Better Call Saul is a show that as a prequel, had a pre-determined outcome.
Part of its tragedy was that we already knew the end.
So, why do I hate the fact that we’ve finally arrived?
I guess I didn’t expect to be this sad.
I don’t know about you, but Saul was someone I’ve been wanting to see the whole series.
I wanted that classic Breaking Bad Saul and his way with words.
We’ve seen glimpses throughout the series but now we’re finally here… and I hate
it.
I love it, but I hate it.
We always knew it would end this way, but somehow I’m surprised when it finally arrived.
I think that’s what’s been so amazing about this show is that it somehow surprises
you despite you knowing the outcome.
It’s very unique as a prequel in that way.
For example, I was scared for Jimmy in Bagman; I was worried he would never be a lawyer again
in Wiedersehn.
I was concerned over and over despite knowing how it ends.
It was a similar moment with Jimmy’s quite literal transformation into Saul at the end
of 609, Fun and Games.
This time though, when we stepped into that moment of him going full Saul, it didn’t
feel right.
It felt awful.
That’s kind of the theme of this episode for me, is this arrival at the final stop
as it were.
This blunt stop, where we’re following a story and then have our heads thrown back,
whiplashed by the sudden arrival at our destination.
We’ve been aiming for this point for six seasons and when we arrived I got this h0rrible
feeling inside of me.
One truly amazing thing about this show is that they’ve taken characters who may appear
to be some of the shallower in Breaking Bad.
Saul typically acting as comic relief, and haha funny lawyer man, turning him into possibly
the most tragic character of the universe.
Same goes for Gus and Mike, two fairly one-note characters in Breaking Bad, who acted as these
stern scary faces.
So, today I want to analyse my hatred for this episode really.
It was a dark, but incredibly illuminating one for all of our main characters.
Let’s start with Jimmy and Kim.
This episode was really important, aside the obvious reason of Jimmy and Kim’s split,
but because it feels like it was the last episode of Better Call Saul.
It seems like 610 onwards is a different show now.
No Kim, no Howard, no Chuck, and no Jimmy.
There was a horrible hollowness about this episode where we got a final tour of the life
of Jimmy before it all fell apart.
We end the lawyer side of things with Howard’s funeral, which takes place in HHM.
HHM representing the potential moral life Kim and Jimmy could have led, which they instead
destroyed, quite literally.
They had a huge part in the deaths of both Chuck and Howard.
I found this whole ending scene quite powerful.
As it was happening I had this thought in the back of my head that this was probably
the final time the legal world would see Jimmy and Kim in the way they had been seen throughout
the series.
As Rich states, it’s the ‘end of an era’.
In the same way that HHM becomes …, Jimmy has now fully become Saul, with Rich even
mentioning it at the end.
Everything is moving on and changing.
All the hurt that’s been caused is being covered up, painted over, removed like it
never happened.
That bin is significant in that way I think.
All that rage that Jimmy let out on that bin in Season 1 and now it’s like it never happened.
That sums up the whole purpose of Saul.
This persona and mask Jimmy can wear to keep on keeping on, and to not have to face that
pain or damage.
Even as they leave the HHM offices he says, ‘let the healing begin.’
Jimmy’s always ready to move on and start again.
His full committal to Saul only coming when Kim finally leaves him.
This whole world we’ve witnessed for six seasons is over.
I also really liked the interaction with Cheryl.
I loved Kim’s insistence that ‘You were his wife, you saw him every day, you knew
him better than anyone.
Maybe I misunderstood what I saw.
You would’ve known.’
I think it’s somewhat of a revelatory moment for Kim herself in regard to Jimmy.
Of course, she’s lying about Howard’s drug problem in the moment, but her words
seem to double up pretty well for Kim’s own assessment of her relationship with Jimmy.
The subsequent scene having her share a final kiss with Jimmy before quitting the law and
leaving him.
This whole time she knew full well what she was getting into here.
Kim’s own way of plastering over things was always to dig deeper, to believe Jimmy
and continue on with him.
Sunk costs.
As they continued to scam throughout, she goes from questioning whether she wants to
be with him, to marrying him.
I think this is finally the moment she realises there’s no where else to go.
Howard’s last words to her clearly struck a nerve, and she’s realising that despite
her constant saving and recurring belief in Jimmy, ultimately she can’t save him, and
her persistence to try is only enabling them both and causing irreparable harm to those
around them.
I think Jimmy is able to move on, become someone new in Saul, but Kim requires to physically
leave, to run, much like we can presume she did back when she lived in Nebraska.
That’s what she’s done since she was a child, and I think the inevitable ending for
her therefore was for her to do the same here.
Jimmy copes by covering up, typically through Saul, and Kim copes by running, or moving
on, starting completely anew.
She can no longer kid herself with the sunk cost fallacy I don’t think.
It’s a tough one to judge, let me know what you think.
In the end, we knew this relationship would end in this way, in large part because of
where Saul is in Breaking Bad.
There’s something that feels so strikingly unreal about it happening though, and I think
it’s kind of summed up well by Kim.
We didn’t want it to end, we were having too much fun.
Kim’s true ending at this point is still uncertain, but it certainly brings a new perspective
to Breaking Bad.
Saul is a broken man, who needs the constant chatter of work in his ear to make sure he
never gets a chance to think about what he’s lost.
Saul has eclipsed him, and in many ways he’s become the very thing he hated about Chuck.
A person who cared more for his work and the law than those around him.
Jimmy refers back to Chuck’s quote in the episode Chicanery as we leave him alone in
his office.
On the flipside, the cartel side of things had almost an upbeat nature to it, with Gus
getting away with all he’s done, Hector being mocked by Eladio, and things seeming
just alright after the relentlessness of the whole Lalo Nacho situation.
Gus lets his guard down briefly, and for the first time we see him as a human.
Ultimately though this episode shows us the final moments of each character’s humanity
in a sense.
Gus leaves a potential relationship, for the purpose of revenge.
Mike tries to find humanity in the situation he’s found himself in, but Manuel basically
says ‘Uh-uh fella, you’re too far gone, and you’re just as bad as everyone you claim
to hate.’
Which by the way, I loved.
There’s this weird misconception with a large part of the viewer base of this universe
that think Mike is a good guy, when really he’s just as bad as everyone around him.
Manuel was told that his son had been murdered and he seemed pretty much immediately accepting
of it, because as we saw in 603 in their final conversation, he knew this would happen if
Nacho continued down the path he did.
He loves him, but I don’t think he’s surprised.
He mourned his son far before he died.
In 603 Manuel also mentions how many times they’ve had this conversation.
It felt a bit like that with Mike here.
There’s this show of remorse or attempt to make it right on Mike’s part, and I like
how Manuel basically just tells him how it is.
It’s a far more quiet and subtle version of Chuck’s ‘embrace it’ moment to Jimmy.
Stop with the sad faces and empty words and just embrace who you are.
Mike loves to give a sad disapproving look when he hears about unintended collateral
in the deaths of innocents.
It doesn’t stop him though.
Sure, he gives a sad face when hearing about the ‘Good Samaritan’, or when staring
down at Howard in a grave with Lalo Salamanca.
He seems to believe there is justice in the fact that he got revenge for those innocents,
but as Manuel points out, that’s not really the point, and is more something he’s doing
to justify his own horrific actions.
I think that’s part of the tragedy of Nacho, but Mike as well is that these two characters
from the get-go are too far gone.
So, to have this blunt dressing down by Manuel, who represents the show’s lawfulness and
morality, I think was quite powerful.
I think a bit like Caspar’s words to Mike in 501 about Werner, these words hit in a
similar way.
In that moment Mike is grouped in with the rest of the criminal world, ‘He was worth
fifty of you.’
Where here with Manuel it’s simpler in that he essentially states ‘you’re worth nothing.’,
‘you’re all the same.’
He’s heard Nacho constantly fail to take his advice, and go down his own path, fighting
back, attempting to beat the Salamancas, when all Manuel wanted was for his son to walk
away.
It’s interesting too because Nacho and Manuel feel to me to be the inverse of Mike and Matty.
Mike was the crooked cop, Matty was the good cop, Nacho was a criminal, his father was
a hard-working honest man.
I think ultimately these words from Manuel are kind of meant to reflect that initial
sentiment of Matty, and how Mike ‘broke’ him.
Mike is still the same guy he was in Season 1, he’s just more accepting of it now.
The bluntness of this moment I think is almost meant to be a message to Mike saying Matty
wouldn’t have wanted him to get revenge in the way he did.
Like Manuel says, that was all him.
That’s all people like him think about.
A bit like Saul therefore, Mike was pretty much always destined to be that guy.
Despite everything that Mike has done, for a multitude of different reasons, he still
clings on to this sense of justice.
I think the whole point of that caged shot too was that it was meant to represent that
Mike is trapped on that path.
Much like Nacho, who was in too deep, and ended up dead, the same is going to happen
to Mike.
The justice he claims to be providing ultimately catches up to him when he bleeds out alone,
failing to get any money to his family.
Most of the characters in this universe have a fatal flaw that eventually catches up to
them.
Walt’s was his ego, Gus, his desire for revenge, and I think for Mike it was this
distorted sense of justice that has been forever festering in him since his days as a corrupt
cop.
Gus’ ending is quite succinct.
We get this short scene where he talks to a man about wine, and there’s clear possibility
for a relationship of some form here that Gus notably decides to not pursue.
Despite the many successes for Gus recently: the killing of Lalo and Nacho, gaining Northern
territory, and taking one step closer to destroying the Salamanca’s, he’s still unsatisfied.
The whole scene at Eladio’s I found really interesting, because this scene holds probably
the most despicable characters of the universe.
When we hear that Hector has dictated this whole letter for Eladio, only for it to be
mocked and for him to be wheeled away, with his own family even disagreeing with his claims,
I felt kind of bad.
At least as bad as I could given the horrific human being that Hector is.
I think the point of this though was kind of meant to show that Gus has the upper hand
in every sense at this point.
In this episode he won.
He beat the Salamancas.
But what the bar scene shows us is that despite this, he isn’t done yet.
His need for revenge is too strong.
He can’t accept this huge win despite the many hardships he was put through to achieve
it, because ultimately winning to him is the complete decimation of the Salamanca family.
Personally, this puts a whole new spin on Breaking Bad in that Gus was basically always
going to win.
He’d already overcome probably his biggest obstacle with Lalo.
He was in a comfortable position, with control of the North, Eladio’s respect, despite
Eladio seeing the hatred in his eyes, yet he still decides it’s not enough.
Because of the one time this group of people truly hurt him, he dedicates his life to repeatedly
causing that in return.
This episode, this moment in the bar is truly a hand reaching out.
We see the closest thing to humanity in Gustavo Fring in this moment, and he decides to walk
away.
So, yea, basically this episode was really depressing.