Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 6 has just released on Netflix and AMC, and we get an
episode then again teases what's to come in the midseason finale.
The focus this week is on a flashback scene with Kim as a child, her and
Jimmy's D-Day plan and the anxiety from other characters such as Mike and Howard.
In this spoiler review, I'm going to be giving you my
recap of Better Call Season 6 episode 6, entitled Axe And Grind, alongside discussing my general
thoughts on it.
But before I get into it, if you want to see more videos on the final
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But without further a do, lets dive into my recap and review for Better
Call Saul Season 6 Episode 6.
So the 6th episode of Better Call Saul's final season, opens with yet another flash to a
different time, and this one is our second with young Kim Wexler.
The cold open gives us a flashback to a young Kim and her mother.
Last season, we got one with a teenage Kim who was waiting outside her school in Nebraska
and her mother turned up hours late in a drunken state
with it resulting in Kim not getting in the car.
We learnt that she would rather make a long walk home than do what her mother says, and
it really gave us a glimpse into why Kim might be the way she is today.
Well in this new cold open, we get a little bit more information on what Kim is embarking
down bad choice road, and how it stems from an early age.
Young Kim is in a depatment store officer where the manager has caught her trying to
steal a necklace and a pair of earrings and it's here that her mother comes in, looking
identical to Rhea Seehorn, acting dissapointed in her
daughter and saying she won't let it happen again.
Young Kim just takes in the fake anger and affirms that she won't do it again.
But as soon as they come outside it's not long before
Kim's mother starts laughing and reveals that she stole the necklace and gives it to her.
She says to her that she didn't know she had in her
and this is a perfect scene to show that Kim is the kind of character that we didn't expect
to turn out the way she has.
But in a way, using her past frames has shown why she perhaps has
become this way and alligned herself even more with Jimmy.
As the daughter of a single mother, one that seemed to be fueling the person she's become,
and someone who has been moved from one home to another, it makes sense why she
would be doing the things she is now and trying to support the little guy like Jimmy.
Now we clearly know why as Jimmy McGill’s wife she
proposed to him after being on the back end of one of his scams against her own client.
And it's clear that come the current point in this season, that Kim has not moved away
from the commitment to taking down Howard and puting
an end to the Sandpiper lawsuit.
She clearly is up to the task and with an engrained history of getting away with things,
praised by her own mother, it seems there is no turning back.
It seems to us that Kim’s childhood is what has made her empathetic to the people she
sides with and it reveals why she might be attracted to
Jimmy and his cons.
It’s a standout moment and I think it will turn out to be a crucial one for however Kim
ends up in the show and the message that they ultimately convey with her
character.
But before we get back to current times with the evolving plan of Kim and Jimmy, we do
get a brief for scenes with other characters that really feeling the heat and I think even
the viewer feels quite sympathetic towards them.
After the opening credits, we're back in Albuquerque during the present Better Call Saul timeline
and for the first time we're inside Howard Hamlin's home, where the lawyer is trying
to decide what to wear.
All his clothes are perfectly organised and after he decides which blue shirt to wear,
he takes on the long process of making the perfect latte, and finishing in
it off with a symbol of peace using lots of milk.
It's at this point where we actually see Howard's wife, who clearly isn't sleeping with him
at the house, and Howard says that the latte is for her.
We get a sense of their shaky relationship with his wife thanking him for the Latte in
the smallest of ways and then poyring the latte into her travel mug without a word towards
the peace sign he spent long to make.
It again shows us that at heart Howard is someone who really spends his time trying
to meticulously per-fect and be the best he can be, even after
problems, yet it seems he's always on the back end.
During their brief conversation in this scene, Howard also speaks about Jimmy and tells
his wife that she may hear or see something connected to his cons.
He re-aafirms that he's handling it and back at his office, the private detective he hired
goes over Jimmy's recent activities and we discover that he
made a visit to a bank and withdrew $20,000 in cash.
So Howard knows that Jimmy is up to something and like us, we don't quite know all the
deatils.
But again it's two scenes that really re-frame the idea of not wanting bad things to happen
to Howard, but they do seem inevitable.
And I will return to that plan of Jimmy and Kim after we recap some of the other smaller
scenes and characters in this particular episode.
These involve a few brief moments with that of Lalo Salamanca and Mike Ehrmantraut.
Lalo is of course still out there in search of information about Gus Fring's hit operation,
and comes across the person he's been after.
Kai, The German worker who previously called Werner Ziegler weak is seen chopping wood
in a forest, when Lalo appears, chases him down and after
getting an axe to the chest, he finds a way to gain the upper hand in the fight and asks
the engineer to tell him everything he needs to know.
We get nothing else with Lalo but it's clear to us that this man is going to tell
him what he needs to know about Gus and that very soon he'll be on his way to confront
the chicken man alongside Mike and his team.
And this leads us to possibly the most impactful moment of the episode, which involves us learning
about how Gus and Mike’s anciety surrounding Lalo impact their relationships.
In particular, we focus on Mike’s relationship
with his own family, as the hitman must watch his granddaughter play with her new telescope
from a distance, without her knowing he's just
across the road just to ensure that the operation won't come back to bite his own family.
Mike seems worried when he tells her that he’ll be calling the next day, and the framing
of this scene is extremely telling towards what happens
to Mike's family in breaking bad.
She is just across the road, yet out of reach and Mike continuously worries for their safety
and stability with everything he's got into.
It will be really interesting to see how they end Mike's arc in this show but right now,
I think's he's the one character from Better Call Saul
that I think they've done better here than in Breaking Bad.
They make you really connect to how he feels surrounding the protection of his family and
frame why he makes the choices he does in Breaking Bad.
Think about the Nacho situation and how maybe that affects him when he ultimately comes
in contact with Jesse Pinkman.
It's the little things and moments like the one in this episode that invest you even more
so in the emotional qualities to his arc.
And this leads us back to the main chunk of episode 6 which surrounds Jimmy and Kim.
They have begun the final step of their D-Day plan, and while the details are still mysterious,
we're starting to see the greater hints of the things at play.
Whether that be the photo shoot with an actor dressed to look like the Sandpiper judge Casamiro,
or a late-night visit to Dr. Caldera involving Jimmy taking a mystery
substance that won't show up on a blood test and makes his pupils a lot wider.
Caldera tells them that he's leaving and in his black book
we see the hint of the vacuum cleaner repair shop.
This will likely be a huge hint for what's to come and I wouldn't be surprised if we
got a brief seen with Robert Forster down the line
before he of course passed away.
But it's easter egg and we won't really know if that comes into the frame until we see
the later episodes.
But while Jimmy is shocked that Caldera is leaving due to all the money he's making,
Caldera knows that this kind of lifestyle is one that is not a happy one, and that getting
away with things affects the outcome.
Kim seems to see this and it's over her arc in this episode
that we get possibly the final straw in her decision to go back down that path.
After watching a trial and following his concerns with Howard, Clifford Main offers Kim a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity, a presentation in Santa Fe to help her career during the same
day that the final stage of Howard's con is due to take place.
Jimmy says that she doesn't have to be with him during the con and as they spend a final
moment together toasting outside of HHM, it seems like everything is going
to plan.
But with just a small period of time to go before the plan kicks into motion, and Kim
driving in the direction of Santa Fe and her good future, Jimmy is in the process of buying
a bottle of Zafiro Anejo and things start to go wrong.
He sees the real waiting in line, and while he has the mustache that they perfectly
recreated with their impersonator, he notices that he's also got a broken arm.
Jimmy freaks out, calls Kim and tries to pull the plug on the con and this could have been
the moment where Kim finds a way out of a plan that's way too
risky.
She could have kept driving, but instead, she makes a fast turn down a long road and
heads straight back to Jimmy.
She says to him it happens today and heads back speeding down
potentially bad choice road.
So next week's midseason finale will likely answer many of the questions surrounding their
final plan and we'll see exactly what Kim has just given up in
this big opportunity she had.
Maybe if her childhood was better she might have continued down the path to better things,
but again, she turns around and heads straight back to Jimmy.
I think what this tells us is that this was really Kim's last opportunity a legitimate
chance at getting her dream job, but by using this road to
symbolise her coming straight back to the final steps of the con, it tells us that her
downfall is inevitable.
I think the aftermath of this whether it's successful or not will come back
to haunt Kim's status as a lawyer, but we will soon truly see what her and Jimmy have
planned in the takedown of Howard.
So what were my general thoughts of episode 6.
Well, it's an episode that again continues this buildup to whatever D-day turns out to
be, and don't me wrong, while I do think there could
have been more plot development towards Jimmy and Kim's plan in terms of what they are actually
doing, if next week does have the huge payoff, then it will be all worth it.
We still know so little about what that plan is, and it's
hard to really invest in moments to do with their plan when we don't know how it fits
into whatever the outcome is.
Like with Jimmy discovering that the real Casimiro has a broken
atm and the 20 grand that Howard mention earlier on in the episode.
The plot did feel like it was moving a lot slower, but again, because
the character moments are continuously written so well, I think it will mean that the payoff
will carry it over the line.
We are so invested in the motives of each of the characters,
and when the potential events take place next week, it will hopefully be really effective.
Overall, we leart that because of Francesca's help, Jimmy has the call-in information for
a conference call with Sandpiper, that his filming
crew are shooting a Casimiro impersonator and that Dr. Caldera has helped Jimmy dilate
his pupils.
And while Kim Wexler got a perfect meeting with the Jackson Mercer Foundation,
she still ends up taking bad choice road in the aim to take Howard down.
And with all the further tension surrounding Gus, Mike and Lalo, next
week's finale has to really deliver on a lot of setup plot points and increase the overall
pacing that has been slower in the previous 2 episodes.
As I said, I think it's going to be worth it, and Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould
know how to write television that fully pays off.
We will have to wait until next week, but hopefully, it wll be an episode that delivers
on it all and ups the ante.
But that was my spoiler review and recap for Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 6.
Axe and Grind is slower and more mysterious but it stays on target when it comes to delivering
a satisfying midseason finale.
It foucses on the last moments with these characters before they all presubabaly come
together and everything goes down.
Will they answer the other questions like that of Mike warning Kim about Lalo and
Lalo himself making a fatal move, or will it simply focus on the revealing plan of Jimmy
and Kim in taking down Howard.
I honestly don't know, but I think a lot will happen and based
on this episode, it clearly won't be very happy for the characaters we care about or
have stayed with throughout the seasons.
It likely going to be eventful and let's hope it really raises
the stakes for the second part of Season 6, which returns this July.
I'm giving Season 6 Episode 6 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 the mid-season finale next week?
Let me know down below in the comments section.
For videos on every episode of Better Call Saul Season 6, including my trailer breakdown
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