Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 12 has just released on Netflix and AMC, and we get a
penultimate episode focussed on Kim Wexler following the last time we saw her.
We see how things have changed and the differences between her
and Gene in the years since following their destructive plan to ruin Howard.
It's an emotional and eventful episode as we expected, and it
only get's us anticipating that finale even more.
In this spoiler review, I'm going to be giving you my recap of Better Call Season 6 episode
12, entitled Waterworks, alongside discussing my general thoughts towards it.
But before I get into it, if you want to see more videos on the ending of Better Call Saul,
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But with that out the way, lets dive into my recap and review for Better Call Saul Season
6 Episode 12.
So in the penultimate episode of Better Call Saul, the fun is all but gone and the misery
has begun.
Before Kim left Jimmy, she told him that while they had fun, they hurt everyone around
them.
And with them both about to cross paths again, we see how things have totally changed following
the death of Howard in their apartment.
It's a fitting episode for the waterworks title and it promises an eventual end to the
journey of Jimmy McGill and Kim Wexler.
So let's breakdown what happened in this packed Vince Gilligan instalment of Better Call Saul.
If we're gonna begin things in order of timeline, it's best we start with the scenes in the
Breaking Bad era.
We open this episode with Saul Goodman stalling a meeting with Kim and instead
he's bouncing a ball against the monument of justice that she previously had the idea
for.
That topples and it indicates what lies ahead for him with everything unfold during the
Breaking Bad era and the Gene timeline.
He’s essentially wasting time and it's because Kim has returned to Alberquerque to get him
to sign divorce papers.
But once we do get to that meeting later in the episode, we see quite the telling response
from Saul about where he's at mentally during this particular timeframe.
Of course, the Saul Goodman persona was fueled by the anger and
sorrow following Kim walking out of his life, and now that she's back at his office wanting
a official divorce, we see him embodying that rude and cocky persona more than he previously
has.
He’s tells Kim that she should have taken her share of the Sandpiper settlement, and
it's no shock to us to learn that he did take the money after the brutal events with Howard,
and she didn’t.
Kim doesn't say a word to him, and after he signs the papers, he tells her to have a nice
life and she eventually leaves.
In the reception area she get's passed by his next
client, who noneother than emilio from season 1 of Breaking Bad and that links into what
Jesse said to Walter about Emilio being got off twice by Saul.
A way of convincing him to take up Saul as his lawyer during that previous show.
And speaking of Jesse, when she goes outside to smoke a cigarette, she meets another client
of his, and that's noneother than Jesse Pinkman himself.
Not only do we get to catch up with Jesse before he meets Walt and continues works with
Emilio, but we get quite the clever moment between a set of characters in very different
situations.
This was the point before he met Heisenberg and the tradegy in his life that follows,
whereas Kim has already experienced a big tradegy.
If she wanted to, she could change Jesse's life there and then, but without knowing
what path he would eventually go down, she gives him the answer he would want to hear.
When he asks if Saul's any good, she replies, “When I knew him, he was.”
It's an emotional reflection from Kim as she says those words, trying to help Jimmy, even
if it's probabaly for the worst when it comes to his and Jesse's
future.
She didn't think that Jimmy would descent into what he is now, and like always, she
tries to help him, even if he's rude and brags to her.
Personally, I prefered this scene to last weeks one with both Walt and Jesse and
if anything, it really excites me to see what they'll do with Walt's final scene in the
last episode.
We'll have to see, but this was a powerful connection between two very different characters
at different points in their journey.
But moving on from the flashback scenes, the rest of this episode is set in the black and
white Gene timeline, and we get more then just Gene involved.
As predicted, we finally get to see Kim Wexler in the events after Breaking Bad
and catch up with the lifestyle she's been living.
We get to learn exactly how she's feeling, 6 years after she went to Saul's office to
divorce him.
And then there's also that phone call from last week’s Breaking Bad episode, which
left Gene so angry that he slammed the receiver and kicked the glass through at the
phone booth.
This call was made to Kim at her workplace in Florida, where she is writing and designing
layouts for the tubing in sprinkler systems at Palm Coast Sprinklers.
It turns out that Kim is living an invisible lifestyle,
and that means she's having conversations about whether to use mayonaise or Miracle
Whip in a potato salad, she's going out with a weird
guy, and she's always framed in the background of a group of people, listening to discussions
about quite normal things.
But one day at work, she get's the call we've all been waiting to
hear.
An office collegue tells Kim that she has a call and that it's from Victor St. Claire,
another alias of Jimmy McGill, and after spending a few moments deciding whether she should
answer or not, she eventually does.
Gene has rung Kim to catch up after the 6 years that have past and we hear everything
that was muted during that previous episode.
He says to her, “I'm still out here, still getting away
with it,” thinking that he might have impressed her even after all of the things they went
through.
On the other hand, Kim barely says anything to
him.
He's intruding in her new life, and that new life is one that she just goes along with
in an attempt to escape the pain of the past.
Gene wants her to say something, and after him
continuously pressing, she says that he should turn himself in.
And he replies with, “I know you are, but what am I?”.
He's broken after she left him and it's his way of venting that
frustration.
When we reach the end of the call, he tells her in an angry state that she doesnt have
to keep their cartel activity or scams on Howard a secret because no one is around to
provide evidence towards that.
He says that if she's feels bad about it all then she can come clean.
And with Kim having more balanced moral outlook, she takes this suggestion and goes
with it.
She tells Jimmy that she hopes he's okay and then ends the call.
So this brings us to the moment where Kim comes clean to Howard's wife about her brutal
past.
After arriving in Albuquerque, driving past that old car park booth where Mike used to
work and is now automatically run, and making a
quick stop at the courthouse, she arrives at Cheryl Hamlin's home and proceeds to reveal
the truth following the lies she previously made to her
at Howard's memorial.
She gives Cheryl a pile of papers that she already shared with the District Attorney,
and it recalls a detailed account of her and Jimmy's interaction with the
cartel, and a description of the night Howard was murdered.
It also details the cons that her and Jimmy took to destroy Howard's career, with note
that they did it for fun more than earning money.
Cheryl is devastated when she reads this and we see her anger towards Kim, realising that
for one she was lied to, and two, that Kim is supposed to be the great lawyer that
Howard said she was.
Kim tells her that Howard didn’t suffer when he was killed and that he was caught
by Lalo in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And towards the end of their discussion, Kim does mention Jimmy in a quote,
saying, “assuming he’s still alive”.
So was she protecting him by coming clean or is this going to go in the other direction.
Well I think that in this particular moment she says that
to protect him.
But once we see what happens at the end of this episode, I think it's going to come to
a point where she can't protect him any longer.
I think that after this scene we could see the difference between Kim and Jimmy really
highlighted.
She is coming clean and trying to own up for what was done,
even if it will haunt her for the rest of her life.
Whereas Jimmy is plunging back down theat saul goodman path, being rude and angry in
conversations with her following her leaving and
now Kim has spread the truth about what happened.
On the flip side, this could just be her light attempt to protect herself if things go the
direction of a court trial surrounding Jimmy.
I'm not sure which route to take at this point, but I do believe that in this moment with
Howard's wife that she's actually protecting him as best as she can when she suggests that
he might not be alive.
But as we know he may very well be caught in the next episode, so that statement wouldn't
matter anyway, if it is made for that particular reason.
I will be getting more into my predictions in a video later
in the week, but that's just something I wanted to point out, following what we see in episode
12.
But surrounding Kim Wexler in this episode, we
do get one more emotional scene to really showcase everything she's feeling.
On her way back from Cheryl's house, Kim starts breaking down on the bus back to the airport,
not being able to stop the waterworks and it may be the most
emotional bit of acting I've seen from Rhea Seehorn in this show.
It's a massive shame that she hasn't won an emmy for her performance yet
and also quite ridiculous that she's only just received a nomination.
But we all know of the great work that she has done, and this scene is another example
of the brilliant and complex performance that she always brings with Kim
Wexler.
And that's where we now come to everything else we saw with Gene Takovic in Episode 12.
Of course, things weren't getting better after that phone call with Kim and after the ending
of last week's episode, he's pursuing the dangerous
path he returned to.
After breaking in to the cancer man's house, he spots him asleep on the floor, still out
from those drugs that he slipped into the water bottles, and proceeds
to get images of all the documents and passwords that was originally left for Buddy to do,
before he walked out.
But after Jeff arrives outside, and Gene is ready to leave, he decides
to stay and search for more, because most likely, he's having too much fun.
Even after the Cancer Man briefly wakes, Gene does escape this
situation without being caught, mostly thanks to Jeff, who makes quite the silly move, crashing
his taxi right in front of a police car.
And not to mention that Gene almost took the violent route in escaping the cancer man's
house, but instead, he was lucky that his target fell right back to sleep before he
could alert anyone straight away.
Because of Jeff's stupidity though, once the cancer man does
alert the police about the break in that Gene conducted, the blame is then quickly transfered
on to Jeff while he's at the police station.
When Jeff gives him a call for help, Gene seems
even happier that he has yet another opportunity to use his Saul Goodman skillset, without
understanding that this is the moment that could
lead to him getting caught.
And that's what's satisfying about the final scene that follows, because someone does catch
him minutes after he feels completely invincible in the state of
what he was pulling off.
When Marion is suspicious during a phone call to Gene that Jeff called him instead of her
when he's with the Police, she searches for con man and Albuquerque on her new laptop
that Jeff had previously bought her.
And this comes after the suspitions about Gene's Nippy lies and the meetings taking
place in her garage.
It's during her search that she finds those Better
Call Saul commercials, and when Gene comes round in a happy mood, ready to pick up Marion
to go to the station, he walks in on her watching them, and we see a stunning bit of photography
in the process.
Gene’s glasses reflect the commercials from Marion’s laptop in color, reminding us of
that very first Gene scene in season 1, when he was at home watching his commercials
then.
It all transitions into a tense faceoff between the both of them, with Gene riping the telephone
wire from off the wall, walking towards her as if he would strangle her with it.
Marion threatens him by pushing the button on her LifeAlert monitor, which would lead
straight to the cops.
Marion looks him straight in the eye and tells him that she trusted him,
making it another perfect reflection of what we saw before with Irene at Sandpiper crossing.
But this time the old lady makes a move and isn't scared to do what's right.
And Gene won't kill her because that's something he wouldn't
do, unlike say Heisenberg.
He threatens her and tells her not to use her LifeAlert, but even that threat doesn't
work here.
She calls for help and tells the assistant that Saul Goodman
is in her house, and with that, Gene runs out with only a small head start.
Not being caught is probably the only thing that he could continue to
brag about at this point, and it leads him to almost causing physical harm.
Sure, like I said, he's not the kind of person to kill an elderly lady, but we have to remember
that this was the second time in one episode that he considered
using a violent act.
He's desperate to stay free, he enjoys the thrill of pulling off a con and brags about
it all, until he's caught and it's truly all gone.
The terror on Marion’s face was the only thing that stopped him from killing her and
it's a reflection of the terror on Kim's face before she left and he became Saul
Goodman.
Jimmy McGill was once a good man with many problems, but this is the moment where we
realise that there's only complete ugliness left.
Kim and Jimmy both made different moves after what they did to Howard.
While Kim is being truthful yet struggling to live with herself, Jimmy is refusing to
give up his destructive ways and he’s going to make everyone work
that little bit harder to bring him down.
Kim and Jimmy may meet again in this upcoming finale, but things will clearly never be the
same.
So what are my overall thoughts of this latest episode.
Well, Waterworks is another classic episode by Vince Gillian and he directed an episode
that truly felt like it was accomplishing what Better Call Saul always does.
And that is to stay true to what this show is about and the characters that have defined
it seperately from Breaking Bad.
Yet in using those flashbacks, this show once again does so in impactful
ways, rather than solely for fan service, which many franchises tend to lean into.
We see the emotional and phychological differences between
Saul and Kim during this post Breaking Bad timeline, with a clear focus on the central
messages that this show has always worked at building towards.
One of those main ideals, is can Jimmy change for the better or is he doomed
to continue doing the wrong thing until the justice eventually comes.
Well it's clear that after this episode, Jimmy hasn't given up on those
ways and it's sending him down an unescapable path come the finale.
Of course, these writters like to satisfy yet pull the rug from underneath us, so I'm
not making a decisive prediction on what this all means.
But this particular episode communicated that Gene is on a dark path that he refuses to
get off.
And with Kim Wexler, we've got someone who can't escape the trauma,
yet someone who's now trying to do the right thing.
I honestly can't wait for this finale and Season 6 has been an absolute masterclass
in writing tension, comedy, drama and pretty much
everything in between.
I think if this finale delivers, it will go down as one of my favourite seasons of Television
ever and like the title of this episode indicates, I will be extremely
sad to see it all end.
But that was my spoiler review and recap for Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 12.
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 the final
episode?
Let me know down below in the comments section.
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