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

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

Ben and Joanna start the pod by talking about their expectations for this season and whether they've been met or exceeded at this point in the story. They then pivot to the dual cold opens that begin the episode and what they reveal about both Kim's moral background and Howard's home life. Next, they share their general theories on the the mysterious private investigator, the plan to secretly drug Howard, Francesca's overall importance, and Kim's decision to not take Cliff's offer to follow her original dream (24:33). They continue by talking about Kim and Jimmy's love chemistry, Lalo's big scene, and the strategy of releasing a two-part season for Emmy award consideration (1:03:33). Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Ben Lindbergh Producer: Chris Sutton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The ringer's music critic Rob Harvilla curates and explores 60 iconic songs for the 90s that define the decade. Rob is joined by a variety of guests to break it all down as they turn back the clock. Check out 60 songs that explain the 90s exclusively on Spotify. Hello, welcome back into the prestige TV podcast feed. I almost bought a celebratory bottle of very expensive tequila for this podcast, but then was suddenly deterred. But I'm here to talk about the penultimate episode of the halfway,

season of the final season of Better Call Saul. I'm Joeter Robinson. I'm here with Ben Lindberg. Hi, Ben. Hi, it's time to tie off your bleeding leg stump because you and I are going to have a little talk. Oh my God. Do you think I could do a whole pod and not bleed out? Let's find out. From a hacked off, but only one way to find out. Okay. So as you know in the Presby's TV podcast feed, we had a lot going on. It is, we are in the thick of it in the Emmys of eligibility window. I'm going to actually talk about awards eligibility in a bit. There's a lot going on. So Atlanta, as we've mentioned, as Charles and Van bringing down Atlanta every week.

Sean talking about Barry with Bill Hader, great stuff every week. And then we own the city. Another sort of all in. I think we're hitting our groove in the prestige feed in terms of like just digging into a show week by week rather than sort of scattershot trying to follow everything. So those are some great shows that you can dig into and hear conversations around. This is our second to last time that we'll be meeting. about this, but we're about to hop Ben. I don't know if Mallory told you, but we're going to be drafting you. I'm sure she did. We're going to be talking about Obi-1 Canobi over the Ring

Reverse feed, and we can't talk about Star Wars without Ben Lindberg. So Ben will be on there to do some lore master's up for us over there. So we won't even have a break, Ben. You'll just be stuck with me for perpetuity. Yeah, we'll just have a little Obi-1 interlude between our better cause all half seasons. So today we're here to talk about season six, episode six, the aforementioned X and The Grind. Directed by, okay, got a new pronunciation of a long favorite actor and sometime director. Giancarlo Esposito is how you pronounce this actor and a director of this episode. He plays Gus Frang on the show, as you know, but he also directed this episode.

I was listening to The Insider podcast and I had to pause it and slack bed and be like, oh my God, did you know this? Have you heard me mispronounce this name? I'm right there with you. I went and looked. I mean, he's been on late night shows where they said it the way that we were saying it. But then I did find a video where he introduced himself just to confirm. And yes, it is indeed Esposito.

Esposito. So it's Jennifer Esposito and Giancarlo Esposito. I was tweeting about this and some listeners said that I guess there's a really good conversation he had with Mark Merrin about the pronunciation of his name. That podcast episode I was going to listen to it. But it is like a paywall locked episode. So I did not listen to it. But if you are a Marin devotee and you want to. want to hear John Carlo talk about the pronunciation of his name more. Apparently, you could hear

it there. The DP, as we mentioned, of all the even episodes of this season of Better Call Saul is Paul Donicky. He's like the longtime veteran DP of the show. First time writer, I should say, on this episode, Ariel Levine. Multiple time. Co-writer. Yes, first time, first solo script. Okay. So even before I listened to Chris and Andy talk about this for 30 minutes on the watch this week, I had a section in the notes here titled Expectations. So that's what we're going to start. start because here we are, I think for the last couple weeks, you and I have been like, well, surely it's going to like really ramp up next week or surely it's going to blah. And it's a conversation in the wider fandom. The Reddit boards are sort of choked with this question and Chris and Andy

chewed over in their, you know, customary thoughtful manner on their show, which is that I think all of us had an expectation that in a final season and especially in a split season where we're ramping up to a break, that there would be more momentum than perhaps we're feeling right now. over the last few episodes. Some people will go so far as to call it like boring, something like that. I'm not there yet at all. But so I don't want to anyone to misunderstand me. But I do think it's worth having a little chat about when something is split like this

or when we're in a final season like this, what we expect for the pace, what we expected to accomplish in the first half of a final season, et cetera. Ben, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I think a lot of the concern comes from the fact that we can see the finish line now and it's getting close and we're counting down the hours they have left to tell the story. And maybe we're making mental comparisons with the final season of Breaking Bad, which we all remember just being frenetic at the end. And I think season five of Saul sort of coached us to expect that, right? Because finally the streams crossed.

We had the lawyer storyline and the cartel storyline coming together. Things were picking up. We were getting lots of action. And I think there was maybe the expectation that that would continue or that that pace would even. pick up through the first half of this season so far. And that hasn't really happened, at least consistently. I think we were both surprised that they took nacho off the board as early as they did, right? And I think you could critique just how long we are taking to set up D-Day here. And I hope that come next week, we'll be saying this was worth the wait, and that this is

the last episode when we'll be talking about it being sort of slow. Personally, I'm not there on it being boring either. I kind of go back to what I said in our first episode about having almost total trust in this creative team and not feeling the normal last season anxiety about how are they going to tie this up? Are they going to bleed out? Is the leg stump of this story going to be stanched? But I don't want to just be better call sol apologists and say they can do no wrong, right? If we get to the end and it turns out that that faith was misplaced, I'll certainly say so. I just don't find it to be boring on a moment-to-moment basis. I'm still sort of savoring these characters and being in this world. Like, look, we get the extended montage of Howard getting ready for work and making

coffee, right? Which we'll talk about in a minute. You could summarize that scene as Howard gets dressed and makes coffee. Not really riveting stuff, but there's so much going on there that it's teaching us something about the characters. Maybe it's also preparing us for what's to come. So you have to be pretty invested in the show to pick up on or care about these things. And I'm not saying that if you think it's slow, it's just because you're not paying attention. You know, you're doing better calls all wrong. It is sort of slow. And I think that's a valid reading.

And there have been times in earlier seasons when I felt that slowness too, especially back in the Chuck era. But now just every little tidbit we're getting combined with the anticipation, in a way it makes it more frustrating because we hear at the end of this episode, it happens today. been waiting for that day for so long, but that anticipation, because I know that's coming, because I trust that there is a climax coming, I'm just willing to wait and take what we're given for now. I think the Howard getting ready intro is extremely rich. But there were other moments like in this episode, there's a scene where Mike talks to Tyrus, right, about like the distribution of men and who they're watching and who they're not. And before he does that, he just takes a slow leisurely walk through the laundry.

And it's like, did we need the long walk through the laundry? And like, and I don't, I don't mean to be an inattentive watcher because I do like that, not just Saul, but Breaking Bad would do this, like a slow down. And like, let's, let's savor the visuals. Let's just meditate in the moment. But I think there's just been a few episodes in a row where we're like, okay, like, maybe this could have been a shorter episode or could these have been all put together in one episode or two episodes or something like that. So I think these are questions. I think these are valid

questions worth watching. I think this is still one of the best shows on television, obviously. I think I did, I try not to let my expectations or my speculations get in the way of my enjoyment of something. But I think I did expect that like somehow everything pre-breaking bad would be wrapped up in this first half of the season or, you know, like I had a lot of thoughts. And to be clear, no one making the show promises that in any way shape are formed. So just because I thought maybe the back half would just be Jean, or I thought maybe the back half would be like the plot of Breaking Bad and Gene or something like that. Which is still in play, right? Yeah. Yeah. It could be. It could be. But like it still feels like there's a lot to do. Maybe there's a lot to do and

it will just be the most frenetic and adrenaline racing episode. We wish for a slower-paced episode. Exactly. So we'll get to all that. They've, We'll talk about sort of next week on when we get to it and we'll give people a chance to jump off. But let's start with, there's just like two cold opens in this episode. There's the Kim Cold Open and then there's the Howard Cold Open. So we'll start with the Kim Cold Open. On the Insider podcast, they talked about how there was originally an entirely different cold open. And they decided sort of to change it to this one.

We got an email from a listener, Chris, who mentioned that, of course, we've seen Kim and her mom before. in this cold open we see a shoplifting incident and her mom you know uh revealing her moral qualities and uh and sort of snagging the the earrings for for kim anyway in the previous one we saw like good girl kim coming out of a cello lesson i think uh not wanting to get in the car with her mom because she thought she had been drinking she was late to pick her up and she thought she'd been drinking that was in season five episode six wexler v goodman chris is really good question here This speaks to the earlier section is, did we learn anything new about the Kim, Kim's mom dynamic? And if so, what do you feel like you learn, Ben?

And, like, how does that inform how you're thinking about the larger show? Yeah, that's an interesting discussion. And they had that on the insider podcast, too. And it sounded like they had some misgivings about this teaser, that they reworked it, that their concern was that they were just going to have this be too simplistic, you know, just deliver Kim's origin story, just wrapped up with a bow. this is why Kim is the way she is today because of this scene because of this dynamic. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And I wouldn't want that to be the case either. And I think this does kind of tow that line. So look, we see young Kim with the foot tapping, right? So this is a through line. We're seeing a mannerism that she has as an adult that she had as a kid. I did want to compliment just the acting, the performances in these scenes. Like this is the best young actress playing a kid version of an adult.

character since Matilda Loller was young Kirsten on Station 11. A couple months ago. Yeah. Yeah, way back then. But kudos to Kim's home. And also Kim's mom, the actor playing her, Beth Hoyt, just perfect casting and acting because I was questioning like, is that Ray Sehorn? A lot of people thought it was.

A lot of people thought it was her in light prosthetics. Yeah. So you sort of see, I mean, we know where Kim gets her acting skills, right? clearly from her mother, her ability to keep her cool, to maintain this facade to hustle people, right? Like Kim's mom hustles the manager the way Kim later hustles Lalo and others. So I think what this raised in my mind, why is Kim doing this? Is this telling us that Kim always had this in her from the start, that she always just had this rebellious streak, this lawbreaking streak? Or is the point that, well, she's acting out actually because she wants

to be corralled. She wants her mom to take a firm hand here. She wants her to stop her and lay down the law and discipline her, or is it a bit of both? Because I really did think it was kind of heartbreaking that moment where she takes her mom's hand, right? She wants to be parented, it seems like, in this moment. And then as soon as Kim's mom starts laughing and making part of the manager, Kim immediately disengages her hand. And she's just right back to, oh, I have no guardian here. That's so funny. I thought her mom dropped her hand. Oh, well, maybe it's mutual.

Maybe it's a bit of both. I thought her mom was like, I thought her mom saw the hand grab as like, oh, good move. We're still doing this performance for the manager. And then they round the corner and she drops her hand. But either way, it's heartbreaking. But I think that that that concept of Kim wants to be parented, huge. Like this idea of kids acting out because they want attention good or negative attention is, is I think a big part of, you know, moves like this as a kid.

but also, yeah, just wanting your parent to parent you. Yeah, and she does crave some attention from her mom and some affection, and she gets it here because the mom says, I didn't know it had it in you, right? So it's kind of like Kim's mom is a grifter like the grifter who wanders into Jimmy's dad's store, right? And tells them they're wolves and sheep in this world kid. The shopkeeper is like Jimmy's push over dad. So both of them have been shaped in this way at around the same age, seemingly.

they both learn the same lesson. And it still seems sort of like Kim thinks that scams or griffs are expressions of love. Right. Like this is how you connect with people because this is how she connected with her mom by shoplifting. So maybe this is how she's now expressing this affection that she has for Jimmy. That's why they've bonded over this. That's just how she thinks relationships work seemingly. So that's really sad. I don't know that that is that enlightening because, because we knew that Kim just had this fever for the grift. It's been in her all along. So maybe we could have just inferred this.

We could have imagined this. So you could say that we didn't need this, that it's a little heavy-handed. It's over-illustrating the origin story. But it is just really a poignant scene. And it does tell you a little bit about how Kim became who she is now. So, you know, does she even want that corrective impulse anymore? The person who's going to come in like Jimmy does at the end of this. episode and say, well, we'll live to fight another day. It's not happening. And Kim rejects that. So I don't

think she even want someone to come in and say, no, I'm going to keep you on the straight and narrow, the literal straight and narrow road here. I think she is fully interested in just going the other way. In a little bit, I do want to revisit that idea of the grift as an act of love. I think that is a key point to something worth exploring in the Kim and Jimmy relationship in this episode. Yeah. And, you know, I don't, this may have been a throwaway, line a coincidence, but the manager mentions that the earrings are from the starlight collection, which made me think of the Kaylee scene later in this episode. Like, that's kind of Mike's expression of love for Kaylee, right?

That he gives her this telescope. He's walking her through seeing the stars. That's kind of the childhood you want, I guess, where you have your mom standing next to you, pointing the telescope with you and you have your pop pop on the phone telling you what you're seeing. Like, that's the starlight that she is seeing. whereas Kin, at roughly the same age, her starlight is a pair of earrings that she shoplifted and has continued to wear into adulthood. Yeah, but I mean, I'm not sure that binary is perfect in terms of Kaylee because, of course, like, her pop-ops across the street and lying about being in Shottanooga.

And we know that, like, Mike's going to vanish from her life very soon from her Kaley's life. Yeah, so maybe it's an illusion in both cases. I want to visit this theory that a couple of people of you melled us about over the way. a few weeks, this Kim behind bars theory, which like if you pay attention, I think a lot of this comes from the fact that Kim has been doing business in the El Camino, which I think has bars on its windows. So like a lot of shots have featured bars in front of Kim's face. And I wasn't sure like how intentional that was if we feel like that's foreshadowing Kim being in jail the end of the series or the end of the split season or something like that. But so I was on the lookout in this

episode and there is a shot as she's going into the office. of like the newly decorated office that Francesca has worked over of Kim's shadow in the shadow of the level blinds of the window sort of projected onto the wall so it's Kim again behind horizontal bars but bars in that scene so I was like okay well maybe

I don't know I don't like that as a possibility of an ending but she does start this episode young Kim starts this episode in custody so you know just just floating the Kim behind bars a theory that is out there raging raging through the fandom. There's also, we got an email.

I've seen a lot of anti-Kim sentiment, and I just want to say for the record, I think you can agree with me. This is a pro-Kim podcast. We are not standing for Kim hate. I am concerned for Kim, but I am not against, I mean, she could do something to change my mind, for sure, but I care deeply about Kim Wexler and her. I mean, that's why our email is Kim Wexler lives. at gmail.com. I care about her and her well-being. How are your Kim feelings these days?

Maybe that's part of the purpose of the opener with young Kim just to refresh our sympathy for this character because this is an episode where she runs off the rails. I mean, at the beginning of the season when we first started doing these podcasts and we talked about what might happen to Kim, I said, well, maybe she doesn't die, but maybe she just becomes such a morphed version of the character we knew and love that we no longer feel for her the way that we're not. have. Maybe we want her to be put out of her misery in some way, not necessarily dying, but being disbarred, being in prison before she can get herself into even worse trouble, will we still feel for her the way that we used to? So maybe is that scene reminding us this is where Kim comes from.

Maybe that's putting your thumb on the scale, the scales of justice a little too heavily there. We've been living with Kim for several years and several seasons here, so there's a pretty deep bond between her and most of the audience. But I think it's hard to lose that sympathy for her when you see where she came from, right? So maybe it's sort of the sob story. Like, hey, if you were raised in these circumstances, then you would have turned out like Kim too.

I don't know if that is part of the reason why that scene was there. Kim's got a cold open. Howard's is even colder, I would argue. Though interestingly, you know, I'm not sure how much of this is like a directorial flare choice or is in the script or whatever, but I just thought the establishing shots of things in both the Kim Cold Open and the Howard Cold Open of like hangars and like, you know, just it's shot very similarly.

Both the characters are in cages of of a kind in these in these opens. But we find out that Howard, as alluded to in his therapy session, a couple episodes ago, his marriage is on the rocks. He's sleeping in like sort of a guest cabana, must be nice. He's not on the couch, but he's effectively on the couch. And we see his sort of like long morning routine of making a beautiful latte for his estranged wife who we meet for the first time. I do want to note quickly that Howard drinks chamomile tea, not coffee, that may come into play later. I mean, I really loved this sequence. I think it establishes a lot in a very little amount of time, very little dialogue.

I like that his estranged wife is not painted as a monster. That it's even sadder than a relationship where the. couple is like at each other's throats and fighting is this she just so clearly doesn't care anymore and not doesn't care in a monstrous and humane way because she's like oh i thought you're going to get a mattress you know she cares that his mattress is nice she you know she i think she cares enough about him but she does not care at all about any of his love languages that he is trying to offer and that is just deeply sad what did you think yes Howard's love language is espresso.

It's not being reciprocated here. Please, Patrick Fabian, if you want to come to my house and make me some foam art, I will gladly receive it. The peace sign to go with the namaste, a license plate. Howard, I love you. Yeah, this is a devastating scene. Even before the coffee, when he's dressing himself and buttoning his own buttons, the contrast with Kim and Jimmy's morning routine is strong, right?

Because they dress each other. It's a mutually destructive relationship in their case. but they have someone to button their buttons, right? So they don't have to look in the mirror and button themselves up. And Howard is just generally a buttoned up person. And in the scene, he is too. I mean, Howard, like, in every interaction, Howard always looks like he's giving a presentation, you know. He has these finely choreographed hand movements.

He has this voice where he's projecting and everything is very controlled. But you can see that under the surface he's hurting here, I think much like the Kim opener maybe fostering our sympathies for Kim. This scene serves to foster our sympathies for Howard, right, with what may await him next week. We should remember, Howard's not a complete baby face, you know. We have seen him do some reprehensible things. We've seen him be a bad dude at times, maybe not as bad as Saul slash Jimmy think he is

or as Kim thinks he is, but he has been disrespectful and dismissive to Kim many times. And we don't know what happened in this relationship, right? It's not necessarily the case that Howard is just the victim here. Of course, of course. For all we know, the wife is out on Howard because of something he did, right? So we're coming in midstream here. But, yeah, he has the fancy coffee machine, Spiros' coffee machine from billions. He makes the peace sign in the coffee.

She doesn't even seem to notice it. She doesn't acknowledge it. Slops it on the counter. His clean counter just dripping all over. Just really just devastating. And then she walks out without saying goodbye. and they're just planning their routine. I'm going to go here.

You're going to go there. Do you want me to come? No, I got it. You know, they're just synchronizing their schedules. There's just no affection, at least on her part. Totally. I thought the line read where she was like, I'll be over at these people's houses tonight. So you've got the house to yourself in that sort of like, lucky you have your other house to yourself.

But you feel the emptiness of that for him, that he's going to go home to a cold, empty house. Yeah, he doesn't want to be on his own in this house. And then you see her walk way down this long hallway with her. steps just echoing to and from this kind of cavernous space. I think the way that Giancarlo Esposito set the camera, so you see that hallway in the kitchen as like separate spaces, you watch her come in that separate space and leave that separate space, and we stay with him as he wipes up the foam from the counter. It's all very sad.

You're right. He's not an innocent little puppy dog. It's totally true. But they're doing the work that they need to do to get me to care without like hitting it too hard. You know, it's still a fairly quick scene. And Hauer's not like rescuing kittens from trees or whatever. Do you know what I mean?

He's just like he's probably dealing with some consequences of his own behavior. You're right. But it's, you know, there's something about the shoe buffer machine that is just extremely sad to me. Yeah. It's just all about keeping up appearances and having this high collar while all of these things are going on under the scenes. And it just lets you know that, yeah, he has a home life, but it is not a rich or rewarding

one right now. And so all he has is the office. And that's why in his therapy session, he starts with the office. And he has to be reminded, no, this is not just about work, what's going on in your personal life. He doesn't have much of a personal life now, or at least not when he wants to talk about or dwell on, which if he has some sort of professional downfall next week, that just makes that even more agonizing, I think, knowing that he has nothing to fall back on. And getting the reminder here, not only do we learn that he is a tea drinker, not a coffee drinker, and an uncaffeinated tea. drink. Camamile, yes. We'll get into that later, but also the reminder that he hasn't been sleeping. You know, he replaced his mattress, but it's not just the mattress that is making it hard for him to

sleep. So all of that kind of goes to his mental state, as they say in court, which will probably come into play sometime soon on Better Calls All. All right. So we're going to get to caffeinated habits and BPMs in just a second. But before we leave Howard here, there's this PI check-in, which I think is significant. So it sets up this fact, you know, like Howard hired this PI after that erstwhile sort of like boxing match situation who's been trailing Jimmy and Kim. Jimmy and Kim are aware that a PI is trailing them. I'm going to jump ahead. I was going to bring this up later, but I'll bring it up now. Do you think this PI is actually working for Jimmy and Kim?

It's a great question. I think you see in the scene when he lingers over Jimmy taking out his fat stacks and he sort of just steers Howard toward, hey, this is not normal. this is not above board and kosher, right? That would not necessarily be an unrealistic thing for the PA to say if this is all on the level and on the up and up. He was like, he was like, can you think of a legitimate reason why someone would, and he has the exact amount is like 20 grand in cash? Like he says he saw four stats like, I don't know, I'm not a PI, but if I saw four stacks

of cash, I wouldn't be like, oh, clearly, 20 grand. That's what that stacks of cash is. I mean, it really feels like this guy is working for Jimmy and Kim. Yeah, you wonder about the mechanics of that because it would not have been hard to anticipate that Howard might have gone to the PI. We could imagine Jimmy making that connection. But then does Jimmy know which PI he's going to call because they have used PIs before at HHM? Or does he get to the PI after he's hired? Or does he put a plant there?

Does he pay him off? I don't know exactly how that would work. And I don't think it's necessary for this to be the case. We can run through a little later on how we envision D-Day going. I think there are ways that they could pull off this scam without having the PI in their pocket. But it's definitely suggestive. It's a little bit suspicious. The fact that they felt like they knew exactly what the Kettlemans would do just by their first, you know,

it feels like a lot of this plan is hinging on them feeling like they know what someone's going to do next. Do you know any behavior? And so I could see them in the universe of this show, I could see something as simple as like planting an ad somewhere that Howard would see it or something like that. Or your explanation is so much simpler. They have an in-house PI that they use at Hamlin, Hamelin and McGill. And Kim knows him, you know? Yeah, because in a way, like, we're kind of kept in the dark about a lot of aspects of the scene,

but we've seen some of it. The curtain is beginning to be pulled back. So we see the actor who's playing the judge in this episode. So if they've had an actor impersonating a PI all along, let's say, and we have not been privy to that, I would feel a little left out. I would feel a little manipulated as a viewer at this point. And if they were paying off the PI, I mean, I guess they still have the cash in Lalo's bag, right, just hanging around in the closet. So maybe they've finally found a use for that. But in a way, I kind of like the idea that they've just anticipated where Howard will go. They're just seeing so many steps ahead here. And maybe they will fail to. to foresee something next week, but that they're able to anticipate this just because they're students of the characters of this show. All right, we're going to break down exactly what we think this grift might be. I think we figured it out.

But whether or not, as you say, whether or not it goes to plan, we shall see. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere in a crowd. But too often, life gets busy or the price holds you back. Price Line is here to help you make it happen. With millions of deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars, you can go see the game live. Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com.

Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. Let's take this next step, which is a visit to the doctor, right? We mentioned at the end of last week's episode that we had seen shady, veterinary, and extraordinary Dr. Caldera in the next time on. So he is back. He's got a little black book that is incredible. coded with a cipher. Fun fact that Cipher is real.

Not only like I heard that on the insider podcast, but I had already seen Redditors like start to break down. Of course. Something I love about the Better Call Saul Reddit is like the Breaking Bad Reddit was so intensive. But that show, the fandom around that show was so much more intensive. And what I love is that even though a lot of the broader cultural scrutiny of

Better Callsall has has fallen away from the Breaking Bad days, that core. and hardcore core I'm going to freeze frame every page of this little black book and Dakota Cipher that is really just names that are probably just like production staff honestly you love to see it

honestly I love that level of engagement I think it's incredible they've been through the fire with Breaking Bad they've learned from that series and they've applied all of those lessons to Better Calls Hall okay but so we're testing a substance on Jimmy here Jimmy is a human guinea pig here and there's a few

key phrases here right He says the skin's dry where you put the stuff on, which makes it seem like the substance is topical, right? When asking about the effects of it, again, this is like, as you say, the half draw of the curtain, right? We're getting some hints here. What will this drug do to you? How will it impact you? And he says, depends how used to caffeine you are. And then we think about Howard's chemomile tea and we get worried.

Like two red bulls on an empty stomach is the impact here and that there's an hour or two of efficacy and it will not show up on a blood. panel and it all ends with Jimmy's people sort of being blown out as they look in the mirror. So essentially what we can conclude here is that they are testing a topical drug that they will somehow slip to. This is the part of the plan that I'm like, I cannot believe this is happening. But this is the long con of the whispers about drug use is that they are going to drug Howard in a moment of crisis. And we'll get to that in a second to make it seem like he is high.

He is at least as jittery as one might be on two Red Bulls, maybe more since he's a camomile guy. Ben, oh, my God. How do you feel about this development in the plan? They're framing him as a drug user by actually drugging him. Oh, my God. It is devious. It is fiendish, but you can certainly see it playing out because Cliff is convinced as it is, right? So he sees the pupils dilated.

He sees Howard look at a little off his. game here just on a super extreme caffeine high, you can see how this would all fall apart. And we can maybe imagine what the precipitating incident here, right, is because we've been seeing the actor who has been playing the judge, who will be the arbitrator mediator in this case. And so the wrench has been thrown into that plan. The cast has been thrown into it as we see at the end of this episode. But all the groundwork has been laid here seemingly. Howard knows that Jimmy took out a bunch of cash.

We've got framed photos, faked forged photos of Jimmy with the judge impersonator, right? So somehow those photos have to get into Howard's hands. Now, that's the part I'm not completely clear on, or at least one of the parts, if the PI is in the pay of Jimmy and Kim. That's why I think the PI is working for Jimmy and Kim. Then it's easy, right? Then he just slips that in with all the other photos. If not, though, I think it could still work, right? Maybe there's a courier.

Maybe Jimmy and Kim, they still have friends in the mailroom. Who knows what it is? But maybe someone slips the photo to Howard in this moment when perhaps he's already high. You know, it's a high pressure, high anxiety moment. He sees this. He's already primed because he's seeing Jimmy behind every corner now, right? He knows that Jimmy is scheming against him. So if he sees this, it'll be confirmation bias.

He'll say, aha, I know he has this money. He's giving it to the judge. there's something shady happening here. And then maybe he brings those accusations out in the room. And meanwhile, he's ranting like a lunatic, right? It's the chicanery moment again, right? Where Jimmy makes Chuck look like he has no credibility. It seems like they are laying the same sort of trap for Howard here.

Speaking of the incredible work of the Better Call Sell Redditors, one of them has broken down the post-its on the board of Kim and Jimmy's plan. And it is incredible content if you feel like exploring this. On Reddit, the post is called like Kim and Jimmy's Board of Mischief, all main points. I was feeling like an idiot when I read out a Redditor's username because they're usually incomprehensible. So I will spare myself that, but I do want to give them full credit for this because there's just like fun pictogram stuff.

Like for last week when Kim was getting information from the character, Vila, there's like a viola drawn on a post-it as like to indicate. Kate, I will get the information. Like, it's just, like, the production design team had a really fun time, just, like, devising these post-its. But every single step of the plan is laid out there. And so, like, to zoom back to the beginning, right, we plant the drugs on Howard and the club.

We involve the Kettlemen's to undermine Howard to Cliff. We staged an altercation with Wendy the sex worker, again, in front of Cliff. We bait Howard into hiring a PI, and is the PI working for them? Or, as you say, are they just going to, like, send the photos and go. claim it was from his PI. Whether or not the PI is working for them is a question mark, right? Find out the identity of the judge from Viola, hire someone to impersonate him.

As you mentioned, we saw this actor this week. Stage a photo where it looks like Jimmy is paying off the judge. Make Howard think the judge is dirty. Drug Howard. In a way that makes it look like he's on Coke. And then he wiles out, as you say,

accuses the judge of bribery, a venerated judge of bribery in front of Cliff. at this mediation meeting that Saul or Jimmy used Francesca to find out location of how to dial in so we could listen, so we could have the joy of listening to Howard end his own career over the speakerphone, right? They want to gloat. They want to be there. Yeah. I, okay.

I think from the start we've meant to feel uneasy about this scheme. And I have, of course, from the start, Jimmy feels uneasy about it. Kim is determined that we're supposed to feel all that tension. this I don't know why this step over the line of like actually drugging him is is making me feel really queasy but that's that's where I am I'm just like this is this is a bridge too far it's all a bridge too far but this is like there's something fun about watching Jimmy like steal the car put the cone out like all this sort of stuff like that but I'm like you're going to drug a man and a man that we know drink camamile tea I know it's funny that you use that phrase a bridge too

far. I was going to bring that up too, because this is feeling more like Operation Market Garden than D-Day to me. This is going to be a bridge too far, right down to them having a little picnic in the garden outside HHS the night before. So it does feel like things are going to go wrong somehow here. I'm worried about Howard, not just professionally, but on a personal level, like on a health level. Yeah. I mean, he hasn't been sleeping. Could be, right? Which would be, I mean, kind of eerie, given what actually. happened to Bob Odenkirk during the filming of this season, but you could see something like that happening, like sleep deprived, under stress, low caffeine tolerance, Howard at this moment

that's his professional undoing. The only thing he has going for him is falling apart. Maybe they get the dosage wrong. Maybe he's just not ready for this. Maybe he keels over, right? And maybe that prompts an investigation, that prompts all kinds of guilt on the part of Jimmy and Kim. I mean, they don't want to kill him. Right. So if things go that far, then that sets up maybe an investigation, right? Dr. Caldera, he says that they're not going to detect the substance on a local blood panel, right? But if someone dies, who knows?

Maybe they bring in the out-of-town experts, right? And they detect something here. So maybe they actually could get implicated. I don't know that it has to be a death. I'm just saying that that kind of thing is in play here. Yeah, I'm definitely having flashbacks to Succession. and me being like, just candle die, right? So, like, I don't want to, like, get too wrapped up in my own tendencies.

Obviously, these are the stakes that this world exists in this show existence, you know, like, Nacho dies. Of course, Howard's not on that side of the story. He's not on the cartel side of the story. So we weren't really expecting this. Or even going to Breaking Bad. I mean, you know, Brock with the ricin or, like, you know, watching Jane die, right? I mean, there are echoes of all of these things here potentially.

There's been a long-time theory, and I don't quite know the exact genesis of it, that Howard might take his own life just because things get too bleak and upsetting for him. We shall see what happens. And we'll have a little bit more to say about this and the end of this episode when we talk about like the next time on. Right. I was thinking of that too because I think someone on Reddit pointed this out in Breaking Bad season three episode two. This is after Skyler finds out what Wall is up to. Saul tells him we live to fight another day, which is the same thing he says to Kim at the end of this episode, right, when he's trying to talk her into calling off D-Day.

And then he says to Walt, just promise me you won't hang yourself in the closet, right? And then he goes out and sits in the car and puts his head down. Is he thinking of a particular incident here in his past? Retroactively, could Howard do that in the closet where we saw the hangers to open this episode? Could be. I hope Howard's okay. Well, the good news is those hangers were on like a portable clothes rack because he's in the guesthouse. I mean, that brings us back to something that they said on the inside.

I think it was Peter Gould who said this on The Insider podcast in terms of that that magic trick that Better Call Sullen Breaking Bad does of making everything feel like it was planned all along even when it wasn't. He said one of the tricks, you know, one of the tricks we know is they've got all these players in the board and they sort of pluck them out when they need them. We'll get to sort of the film students in a second, right? But the other is he said, what have we said in the past that we can use in the future, right? So a line like that, don't hang yourself in the closet is something that they could earmark. mark for we should make that payoff at some point in the future. Not knowing exactly how, not holding themselves to exactly what that's going to mean, but like maybe it could. Yeah. And before we move on from Dr. Caldera for good, another thing about this scene.

First of all, love that he loves being a vet. He has his wall of happy pets. Animals are his life. Yeah. Love that we get a doxin for the second straight episode. Very into that. Also, the little black book, that's a prester egg, right, from that first scene of the season. So we get another reveal there, which suggests that Saul acquires that book, buys that book from him at some point, and we get the best quality vacuum card. So we know, and this seemed to be a big deal to Peter Gould on the insider pod, that this is finally how Saul knows about Ed, but Mike doesn't because Mike is not in the scene, which was not something I personally was really stressing about.

This was like a huge problem they wanted to solve for themselves. They were like, finally we figured it out. I wasn't really on tenter hooks here thinking, how did he know? I just figured, well, you know, he knows he's in the Albuquerque underworld. But here we get that reveal, which I think there's a fine line between over-explaining, like, how does this character know that thing? Where did he get the Statue of Liberty blowing thingy? You know, like we don't necessarily need all of those things spelled out,

but there is something in Gilgan and Gould, I think, that likes to allow us to plot those steps after the fact, even though they acknowledge that they don't know where these things are going when they start out. They figure it out as they go. they still do want all of the puzzle pieces to fall into place at the end. So this was apparently an important puzzle piece for them. It's funny like what we weigh and what we don't weigh because like I wasn't weighing that at all. And I'm like, okay, I'm glad that they feel at peace with that. And I didn't really care about okay. Meanwhile, the Francesca thing, which has been a question of like, how do we get from the Francesca we met? And I think it was what, season three of Better Call Saul to

the Francesca we meet in Breaking Bad. And, you know, their, their explanation this episode is very much like, this is it. This is, we're seeing her fall right now. And again, I'm just sort of like, I don't feel like I, again, there's, there's many more episodes to go. Maybe we're going to be spending a lot more time with Francesca. I don't know. I don't know that I want to necessarily, but I still don't know that this feels like a

satisfactory like, oh, she got talked into getting on this burner phone and doing this thing for him because he's paying her a lot of money. or some guy pissing all over her interior decorating is like what made her, you know, fundamentally change her character between these two seasons. I don't know. Yeah. Poor Francesca. I mean, we know that she has a few years ahead still with Saul before we actually meet her

in Breaking Bad. So a few years of exposure to Saul Goodman, that could change anyone, I think. But I did enjoy that scene. I guess we're stepping ahead a little here. But Francesca, I mean, she missed her calling, I think, as an interior designer. she could have stayed on that test? It's a lot of tope. I don't know. No, you're not into it? Okay.

I mean, it's definitely better than what we see in Breaking Bad. Absolutely. Like, way classier. But I think it lacks a certain imagination, is all I'll say. I like what she's done with the place. I don't think it's right for Jimmy, though. And I think when Kim sees it, you can sort of see that on her face, right? Like, this might be a good look for Kim's office, potentially. But she knows it's not what she weighed out for the Sol that she had in her mind.

And so in this scene, you know, when they step out to the alley and we get the, first of all, the little glimpse of the old toilet in the dumpster, right? So that's still out there if anyone was wondering what happened to the toilet. The toilet that they probably should have left in the office so that that guy could have had a place to actually pee. That could have been the water feature. But you get, I think, the, you know, fancy, respectable looking intersanktum and then you get the alley, like the interscentive. like the inter sanctum is Ali adjase here. There's just a very thin line between the public facade of respectable Saul, such as it is, and just the alley lawyer out there.

But when Francesca says after that conversation, we're not going to make a habit of this, right? And of course, that is the clue that, yes, they are going to make a habit of this. And they do their social engineering to get the call in info for the Sandpiper meeting. And, you know, she thinks, oh, this is a one-off. You know, I'm a little uneasy about this. but it won't be a regular thing. Oh, sweet summer child, right? Just give her a few years and she will be impersonating APD

and calling Hank to tell him that Marie was in an accident, right? And in that scene at Breaking Bad, she says, you're going to have to start paying me more, which echoes Saul's, you know what I'm paying you in this scene. So you can see just the real-time coaching of how to sound, you know? I loved Odin Kirk's performance in that scene. It's just like classic comedy stuff from him. And when she says, we're not going to make out of this, right?

He's like, no, no, no, no, no, like just perfect delivery of this hustle that he's doing here. Yeah. As you say, we hop for it because we want to go back to sort of Cliff and Kim here, right? Which is that when we saw Kim at the end of last season, and she's talking about the earliest grains of this plan, she's justifying it by saying, and we've seen a bit more of this with the pro bono work this season. But she justifies it by saying, if we get this sandpiper money, what I'm. going to do is I'm going to set up a you know a system where I can do pro bono like real good pro bono work in this community that is what I'm going to do with this money and so the fact that the writers of the show and Clifford made himself Ed Pigley Jr. having a significant role in this final season offer her that without having to drug Howard Hamlin and she says no I'm going to keep on my my with this plan, we already suspected that that it was her justification was bullshit, but now we proof that it is bullshit that she is literally offered a road to the future she wants without

having to do this horrible thing. And it's not, it's just about her finding some ends to justify the means of what she wants to do, which is a crime, a big crime. What, like, is that, is that, is that by, is that offer like too obvious, do you feel? Or do you feel like it's, it's perfectly set up to, you know, like to have a character to do a literal you turn or a road? Like, how do you feel like that? Yeah, I mean, we see her in that core scene really just caring about her client and arguing her case well. Like, she's good at this, you know? So the fact that Cliff would offer her this position, that tracks, I think. And somehow she's found time. Even while planning and being obsessed with Howard's downfall, she's worked 50 hours somehow to help this client at minimum wage. So there is still that side of her that does care about those things.

And it reminds me, I mean, at the end of the Dr. Caldera scene where Saul is lamenting that Dr. Caldera is walking away from this thriving side business he has here, right? He says he's raking it in, day and day out, passive income, minimal risk. I can't believe he's walking away from that. And Kim says, well, he knows what he wants? And so the question is, what does Kim want? And she makes a choice here. So in this courthouse scene, we see the reverberations of choices she's already made because there's the contrast. between her courthouse coffee from the vending machine and Howard's fancy espresso.

You know, it's just slopping into the cup. That's what she gave up. She gave up being on the partner track at the fancy law firm. And she chose the vending machine coffee so that she could do some good. She could help people. But clearly, it's not enough for her anymore. And so it reminds me of that scene. And I've quoted this before, but she turns on to the literal bad choice road.

Remember back to Season 5, Episode 9, that Mike monologue. We all make our choices. And those choices, they put us on a road. Sometimes those choices seem small, but they put you on the road. You think about getting off, but eventually you're back on it. The road we're on, led us out to the desert, and everything that happened there, and straight back to where we are right now. and nothing, nothing can be done about that.

And her road, she makes a very literal choice here. It's almost too obvious in its symbolism, if you can even call it. Right, right, right. She's driving toward justice for everyone, and she does a U-turn and says, no, that's not really what I want. I think it feels like a little on the nose for me. But those fatal and fateful choices have always been a hallmark of this world that Gilligan and then Gilligan and Gould have created these moments where you're just like

if you had only just I'm glad you flagged that line that she says he knows what he wants in the Dr. Caldera scene because ever since you told me about Kim's ponytail sort of reflecting her mood like I was looking at her hair in that scene that scene when she's like you want to talk about like alleyway lawyering

let's talk about like shady veterinarian exam room drug trials like her so she's got the ponytail but it's like she's got pieces of it down and it is like low the curls there but it's like low but then you cut to her in the courtroom arguing the case and the ponytail is high and tight you know what I mean and it's just sort of like this is you know I don't know I'm on ponytail watch I think it's a fascinating place to be yeah we'll see how it all pans out next week I think the really important thing that I want to go back to here is this question of the Jimmy and

Kim love story this is something that Chris and Andy have been banging the drum on and and I I largely disagreed with them and I was trying to figure out why and how to articulate it. This idea that they did not feel like the love story of Jimmy and Kim was very rich in chemistry or explosively passionate or anything like that, that this was like that they were more pals, that it was like a marriage of legal convenience more so than passionless or stuff like that. And I'm like, I get what you're saying here. I get all of that. I do think that there can be like an absolutely unbreakable connection. that is not explicitly sexual.

And it is something that I think these two characters have. And it doesn't, to me, make their love story feel like not a real love story. You know, and there's this part where he like, you know, he's so proud of her. He's so happy for her. She's smiling wide because she's like so excited about this Jackson Mercer possibility. And he grabs and he smooches her. And I guess it's like one of the more moments of passions that we've seen from these two, right? And kind of a pure moment where they're actually celebrating something good instead of just hooking

up as they are just like so turned on by their mutual scheming, right? And then we get that just immediate cut, like a literal cut to Casper splitting wood. So we don't get to ligure and enjoy this embrace. But that did stand out to me as, hey, no, he's like legitimately happy for her. There's something here maybe just beyond the fact that they want to manipulate people together. Okay. So like, I might be overthinking this, but hey, what else are we here for? But I think it's worth thinking about, like, what does Kim want from Jimmy? And, And what does Jimmy want from Kim? What I'm worried about is that what Kim is most attracted to is Saul, not Jimmy.

And what Jimmy wants from Kim is what she wanted from her mom, which is someone to, like, tell him no, tell him the know that he needs. And also, like, if you think about the earlier arc of the series and how that what all that Jimmy wanted was for his brother to see him as Jimmy and not slip in Jimmy, right? that like he just wanted to be seen as like a worthy, a good lawyer, a worthy brother and not a con man, right? And then he sort of like, well, fuck it. Right. If you're not going to see me that way, I'm going to do it.

But like, I think he also wants Kim to see him as Jimmy and not as Saul. But Kim is so excited by Saul and the prospect of building Saul, you know, and he's more excited about pro bono Kim than he is about schemer Kim. And so that's just like at cross purposes with each other in a way that really concerns me. One thing I was thinking about is like we're wondering why Jimmy's leaning so far into Saul in these seasons of Breaking Bad that we've seen. And like a reason could be something happens that breaks his heart or forever morally decays him or whatever it might be. But there's a part of me that wonders like, is he clinging to Saul so much because Saul is Kim's

creation and it's a way for him to feel close to her. or the man that she wanted him to be, which is this exciting grifter mixing in an adrenaline-fueled criminal world. What do you think? Yeah, that's a great point. I hadn't made that connection. But right, maybe that's his way of, we don't know where Kim is during that breaking bad timeline, but maybe that's his way of honoring her, of trying to get her back, of just fulfilling what she wanted him to be. I like that idea.

and I was just trying to figure out their psyches in these scenes because, you know, in that courthouse scene where Kim is talking to Cliff and he asks her how she left things with Howard. And she talks sincerely, it seems to me, about owing Howard and H.HM a lot, even as she's trying to take them down, is that just an instance of her putting on this front like her mom did in that scene and telling him what he wants to hear? or does she actually feel that on some level? Like, late in this episode, I just, I almost had to pause the episode and think, you know, Alan Seppenwell pointed out that that scene at the end, when Kim turns around, it's reminiscent of when Kim got Jimmy an interview with Davis and Maine, and he almost drove away from it, and then he came back ultimately for a while, although really he was working his way out of there.

Kim is turning away irrevocably from the life she saw it, and I had to think, like, why are they doing this again? I had to remind myself, like, why are they doing this? Why are we going forward with D-Day? Because things are going so well for them right now. On the surface, it seems, Kim is getting exactly what she wants. They have a bag of Lalo cash stashed away somewhere. Jimmy's practice is thriving.

So it's not logical for them to continue down this path. Yeah, this is like Huell's point, right? Why are you doing this? Yeah. Exactly, right. And so I guess you could say, well, this is a failure of writing of Better Call Solid Character, motivation. It just doesn't make sense. But I think it does make sense that they've told us that these are who these characters are, that they're not acting logically. That's okay. People in real life

act logically all the time. So it doesn't make sense for us that they are persisting in this, but it makes sense to them because of who they are and where they came from and what they want. And it's just a jumble of motivations sometimes conflicting where half of them wants something, half of them wants something else that precludes them from getting the first thing they want. Yeah. They have to pick a lane here. And Kim literally picks a lane in the last scene. But it's been a struggle for them to do that.

I genuinely think at this point in Jimmy's ideal world, like, he's with Kim. She's doing pro bono. He gets his respect back at the courthouse. You know what I mean? Like I think that that's something he wants. Yeah. Even if it's still clients who are putting out cigarettes on the armchair, like at least he's making a legitimate living.

Yeah. But they're also just hooked. on the heist to some extent. All right. We have to zoom through a couple things really quickly. I mentioned before. The film crew is back. I don't know why they have a sound guy for a stage photograph, but...

It's a package deal. It's a fun mystery. He's got his boom mic for no reason there. Mike in the laundry already mentioned. I just want to mention that he, when he's running down, like, who, where his guys are, when Tyrus is running them down, he mentioned the Vargas of Poultry's shop. So he's looking out, he's looking out for Nach's dad. Will that come back into play?

if Lolo comes back into town or when Lolo comes back to town. Lalo, I mean, the scene was fine. He sort of played out sort of how we expected that he followed the clues to find one of Werner's men. Seems like he's going to get some info out of the guy before he bleeds out. Hopefully possibly the move with the razor blade was classic Lalo cunning, great stuff. Overall, I mean, I'm pleased to spend time with Tony Dulton, but I wasn't like electrified by it. How did you feel?

Yeah. It's sort of an Ozark blue coloring. in this scene. I was wondering where they shot this, where they found somewhere close to Albuquerque that was wooded in this way. It was interesting that Lalo is not invulnerable, right? Like he does actually maybe break a rib here

and Casper gets the drop on him quickly. Normally he's just been so superhuman that it seems like, you know, no one can catch him unawares. But he does, at least very briefly here, although he very quickly recovers as well. It seems like there's another way that this scene could have

gone potentially a less violent way, but it seemed like Casper was kind of primed for someone to be coming for him, maybe because of Mike's warnings, you know, don't tell anyone, super secret signing an NDA, ironclad. Maybe he's been expecting someone to come after him here. This is like me when I watch a Disney screener. Right. It's just, you know, it goes back to the he was worth 50 of you lines. Like, you can see how concerned he is for Margueretta, right? Like, clearly. There's some concern there because he thinks Lalo might have killed her. So, yeah, I mean, we can see Lalo following the leads here,

and we know where those leads lead in theory. So you come at the fring, you best not miss, I guess, right? But we know he's going to, which still I'm just sort of puzzled about where this all ends, where the suspense is, what world there is, where Lalo could possibly get away with this or survive. Like, you know, forget about all the lines. in Breaking Bad about the last of the Salamanca's and all of that. But just think about, like, Gus's mental state. Right now, he's so on edge because he knows or strongly suspects that Lalo is out there.

That's not who he is in Breaking Bad. So at some point, it seems like he must get confirmation that Lalo is not a threat to him anymore. And one imagines that it's because he wiped that threat off the board personally. So it just, it seems like that's where it's leading. I'm just not that interested if Lalo's, like, poured into concrete in the Super Bowl. lab or something like that's not a cool satisfying ending to me again as as christianity said and as we've said before like I have so much enormous amount of faith in these writers so that's the thing yeah i expect to be surprised like you know we're we're tracing out what we think the blueprint of

d day is and how it could go right and how it could go wrong i'm totally ready to be wrong about a lot of those things or to fail to foresee something because that is generally the way it works in the giligan version one last tidbit before we get into sort of like next time on uh analysis analysis. Jimmy is going to buy a bottle of the Saffir-a-nejo tequila. And the clerk makes a point to mention how very sharp stopper on the bottle is. Did you interpret that as this could be a weapon, or did you interpret it less literally just, hey, this is a symbol of their relationship. And maybe that relationship can cut them somehow. It will bite you. I don't know. I hope it's the latter or not That stood out to me too and a couple other quick things in the Kaylee stargazing scene,

which is very brief, by the way. I know they have time constraints here, but you lug that whole telescope out there for one minute. You just get your glimpse of Jupiter and then it's bedtime. That's tough. But she says, you know, she's looking at the stars. It reminded me of Werner's last lines, right? There's so many stars visible in New Mexico, he says. And here's Kaylee actually looking at them.

So is this again, Mike trying to atone? in some way. And then a couple other things in that picnic on H.HM's lawn on D. Day Eve, we see a vacuum in the H.HM office, right? They're cleaning up in there. Is that further foreshadowing of Ed that disappear potentially there, possibly? And, you know, Jimmy says toward the end, we didn't miss anything, but then they missed the cast. So what else did they miss, right? What did they not know? Camelile T. I'm telling you. Exactly. That's too. They're just assuming that Howard takes coffee in the morning, but he's a chamomile man.

So they find out that the judge has broken his arm. Shear miracle. Jimmy runs into him at the liquor store. And so that that throws a wrench and everything. And that, I think, leads us into our next time on. So I'm just going to give the warning that people don't watch the next time's on or don't want to hear us speculate wildly about next week. We're just going to do that for a couple minutes here at the end.

So next week's episode is called plan and execution. execution has me very worried. Someone's going to die, but that's probably just reading too much into it. But what it seems like from the promo, which is like we see Jimmy and Kim Scramble to redo the photo. So they have to go get the film crew. Yeah, they have to get the film crew out of, out of class. They have to. It seems like the actor is maybe like a parking attendant at the courthouse. I don't know. He's wearing like a bright green visibility vest that I feel like that's what Mike would wear. And then the drugging. lit eerily and red.

More Gus versus Lalo potential showdown. Mike talking about needing a home court advantage. Is that the super lab? I don't know what we want to talk about there. And then we see Howard publicly freaking out and looking at a painting of Chuck and maybe being like, this is what happened to Chuck?

This is what happened to me? I don't know. And Cliff looking concert. So it seems like Kim's coming back. We're going to be like a quick pace trying to frantically redo it all. It seems like it's going to work up to the point of provoking Howard.

And then perhaps the Camelette comes into play. I don't know. There's another element I want to talk about in a second, which is a little Reddit detective-y. But the creators have promised a painful cliffhanger mid-season finale. Anything you want to say about this? Cliffhanger. Anything you want to say about this fan? Yeah.

I mean, we saw Kim's mom say to her, relax, you got away with it. I don't know that anyone is going to be saying that to Kim at the end of the next episode. I'd like that to be the case, but it seems like this will be an eventful one. It's a Tom Schnauss episode, right? And we've seen some eventful ones in the past. I think there could be a lot crammed in here. This was a short episode this week, but D-Day, the longest day, right? So this could be a long day for Jimmy and Kim.

It could be a long episode or certainly an action-packed one. And it is interesting. Jimmy wants to pull the plug. Discretion is the better part of valor here. We'll wait for another day, and Kim says, what other? day. It just, it has to happen now. So I do wonder how it's going to unravel. Yeah, exactly, right. And I also wondered, you know, we didn't touch on this when we were talking about the teaser, the opener with Kim, but is there a potential for a time leap? Like, it seems like there's too much to wrap up in the

midseason finale. As you said, it seems like there's going to be a cliffhanger and probably we will pick up at least part of the second half of the season. We'll still be in this pre-breaking bad timeline. But at what point do we take the leap? Because we've got to take the leap at some point. They've been leaving these breadcrumbs with Gene and the Sun Sin upon going back to the beginning. There was a purpose to that. And personally, I'd like a lot of that second half, that back half to be set either during or my preference after Breaking Bad, picking up with these characters, any of the surviving characters, hopefully Kim among them. And so that's why I wondered, maybe the Kim opener, partly that's a reminder that, hey, she just happens to be from Nebraska, right? Very true.

We got the Nebraska license plate. Yeah. Gene is in his Omaha Cinebond. So does that mean that after being disbarred or after getting out of prison or whatever happens to Kim, she goes home, she reconnects with her mom, you know, now that she's a convict, maybe they'll get along great. She'll be so proud. I always knew it.

I think you had it in you. Wow. But if she goes home and Jean is in the area, you know, who knows? Maybe. maybe they connect and maybe there is still some redemption in the offing for these characters. I mean, Chris and Andy mentioned this, but we have long wanted this that Kim is around in the gene timeline because we believe in love. But I think that something that I forgot to say earlier and I wanted to, which this idea of like the reason the season is split this way, it seems like,

is so that Better Call Sol, which was delayed mightily due to COVID could qualify for the Emmys this year, right? So if you, if they drop these, this first half of the season, um, before the cutoff, which is May 31st, that means they're eligible for the Emmys. And not only that, but like, in the way that like, Stranger Things is also doing this, they're going to be finishing up their season while people are voting for the Emmys. And that's an advantage that a lot of shows, you know, the TV landscape gets really crowded in May because everyone's trying to get their premiere in before that. But the real sweet spot is if you can still make it eligibility and have your show being talked about, while people were voting.

The king of this move last year was Ted Lassau, which premiered second season while people were voting about the first season of Ted Lassow. That was like a genius move. And so I only bring all of this Emmy strategy up to say the decision to split the season here made nothing to do with an artistic decision. So though it will end on a painful cliffhanger,

it doesn't necessarily mean that we're supposed to think of it as volume one, volume two in such a discreet way. Do you know it's like this is logistical and awards focus more than it is. We see this is one holistic half of the season and this is another holistic half of the season. So just thinking about expectations that way in terms of the finale, that's just something that I've been trying to temper for myself, if that makes sense. And another thing that Chris and he brought up is, you know, did they stretch? Was it AMC saying, hey, we want more episodes here? And that's why they've kind of been slow peddling the reveal here.

I guess that's possible. I mean, I'd like to think that they have these things plotted out at least a season in advance because the pandemic gave them more time to write than they usually had. I'd like to think that it was not just, let's twiddle our thumbs here so that AMC has a few more filled slots on the schedule. But you never know. It is also, I think, an on move to see like a few like untested writers or like let's let the cast direct like here and here at the end of it all. You know, it just seems like. Let every actor take a turn behind the camera. Yeah.

So I don't know. questions. All right. This is the last thing that it's not a spoiler, but it's just like a little extra textual information that like really if you don't want it, you should jump off. But I do want to mention that at the end of last year, I think is December, 2021, Bob Odenkirk posted a photo on his Instagram to wish actor Patrick Fabian, a happy birthday. And in it, we see Patrick's in his Howard costume and he's got blood on his head. And it is definitely the same costume he's wearing in the promo for next week's episode. It's a woven tie and a pink shirt, not his usual blue with the white collar.

It's a pink with the white collar. It's a very distinctive look for him. The same look, but distinctive. Is it a fatal amount of blood? It doesn't look necessarily fatal. It looks like maybe the amount of blood you might get from the sharp top of a tequila bottle or I don't know, a fall from some height. I don't know.

I don't know if Howard dies or if he or if him just bleeding from his head is enough for Kim and or Jimmy to be like, holy shit, maybe we should not have drugged someone? I don't know. What do you think of? That's some deep sleuthing, well spotted. It's a callback. Yeah, maybe it's just a nosebleed. Let's assume it's just a nosebleed.

A nice non-fatal nosebleed. Yeah, that photo has been going around for a while and I was like finally able to source it. I was like, who posted this? Who would dare to post a photo of a character in a final season of a television show where people died with blood on their head? And it was Mr. Bob Odenkirk himself. The leaker.

Yeah. Six ships. All right. So that's something that we're nervous about for next week. A painful cliffhanger coming our way. Anything else you want to say, Ben Lindbergh before we go? No. Let's sidebar in the law library.

All right. I will bring the nice lattes, not the shitty courthouse coffee. I promise. We'll be back next week with the finale. We'll have a special guest for that episode. and this episode was produced by Chris Sutton. See you next one.