this instant becomes saul goodman in the script for the episode peter gould
wrote that as a fugitive he was playing a game he didn't know but now that he's in the system
his system he's like cal l waking up under a yellow sun in this place he has super powers
and we see him get right down to the business of putting those to use he calls bill oakley who
francesca told him had switched sides to become a defense lawyer and he sets out to get himself
a deal on the way to meet with the lawyers he sees marie schrader and uses her as a prop to
show them what they're up against after listening to a heartfelt monologue about losing her husband
and what she'd like to see happen to saul he responds in kind with a story about how he got
dragged into working with walter white he mentions being taken to the desert and having a gun pointed
at his head and how that scared him into doing everything he did it's the kind of performance
we've seen before and he basically looks sincere no one in the room believes this to be true and
the prosecutor doesn't think a jury will either but that's not what's important as saul points
out all he needs is one and that reality is enough to bring them to the table he gets them to agree
to a really generous deal where he'll serve seven years at the prison of his choice it's all at full
throttle and while seven years is not nothing this would pretty much go down as a legendary win given
the circumstances it almost ends there but when he pushes for a pint of blue bell mint chocolate
chip ice cream in exchange for information about howard hamlin's death he learns about kim going
back to albuquerque to file her affidavit with the d.a while that steals his thunder as far as
the mint chocolate chip is concerned it gets worse when bill tells him on the flight back that even
though there are no witnesses and the d.a probably won't do anything with it she also went to confess
to cheryl in person which means she'll be able to bring a civil suit against her we see that this
gives saul an idea but it's not at all clear what his angle is he tells bill to tell the prosecution
that he has more information about howard this is somewhat confusing because as bill points out
anything he tells them might be bad for kim plus we know that kim isn't looking for him
to save her but at this point we have to sort of give it to him that he knows better than us
after the end of the last episode i was hoping that kim's breakdown on her way out of albuquerque
would mark the end of the indecisive life she was leading in florida we take a brief trip
there to see that it is starting to happen but that it's going slow it's not jimmy turning into
saul or kim waking up in the morning and snapping back to be her old self in a scene at lunch with
her co-workers at palm coast she still struggles to offer an opinion but later we see her go to the
local legal aid office and volunteer it's a step in the right direction and i loved how the woman
is so busy that she doesn't offer much in the way of her having to make a decision she just
tells her to answer the phone and we see how she lights up and rises to the challenge right away
unfortunately any newfound piece she achieved from this is dashed away when she gets a call
from ada eriksen she tells her that saul's in custody and that he's giving testimony that
affects her personally cut to saul goodman being led into the courtroom with that sharkskin suit
i mentioned at the beginning of the video we see that his plan worked because kim is there
and as he derails his deal by telling the truth we start to understand what he was trying to do he
tells the court that he lied about her involvement in howard's murder just because he wanted her to
be there to hear what he had to say he started off with the same story he told marie about being
afraid of walt but admits that it didn't last long he saw an opportunity and did everything he could
to help walt build his empire we know that all of this came from his coping mechanism that he put
into place after she left and there's a moment after bill hilariously tries to withdraw from
the case where he looks back to see that kim is certainly watching but he can tell he hasn't quite
won her over yet which at this point is clearly all he's trying to do he brings up howard and by
now saul is gone he mentions that kim had the guts to leave town and to start over but he was the one
who ran away now that he's really looking at the truth he moves on to admit that he got chuck's
insurance cancelled because he saw a chance to hurt him and that he'll have to live with the fact
that he went on to commit suicide and while this is all coming from a person who we know would say
just about anything if it would help him the fact that it doesn't hear shows us that he's
telling the truth there are some visual clues to enforce it as well when he mentions chuck it
cuts to a wide shot where we can see the exit sign a lot chicanery and hear the electric hum
and there's a shot of kim where she's framed like she's in the crosshairs from the railing in the
courtroom it's also in the performance and in the way he says the name's mcgill i'm james mcgill but
where it really counts for him and for everyone who fell in love with the characters on this show
where it really counts is that kim believes him he looks back at her one last time
and when he doesn't see the response right away he drops his eyes but when he looks back up ray
seahorn does the most subtle bit of facial acting where she doesn't really do a look but the tension
in her face sort of eases up just enough to where you see that it got through to her and in case you
didn't pick up on that it's made explicit when he gets called for a meeting with his lawyer
i completely expected this to beak him through the long drawn out reveal but thought that it
meant that she'd been reinstated and was moving on and practicing law again in reality she just
used her new mexico bar card that doesn't have an expiration date and boy was i glad that she did
and a beautiful callback to the first scene they had together back in season one she pulls out a
cigarette and they share it up against the wall her hands are shaking as she tries to light it
and when he helps her steady them you see that the flame and then the cherry on the cigarette
is in color it ain't much but it's theirs and it's a spark that comes from that thing that they share
you learn that instead of seven years he ends up doing 86 for telling the truth so even though he
mentions good behavior it seems safe to say that he'll never get out of there this is a fictional
prison as far as i can tell so it's not even clear if she'll come back to visit this could be the
only time they see each other but again that's not what's important here as kim walks out and fights
off tears she gets one more look at jimmy in the yard and it's clear that no matter what happens it
was enough for him to have just one more moment with her in the closing shot he gives her the
finger guns and this time it's a sign that saul's gone when she turns again before he's out of sight
you know that she knows that he didn't do it to get out of trouble or to win her over but
to set himself free it ain't much but given what he's done it's also kind of everything so in the
end he didn't get away with it he didn't even get what walt or nacho did a chance to go out on his
own terms in the first half of this show i thought the tragedy was that jimmy a character who at his
core was always looking to be liked by everyone and to be loved ultimately was looking in a place
where he could never get it his brother chuck a complicated character who was broken in different
ways to the point of not being able to give it to him for the way things played out it was more
about him not being able to find himself as all these things were happening chuck's death the
ordeal in the desert lalo howard's death losing kim and the entirety of his time with walter
white he may have brought most of this on himself but these things ended up defining him and his
not being able to move past them each thing sent him further away from the good that was in there
and each made it harder to change what i really liked about this is that his most self-destructive
period came after kim made the hard but sensible decision to leave after howard's death
so it's fitting that when he finally comes around it's after he finds out that she came clean to try
to make that right no one is saving anyone but the thing that they share that connection means enough
to get jimmy to start the process of changing it smashes chuck's idea that jimmy was born that way
and that it was pointless for him to try to be something different it also shows that he's not
the same type of character as walter with him i always believed that getting cancer was the thing
that allowed him to become what was always under the surface he was motivated to get respect and
fear he thought he deserved and was being denied in his life and heisenberg was the realization of
that jimmy came off as more complicated because after you met him you started to wonder if the
saul persona you already knew might all just be an act it turned out to be something else something
more self-destructive but it wasn't terminal like walt's cancer jimmy under the surface just wanted
to be loved and through his time with kim learned what that could be because that's the thing none
of us have time machines and as jimmy found out none of us can run from our past forever we can
just go forward trying to make better decisions and make the ones that the people we care about
would appreciate jimmy only earned one smoke in one long last look but it's worlds better than
anything saul goodman ever was a part of i don't think it's a traditionally happy ending but it
could have been a lot worse especially given how many people die in this universe for jimmy being
in jail might not be the end of the world i think you get a sense of that here if i could have left
one thing out of this maybe it would be that bus ride chant which was a little bit much but either
way you can imagine that he'd be able to handle himself in there nothing about what he did would
appear to help kim's situation with cheryl's civil suit but i suppose she would feel that it's a just
punishment also jimmy could have really wasted the opportunity if he tried to solve that problem for
her they both paid the price for their mistakes to some extent they both got there by their own
means and by finally taking some responsibility and looking at the part he played in the pain
he carried around he gets to be jimmy again and speaking of chuck when jimmy was doing his thing
in court right after he said his brother was a brilliant lawyer he added that he was limited
it seemed like a really strange choice of words at the time but it ties in really wonderfully with
the final ghost of christmas past flashback in that we see them in what appears to be
the time right before season 1 started did you ground yourself it's like music to the ears and
there are about a thousand references packed into this short interaction but what stands out the
most is that at least in this case chuck is the one that would like jimmy to stay so they can talk
as isolated as he was you never got the sense that he was lonely and i suppose neither did jimmy they
go back and forth and you see a warmer side of chuck even though there's the sense that he might
be trying to talk him out of practicing law to balance things out it doesn't re-contextualize
their relationship but it is a reminder that chuck did care for his brother in that limited way that
jimmy mentioned it wasn't what he wanted but there was something there and it's here that we see the
copy of the time machine by h.g wells that popped up in the season 6 premiere in saul's mansion
and again in jimmy's room in episode 2. my initial interpretation was that this meant that this was
jimmy's answer to the time machine question maybe he would come back and have this conversation with
his brother rather than rushing off to try to impress him by being something he thought he had
no business being and in the end it turns out he was pretty good at that his being leaned back in
his chair as he listened to his deal put that on full display it was glorious but it wasn't
everything and i think that is a great place to leave things so let me know in the comments what
you thought about the ending of better call saul and how it worked as the ending of the breaking
bad universe there's a ton of references and things i had to cut out because there was so
much going on that i really wanted to focus on this change that jimmy was going through as heavy
as it was it managed to throw in some great laughs i cracked up when bill tried to quit the case and
when walt told saul to stay in his lane it really is the end and the callbacks and references really
made it feel that way the impact that common items like the wayfarer headrest on the airplane or when
walt takes a second to look at the watch that jesse gave him for his birthday i'm gonna miss
seeing things like that pop up and the writing and the acting and everything i mean last week
was sort of ray seahorn showcase and this week was all about bob odenkirk of course everyone involved
did a terrific job but i have to point out how skillfully he went through this episode changing
from one of the characters to the other that all exist inside this same person there's just
nothing else like it and i could go on forever but i won't i want to thank you all for watching this
season with me you all helped to make it a blast please like this video if you enjoyed it please
subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and thanks for watching i'll talk to you soon