The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Better Call Saul' Season 6, Episode 12 Recap

Episode Date: August 10, 2022

Joanna and Ben begin their review of the penultimate episode of 'Better Call Saul' by examining Kim's new life in Florida, while evoking similar storylines from other series like 'The Shield' and 'Fargo' to determine if this is the most suitable ending for this character. Next, they dissect the phone call between Gene and Kim and ponder the significance of the jail-cell-like office blinds in her office and Gene's recklessness during his heist (23:07). Then, they go over all of the visible series callbacks during Kim's visit to the Albuquerque courthouse, praise Rhea Seehorn's performance during the powerful bus scene, and speculate on Kim's future when she gets back to her life in Florida (34:25). After the break, they dive into the emotional complexities of Gene's heist scene and the welcome comedic relief of Jeff's erratic response to seeing the police outside of the house (45:43). Finally, they touch on the harrowing final scene with Marion, explore its cinematic tie-ins to other classic films, and talk about its place in the history of Gene/Saul/Jimmy's trustworthiness in the character's timeline.(52:00) Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Ben Lindbergh Producer: Chris Sutton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Charles Holmes, the Ringer Music Show. And I'm Cole Kushner from Dysect, and Charles and I are teaming up to create Last Song Standing, a new show where we determine an artist's single best song by debating our way through their entire catalog. And for our first season, we're covering Kendrick Lamar. We're talking good kid to pimple butterfly, Dan, Mr. Morow, the mixtapes, the Lusies, and the features. Listen to Last Song Standing on the Dysect podcast feed only on Spotify.

Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson and joining me now, I don't know, is that mayo in your hand or Miracle Whip? It's Ben Lindberg. Hi, Ben. How are you? Yep. Yep. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Oh, God, I didn't see you there. Are we rolling right now? Oh, no. This is embarrassing. I thought I was alone. I don't normally make that sound. Oh, my God. Traumatizing.

So much more than anything else in this episode, despite the many other candidates. I agree. All right. We're here to talk about season six episode 12 Waterworks, written and directed by the great Vince Gilligan. We're here, penultimate episode of Better Call Saul. What an amazing journey this has been. Before we get into the episode itself, we have a lot to say. Just a quick programming reminder that elsewhere in the feed, you'll find our coverage of Westworld, which is also wrapping up next week.

So both shows are wrapping up at the same time. Aaron Paul, what is he going to do with himself? We don't know. And there was a Spirano's Hall of Fame episode last week in the feed, too, which is really fun. So you might want to check that out. And as always, we are here in conversation with what Chris Ryan, Andy Greenwald did on the watch. We are here in conversation with the insider podcast. We've been reading all the interviews that Vince Gilligan has been doing.

So many. So many. We've been scouring the Reddit boards. And we enjoy your emails, of course. Kim Wexer lives at gmail.com. But so what? I guess is sort of how I'm feeling. Yeah.

And that's where we are here at the end of all things. Can I just say as a preface to this pod, I don't think we have any corrections to issue this time. Good for us. But I do have one response. Someone tweeted at us to request that we stop saying Jimmy slash Saul slash Gene whenever we reference the character. And I do understand how that could get grading as a listener. Even as a speaker, I was trying to minimize it at times. But I don't think we can or would want to stop doing that.

because it speaks to the complexity of the character. We are honestly struggling with who this guy is, and he is wrestling with that same question, and it's one of the central tensions of this series. Is he Jimmy at his core, or is he Saul, and is Gene just a synthesis of the two, or is he an unholy Trinity, where he's all three at once and Victor II?

And if you listen to the insider pod, even Goulden Gilligan can't pick one name anymore. They're constantly saying Jimmy Jean Saul, So I'd say think of it as a feature, not a bug. Maybe next week we'll be able to narrow it down to one name or maybe we won't. Though, if someone wants to coin a new name for this character, Voltron, that encompasses all of his personas, I am open to suggestions. When Peter Gould dropped the old Gibby-Sall gene on the Insider podcast, I was like, vindication. Yeah, very validating.

Alexa, play vindication. So let's talk about the promo art, which we've been doing. This is far more straightforward than what we have been seeing. The promo art for this week is a billboard for Palm Coast Sprinkler, watering your world since 1978. There's also rain, which features in this episode as well. Someone on Twitter pointed out that Palm Coast Sprinkler is an anagram of Kim calls partner POS. Fantastic. I'm not sure this intentional, but they do love anagrams on this show, so it's possible. Anything else that stands out to you in this art, Ben Lindberg?

Not too much. No, there are many possible interpretations of Waterworks, the episode title, and we will probably get to a few of them other than the obvious. It's raining, and she's working at a sprinkler company, and there's a lot of tears in this episode. There may be more possible interpretations. But, yes, I think this one is slightly more straightforward than last week's was. Although sometimes what seems to be straightforward on this series can actually be deeper than we think and deceptive somehow. That's a great point, an excellent point. Where are you on this episode?

Like, where is your enjoyment level of it? Liked it a lot. Yeah. Thought it was a very strong, penultimate episode that, if anything, makes me more excited and also anxious for the finale. But I'm just trying to savor every installment at this point. We've got one to go. I know that we've all been so caught up in one. what is happening here that it's hard to step back and take stock of where we are and what this

ending represents, not just of this series, but of the entire Gilliganverse as far as we know for the foreseeable future. So I have a lot of anxiety about what will happen this week, but I'm trying to savor the anticipation and the not knowing about what will happen in the finale and just to appreciate the crossmanship that is constantly on display here, because there's not another Saul just waiting in the wings necessarily for us to watch when this is over. So really enjoyed this one. Didn't always enjoy. I guess enjoy might not be the best way to put it in every scene in this episode, but appreciate it at the very least. Yeah, you know, on his interview tour of the various outlets, Gilligan has been saying a couple different times in a couple different ways that they don't have

plans to spin this off in any direction, though Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, podcast Insider, host, Chris McAilip did make a great better Caldera joke about the veterinarian with the little black book. But no, there are no plans for another show. Never say never. Right. He won't completely close the door. Right. It sounds like he has ideas that he's tempted, but that maybe both he and Gould feel like it's the time to step away and try something new for a while, but that maybe, maybe at some point down the road, who knows, we could come back to this world. So as are, show email suggests me. The fate of Kim Wexler has been on our mind all season and probably all series.

And you and I have talked a lot about this idea of a fate worse than death. And the way we defined it earlier, I think, was more like, what if she doesn't die, but she breaks all the way bad. And that's not something we want to see for Kim because that will devastate us because we like Kim so much. And here we're presented with another fate worse than death, which is not to say, say that Florida is a fate worse than death. I think that Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould have been very careful to say, neither living in Florida nor working an office job, and they've said it

many times, that in and of itself is not, you know, a sort of hair shirt penance like hell necessarily. But the way in which Kim has locked herself into a place where, as many people have observed, she's not making a, she's not able to make a single decision for her. herself, whether it's Miracle Whip or mayonnaise or the flavor of ice cream or anything like that, can't make a decision, is afraid to do harm is the way that Peter Gould put it on the insider, right, that she doesn't want to make a move because she doesn't want to move that she makes to cause harm. And, you know, she's in this relationship with someone that she doesn't seem to care that

much about, you know, she doesn't seem to care much about anything she's doing, even though there is a great deal of meticulous attention that she's giving to her work. How do you feel about this idea of hell on earth as depicted as a sprinkler company in Florida? Yeah, I like that this is what they wound up with. It wasn't the most dramatic ending for Kim, if in fact this was the ending for Kim that we could have envisioned. It wasn't getting disappeared by Ed the Disappearer, right? She's still Kim Wexler. She's not on the run.

She's using her real name. And she's not dead. Nothing super explosive happened. And she is just kind of locked in this purgatory. And in the first shot, she's following a recipe for potato salad. And she's cutting up a potato in this shot that I think echoes the first shot of Gene at the Cineabon in the premiere. And she's doing it because the recipe told her to. It's like she's holding a knife, right?

Like she could do damage. But if she sticks to the prescribed path, then nothing and no one can get hurt because of her actions except for that potato. So we've been talking all season about the bad choice road, the decisions people make that lead them inexorably down the dark path. So she thinks her only hope is to avoid making decisions of any kind. The only way to avoid the bad choice road is to stay on the no choice road. So now she won't weigh in on anything, even the most mundane inconsequential questions. And I think what's interesting is that the boyfriend doesn't seem to want her to say anything or explain. herself when he asks if she thinks that running with the Bulls would be too dangerous for the

amazing race? And she says, maybe he seems completely satisfied with that response, maybe. And as Peter Gould pointed out on the insider pod, at the party, the men and women are separated in almost a regressive 50s type way where the men are talking about work and the women are talking about food coloring, whereas Jimmy always had a huge respect for Kim and always wanted to consult her and always wanted to act as her partner, even when it was a partner in crime. So Jimmy was bad for her, but this guy's not good for her. He's happy to have her hide her light under a bushel basket or a brown wig or whatever. And in fact, when Gene or Victor calls

her, he's desperate for her to say something to show she has a pulse. But by design, she's out of the habit of having one. I love that you mentioned, and I was hoping you would. I had my own, like Ben Lembergian timer on when you would say, Bad Choice Road. But I think that there are so many choices that Kim Wexler made that brought her to where she found herself, right? But that U-turn, making that U-turn on the road, which we talked about a lot at the first half of the season,

just seems to be, like, to make it a literal, you turn on a road, on a bad choice road, is the way in which, like, this show, this universe can be like so on the nose, yet so satisfying at the same time. I saw a comment on Reddit and I apologize. I don't have the editor's name in front of me, but I really love this observation that, like, Kim, Kim's job is writing copy for this website, right? And so that essentially she's put herself in permanent doc review, which was the horrible punishment she was given by Howard.

That, like, drudgery and that just sort of complete waste of her talents is something that she has, a hell that she has created for herself. Yeah. This is what she feels like she deserves. And there's still some part of Kim in there. She's still so diligent and competent, even though this isn't her vocation or calling, like lawyering was. She's still calling around and checking on the particulars of this pipe and tubing and visiting

the factory floor so that she can get this single sentence right. And listener and emailer Daniel noted that this whole sequence is reminiscent of Vic Mackey's fate in the Shield. And I'm always grateful for a Shield reference. So spoilers for a 14-year-old. finale here, but at the end of the shield, Vic isn't dead or on the run. Nothing dramatic happens. He's just confined to an office, preventing him from doing what makes him feel alive and enables him to do some good, but also exposes him to temptation. And that ending follows an incredible

confession scene where he has immunity and just spills everything he's done throughout the series, sort of mirroring the scene in this episode with Cheryl, where all of Kim's transgressions are just laid out in black and white in more ways than one. They're printed on the page, just sort of sapping any romance or excitement from them, making it impossible to spin them or sympathize with the person who perpetrated these crimes. So the Shield is awesome and has a perfect premiere and finale. So go watch it on Hulu if you're looking for something to stream after Saul. If you love Walton Goggins, you'll love the Shield. Yeah, I was actually reminded of the Fargo Season 2 ending because there's a similar fate for a character that both.

Fargo season two, one of the best. The Pockeem Woodbine plays where he's just sort of like, everything happens and he winds up in a tiny office, like a time, like a comically Brazil tiny office. And like for all that they protest that they're not trying to make various places in America or various jobs feel like hell, I do think it's worth noting that I think breaking bad. I don't think it's like a sneering coastal elite thing because Vince Gilligan is a guy who like it didn't grow up in like New York or L.A. or anything like that. that. But I do think, like, when you think back to where Walter White started in, like, working at the car wash, working as a teacher, having his wife and his family and surrounded, like, there is this sort of suburban mundanity that this show does feel like is a hell for certain people, a prison for certain people. And, like, I don't know that I agree that that's the case,

But I think there is this idea, you know, and Jimmy Soljean says that in the phone call to Kim, when he says, we're too smart or something like this. And that made me think of no one else in the world but Walter White, who is like, I'm too important for this destiny. Right. And so, you know, I've worked office jobs that I've absolutely loved, so I'm not here to knock an office job. But I do think, I think this show for all the creators protests, like, do have that kind of mindset on their mind, you know? Yeah, right. And he spent time in Florida when he was a kid. He had family in Florida.

Gilligan spoke about on the insider pod. I don't know if that gives him the standing to make fun of Florida. But again, that is not what he is intending to do here. And it did make me think back to a few episodes ago when they had that exchange apart were okay, together were poison. They're not really okay apart. Neither of them is okay at this point. Maybe they're a little bit better off than they were together at the end, but not by a whole lot.

So Kim sells sprinklers by the seashore is not really a happy ending for her. They're not killing people. No, although Gene is coming close. Yeah, yeah. So there's that. They're not killing people yet. Right. You know, Gilligan, I think in the Rolling Stone interview and maybe others, he said that they really never considered killing her off, which, you know, good to know now.

On behalf of America, thanks for the heads up at this late date about that. But I think they found a better solution. And really, even in the opening credits, where Kim appears just for a moment. And Gilligan in an interview with AMC, he noted that it's just a creepy-looking silhouette of Kim, as if she's like the character from the ring or something. But what he also said there was the idea, I think, is as Jimmy McGill slash Saul Goodman slash Gene Tatekvick, there we go again, devolves as a character, as he increasingly loses a little bit of his soul, it felt like the video and audio quality of the credit should degrade.

At the end in the final four episodes, they change completely and the music goes away completely. And it's not just him losing bits of his soul, right? It's also Kim, we know now. And now that we see her in the black and white timeline, we see that they're both suffering from some of the same things, although that suffering manifests in different ways. Yeah, I want to say a couple of things in response to that.

First of all, in terms of the sound, so much of this episode is lacking in score, and that really adds to this, like, suffocating airlessness of Kim's existence. The score kicks back in in a major melodramatic way when it looks like Saul is going to, you know, crack a cancer victim on the head with the ashes of his own dog. So, like, it's not a scoreless episode, but there's no score in the beginning where you would expect to find it in a lot of places, and that is, was a really interesting move. And then also in terms of, like, Kim dying or not, I thought this, it was an entertainment week.

No, I actually think it was in the insider pod that Gilligan said, dying is letting the character off easy. Right. Like, dying is almost an easy way out for someone who has done something wrong. And that makes me think about the Breaking Bad finale, which is something that I talked about this week on the trial by content episode that we did about. series finale debates and one of my co-hosts brought up the Breaking Bad finale is one of the best finalies all time. And I used to think that and I am increasingly feeling the way that the likes of Emily Nessbaum felt at the time that like the Breaking Bad finale bizarrely gives Walt a win that I don't think that he deserves. Like he gets to come back and play the hero for Jesse and

provide for Skyler and do all these things and then he gets to die doing something fun. So fun. Killing much Nazis is kind of fun though. But like and that's easy way out. But that like suffering and mediocrity in New Hampshire and slowly dying of cancer is maybe more akin to what

Walt deserves. And I think all of those questions circle back to this question I keep asking you, which is like what is the morality of the Gilligan verse? What do people deserve? What is a proper punishment for, you know, doing things? Do people deserve grace? Do people deserve redemption?

is redemption available to them? The answer might come. I mean, we're getting a little off track, and I promise we'll get back on sort of a more chronological thing. But the answer might come in the fact that putting Kim and Jesse together in a scene in this episode, which is something that Vince Gilligan has said all over the place in every interview, just sort of like, didn't really further the plot. We just really wanted to do it.

We thought it would be fun. We couldn't resist. We like these two characters. We wanted to see them together, right? But Alan Seponwell has a really good examination in his recap of the episode about how the similarities between Kim and Jesse and their revulsion, their moments of revulsion for what they found themselves by their own actions in the middle of, how that operates and start contrast to how Walt and Saul process it. And so Jesse gets to go to Alaska. Kim, after what she does in this episode, does she get to have her own Alaska, whatever it is? What do you think, Ben?

Yeah, I thought that scene, I mean, it was amusing that Vince was almost sheepish about including it. You know, it's like usually they would deny themselves doing the thing that they love or that would just thrill everyone. It's almost a cheap thrill in a sense. And so, you know, the fan service, the creator service aspect of the scene gave them pause, I guess. But it does highlight maybe just the cyclical, repetitive nature of these tragedies just as Kim is getting out and having her life ruined and finding a way to pull herself out of that. Jesse is just getting in and about to have his life ruined. So however this series ends, there's probably another untold tale to be told about someone else's. descent into darkness that is happening somewhere in this world of Albuquerque.

So I thought it was appropriate. And yeah, the Alaska Airlines sign fake out. Maybe to make us think for a second. Wait, did she go to Alaska? Is she going to find Jesse there? A lot of people said that. It never occurred to me that that. It did to me for a split second, even though that wouldn't make much sense.

But I just thought Alaska, whoa, okay. But maybe not a fake out. Maybe this is how she finds freedom the way that Jesse found a form of freedom in Alaska because those characters are clearly linked thematically and also physically in a scene in this episode. But there are a lot of parallels in that they were sort of the sidekicks, although eventually very guilty themselves and also just out of the universe that they were intended to be written out of the show much earlier and that they just acted their way onto it and being a core part of the show and sort of the soul of the series in a sense. So it's appropriate for them to meet here, even if it's a tad contrived. A little bit. That's okay.

Yeah. We just have to maybe spare a second to talk about her outfit here because I was watching with my wife and sister-in-law who were both dismayed by Kim's wardrobe in Florida. I believe dumpy was one word they used to describe it because she's just normally such a sharp dresser and also RIP ponytail. And I know you're always on wig watch and ever vigilant. So I want your wig take if you have one. If I can speak on behalf of brunettes, I'll just say that I resent any implication here that being a brunette is boring, that her no longer being blonde is somehow symbolic of her dull life. It's not a tremendous wig, but first of all, it's shot in black and white.

So there's a lot of leeway there. And secondly, it's sort of meant to make her look at least mousy. I don't know if dumpy is what I would want to say, but I would say at least mousy. And so in that way, it's doing its job. It's not supposed to look great, I think, is sort of the point of that wig. The denim skirt, which just feels very like, I mean, but this is also a period show. For me, it was watching her go back to the courthouse, and she put her bag in the, like, the metal detector, and it's got this, like, big embroidered daisy on it. And there's nothing wrong with having an embroidered daisy on your bag.

It just doesn't seem very Kim at all. Yeah. You know, so. There's a new ponytail in town, too. There is. There is per year than ever. Let's zoom back to the office, though, because I want to talk about a couple things, certainly this phone call, which we see the other side of, but also really quickly to note that

one of the office bits of business that's going on is that it's somebody's birthday. And as we noted last week, it's also Jimmy's birthday. Right. So the fact that she gets this call from Jimmy on his birthday, which she almost certainly knows her ex-husband's birthday, right? So it's on his birthday, and she has to go sing happy birthday for, like, you know, the lovely receptionist at the Sprinkler company, but like has just had this call from a ghost from her past, I think is interesting. Speaking of Pass, so let's talk about this phone call. You've got some timeline questions. Do you want to process them?

So it's, it's been six years since they've spoken. It seems like, so it's 2010 here. It's late 2010. And it's been six years, obviously, since 2004. There were some conversations. about the timeline on The InsiderPod, and it was a bit ambiguous even there because one person said that it had been six years since they've spoken. There was also a comment that maybe it had been six years since their breakup in episode 609, which presumably transpired some time before the scene in Sal's office, right? So we don't know exactly how much time has elapsed between their initial breakup and then the formal dissolution of their marriage, right?

Not that it matters that much. Well, yeah, okay. I already told you before we started recording that I don't like getting caught up on timeline stuff, but I can't help myself sometimes. I was looking at the divorce papers that opened the episode. There's a May 2004 date of their wedding. There's also another 2004 date on. I've never gotten divorced, so I don't know what all the coding on a divorce paper means. But there is a 2004 elsewhere on the paper.

And so I was wondering if maybe they got married in May, they did all this bullshit and divorced by November. Like, they could have gotten divorced the same year. And his hairline is not as like wonky as it is in that other flash, like, saw flash forward that we got. So it's possible that like this could be late 2004. Like it's both. Yeah, a May December romance. I guess that's not what that usually means. Literally.

Yeah. Yeah, that could be. I mean, obviously, like, he's had time to settle into the Sol persona and get the whole office constructed around him. Those styrofoam columns are not going to carve themselves, you know? Great craftsmanship and worksmanship there. All right, so we get this phone call. I think a couple things stood out to me. One, of course, the Lalo's in the ground, apparently, is something he says.

So, like, we know that he's still haunted by this idea that Lalo might be alive out there somewhere. He says this thing about still getting away with it. And I like that as a parallel to Kim's mom. We talked a lot about Kim's mom and like, what are these flashbacks with Kim's mom meant to eliminate? And, you know, a question I had earlier is like, is she attracted to Saul because he's similar in some ways to her mom? And we sort of like return to something familiar, not to get too Freud about it, but like that we seek out familiar sort of people. But here I think it's meant to be a. a warning shot of like, oh, my God, this is everything you never wanted to be, which is someone

who gets away with it. You didn't want to be your mom. And so, you know, him saying that felt like a real trigger for that to me. But the last thing that I want to say is that her line, you know, I'm glad you're alive, which I found really hard. She does, she has a lot of silence on her end of the phone, right? But she has a moment when her face breaks where she's almost tempted to say, To me, it read like, she's almost tempted to say more.

And it reminded me about some of the, like, the days of wine and roses conversation that we were having last week about this idea of maybe you're slightly tempted, like, this is the person you love and the person you felt a connection with. And like, maybe she never felt so alive as she did with Jimmy when they were scamming together. So there is, I don't think she's quite like, I don't recognize him entirely or the door is closed forever on my feelings for him. I think there is a slight pull there on the other side of the line for her. And then she shuts it down because she knows that she needs to. How did you read that? Yeah, same way. She just hasn't said anything in so long.

And here's this person, her former flame from her old, more fulfilling life who is inviting her to speak. And she's still trying to suppress that part of herself. You can see her hand is shaking. I mean, she's clutching the phone. She's white knuckling the thing. It's almost like she's clamping down on whatever she wants to express here. Right. Do you think Kim did actually ask about Saul or did Francesca make that up?

And if she did ask, do you think that was a way of sending Saul a signal? Like, hey, call me, let me know you're okay because I don't know that she's expecting this call. Like when she hears Victor is on the phone, she knows immediately who it is. She swings into action. But was she hoping or expecting for this call some part of her? or did she actually want to close the book on that part of her wife? I do think she asked. I don't think she asked as a way of leaving a breadcrum trail back to herself.

But I do think there's a part of her that wanted to hear his voice again. And I do genuinely think she cares that he's alive. And so she wanted to hear him and hear that he was still alive. Yeah. And as you said, on some level, she wanted to be punished for stealing those earrings. She wanted to suffer the consequences. So she felt bad about getting away with it. And when she takes this call, she pulls these thick blinds in her office that look a little like prison bars.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but possibly symbolizing how she's trapped in a prison of her own making or just possibly foreshadowing an actual trip to prison in her or Saul's future, which, as a number of people have pointed out, Waterworks is two spaces before go to jail on the Monopoly Board. So maybe one of the many meanings. If that was on their mind, I've seen that all over the place. And I'm like, if that was on their mind, truly wild. Truly wild. Right. And the image of blinds or shades trapping characters or obscuring their vision somehow is a motif in this episode. Like when Gene is in the house, he considers leaving after Jeff pulls up in the cab.

And he reaches for the door, but then he decides to turn back. Yet again, he makes a bad choice. and there's a shot of him framed in front of those slats across the window. Or in the scene in Saul's office, it's pouring rain and the shades are down and drawn. No one can see outside, right? And they're just kind of enclosed and it's oppressive and kind of claustrophobic. But maybe it's more than that because last week I read that Tom Schnau's quote about what was coming for this character. And he said, I feel like we see a whole new character at some point.

There's a version in a future episode where Bob walks on screen and it looks different. than we've ever seen him before, and it's great. So again, I wonder whether that's a prison jumpsuit. Maybe with like head shaved or something. I don't know, fully embracing, something like that. Absolutely, absolutely possible. But also, I feel like we saw Bob do things in this episode that I don't recognize in Jimmy, you know, like holding the urn. Like the face he makes, I mean, we'll talk about the phone cord shot, but like the face he makes with that urn in his hand.

Yeah. Was truly grotesque. So, yeah, and like Gilligan has said in all these various interviews that it's almost unbearable to see Jimmy Soljean like this, that he's a monster. And he's like, as a fan of this show, I don't even want to watch this, you know. Right. We're all looking for the guy who did this, right? It's new viz. You wrote this way.

But, yeah, when he said that, I think it's important stuff and we feel it's necessary plot-wise. but man, what an unpleasant thing. He said, I'm glad we don't have too much left because I don't want to see too much more of him being a monster. So read into that what you will. Does that mean that we only have one more episode left of him being a monster? Or does that mean this is the end or the beginning of the end of him as a monster? And maybe somehow still there is some redemption awaiting here, just going against the moral fiber of this universe. I was going to say this later, but I'll say this now.

Something that Andy Greenwald said on The Watch podcast this week that I really struck me was he was like, they did it to us again, which is true, which is like watching Walter, I don't know, I was never, I think I was out on Walter White earlier than a lot of other people were and that's okay. But I definitely was at some point being like, well, this guy's going to figure it out and pull out and he never does, right? ever. And similarly for Jimmy, a lot of us are watching this being like, well, Gene is obviously the era of his life in which he's going to like reckon with what he did as Saul. That's not what we're watching right now at all. The opposite is true. He's going, he's breaking even batter, right? But we are still holding out. Yeah. We're Charlie Brad with the football at this point, but. Not that Jimmy and Kim are going to like find each other and live happily ever after. That's off the table, right?

But reckoning with what he's done, like that if Saul is the way to bury Jimmy and to bury his pain around Chuck and his pain around Kim and all that sort of stuff like that, if it is this grotesque mask he wears, what we really want to see him do is pull that mask off and really look at himself in the mirror. Right. Saul gone. Yeah. Saul gone. And if that involves himself, like, turning himself in, right. So like Kim says, and thanks to Brandy and the Alexanders, because I believe that transcript that they sent us last week is pretty accurate. of what the phone call was.

If Kim says, you should turn yourself in. And he has this scoffing response to that. But then what do we see him do immediately after? Right. Is not turn himself in, but clearly out there trying to get caught. You know, he might not be admitting that to himself. But we can all watch this. And, you know, Vince, I think, said, you don't have to be Freud to, like, understand that, like, he's not, like, he's behaving so recklessly that he's trying to get caught, which is, like,

kind of his way of turning himself in, doing what Kim is saying that he should do, right? Right. Yeah. I mean, he breaks the glass. He leaves the glass he was drinking from there with a possible saliva sample. Maybe that won't matter. But another example of him being careless, he's stealing the watches and cigars. He's completely reckless. He's departed from the plan. And Sepinwall pointed out that there's a call back to that shot from the season five episode, JMM, where we see half of Jimmy's face and then the other half reflect. And there's a similar framing when he's in the house. And here there's no reflection, which might mean that there's no dual nature to Gene. He's just a bad dude at this point. He's mean gene. But I don't know.

Maybe there's still something lurking in there. I was going to ask whether you see him just being so out of control here as being so upset by the call with Kim that he's just going to greater lengths to bury that pain as if he's developed a tolerance to whatever satist. he was getting from that scheme and now he needs a bigger hit to achieve the same high, or is he on some level trying to follow Kim's advice to turn himself in the way that Kim kind of follows his advice or his challenge to come clean, which I don't think he necessarily meant, but she takes it to heart and she follows through. So maybe they both are in their own way. I love that. But they're both like doing what the other one says, even though in their own Okay, so let's talk about Kim's return to Albuquerque here.

I saw a, and I can't find it now, which is maddening to me, but I saw a post on Instagram that was a side-by-side comparison of Kim standing at the Albuquerque Airport and Walt's standing at the Albuquerque Airport, and it's the same exact framing. Right, when Jesse picks him up in the RV, right? Right, yeah. And so, like, Kim coming back, the way that Walt came back himself at the end is sort of like an interesting parallel. Of course, so she goes back to the courthouse.

One of the coolest shots of the episode is that Mike Irman Trout has been replaced by a machine. Yeah. We'll all be replaced by robots and automation at some point. Automated podcasters coming soon. You mentioned the new ponytail in town. We got the empty chairs and empty tables, like, you know, where Kim and Jimmy had many at lunch and also where they sat before they got married, you know. So that's all spying.

marking that. But, you know, the big meat of her return here comes when she goes to Cheryl's house. And something that, um, you mentioned the, the sort of, uh, romancelessness of the affidavit of just seeing the actual events printed out on the page. But also, um, Vince speaking to entertainment weekly talked about how this felt like part of a 12 step, uh, you know, we've talked so much about the scam as addiction. And the idea of step nine and 12 step, 12 step has a lot of, religious language in it, by the way. I vaguely knew that, but when I looked them up, I was like, wow, there's a lot of God in here. Anyway, step nine is made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so

would injure them or others. And so what Gilligan points out is that she goes, she gives the affidavit, she does not ask for forgiveness. She does not apologize. She does not tear up. She's not looking for absolution or forgiveness because to ask for forgiveness would be too self-serving. So she doesn't.

She bottles all that down. She lets it out later. She just presents the information to a woman that she grievously wronged at the memorial for Howard. How did all that play out for you? Yeah, we see her face go from shadow to shining light when Cheryl opens the gate to her house. And one of Kim's lowest moments was deceiving Cheryl at Howard's memorial. So now she's belatedly undoing the damage that she did there. I've seen some people say and some people have contacted us to say that it's self-centered or cruel of Kim to confess and open up Cheryl's wounds again, that sometimes the kindest thing you can do is just let people heal and move on.

But I didn't see it that way because it's not like Cheryl thought Howard had a happy ending, right? All this time she has been thinking that she missed the signs of Howard taking cocaine and having suicidal thoughts. and she's probably been punishing herself for being so distant toward him. And that's Kim's fault. Kim made her feel that way. Kim constructed the whole fiction about Howard's addiction and then just twisted the knife into Cheryl at the memorials by saying, well, you would have known, right? So she has to make it right, I think, before she can move on from her Florida purgatory.

And sure, it's hard to hear these things, I think, but ultimately this opens up the possibility of restoring Howard's reputation, right, and of Cheryl being able to forgive herself, presumably. So it's interesting at the end of the scene, Cheryl asks her why she's doing this, and we just cut straight to the bus scene before we hear her answer. So I don't know whether she has no answer

or whether the creators just wanted to leave her motivations open to our interpretation, or whether there's something else still to learn in the finale that they didn't want to give away here, that Kim has further plans that maybe she's hoping that Jimmy Saul can corroborate this in some way so that either of them or both of them can actually suffer further consequences. But I don't know what you made of that cut of leaving that question hanging there. Yeah, that's a great question. And it does open the door to, like, you know, we've only got one week left.

Of course people are like going to, this is the wildest time for theories. One week left of a big show. Of course, people are on their theories. I just think it's so key that in that scene, the only lie that Kim tells is about Jimmy's whereabouts, right? She's like, the only person who corroborate me is my ex-husband, if he's even still alive. She knows he's alive.

So that's the one lie she tells is. Although, is Jimmy alive is still a question, right? But, like, that's a protective. I read it as protective of him. Yeah. She's like, I will, okay, I'll do what I need to do to try to get my hands as clean as possible and unburdened myself here. But this is about me and it's not about setting up Jimmy, which I saw. I've seen a lot of theories about it.

It just bothers me to the end that people think that Kim is still scheming when like we see her so broken. She can't tell her terrible boyfriend, no, Miracle Whip is disgusting actually. She can't even say that. So, like, that's where Kim is, you know. Yeah, no, she's not going to give him away. I think she hopes that he will give himself up for his own good. Yes. But I don't think she's going to be the one to do it.

And, you know, then we go to the incredible bus scene, right? When it all just comes flooding out, the waterworks. And on the insider pod, they said that they did two takes just in case. And they used the second one, even though the first was fine. And imagine doing this breakdown twice. I mean, it's hard for me to imagine doing that once, but then, okay, back to one. Let's take that again. And you have to go from this stone-faced reserve to just completely losing it.

I mean, how many times can we compliment Ray Seahorn, right? But one more, at least, I think. So as we've often noted, just Kim is usually so reserved and controlled and she's able to outwardly suppress any sign of what she's feeling, even in this episode when she goes straight from talking to Jean for the first time in years to singing happy birthday, right? So she puts on a happy face or at least a neutral face. But here, finally, she can't clamp down and that damn just breaks. And maybe it's the relief of finally fully coming clean. Maybe it's the pain of revisiting everything she did and all the harm she caused and how her life ran off the rails.

Maybe it's reconnecting with Jimmy, Saul, Jean. It's all of the above, probably. But it's just too much. The damn breaks. And I think the person sitting next to Kim on the bus is played by Holly Rice, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And she reaches a hand out to comfort her. She puts a hand on her shoulder. And Kim seems almost numb to her touch. She doesn't really react. But maybe that's a sign of some healing or reconnection being possible. now that she's allowed her inner turmoil to come out.

And, you know, Gene and Kim are kind of juxtaposed in this episode as they both risk getting themselves in trouble in different ways and maybe find their way to confessing in different ways. And another parallel is that they both ride a bus. Like, Gene has to take the bus back from the heist house because Jeff was his ride. I don't think Gene has an emotional outpouring on his bus trip. No, it's not that we know of. No. No, maybe he's heading toward one.

And I guess he did have that breakdown. down in his car in the season four finale winner. So that was sort of a parallel. But this is just a really powerful scene. I love that Vince in, I think it was a variety interview, Vince was joking about how Holly, his partner, Holly was like, why are there more shots of my face? Why are he ones racing his face? Why is just my hands patting her on the shoulder. Yeah, that really reads as relief.

Like, it's grief, but relief also. And a question I had watching this is like, does Kim just go back to Miracle Whip and puzzles an amazing race? Honestly, nothing wrong with any of that except for Miracle Whip. And the yupp, yep, yep. Is this a step in the right? Is she going to make that date to the outback? Or is she not going to have a bloomin onion? Is the question in like something that Vince Gillian says in the variety interview, he says,

once she copse to her sins to the guilt she has for these terrible things she and Jimmy did, then the healing hopefully will begin. So this is like, yes, Kim has done this. She's, to use more 12-step language, she's given herself up to the higher power of the district attorney's office in Albuquerque, right? I can't control. I have to, I put myself in the hands of the higher power that is the DA's office and they'll do what they'll do and we'll see. But I have a sense that she's not going to, you know, go back to the sprinkler company. And I have a sense that she's not going to stay with yep, yep, yep.

And I have done to, like, you know, she might go get some sparkling highlights. Nothing wrong with being a brunette, obviously, clearly. Yeah, I don't know if she goes all the way back, you know. I think she probably still has some guardrails up. And so I don't know that she's going to be reinstating herself as a lawyer, right, and arguing cases again. But maybe there's some middle ground. Maybe she can do some social work. Maybe she can find a way to help people to put her skills to use without also endangering other people.

and herself, there must be some middle ground. So we'll take it, right? Like, this is what qualifies as a happy ending in this universe, in this series. She's not only alive, but there is at least a little bit of sunlight breaking over the horizon here. I don't know if this is quite a rainbow after the storm after the water works, but you could imagine one starting to form at some point. I've never been to Florida, so no knock on Florida at all because I've literally never been there. but like the shot of the heat waves on top of the cars in Florida. It's just like, oh, we should mention, um, it's not Florida.

It's not Florida. They did not shoot in Florida at all. And they go at great lengths to describe all the things that they did to make Albuquerque look like Florida, including a digital effect in the background at that sort of airless barbecue that happens at the opening of the, they just sort of completely digitally mapped the canal background into an Albuquerque backyard. So just in case you thought they were being flagrant with their budget. Much like they did not go to Germany when Lalo visited Margarita. Pretty convincing.

I really thought that digital, that CGI gator that sort of like waddled through the barbecue was maybe a stuff too far. But other than that. Dexter in the background. That was a little too much. Yeah. And I was like, do we need to go to Marilago? I mean, like the FBI is there. But do we have to go there?

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But, I mean, it's just a funny bit, too. A Redditor pointed out that the poor cancer mark has $737,612. $6.62,000 is the amount that Walt said he needed in 737. 612 is presumably for season 6, episode 12, which we are in. And 62 cents is for that this is the 62nd episode of the entire series. Yeah. Wow. All.

Okay. But I think even more fun is that someone on Reddit pointed out that the desk of this mark is the Coca-Bolo desk that when Jimmy was trying to get fired, it's just the very expensive, lavish desk that he ordered for himself. And that could just be like, A, a fun callback to the Coca-Bolo desk, or B, maybe it represents like, Jimmy's like, what's the worst, most obnoxious thing? that I could try to get. I know the Coca-Bolo desk, and here it is, and like, his mark has it.

I don't know. What do you think? And everything in this series is just such a flex, just such a tour to force. You know, I know that Gilligan refers to it as showmanship, that he and Gould use that a watchword, that, hey, why just do the drab version when we can do the showy version, not showing off necessarily, but just adding a little intrigue for all of us who are here doing deep dives. And I'm going to miss that because that depth is not in every series. And maybe sometimes we read too much into it and we give them more credit than they deserve as intentional

storytellers. But that's because they've conditioned us to look for these things. And so often they're there. And this series supports that sort of reading. So this is a tough scene. As you mentioned, just seeing him be prepared to brain this poor guy who's already suffering from cancer and has been robbed and taken advantage of and just the expressions flitting across Gene's face. And, you know, I guess you could debate whether he was going to do it. But I think it's pretty clear that he was going to go ahead with hit, literally, if the guy had not passed out at that moment. And maybe it wouldn't have been fatal.

But if you're ready to bash a cancer patient in the skull with the urn holding his dead dog's ashes, you've sunk pretty low. You're pretty farmed down the bad choice road, I would say. A lot of bad choices would lead you. Yeah, and that's just one of the times in this episode when we see him come much closer to getting his hands dirty in an unusual way. He's usually pulling the strings, not pulling the trigger. And even in Bagman, he's setting people up, but not doing the dirty work or the wet work himself. And here he's kind of crossed that line where he comes close to potentially two attempted murders.

And maybe he's pulled back in the second of those scenes by his own sense of. sanity and morals, whatever is left of that here, it seems to be pretty purely coincidence that actually prevents him from taking that step. And listen, it's one thing to brain longtime Big Bang Theory star Kevin Sussman. It's another to throttle comedy legend, beloved comedy legend, Carol Burnett. So before we get to Marion, though, we need to talk about this incredible comedy moment with Jeff in the cab. I just like is so good.

The way it was shot, the way that we get to, like, sit with the cops with their, like, conversation about fish tacos. I, I, and then, like, yes, I would never eat a Nebraska fish taco. I agree, by the way. But secondly, and then just watch the gap, first of all, take off, and you're like, oh, Jeff. And then just, like, plow into another car immediately. I was a big relief that I needed because I was, like, wow, I'm so tight watching this episode. I know. And that's what this series does, just to go from this.

incredibly fraught disturbing scene to just the greatest comic relief. I laughed long and hard, probably longer and harder because it was coming on the heels of. So tense, yeah. Yes, but it was great regardless, just executed so perfectly, just seeing it from afar, just waiting for Jeff to make his move and then having it basically be a blooper like in America's Fudiest Home video. This is like a gif that you would see and maybe make fun of on the internet. So I love it. Jeff gets caught because he has a guilty conscience, right? I mean, he thinks that the cops are looking at him, and everyone has a guilty conscience at this point. Kim's is maybe guiltier than Jimmy Saul Jeans is, but it's making them do things, right? It made Kim take the step of confessing.

It made Jeff Flore the accelerator, and it makes Gene, maybe, maybe it's one of the things making Gene act the way he does. And maybe it's all bringing them. to justice in one way or another. And then immediately we go to Gene getting arrested, the great shot of him just on the ground. Like, whoa, wow. Oh, Jeff. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Which, you know, almost made me glad that this is a different Jeff actor because the previous one was just so menacing that I don't know if he could have pulled this off and it would have been as convincing and funny. And I saw Tom Schnaz said they didn't rewrite the character because of the casting choice. So maybe they would have had him do that. Maybe he could have pulled him off. But it was just perfect. And, you know, Gene does the Jimmy hands, right, from season one when he's waiting for Jeff to call. Jeff calls Saul. And Gene feels like he's back in his element for a moment before it all falls apart.

He makes a bunch of mistakes, right, in front of Marion, essentially. And as we kind of expected, her love of cat videos, you know, brought her to the conclusion. He shows up. We get this moment where the commercials reflected in his eyeglasses, which is a callback to the pilot episode when we first met Gene Tackovic and he was watching Better Callsall commercials to feel something. And we see the reflection of color in his glasses in season one, episode one, a Better Call Saul. So full circle to that shot there. And a few other callbacks. I was looking, the website, TV tropes does breakdowns of these episodes and does a good job of identifying some call.

backs. And this Saul Goodman commercial, I believe, is the same one that's playing on Jesse's TV when Saul makes his appearance in Breaking Bad. And then also, there may be some parallels here where the beginning of the end for this character, perhaps it's sort of reminiscent of the copy of leaves of grass that Hank finds that's signed by Gail. And suddenly it dawns on Hank, oh, Walter White, that's this Walt. It's the same guy, right? And here it's the multiple personas of Jimmy Jean Saul coming together in Marion's mind. And also the parallel maybe to Gene's plans being changed in the last scene of the penultimate episode of the series

by something he sees on a screen, which is maybe also a call back to Walter White at the end of Breaking Bad. So lots of echoes here. And I guess you could also say that Mary's, and pressing the life alert button. It's kind of like Hector pressing the detonator to take down Gus, right? Just like blowing up Jeans' reconstructed life with the press of a button. Chris Ryan mentioned that the shot of Bob Odenkirk with the telephone line looked to him like a Hitchcock movie. And that's exactly what it looked like to me as well.

There's a couple specific Hitchcock movies that I wanted to shout out here. One is like obviously the film Rope. Like that's a clear one. Great film. if you haven't seen it. All of these are great films that I'm about to mention. But also I think two really interesting Hitchcock films,

which are suspicion and shadow of a doubt, which are both about genial figures played by Carrie Grant and Joseph Cotton, respectively, who have a moment where the main character is like, holy shit, is this person a killer? Yeah, the mask slips, right. They're holding something mundane. It's like something mundane that is suddenly,

like shot in a different light and you're like, oh my God. So that's the real Bob Odenkirk move here. But interestingly, Vince Gilligan in his conversation with Entertainment Weekly said that bridge on the river Kwai was also on his mind because there's a moment at the end of Bridge on the River Kwai when Alex Guinness's character has a moment where he realizes like what he's done in building this bridge. And Gilligan says, I was thinking, I want that look on his face with him without him saying it, my God, what have I done?

So that's what's going on inside of Jimmy Jean Saul's head when he decides to not murder, beloved American treasure Carol Burnett. Yeah, I think Odin Kurt comped the arc in this episode to Nicholas Cage being self-destructive in leaving Las Vegas. So maybe a lot of parallels here. And again, like Jimmy Jean Saul thinks he can talk himself out of any situation. And usually he can. He has some basis for saying that. But here he can't. Finally, he's cornered.

He even talks himself into trouble, right? By letting slip that Omaha has cash bail and saying it's not like Albuquerque at all, which raises more red flags for Marion. How does he know that? So I was inclined initially to interpret that scene charitably just because we're all Jimmy apologists on the inside. And I was like, hey, he's not really going to kill her. He's just trying to intimidate her and maybe tie her up.

But in an interview with Variety, Gilligan said, I don't think he was kidding around. I think he was ready to do something awful. He has turned into such a monster. So it could have been his Todd and Drew Sharp moment maybe. And maybe he was going to kill her until she said, I trusted you, which according to Gilligan was a line that Burnett came up with. It wasn't even in the script, which is pretty impressive because that line really ties this together. And as Gould noted on the insider pod, what a treat to see. two comedy legends in this incredibly intense thriller style scene and totally holding their own.

But that line I trusted you, I think that touches him maybe because no one else has really trusted him since Kim. And maybe because it makes him remember how he was helping the Sandpiper residents, how they trusted him, how he betrayed Irene, which brought him back to his senses once before. His motto... Big Irene energy here. Yeah, yeah. Definitely.

Yeah. And his motto at the start of the... series was a lawyer you can trust. And he always wanted Chuck to trust him and never got that validation. And now he's realizing what he's turned into and how unworthy of trust he truly is and how this person did trust him and he threw it away. So there is seemingly some shred of Jimmy that pulls him back from the brink here. But can that tiny voice inside save him or is it too late? The other image that I thought of, someone pointed out to me weeks ago that Gene Tachovic kind of looks like the BTK killer.

And if you Google image search the BTK killer, it is the glasses, the mustache, the thinning hair, the sweaters, like, it is very much what the BTK killer looks like. And the BTK killer did a lot of binding. And so with him with the phone cord in his hand was just like pure a serial killer moment for our beloved Jimmy McGill. Like, what a move. Right, yeah. And I meant to mention in the scene in Saul's office, we see the pillar fall, right, that column.

And Kim was the pillar propping up Jimmy McGill. Now she's gone. And so is he. And here's what's left. And also in that scene, remember, Kim kind of created Saul. She was the one who helped him craft the Saul persona in Wine and Roses. And now in that scene, she's sitting in the eye-catching office. she described the Cathedral of Justice.

And it looks totally tacky and garish. And he's like, what do you think? And she's like, hmm. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, he's pretending not to care about Kim. And meanwhile, he's ensconced in Kim's creation, right? Her handiwork. Yeah.

And maybe she feels even worse about what he's turned into because she played a part in creating that character, creating his layer. And, you know, before she comes in, he pulls out his hand mirror, checks his hair and his teeth. And then when she's there, he pretends he doesn't care, this very studied indifference that's not full in anyone. I did want to say this, the glorious technicolor section for last here and talk about all the color scenes together.

The cold open that we get, so he's bouncing his handball against the wall here loudly so that everyone outside can hear him. But this is, you know, as many pointed out, this is a callback to when he's working in the cell phone store. This is something that he would do. But also, like, we're talking about classic movies. Like, if you watch a character bounce a ball against a wall, like, there's no way you're not thinking about Steve McQueen in the Great Escape. And Steve McQueen in the Great Escape is in the cooler.

He's in, like, solitary confinement when he's bouncing the ball against the wall. So, like, that's like, that's a very, I'm in a prison of my own making of this glorious cathedral justice that I've built with fucking styrofoam columns that are falling down all around the moment. He's also shot, Bob has shot a lot in shadow in those scenes, both this cold open here and the actual son. lining of the paper scene. And I think it's really significant that the last shot we see of him, like the Kim sees of him, it's just like in the background. Yeah. He's gone.

Yeah. So all of that, all of that is very upsetting. We get some ties to breaking the beginning of Breaking Bad, right, that Emilio, who is Jesse Pinkman's cook partner before Waltz is the customer who walks. in after Kim. And our timeline questions aside, this is obviously before Breaking Bad because Emilio dies, spoiler alert, right at the beginning of Breaking Bad, right? So this is, as they, I think they said on the insider podcast, the youngest we've ever

seen Jesse Pinkman. Like the most, I mean, okay. Aaron Paul, shot in shadow in a beanie, sure. But like, that this is the beginning of that. The beginning of Breaking Bad is like here, thereabouts, you know. So I think that's interesting. Anything else you want to say about the Kimmy and Jesse scene that we didn't already talk about? Well, I guess the question is, is this Kim's farewell? Is this her last bow? Right? And the line that she leaves with when I knew him he was, which is debatable, right? Even that was he a good guy when she knew him when he was Jimmy. Chuck would say he wasn't even then that maybe he never was. But she always saw him that way. And just her seeing him that way, maybe he was.

the thing that kept him from completely breaking pad. But there is the question, is this her exit, right? And will the next episode be Saul-centric or Gene and maybe a little bit of Walt, right? Because there's still a Walt cameo to come based on what Brian Cranston has said. So I would lean towards no that this isn't the last that we'll see of Kim, just like I lean toward Nippy not being the last we saw of Gene. But if it is, if it was the end, I think I would be satisfied. I think she deserves to be there at the last moment just because of what she meant to this series.

But that would be a fitting end to that character. I think, you know, there's a little bit of hope. She has paid the price, right? It feels like a fulfilling arc, which I guess you could also have said of Gene at the end of Nippy, where we thought, okay, he had one last scam. and now he's hanging up the suit and he's walking away. That was not the case. So close. So who knows whether this is just neatly wrapped up.

Exit stage left Kim, series wrap on Ray Seahorn or not. Either way, I'm kind of okay with it in theory. Talking about the finale, Vince Gilligan said to Anatomyweekly, it looks to me like Gene, this is not spoilers. It's vague. So I don't, you know, we're not, I'm not shielding it. It's just something he said. He says, it looks to me like Gene Tuckaviv.

slash Saul Goodman slash Jamie McGill's world is crashing down around his ears it's going to be dramatic it's going to be a big one buckle your seat belts and then when Dan Sneerson at Entertainment Weekly

pressed him for an adjective he said earned well earned and what the finale to feel earned well earned and I think yeah whether it's redemption

or downfall I don't think that we can we can disagree that it was well earned and I do want to say that to go back to those we're going to wrap up

in a second here but to go back to that I think it was the Tribeca screening of episodes when the Gassamas were asked about like how to describe the end of the series. And Ray Seahorn said, Bob said a second life, but you don't even know what that means. So that could be him talking about what the fuck Gene gets up to, possibly. Or, you know, your envisioned future of him in prison maybe. So that's like a third life, right? But Ray said provocative and psychologically disturbing.

And I think that is really delivered on that so far with Bob Odenk. buried down on Carol Burnett. Yeah. And with one episode left and even though we've been thinking about this constantly in speculating and reading theories, I still don't know what will happen. Yeah, which is wonderful. That's exactly the way I would want it to be. It could go multiple ways and I could see it being earned either way. And that's the thing. I'm not, I'm worried about what will happen to these characters, but I'm not worried about feeling unfulfilled at the end of it. Just going back to my confidence in the creators of this series that has persisted since the start of the season. It's just such a great place to be in as a viewer to feel like I'm being led down a road

that I will be happy to get to the end of, or if not happy, at least I will feel like, yes, this made sense. Thus far, it's felt like everywhere these characters have gone felt fitting for these characters. And I have faith that that will continue to be the case. I just don't know where it will be, what that destination will be. will be. And that's great to get this far, especially with what started out as a prequel, although it no longer really is one, to have this feeling of just deep appreciation of the art on display in the series, but also just not knowing and have that basic suspense of what will

happen next that we want with a lot of our entertainment. It's just, it's special. So going to try to savor this last week, savor this last episode, maybe savor the free. center of the role that Cineban is giving away on Monday. And just plop down in front of that TV and just make it last as long as we can. All right. Well, I'll be craking up the blondie, typing my various theories into Ask Chiefs. And we will see you all next week for the finale of Better Call Saul. Series finale.

The wrap on this podcast, wrap on the show. We'll see you next week. This episode and all of our episodes will be produced by the great. Chris Sutton and we'll see you next time. Bye.