The Prestige TV Podcast - 'Better Call Saul' Season 6 Episode 9 Recap

Episode Date: July 20, 2022

Joanna and Ben start their conversation by discussing the amazing job director Michael Morris and writer Ann Cherkis did on this episode and the other chapters they worked on together in the 'Breaking Bad' universe (21:19). Next, they dissect the opening montage and compliment Rhea Seehorn's performance in this episode and throughout the series (24:08). They then debate the episode's theme of dual identities and lament Gus's inability to show his true self to the cartel, as well as the metaphorical prison he and Mike have built around themselves as a result of their actions (30:14). After the break, they discuss Howard's memorial at HMM and ponder if this was the moment in which Kim ultimately decides to exit the "bad choice road" and split with Jimmy (47:18). Finally, they end the pod by dissecting Jimmy's cinematic transition into Saul Goodman, theorize how the 'Better Call Saul' and 'Breaking Bad' timelines will be cemented, and look forward to next week's episode and the rest of the season (1:07:46). Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Ben Lindbergh Producer: Chris Sutton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So when your mind won't switch off, you've got something that can help. You're racing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance. Find Ollie Sleep Solutions for the whole family at ollie.com. That's OLLL-L-Y.com. Welcome back to the Precise TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson and joining me because he did not walk out the door on me. He's here for the rest of the season by my side. It's my partner in crime, Ben Lindberg.

Hi, Ben. How are you? A bottle of red. Lalo is dead. Perhaps some bottled up rage instead. I just want to say that I'm always delighted by what you decide to drop in here at this moment in the podcast, but I've never expected a serenade. Wow. No. Thank you.

I can do a whole riff on Jimmy and Kim as Brenda and Eddie, but I'll stop singing now because we have a lot to talk about. Oh, we do. We do. But maybe we'll do an all musical episode of this podcast someday. I would love that for us. We are here to talk about Better Call Saul, if you didn't know. We're here to talk about season six, episode nine, fun and games. It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt, till someone walks out the door, until someone turns into Saul Goodman.

Just some broad announces before we get into this episode. Else we're on the feed. We're discussing Westworld, which I'm not lying to you, is extremely good again. I believe you. Do you believe me, Ben? I have not yet taken the plunge again, but I do believe you. I just have a lot of Westworld to catch up on. the problem. I understand. Join me. But if you love

bananas theories or literary illusions or whatever, that's everything that Danny Hyfitts and David Schumacher and I are getting up to every week talking about Westworld. I don't know what else is going on this feed. I think this is it right now. This is all in Westworld. We might have some other fun one-off shows coming up, but that is the name of the game right now on the Prestige TV podcast feed. We got an email this week from someone. Our email,

Kim Wexler lives at g-gmal.com, looking looking solid, looking correct. We got an email from someone titled Kim Wexler Leaves, and I did briefly consider by getting that email address to Kimwester Leaves at gmail.com. Yeah, well, she is living, if you can call this living. But it's true. I'm glad that we kind of have the feed to ourselves a little more than we did during the first half of Saul, just because I want Saul to have the stage, right?

And last time in the first half, we were competing with every other. other show that was out there in order to get under the wire for Emmy eligibility. And now it's like, Saul sort of has the spotlight for the final run here, which is appropriate. Yeah, it's a nice, space in the summer schedule before the Dragons and Hobbits, you know, take over in August. So you can email us. We got a ton of emails this week. Every week we're getting a ton of great emails. Ben and I read them all, including, as I was just saying before we started recording, lengthy analysis of baseball footage that I don't really understand, but I'm fascinated by. So thank you for all of your emails.

And as we mentioned last week, we're sort of like working in conversation with the insider pod that we listen to with our pals Chris Ryan, Andy Greenwald, over on the watch, with Reddit, with your emails. The watch, listen, I'm assuming that if you listen to this, you also listen to the watch, but maybe possibly we are your soul, better call Saul podcast. that what a treat, what an honor. But I'm going to heartily recommend you listen to The Watch this week because the guys had Peter Gould, co-creator of the show on for a lengthy interview, great insightful interview, which we'll reference here and there, but, you know, you really should check it out.

So not that the Watch needs my help, but, you know, go ahead and listen to those scrappy newcomers, Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald over on the Watch. All right, so let's just take a moment to look at who wrote and direct this episode. Anne Cherkes and Michael Morris. These are like long time saw creatives and this is their last episode. We're getting down to last for a lot of heavy hitters on the show.

Fun thing I was looking at when I was looking at like the episodes that Anne has still writing credit on and Michael directed is that they have three overlap episodes, fun and games, the guy for this, and quite a ride. So stretching back to 2018. And then Michael Morris also directed this season premiere. Wine and Roses, and a few other things. Is there anything that sticks out to you in the kinds of episodes they've done before and why they might be perfectly suited for something like this or not?

I don't know. Clearly, they worked well together and they decided to keep this dream team as a tandem. But this episode was just such a culmination of the themes that we've been talking about with Saul all along, that it's hard to liken it to any specific episode in the past, right? It's just everything kind of coming to fruition and paying off here in what is, in a sense, a series finale, right? A finale for the prequel part of the show, perhaps, and a satisfying finale, I think, in a lot of ways. So it's hard for me to say, this is like that episode or that episode, it's just such a slow build to this point where finally we're getting the resolution here. Did any parallels stand out to you?

I think there's some really solid Kim stuff in the work that. Ann Shirkus is done. So I think, you know, given that this is such a, it's a big episode for everyone, but such a big moment for Ray Sehorn. So I think bringing in Ann to write this episode specifically was a great move. And then something I want to do that we haven't been doing, but I thought might be a fun experiment is like every week they put out a little promo image. Usually just a few objects from the episode, AMC puts out a little like poster, essentially

mini poster for the episode. And in this episode, Funning Games, we get a cracked. ash tray with the HHM logo on it and a stubbed out cigarette and the stubbed out cigarette is on significantly the ash is covering the M of HHM. And we find out in this episode that HHM no longer dissolved or renamed, at least, rebranded, renamed, moved downtown, etc. What are you getting from this fairly fairly fairly obvious image? Yeah.

Right. I mean, we found out here that not only did. Jimmy and Kim take out an H and an M, but also HHM. They're moving to an office. They're changing their name. They're downsizing. That is just how completely they've been laid low as a pretty direct result of Jimmy and Kim's actions here.

And, of course, we have Jimmy making the final transition into Saul here, right? So we also have another McGill getting erased. And fire and ash is a big part of this episode, too, smoke, right? There's a lot of fire imagery, which we will get to. So it's all kind of coming together here in one neat little image. Yeah. I think also, you know, we're going to talk about parallels to things we've seen before with Kim and Jimmy.

But the fact that we return to that parking garage where we sort of first really saw their relationship over a shared cigarette. We've seen a number of scenes of shared cigarettes between the two of them. It's like something really kind of deliciously intimate that they do is that they share one cigarette rather than each smoking a cigarette. And in this one, we just see Kim smoking by herself as she waits for Jimmy to come home. And I think that eraser of Jimmy McGill entirely is key. I was following Andy's lead and started calling Saul, and you were holding on for Jimmy and you were right.

This is the transition episode. According to Ellen Seppinwall's recap on Rolling Stone, they started to refer to Jimmy Esau in the script in the coda of this episode. So that's, of course, the flip of the switch. Right. And the flame of their love,

their relationship is extinguished in this episode also when she puts out the cigarette that she's smoking by herself. She is kind of putting an end to that relationship too. So they managed to cram a lot into this promo image.

Well done. Okay, we'll be back. I kind of like this segment. We'll be back next week with more promo image over analysis. Okay, so I want to do a little overview because I know you and I, so you and I, as we mentioned, do not a screener for this season. I watched this episode at an airport terminal because I was terrified of getting spoiled about it. The ideal place to save her an episode. Exactly, where Vince and Peter wanted me to watch it. As the artist's intended. Yeah, on my phone in the, waiting for an Alaska airline flight out of Washington. And then I rewatched it, I promise. I didn't just watch it on my phone. But, um, The, we were nervous, like Alan Sepumol had tweeted out, like, better watch this live. My pal Mike Hoagot over at Vanity Fair was like texting me about it.

And he was like, hey, I have questions. This episode is like, I haven't seen it. Don't ask me questions, man. So we had certain expectations going in. We had that like whole 609 sign. Is Kim going to die in 609 question? All this sort of stuff. And then we watched the episode.

And I really liked the episode. But how do you feel like your expectations versus what the text of the actual episode? How do you feel like that affected how you took in the story, Ben? Yeah. In a way, it felt almost anticlimactic to me parts of it, not because there is anything bad or disappointing about it. This is a me problem, not a better call solve problem. It's just that I'd imagine so many times how it might go down, right?

All of the possible outcomes for Kim that we've been playing out for years and years. And it's just jarring to get answers to the questions of what happened to Kim. How does Jimmy become Saul? These questions that have animated this whole series. And as I said, that is why this feels like a series finale. And it would be a satisfying series finale. I approve of the character choices that were made here. And the usual artistry is at play in bringing them to life.

So I love the episode. It's just another hit for Saul in a long line of them. I think for me more so than sort of a spectacular capper or reaching a new level, it's been at such a high level pretty much all along with occasional lulls that maybe it's hard to just ascend to it an even higher level, which again, like I'm not down at all on the episode. I just was expecting maybe something even bigger or more flashy in some way, but I think it's fitting for this series that this is what it was, because we talked last week.

about that Gordon Smith quote, right, where he teased this episode and he said that it's going to be bigger and badder and, to my mind, even more heartbreaking than episode eight, which was pretty big and bad in its own right. But I think it's fitting that the episode described as bigger and batter is not the one with the corpse on the floor and Mike leading a commando raid and Kim almost killing someone and a bloody showdown between the two supervillains. It's the one where the surviving supervillain goes to a wine bar. And Mike has a quiet conversation with a civilian. And Kim tells a lie and comes clean about a lie and leaves. Like the looks and the words exchanged in this episode are more devastating than a bullet could be. And they're more in keeping with the spirit of the series, which has crossed over into action territory from time to time with great results, but has mostly been about different forms of violence, I would say. So, It's like the big climax is a character realizing and voicing something that we've known since season two, right? Like, nothing that surfaces in the final confrontation here is news to us necessarily, but to hear her say these things after all this time still hits hard.

I think a couple things are true. One, there's some core, core, core show ideas at play here. And something I want to say about, like, what comes next, right? So this could have been a series finale, right? It could have been. What comes next? We've speculated about, you know, how the episodes might break out along the breaking bad timeline, headed into the Gene Tachovic timeline, all that sort of thing.

Whether or not that parceling out of episodes is accurate, what's true, given everything that the creatives have said, not just Peter Gould to Chris Nandy on the Watch, but almost everyone across the board are sort of hinting at this thing that. it feels like they're nervous about some of the choices they've made in the back three of this season, that this was the surefire, we've landed the plane, we really did it episode, and then they're going to take some wild swings in the back three that they're unsure of how it's going to be received. Like, Peter Gold wanted to talk to Kristen Nitty for this episode, because I think he's anxious that people won't be as high on everything when the finale comes. And I'm like, I'm actually pretty

sure at least that you and I will be because when these creatives get ambitious, like we tend to respond to that. Yeah, that makes me excited. I'm not nervous about that. The fact that they're a little anxious actually makes me more excited to see what happens. I know. Totally me too. And I also think that the Saul fandom, which is a much smaller fandom than the Breaking Bad fandom, but I think it's a fandom that is a little bit more in step with the show that they're actually watching, as opposed to at the height of Breaking Bad, I feel like some people watching the show were watching it because they thought Walt was a hero and got a little, like, feisty at the end when, you know, that didn't really prove to be the case.

You know, the bad, quote unquote, Breaking Bad fans. And I don't feel like Saul has that fandom. You know, it's such a different show. It's such a show that requires so much patience. And I feel like even though it's a smaller audience, it's one that it's just paying much more attention to what the writers are trying to say. So we don't know that there will be any sort of major misalignment of audience want and creative content. Does that make sense? Yeah.

I mean, I think if something even more horrible had happened to Kim, I don't know that anything that much more. purple that could have happened to her that would have left her alive. But if she had died, as we all feared she would for so long, then that might have been a breaking point coming so soon after Howard and after Lalo. I think that would have pushed us too far, perhaps. And we've been talking all season about how maybe what happens to her is worse than death in some ways or makes her harder to sympathize with. But I think this ending, maybe it'll end up a little like, and Andy brought up this idea, too, the way that Breaking Bad had multiple endings, really.

Choose your own endings, right? If you wanted the happier ending, then that was there. And the more bleak, depressing ending was there, too. And maybe that's what we'll get here, too, where if you just want to leave these characters here, and some of these characters we might not see again, and we can talk about that, this might be an actual ending for some of them. But if this is the ending for the Better Call Saul timeline, which seems likely, if not certain,

then I think we can all feel good about where that ended up. I mean, I don't know if we can feel good about it, but we can feel fulfilled by where it ended up and the choices that were made and the decisions the characters made, they all felt true to those characters. And now we can just see what happens when they flex and fast forward, and we get to see the breaking bad timeline, and hopefully we get to see the future timeline.

And maybe we do get some greater redemption. Again, we can talk about that a little later. But this was, I think, pretty much a perfect way for this part of the story to end. And if it was at all anticlimactic, it was because I was expecting perfection, I guess, right? So they did exactly what you expected. Yeah. At the beginning of the season, we talked about how the experience of watching this final season of Saul is different from watching the final seasons of so many other series because that

element of can they land the plane, will they do it, just wasn't present for me because I had such confidence that they would and that they had thought these things through and that they would not leave anything unresolved or have any jarring character choices that really lost me. And that was true, you know? So in a sense, it's a victim of my own high expectations and the high standards that it's set. But a lot of people are saying that they think this is the best episode of the series or one of the best episodes of the series. And I think that's a defensible standpoint to it.

For me, it's more like this is a series that I don't even analyze on an individual episode level the way that I do with many other series or even with Breaking Bad because it's just all so part of a piece. And it's just building up to something just link by link in that chain. And so, yeah, there are certain episodes that are maybe more adrenaline-fueled or spectacular than others, but even the quieter ones are laying the groundwork for where we ended up here. I think this idea of us sitting here being like, is Kim going to die? Is Kim going to die? Maybe is one of those misalignment of expectations. But what I love is I feel like you can see the reverse engineer math that they did here that they often do on the show where they say, we have to get here, how do we write ourselves out of this one?

Or how do we write towards a thing that makes sense? And for Kim Wexler to not be in Breaking Bad, how do we make that make sense? And, you know, killing her is one thing. I think Ray Sehorne said something really smart in her conversation with Alan Seppinwall. She was basically saying, like, an easy choice or the obvious choice maybe would have been, Kim saying, I've had enough of your shenanigans, Jimmy McGill. I can't stand this. I'm a good girl. I got to go. And what is so much more interesting is what they've given her to play here, which is this addiction storyline that you and I have been talking about since the beginning of this season, this idea that Kim gets a taste and likes it and likes it too much. Also, the profoundly deep idea, and you know, I was really proud of us when Peter Gold said this on the watch podcast, when you said like the one thing driving Jimmy McGill is the need to be.

loved and I was like, Ben and I've talked about that. That's great. Because, okay, so if Jimmy's, like, raison d'etre is, I need to be loved. And he says, I love you to Kim. And she says, I love you to. So what? Like, if that's his core drive, I need to be loved. And she's like, yeah, I love you. And, right. What a, you know, what a reality breaking moment for Jimmy Miguel. And I love that we cut directly from that and from Kim. Kim taping up boxes to Saul waking up because there is no Jimmy without Kim anymore. Once she leaves, that part of him is gone, at least for now. She was the last link to his old self, the last person who saw him as someone other than Saul,

the last person who loved him. And if she's gone or if that love is not enough, then there's nothing to sustain Jimmy anymore and he must transform into Saul. There is a year time jump there, but we don't even need to see what happens in that. year because really once she packs up those boxes, once she walks out the door, it's over for them, it's over for him. And you hear that when Rich calls him Jimmy and then catches himself and says Saul, right? So now just everyone sees him as Saul. Even I am ready to accept that he is now Saul. And I think when any long-term relationship ends, I think you lose a little piece of yourself,

at least temporarily. You have to rediscover who you are outside of that relationship and outside of who that person saw you as and that shared memory that you had together. And Jimmy is no one now. Maybe Gene will be Jimmy again or maybe Gene will be somebody better. It won't be Jimmy or Saul or Gene. It'll be some final form of the person who was once Jimmy McGill. We can hope for that. But I think it was appropriate that we just jumped directly there.

And hat tip also to Bob Oden Kirk's transition from the ultra-vulnerable Jimmy to the coarse physicality and the mannerisms of Saul and not just his portrayal, but the makeup and the hair, and we can talk about all of that, but the transformation was complete and convincing. I love what you just said. And I think this episode is,

the reason this episode is so special is because it deals so directly with not only the main theme of Better Call Saul, but I would argue the main theme of Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad, working in tandem with each other, which is this concept of split personality, Something that we talked about a lot.

Of course, in Breaking Bad is this idea of, like, Walter White is the premise of that is like, Mr. Chips turns into Scarface. Like, what happens? And that, and those dual identities are drug kingpin and mild manner teacher and what's it play there. The dual identity of Saul and Jimmy, the promo image that a lot of people are passing around this week is of, you know, Bob Ode Kirk and black and white and then the color, flat colored cardboard. grin, grinned of Saul, but also just the split personality of, and we talked about this last week about the legal world and the drug cartel world, and how those are sort of like, that's a Jimmy world and a Saul world, like all of these split identity concepts of this idea of double life that you lead for all these characters, delusion about who you are versus

like who you think you are or who you want to be versus who you actually are that hits all of our characters really hard in this episode. And then at the end of the day, what's most apparent in this episode is how extremely lonely it is to lead a double life, to either not know yourself enough. And that's something that Walter White really struggled with is not understanding himself enough or being honest with himself about his own motivation. So not knowing yourself enough or I think the word that Peter Gould use flattening yourself, which Jimmy does, into the shape of Saul.

Yeah. And what that does to you and how absolutely isolating and lonely that can be. Yeah. At the end of this episode, everyone, Gus, Mike, Saul, even Kim, they end up alone and damaged and cut off from happiness and whoever and whatever they were before, before they got into this mess. And it's sad. I mean, they've earned it, right?

But they are really reaping what they sowed now. They're sort of a survivor's guilt. Like they're not buried in the hole under the super lab like Howard or Lalo or in the desert like Nacho. There's a long body trail that these characters have left behind them. Right. But they are clearly feeling the effects of that, whether it's more acutely like Kim or whether it's in a repressed sense like basically every other character where it's putting

on some sort of facade and just trying to bury that. deep down inside, not totally successfully. All right. Now that we spent like 25 minutes talking about this episode without like doing a drive from now, let's start at the beginning. So the opening montage, you know, as they mentioned, the insider podcast, this was someone inspired by the film The Graduate, just in terms of like the idea of using objects to connect scene by scene.

My favorite, I'm wondering if you had a favorite. My favorite was, I think it was like the faded blood stain on the floor that Mike catches with the black light and the like seal of the. the star seal on the floor of the courthouse. Did you have a... That was actually my least favorite. That's okay. Like, that's sweaty.

Yeah, I love a good match cut. Not that one. It felt a little too contrived for me. Okay. What was your favorite? You know, it was like, I don't know, maybe like, I mean, the light is obvious. Like, the lamp and the ceiling light is an obvious one. Probably, though, like the walking out the door of the courthouse and then,

walking into the door of the apartment, which from what we heard on the insider pod was kind of a late-breaking epiphany that they figured out a way to do that in a solution there. I just like the ones where it's like you're using something that naturally existed in those settings as opposed to to me, sort of the star-shaped bloodstain in the UV light was like, we need something that matches the pattern of this star on the floor of the courthouse. I'm glad you liked it. I like the sweat of it, but I hear you. I was the one that took me out of it a little bit.

But I love one more Better Call Sol montage and always enjoy a good match cut. Here's my big question. Is there anything more embarrassing than Mike Erman Trout finding your post-its on the back of the painting of how you're going to ruin a man's life? Like your amateur hour and they're like dumb little drawings on it and all that like I was a more like, yeah, getting someone killed is bad. But Mike seeing your post-its, that might be worse when it. you think? That is pretty embarrassing. That's like amateur hour. That's like, I don't know, your crush, like finding your doodles of them in your notebook or something. Oh, God. That's pretty bad. Yeah. And then I just want to shout out something that Ray Cudorne has done

just with her face. And it might be makeup enhanced. I don't know. Or it might just be tremendous acting. But there's, she just let her face go kind of dead and slack ever since Howard died. And I just think that that is like an incredible, like, when you look at side by side photos of her in these sequences versus like her even like two episodes ago, it kind, you know, she looks 10 years older. And that's not like she's a beautiful woman. It's not like a knock on that, but it's just sort of like the weight and toll that this whole thing is taken on her. She just lets it live on her face. It's a completely unvane performance in that way. And I just, I just think she's incredible. Yeah. We talked about that a little.

last week when she was in that kind of catatonic state as Mike was lecturing her and Jimmy. And we talk about these actors and we praise them for bringing these characters to life. But it's almost when the life is leached out of them that you see their skills even more. It's like Howard playing such a convincing corpse last week or Ray just looking dead while still being alive. She's like the living dead at this point because her old life is gone. So I agree. It's a different form of her. I mean, what is so great about a great actor is that they can do a bunch of different things and they can show you so many sides of a character. And we've seen so many sides of Kim. And often it's that she's clamping down and repressing whatever is going on inside her head. And here it's like, no, she's just dead. Like the spark is gone. And we're actually seeing that on the exterior now. The next thing I want to talk about it, well, actually, so the next thing that happens essentially is like fringing in the cartel, right? You get like Donal Audio and all this sort of stuff.

I actually don't have a lot to say about this that hasn't already been said elsewhere. Is there anything you want to dig into in this interaction here? Yeah, you know, there was a lot of Gus in this episode, maybe more than I needed, especially in the cartel scene. The cartel scene felt a little like loose end tying before the time jump to me. It's like, okay, how does Hector react to Lalo's disappearance? How does Gus get the territory he has in Breaking Bad? I probably could have imagined those things. I could have pictured the way that those things went.

But I did appreciate the reflected fire in Gus's glasses, as Hector tells Donald Lado to look into his eyes and see the hatred there, which reminded me then of Mike staring into the flames as he burns the last traces of Howard in the trash can. Because both of these guys are so meticulous and controlled and unflappable. But inside, they are or have been burning with rage kind of constantly, right? And that was just a visual representation of that. So the cartel scene felt semi-inessential to me, but maybe it was worth it just as a lead-in to the restaurant scene, where at first I was like, why am I watching Reed Diamond describe vineyards right now? Like, I need to know what happens with Kim and Jimmy.

and you're giving me Gus at a wine bar, but patience pays off because ultimately, I think that was probably one of Gus's and Giancarlo Esposito's best scenes in this series. A lot of people were pointing out that both Reed Diamond and John Carlo Esposito were on Homicide Life on the Street, even though they sort of like cross paths on that show briefly. My question for you is,

do you have a role that you associate Reed Diamond? Because Reed Diamond is an interesting level of actor for this role because he's not like super, super hyper famous. a lot of people on the Reddit saying he looked like Gavin Newsom, so they just called him that Gavin Newsom. Great, great, great look for my governor. But yeah, do you think of a role for Reed Diamond? I don't know. A hundred percent detective Terry Crowley in The Shield, who makes a very quick exit from that series.

But his legacy lingers on. I actually interviewed Reed Diamond earlier this year for a retrospective. I wrote on the pilot of The Shield. Did you? And he mentioned that he was going to be on Saul. and you could have given me a thousand guesses, and I would not have predicted that he would be playing Gus's sommelier. I always think, for some reason, I associate Red Diamond with Doll House,

but the point is, like, this is an actor who, those of us who watch a ton of television, like, know who Reed Diamond is. So when he showed up, I had that moment where I was like, A, is this a character we've seen before, and I forgot? or B, is this a character that shows up in Breaking Bad and I forgot? Or C, and this is the reference I make all the time, like, did they do the Wayne's World move of, like, let's hire Charlton Heston? I'm not putting Red Diamond exactly on Charlton Heston level, though I think you would make an excellent Moses. But, like, did they hire just an extra caliber actor for a one scene role?

And they did, and, like, it's worth it for what we get here. Peter Goulden talking to Chris and Andy on the watch, uh, confirm something that everyone had pretty much long assumed, which is that, uh, Gustavo Frang is gay man and, um,

that Max, his partner who died, uh, and sort of kicked all this off for Gustavo was in fact his lover. And, um, that in this scene, it's not just to guys who like the finer things bonding over wine,

but definitely a, uh, a flirtation sparky romance scene. that Gus shuts down. What especially stood out to you in all of this watching the scene? Yeah, that was like Noah Schnapp confirming that Mike is gay on Stranger Things. It's like, yeah, you know, I was picking up on that. Yeah, yeah, I figured it out things.

But it is tragic, which I guess is going to be a key word for this episode, because Gus could potentially start up a new romance here if he wanted to, right, and just drink the blood-flavored wine instead of spilling the blood-flavored wine instead of spilling the blood of the Salamanca's, but he's too hung up on getting vengeance for Max to let those old wounds close. And even if he wanted to at this point, he couldn't really allow this character into his life because it's too dangerous.

And look what happens to everyone in Gus's life. And he probably can't show that side of himself to the cartel, right? So he can't do it. He's gone too far, really, to open himself up to that. We see him at the start of his scene, like throwing open the shutters to his house, right? And it's like, the birds are singing. And, you know, the body double has been dismissed. But he can't really open himself up. By the end of the scene, he's closed down and he's the buttoned up or bottled up, Gus, that we have seen

all along. And that is kind of heartbreaking. Like, as hard as it is to sympathize with Gus at this point after the things that we've seen him do, it is sort of sad. And we know that he's never going to get to drink that bottle of wine that he put away on this character's recommendation. He's presumably saving this special wine for a celebration once he completes his quest to kill all the salamancas. He could crack that thing open right now, share it with Reed Diamond, enjoy it together, but instead he's chosen to deprive himself of that pleasure, save it for a day that we know will never come. But kudos to Jonkaw Esposito for his portrayal of Gus in the scene, think is different from any other Gus scene than we've ever seen before, right? Because we've seen

the unexpressive poker-faced Gus of the cartel scenes. We've seen the very practiced, polished public figure Gus of his chicken man alter ego. But this is a very brief glimpse of the real Gus. He is really emoting. He is smiling in a much more natural way than we've ever seen him do. So he's in there somewhere way down but he's in there so it you know it has to remind you of of jimmy being way down deep at the bottom of the well that is so goodman you know like so down deep in the bottom of the chicken man well is is you know the real gustavo fring and i think i love that scene where he comes home and he throws up in the um this there's a weird reason i thought about this but uh if if you if you have a pet probably more specifically a cat because dogs are usually let outside and

sometimes cats aren't um you because become aware of whenever a door is open because you just like know that your cat's going to beeline if a door is open. So you just always have this like itch in the back of your brain of like how long what's the ticking clock and how long I can have this door open. And I remember when we come, this is not cat related, but when I remember like we've watched Fring walk up to that door before and quickly, anxiously close it behind him. And he just walks in and he's like, he just has the door open, you know. And I was just like, that's a man who's not afraid temporarily. not afraid of what's coming in and out of that door. I guess I didn't need to make that about cats, but I did. But I think there's also that sequence, you know, so he goes down to that tunnel below the house that we've seen before. He talks to Mike about like we need to start work on the new lab. Mike has this moment similar to like Gustavo thinking about David the Somalié, Mike has this moment where he's like, we have to start again.

And if you, I was reading the transcript of this episode. And that exchange is really quick. I'm sure in the actual written-out script, there's a beat where it's like, Mike thinks about Werner. But like, we didn't, we didn't, it's not in the dialogue, but we see it all over Jonathan Banks' face, right? Where he's like, I got to hire a new guy and I'm going to have to, am I going to have to kill that guy the way I had to kill Werner? Like, so that the weight of everything that they have done and everything that they will continue to do is on them. The fact that they're underground when they have this exchange, the fact that they end. And like, I was thinking about it.

Like, you could, you could have walked out of this timeline because we time jump out of here. But you could have walked out of this timeline with like Mike and Fringley kind of allied in their enterprise going forward. But that's not the case. Even though that they will be working together, they go separate ways out of the tunnel. And Gus stays on the forward facing side of the house. And Mike, you know, and his shadow continue and exit out of that tunnel. So it's not like the end of. Casablanca, this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. It's like we are two lonely soldiers

marching forward, you know? Just going hand in hand down the bad choice road. Yeah. And if that tunnel is like the escape route to normality, sort of, or at least like the appearance of normality with the fake family and everything, then he's just closing off that door and that escape path is just it's closed to him. The lights are off, the door is locked, they are still trapped in a way. Maybe the shutters are open for a little while, but they're both trapped in this life that they've chosen for themselves and resigned themselves to. I feel like Gustav is going home from the wine bar and closing those shutters, like immediately when he gets home. Like, that's what I feel like is happening. So, devastating. But also, I mean,

I think what's brilliant about this also is that, you know, as Andy kept talking about on the watch, Like, we know how Fring emerges from this. And he emerges, like, something of a winner. We knew that, like, Lala was not going to get the drop on him. We knew that, like, Fring was going to have started his, you know, purging of the Salamanca family. And, like, on the up and up coming out of this because we meet him in a position of strength in Breaking Bad. But the way in which this episode makes that victory, a Pyrrhic one, makes it, like, he's losing, even as he's losing. wins because he wins professionally, but to have this David the Somalié sequence in here

means we understand him walking out of the season, a series, a loser as well. And that's tough to do. Like how brilliant of the writers to find a loss in the win for Gustavo. I thought that was so smart. And then we get the similarly affecting scene, I think, with Mike and Nacho's dad, which, again, could have been tying off a loose end, like, hey, whatever. happened to Nacho's dad? Is he okay? Did he ever have to pay a price? Did he ever find out what happened to Nacho? Well, we get that answer here, but that's not the primary purpose of the scene here. I think it's to watch the gut punch that he delivers to Mike and to learn more about Mike and to get some greater insight into who Mike is in Breaking Bad again. So we could go through some of the

details of this scene maybe, but if this is the last that we see of Mike and Gus in the Breaking bad verse if they don't show up again in this series, that's fine. I mean, I wouldn't mind seeing them again, but I feel like this is just the perfect ending to both of those characters. We just, we got new insight into just how doomed they are and what is going on inside them. And I think it's a perfect place to leave them, albeit a sad one. I feel like this might be the last we see of Giancarlo Esposito. Like, I think that's possible. Mike, I feel like kind of 50-50 about. But, But as you say, I would be satisfied if this were the end for them. Let's talk about that sequence.

So, like, we see Mike talk to Nacho's dad, Signor Vargas, through offense. I have questions about Mike and barriers this season because, like, how much do you think that this is thematic? Because it works thematically, right? And how much do you think, like, this barrier here and also him, like, watching Kaylee from afar look at her telescope? Like, do you think there's any COVID-Chi? concern for Jonathan Banks a fine and spry but elderly gentlemen working during COVID on a show to, like, put him in these scenes through barriers? Or do you think it's all thematic or some combination of the two? Yeah, it could be, but it works, I think, on a thematic level.

So if it was just a matter of keeping Jonathan Banks safe, which is important to all of us, then I think they found a way to do that in a way that served the story. Although this scene taking place like one of them on one side of the fence, the other on the other side of the fence. And we see Mike through the chain link fence and it's like he's imprisoned in a sense. But I don't get the sense that Nacho's dad is free either. No. He's on the inside of the fence, if anything, right? Like they're both trapped in a way. And I just, it's such an effective scene.

And I don't know whether it was planned this way from the start for Mike to be sort of the surrogate father. figure for Nacho and then Nacho's dad to be the actual father of Nacho and some of the parallels between these characters. But it's a really rich interaction just because of the similar things that they've been through and the different choices that they've made. And yet maybe the sort of similar place where they end up. Like, yeah, Nacho's dad kept his hands clean, right? And he stayed above it all. And he didn't get his hands dirty. And he's not interested in justice and revenge and all of that. He still lost his son. He wasn't able to save his son.

He really didn't make much of an attempt to save his son seemingly. We didn't see their whole relationship. But for the most part, basically he's like, hey, you just got to get out of the cartel, you know, as if that's easy. As if you can just snap your fingers and walk away. Yeah. So he was naive or in denial. He was not really able to help Nacho. And ultimately, Mike wasn't able to help or save Nacho either.

He did try, at least. Now, ultimately, he's culpable and everyone he tried to save, he ultimately failed to save or even executed himself, right? It's great that he argued on behalf of Werner or Nacho, but he was the one pulling the trigger finally in Werner's case or just looking on through the site in Nacho's case. So when Nacho's dad delivers that crushing line where he just lumps Mike in with all the other gangsters and just punctures whatever illusion. he has here about being better than they are because he has some sort of code. I mean, that is just devastating. And Jonathan Banks' reaction to that line, he looks like he's been punched. I mean, we very rarely see him show emotion or see him rattled at all. And here, he is like winded by that line. That really lands. And you'd think that he might mend his ways and see the air of them and reform and go back

to collecting parking tickets. But we know that he does. does not. And at this point, again, maybe he thinks I'm too far down the bad choice road. All I can do here is hope that my sacrifice fills Kaylee's college fund. Yeah, again, like, it's that dual identity of like pop-hop versus, you know, the gangster in Mike. And he more than Gus and more than Saul in Breaking Bad, like vacillates between those two. Like pop-up still isn't, isn't squash down at the bottom pop-up still gets to like come out and play hungry, hungry hippos sometimes. But I think that the devastating death blow to that idea of a code that he's clinging to is so important, as you mentioned in this scene. And this idea that Notches Dad says,

like, scoffs at the idea of justice, right? That this is vengeance, this is revenge, this isn't justice. And like for a show about the law, where like one of the main. images is lady justice herself with like half her blindfold sort of like hitched up like is uh you know i think that's a really really really smart part about this to just be like even the legal side of you know like and we're going to get to kim in a second right but even the sort of like i can balance it all as long as i'm taking in pro bono clients yeah even that like what exactly is going on there and when you talk about revenge you know like Kim deluded herself into thinking that Howard deserved what they were dropping on him,

which was absolutely not true. We've discussed that time. And again, is Howard a saint? No, did he deserve this? Even before the death, did he deserve the lighter version of what they were trying to do to him? Absolutely, he did not, right? And so she called it justice, essentially, but it was petty revenge and fun. And we'll get to that in a second.

But yeah, I mean, I just thought, I think you're right. No one could have punctured Mike as deftly as Mr. Vargas. So I'm really glad that they, as I was wondering, like there has to be a scene where he picked up the card early in the season. Like, there has to be a scene where Mike goes to talk to Mr. Vargas. And so for them to put it here was absolutely brilliant. Yeah. And they both lost their sons and under different circumstances. But of course, Mike gets his revenge.

He kills the cops who killed Maddie, but is that justice? It doesn't really help him in the long run. It kind of leads to him getting in bed with Saul, ultimately, because when he's investigated in Albuquerque, Saul represents him, and then they're off to the races. So it's not like that ended at all, and that healed the wounds and everything is hunky dory with Mike now. He's still suffering from that. And he's still sort of estranged from his granddaughter, right? Like there's the scene where he is in the living room and he looks over and sees her toy, but he's not with her. He's not with that family.

He's still separate and apart from them. And he can support them. He can maybe have moments of tenderness, but he's still somehow removed, I think, from them because of what he's done and how it's changed him. And it's hard to say, like, maybe Maddie died. You know, Maddie put Mike on a pedestal, right? we learn. And it was devastating for him to learn that Mike was a dirty cop too, right? Like when he tells Maddie to take the money because that's what he did, that's tough for him. And maybe it leads to Maddie's downfall because he hesitates and then they suspect him and then they wipe him out.

But Nacho, he put his dad on a pedestal too and he looked at his dad at this paragon of virtue and it doesn't save him. You know, he ends up as dead as Maddie. So even like staying out of it, yourself is not necessarily a surefire way. It's like people make their own choices to some extent. So really, it's just very rich just because of everything these characters have in common and also what separates them. So this was maybe my favorite scene of the episode, actually. It's pretty incredible.

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Let us go now. Let us put on our nicest black outfits and go to Hower's Memorial over in the HHS building. We didn't need the insider podcast to confirm this because Reddit had already pointed this out, but also was my instinct watching this scene was that the photos of Howard that we see at the Memorial are actually just Patrick Fabian's Instagram photos of his adventures around the world. I was like 100% that has to be true. And it was loved that. Love the garbage can reference of it yet here.

That was a moment where I was like, Kim and Jimmy are waiting for the elevator. There's the garbage can behind him. The shot is set up the same way that the shot has been set up before in that elevator lobby, essentially in the parking garage. We previously saw Jimmy kick the shit out of that garbage can in season one. We saw that it was still there and dented in a later season, so the fact that they replaced it with a new one. Did I need Jimmy to, like, say that? I don't know that I needed him to say it. And am I reading it too much to say, like, the undented can is the smooth facade,

Saul persona, maybe. And there's just trash inside, maybe. But little callback references like that, the amount of history. And I think the amount of history then sets up for us to be thinking about the amount of history when Kim and Jimmy return to the parking garage. But what do you want to say about Howard's Memorial? Kim gaslighted a widow at a wake. Like it doesn't get much more devious dastardly than that. That whole scene, I mean, Cheryl, you were his wife.

You saw him every day. You knew him better than anyone. Maybe I misunderstood what I saw. You would have known. I mean, man, she knows exactly how to hurt her, how to twist the knife, because she knows that Cheryl must be blaming herself for being emotionally and physically distant from Howard at the end. And I don't think Kim wants to tell that last lie.

Like, she's keeping quiet there. She's content for Jimmy to handle it himself, but she has to bail him out. He's actually telling the truth to a surprising extent. Like, he owns up to holding a grudge against Howard because Howard had Chuck's respect. And Jimmy slash Saul didn't. But he's floundering. It's not really working. And so Kim comes in with the sterner stuff to save the day and ruin Cheryl's day.

by saying what needs to be said. Maybe Cheryl's entire life. Right. Yeah. And so what I wondered is when do you think Kim decided to pull the plug on this relationship and this life and to leave? Because clearly it's been building up inside her. Yeah. It's a cumulative incremental thing.

But there has to be some snapping breaking point. So there is the scene in the apartment where they go back after their day at work. And she stays in the living room staring at where how are. was and this nice, neat, orderly room long after Jimmy goes to the bedroom to get changed. And then there's the scene in the hotel where Jimmy is telling her how, you know, this two shall pass and she's just lying there unresponsive. On the insider pod, Peter Gould suggested that the lie to Cheryl was the breaking point. Rewatching it, I think she might have come to that realization in the garage right afterward when Jimmy says, I know that was tough, but it's over now. I mean really, really over, let the healing begin.

And maybe that's when she thinks, you know what? You're right. It is over. I can't compartmentalize this the way that you can. The only way to heal or at least not do additional damage is to kiss you goodbye and just check out here. So I think maybe that line was where she comes to that decision. But the lie to Cheryl, I mean, we could compare that and stack that up with anything else that she and Jimmy have done. And that's among the cruelest acts of the series, really.

And her last act of this portion of her life. I think both answers can be true what Peter Gould said and what you said, because I think it's like stepping in to gaslight Cheryl. First of all, Cheryl, do you regret now dumping the foam latte into the Togogacup? You should. But no. I think her stepping in was just sort of like pure grift instinct of like, this is going south. I need to do something here. Yeah.

And I think just taking a, having a moment to even reflect on what she, the monstrosity of what she did there is what happens in the garage. So I think it's both what you say and what Peter Gould says there. And I just think that her next move, right, is is quitting the legal profession. And this is Kim. So we talked about what we're watching in Breaking Bad is Gustavo, Mike and Saul all trapped in this hell of their own making. As promised, they promised over and over again, it's going to completely change how we watch Breaking Bad. And it does, right? The only one not trapped in hell is Kim Wexler. She might be in hell somewhere else. And we might see that. But let's say maybe she isn't.

And maybe her drawing this line here, her quitting the law, something that means the world to her, but quitting it means she is, no longer trying to live that double life. She snuffs out Kim Wexler, perky ponytail, goody, goody attorney, right? Because she's just like, that's just a cover for this bullshit that I've been doing, you know?

And that's way more self-awareness. It took Walter White to the very end to get there. She gets there a little earlier, right? We've got three more episodes to go. Good job, Kim. And escapes and gets out. And so we don't have to watch her twist on the knife for the entirety of Breaking Bad.

Do you think that Kim has found any modicum of happiness or freedom elsewhere? I think it's a necessary first step toward that. I've seen some people wondering why she would quit when it's a way for her to do good and maybe balance the scales or start to. But I just don't think she feels worthy of defending any innocence or trying to up. uphold the law. And also, being a lawyer was a big part of her relationship with Jimmy. They shared an office. They plotted and schemed and scammed together. So they can't stay in the apartment because it's the scene of a crime. They can't stay in the relationship because it helped cause the crime. And she can't stay in the profession because it led her down the road or at least

allowed her to justify her worst choices on the grounds that she was making them for the greater good, even if we knew she wasn't. And so when Jimmy says you want to climb out of your own skin, she has to shed her whole skin, personal life, professional life, it's all got to go. And I think you can see that starting in the scene with the judge, actually, because Kim could have lied her way off of that case. The judge is giving her an out, right? Like, all she has to do is pretend that she has a health issue or a family emergency. But she won't. She won't tell even that pretty harmless lie. Right after we saw her tell the worst lie to Cheryl, instead she chooses to go with this Bartleby the Scrivener response and say she'd prefer not to explain herself, right?

I wrote Bartleby in my notes. I love you, Ben, Lindberg. That makes really happy. So even that pretty harmless white lie, she won't do that. It's like she's drawing a line between the old life and the new life. And whether she will be able to remake herself, I don't know, but I think she's got to get out of there in order to do that. I will say, though, that in light of Mike's advice to act normal and go about your business, you know, like blowing up her personal and professional life immediately after Howard disappears is not unsuspicious. But I guess she's past caring at this point because the life she has isn't worth preserving. Like, the only way to save herself and others is to get out of there. So it almost mirrors Mike leaving Philly after he kills the cops who killed

Maddie, he just blows up his life and moves to Albuquerque the next day, right? Which is sort of suspicious and does follow him there. And for him at least, it's not really a way out of anything, but maybe for her it could be. In a way, she's actually making the move that Jimmy wanted her to make an episode eight when Lalo let her leave the apartment. She's getting out of there. But I think she's doing it as much to save him still as to save herself, though as we see it's too late for Jimmy and Saul, but maybe she thinks that just separating the two of them, that toxic tandem will be better for both of them. We got a great email from our listener, Craig, about this idea of, like, Kim absolutely

disobeys the orders to just act natural. Act natural Kim. She's like, or I could do this. Which, for which I don't blame her. And we also got an email from our listener, Chris, about, like, he said he was not surprised by this scene. and I think, you and I were not that surprised by the scene either, because even though we've talked about Kim dying and all sorts of theories,

like Kim leaving was always on the table as an option here. So Chris said he's not surprised, and not only that, he's not sad about it. Now, I got teary in the airport terminal watching this on my phone, I will be honest, but overall, it's emotionally devastating, but we have to see that this is like the, right move for Kim. That's not an interesting comment on the Better Calls, I'll Reddit, again, one of the greatest place honors, where someone was laying out all the times that Kim has just left, that this is her coping mechanism. She just leaves. You know, she leaves law firms and she leaves

this, that, and the other thing, and that's just what she does. And I'm like, on the one hand, you could say that maybe that's not the best coping mechanism historically. But on the other hand, I'm like, I do think this is the right move here. Absolutely. I do. And I'm glad it was a choice she made that this was not imposed on her because there were so many ways that this could have played out. And people speculated, oh, maybe she'll get disbarred. Maybe she'll be in prison. Maybe that's why we don't see her during Breaking Bad. Or maybe she actually does make the choice to be the secret mastermind of Saul and she's there pulling the strings behind the scenes the whole time.

That would have been a choice, a much different choice. But I'm glad that she did make this choice. Maybe it's too late to make up for the. other choices that she's made and the other roads that she didn't turn down, but she is at least stepping back from the brink, or maybe she's already gone beyond the brink, and she is currently falling off the cliff, but at least she's having this epiphany in midair that everyone else in this episode is not having, or they're having it, but then they're deciding to stay where they are. Yeah, they go the other way. Yeah. Yeah. She, I mean, like, it feels like she's finally

pulling off the bad choice road, right? Taking the exit off the bad choice road. I'm not. You usually in the habit of spending my podcast recommending other people's podcasts. But I, you know, again, in case you don't listen to the insider podcast, something that I will say, and I mentioned this last week in terms of you can learn so much about the technical aspect of how to make an episode of television. There was a lot of chatter this week about how they shot this scene between Jimmy and Kim, Bob Oden, Kirk, and Ray Sehorn. And I am not technically proficient enough to recap it exactly for you. really recommend you listen. But basically my understanding is that, though it doesn't come through in the edit because they cross-cut a bunch of things, essentially, I believe they set up the cameras,

and this was extremely hard to do in the set that they were working in, to follow the actors. Basically, they shot the scenes in long woners and then cut them together. So you get shot reverse shot. It's not shot like a oneer is, but it was shot like a oneer was to preserve for no reason, no showy reason, but to preserve the mounting intensity of the performance of the actor. And I think that TV show has got a lot of love this summer as The Bear, a show that I really, really liked. And it's episode seven, which is a really complicated oneer, is getting a lot of praise, and I think it deserves it. But a lot of times those big flashy oneers, or you think about True Detective season one, like those big flashy wonders, a lot of times I'm sort of

like, well, you're showing off. What's the artistic reason you're doing this other than, like, can I do this? And with the bear, I think, this is not a podcast about the bear, but the bear, I think it works for the mounting tension in that episode. Like, it's important that that's done all in sort of one take. And what I really love about this is that they did, they did all the hard work to choreograph a winner on these actors without any of the accolades because they then cut it together in a way that doesn't look like a oneer. And I just think that that's extraordinary TV making. What do you think, then? Yeah, yeah, sacrifice yourself, sacrifice your any chances in service of the story.

But yeah, I mean, that scene is pretty extraordinary. There are a lot of firsts in this episode. We get Gus's first real smile. We get the first glimpse into the architecture of Saul's comb over. but we also get Jimmy and Kim's first I love you and last I love you, at least their first on screen. Now, in an interview with Alan, Ray said that she thinks that they have said it to each other off screen before. But I don't know. I wouldn't question her interpretation of her own character. But I think for me, I prefer this actually being the first time that they have ever said it to each other because it's there. It's unspoken, but they've always buried it a bit.

as they did with the wedding that's ostensibly about spousal privilege, although really it's about more than that, but actually vocalizing it here in the extremely vulnerable way that Bob Odenkirk does. It's just like a last ditch effort just pulling out all the stops to save the relationship, and it's not enough. It's so what. So I believe that there's love there. I think we've believed that all along, although it is depressing to me that she says she didn't tell him that Lala was alive because you'd pull. the plug on the scam and then we'd break up and I didn't want that. The implication being that

the grift was the only thing keeping them together, which is sort of sad because I'd like to think that there's more to it than that, although that is clearly the central spark of the relationship. But that makes me wonder, like, if that is what it is, then if they do meet up in the post-breaking bad timeline, what could keep them together then if they're not falling back into their bad old ways. Will they have changed and learned and reformed enough that their love is sufficient, that they can sustain that spark without the thrill of the hustle, without the tequila topper that gets left behind at Saul's house? And that also makes me wonder whether we're going to get a Kim only episode or at least a lot of solo screen time for her, because if these

characters are going to get together again, which seems inevitable that their paths will cross, then we have to see some of that molting process where she shed that skin. We saw that, but we need to see the new skin coming in. So I do wonder whether she will get some of the spotlight here. We've been thinking about Gene and about Saul, but maybe there's a lot of Kim left too. We got an email from listener, Michael, asking if we thought there would be a Kim-centric episode at the end of the Saul. And the way we were sort of breaking it out last week. I think Ben, you're the one who plotted it out this way.

I thought it was so smart, was like next week, contemporaneous with Breaking Bad episode, and then the last two in sort of black and white world. But maybe it's contemporaneous with Breaking Bad, a Kim-centric episode, and then the end of it all. Or not. I mean, who knows, but that's, you know. Yeah, the title card under the theme song at the start of the episode is almost all black and white now. It's been getting progressively more black and white maybe as we wind down the prequel timeline and we get closer to Gene. And it's basically all black and white now, so we're almost there, but maybe not quite there.

And when Kim tells the judge, it was unavoidable, that line really stood out to me because it does feel that way. The end of this relationship feels unavoidable in that we've been seeing them spiraling again since season two. So it lacks some surprise, you know, if like there had somehow been a happily ever after here or I don't know if Kim had actually died, which seemed less and less like. as this season went on, then maybe there would have been more shock value to it. And maybe I would have been left gasping more than I was as opposed to just being very sad. But it feels fitting. It's unavoidable and it feels fitting. It doesn't feel like they decided this is how it has to end.

And so we're going to make it end this way, regardless of how they get there. It feels like every step along the way led to this part. Yeah. And that's how all of this is felt. Like when Nacho dies were like, that feels inevitable, right? Even when Howard died, you and I had been sort of saying, like, well, how else is this going to end?

If not that. And then Lalo dying, like, all of it has felt, like, Lolo being buried under the lab. It's sort of like, yeah, we all kind of saw it coming, but not in a way where I'm like, I'm bored. It's just sort of just hollowed out and emotionally devastated. What a fun fine time. What a fun summer TV show. I want to just shout out, we're going to run a little long on this episode just because

there's so much going on. But I want to shout out a couple line reads from Ray in that breakup scene. She gives the, because I was having too much fun line, she gives it the old Brian Cranston Emmy worthy. I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it and I was really, I was alive. Like that's her Walter White to Skyler admitting who he actually is moment. Love that for her.

There isn't like pride in it as there was with Wals. Right? There's like self-loving. There's like disgust there. But yes. Yeah. And something that Ray Sehorne said in that interview is she says, she loaves herself far more than she has ill feelings about him and being Jimmy.

And I love that interpretation. And then also like because they did that breakup scene and these long oner's, there were different, she was telling Alan Sepamol that there were different times in which her character broke across that scene in terms of like letting the grief of everything break through the determination. And the take that they use is when she says, I love you too, so what? And she said in this interview that the reason that she broke there that time was because of Bob's line reading of I love you. She said it had a quality to it that was pleading and also sort of absolutely raw naked, like, this is me with no armor. This is my

truest essence. Is this love I have for you? And it really makes sense to me that Jimmy would just like pull all the armor off and just say like here is the raw naked core essence of me. I just need to be loved and I need you to see me as something that's lovable. And she's like, yeah, I love you. So what? Right. As I already mentioned, and that's just enough to send him underground for six plus years. So.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's like he said, was it in the last episode where he's like, you know, how could that be bad? Well, clearly it could be bad. it's been bad for everyone around them. It's been bad for them. So, yeah, I mean, I hope that Kim has a more happy and productive and healing next six years or so than Saul does personally.

But perhaps we will see where she goes and what kind of facade she puts up or hopefully she doesn't put up any. Hopefully she's just Kim. She's wearing casual clothes, by the way, right, in this scene, which we rarely see her outside. of the business casual at least. But here she's like back to civilian outfit. All right. So let's talk about the timeline really quickly. So we smash cut.

As you say, we cut abruptly, right, to Saul. And we know we've had the passage of time because like honestly one of the very first things we see is the top of his head, right? So like the passage of time as it as it is reflected on his hairline is sort of what's going on here. We get a close up shot of his license plate in this coda. And the registration says 2005. So Reddit is saying, is it 2005, which is a year after, right?

Kim and Jimmy break up in 2004. So has it been a year? And it's 2005. However, Breaking Bad doesn't start until 2008. And also, my favorite post of all time is someone on Reddit analyzed the kind of rappers on the Nutragrame breakfast bars. And pointed out that they were in line with the design they were using. is in 2008, not 2005. So whether you're on the license plate timeline

or the NutraGrain breakfast bar timeline. Or a third piece of evidence, the S&P 500 timeline. I don't know if you saw this post, but there's another Better Call Saul Reddit post by Lomachenko 19 who says, after the time jump, if you listen very closely to the radio

as Saul is driving into his office, it is stated that the S&P 500 rose by five points the prior day. If you narrow down this period to November 1, 2000, to November 30th, 2005, based on the license plate expiring in November 2005, the only day the S&P 500 rose by exactly five points is February 10th, 2005. Therefore, the next day when he's driving to work would be February 11th, 2005, which was a Friday. So perhaps we are down to the

day and date here. Which means Valentine's Day is right around the corner. Tip your local sex worker. So something that is a lot of that I think is really, really unsettling about the sequence other than, you know, seeing Jimmy not there is the way in which Saul has to, there has to be constant noise for him in this whole sequence. He's on the Bluetooth. There's the radio. There's something like, he cannot be alone with his thoughts in the shower. That's who he has become. He's become that guy. I did not know that Bluetooth headphones were water resistant in 2005, but good to know that I could. have been doing podcasts in the shower this whole time.

No, that's my thinking time. That's where I really need to think about things. What's down to you the most in all of, in all of this? Yeah. And, you know, we see him going from the actual loving relationship he has with Kim to just this transactional relationship he has with the sex worker who's sharing his bed and being booted out of it the second he awakes. And yeah, he's just like putting on his armor, right? you said he took off his armor in that last scene.

Now we see him putting on the harbor. We see him looking almost like weirdly grotesque in this scene in the mirror where he's like hunched over and it's like foggy and he's, you know, putting together assembling his comb over. And the whole thing is just like appearances and artifice. And of course you have the tacky exterior of the house and the tacky decor and all of that. And of course, the breakfast bar, which is really like one of the. few moments of humor in this episode. I've talked before about how even in its darkest moments Saul tends to mix in some comedy, but there's not a lot of levity in this episode, except for maybe just the Derek Jeter-esque gift basket of the breakfast bar that he gives to her on her way

out. But yeah, he's kind of keeping up this constant patter. Even in the car, he's like listening to himself via his own radio ad. In mono. Yeah. It's like if he stops talking to for a second or stops listening to himself talk, then the inner monologue could take over. Like, maybe Jimmy could come out, right? And he doesn't want Jimmy to come out. He wants Jimmy to be buried like Lalo in the super lab. And so he just has to keep up this constant stream of Saul to suppress who he is. I love this ideal. If we zoom back to the cold open of the series, it's nope, of the season, I should say. When we see some agency seizing his property, right? the tequila bottle topper that we've talked about.

I just love that idea of like there's this huge mansion with all this shit in it, all this gold-plated bullshit in it. And hiding in the middle of it somewhere is one tiny piece of one tiny spark that's still alive for Kim and Jimmy in the bottle topper. What does it mean that it's left in the gutter at the beginning of the season? I don't want to talk about it. But I think that's all really, really distressing and interesting. And speaking of the quiet, I wanted to circle back to this moment in Breaking Bad that we've referenced a lot. But I think we grasped the wrong end of the stick with it, which is season three episode two, Kabiosi Nomre, or no name, Breaking Bad.

And this is the sequence that we've referenced a bunch of time where Saul says, just don't hang yourself in a closet to Walter. And then he goes and sits in his car and has this uncharacteristic moment. of sort of exhausted self-reflection, right? And a lot of us are like, well, does that mean? Someone's going to hang themselves in a clock? I mean, like, I was, as of last week, entirely susceptible to that. But then I rewatch the scene for the larger context of what's going on there. And like, the reason that Saul is talking to Walt is Walt has been kicked out by his wife.

And he's like doing laundry and living in this sort of like sad, divorced guy apartment. and Saul comes in and he says, we live to fight another day and after a decent interval of time, while there are other fish in the sea, you've been out of circulation for a while, you'll be just as amazed at what's out there. Thailand, the Czech Republic.

I mean, those women are so grateful to even be there. That is upsetting. So, like, this idea of him being like, hey, man, this is a good thing. Like, move on. There's tons of bates who want to fuck you, like, all this or stuff. And then he sits in the car and he's like,

fuck, you know? Like, that's Jimmy coming through. And I think people are really smart to zero in on that as a moment in Breaking Bad of Jimmy coming through. But I just think that they were latching onto the wrong reason why. Yeah, there's even a deleted Breaking Bad scene from that same period that Peter Gold tweeted out this week where. Oh, did he? Yeah, it's in the same beachcomer apartments complex. And Saul is talking to Wald.

And he says, you think I don't get it. I get it. I've been here myself. This is where every middle-aged washout ends up when his wife gives him the boot. So maybe he was there, too, during that transitional period before he gets the sandpiper money and puts it towards this big mansion. Oh, not saving people with pro bono live. No, what a surprise. Shocked that that's what happened with the sandpiper money.

But again, it just, it still amazes me that the plan was ever to have him transform into Saul by the end of season one because we already saw Saul as Saul in Breaking Bad. The whole point of this prequel is to see how he becomes Saul, which just seems infinitely more interesting than seeing Saul even more. So what would it have even been left if that had happened as early on as it was planned? But I think that, you know, we see the world's greatest lawyer mug here, right, which we saw in Breaking Bad, but it takes on a new resonance now. And that's a great example of how something from Breaking Bad can be reframed by Better Callsall because now we see the world's best lawyer and we view it in contrast to the world's second best lawyer, which was a gift from someone who loved him.

Whereas the world's best lawyer, the very self-aggrandizing, mug. That's just a gift to himself to try to put Kim out of his mind. And so I wonder what it will be like to watch that Saul. If we were to go back and rewatch Breaking Bad, which I've considered doing after this, what will it be like to watch that Saul who Bob Odenkirk was playing without any sense of what had happened to that character to make him who he is? Maybe he had some head cannon at the time, but nothing like what we know now. And so I wonder whether it will be satisfying. As you say, like there is the example of that scene you cited where maybe we do see the Sal facade crack and we see a little Jimmy come out.

But for a lot of that series, he's just Saul and he seems to be enjoying himself and he doesn't seem to be bothered by it. And there isn't necessarily a hint of that deeper despair that's in there. And so when we rewatch that, will we be able to read that into it and will it be even more satisfying than it was or will it be unsatisfying because we'll feel like we're disconnected from that character? because we know that character better than Bob Odenkirk did at the time. So I don't think it'll be unsatisfying.

I think it's just I've watched some scenes here and there and I'm sure you have. And it's like it's devastating. Yeah. Like it's devastating to contemplate that Jimmy might become the guy who steals a rice and cigarette that has been like all part of a kid getting poisoned. You know what I mean? Like it's devastating to think of the things that he's okay with in that series. Yeah. I think it would help in the next episode.

episode if we are seeing Saul during the Breaking Bad timeline, just to see some of Jimmy in Saul, maybe now in that period, just to further establish that he's in there somewhere, make the original portrayal of him seem more artificial so that when we go back and watch that, we think, okay, we saw him during this period when he was breaking that facade and we saw the cracks. And so we know that that's in there. But I know that a lot of people have been just waiting for Saul to show up in earnest and have been impatient. and when are we going to get Saul and when is he going to complete the transformation?

For me, it's been more like dread than impatience. Like, I've been happy to just unspool this slowly because we saw Saul. I've been pre-mourning Jimmy for some time now. And now I am mourning him, you know? I think that means you're smarter than the rest of us. Because, like, I'm definitely guilty of being like, ooh, whenever you get this Saul show, I'm excited. There were some slow times. I will not deny that.

But to make us wait this long and then to give us what we were. clamoring for it to have us go like, no, not like this is so smart, you know. The memorial for Howard is almost a memorial for Jimmy in a way, too. You know, just we got to see fables live in his best life, which was great, but he's gone now and Jimmy is too. And so now that we've got Saul, yeah, I'm excited to see what happens next and how we get Walt and Jesse and what kind of context Saul is placed in. But I'm even more eager to see Jimmy again, hopefully, or to see whatever the

person formerly known as Jimmy has evolved into. It's been so interesting to hear people talk about as we watch Gus and Mike and etc. To contemplate how soon after this that they will all be dead, right? And how, you know, a high school chemistry teacher is the means of their downfall. But I think what we see here is that they're the architects of their own downfall and this idea of like trapping themselves in, I got so enamored in this. idea of them trapping themselves in hell of their own making that like the the fire imagery that we

get in this episode. Francesca 2 stuck in that horrible office after like, you know, she, she spent so much time making a beautiful office. And that like this idea of Walter White being this, the devil that's waiting for them. And then I remembered that like Jesse Pinkman has that line in the final season where he says, Mr. White, he's the devil. That's what he says to Uncle Hank. And I think that that is, um, that is what's waiting.

Hell is what's waiting. And Breaking Bad is just hell for a bunch of different characters. And I just think that that is what a brilliant thing to do. And I think we got this really interesting email from my listener, Sean, saying like, if we get this, we all expect. And in fact, no, that next week is an overlap of the Breaking Bad timeline. We know that Walt and Jesse are coming. I mean, we have to presume that it's in this week's episode. Michelle McLaren, a Breaking Bad director is coming in to direct the episode.

Brian Cranston has said that. Walt and Jesse are in three different scenes. There's a Waltz scene of Jesse scene and a Walt and Jesse scene. So, like, it's not a cameo. Like, they're in the episode. But what Sean said in his email was, like, showing us this overlap is not just a fun, like, member Barry's episode of her, like, remember how you like breaking bad. We got Cranston.

We got, you know, Aaron Paul on break from Westworld. It's to force us to reconcile Jimmy and Saul. It's forcing us to not keep them in separate buckets, but to really acknowledge that this is who Jimmy is for years and years. Right. And how horrible that is? Yeah. And then how difficult does that make it for us to sympathize with him all over again if that's what happens in the future timeline? Can there be real redemption?

I want there to be, but I also want it to be earned. Just a few more things before we wrap up. I think you pointed this out last week. The episode title, Nippy, really feels like it's sticking. So, episode 10, Nippy. And I think you're the one who pointed out this idea of transitioning away from the X and Y format of the title to a solo title is like a, we're so sad for transitioning out of the Partners and Crime phase of this season into Jimmy actually saw now by himself, by his lonesome. And then the other thing, coming on this episode, I did not think that's the last. We'll see if Kim Wexler.

I absolutely did not think that. No. I had no reason to really think that. This felt like the most confirmation we've ever gotten that we're going to see her in the gene timeline at some point. The thing that makes it crystal clear to me is the fact that Ray Seahorn was not a guest on the insider podcast this week. It's a pretty good tell. I was like, usually they get a little exit interview this week. The lovely Tina Parker who plays Francesca was on the podcast, which means maybe.

I mean, she seems like she should be in next week's episode. But, yeah, Ray did not get a goodbye interview. So I'm pretty sure we're going to see her again. Yes. Anything else forward-looking that you want to say? Well, I don't know if this is forward-looking, but we didn't explicitly mention the last line of this episode, right? Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.

Right. Which is another callback from Saul here. This is Chuck speaking to Howard in the famous episode, chicanery. And Chuck said that before appearing in court against Saul, right before Saul destroyed him. Yeah. And so the fact that he is quoting that here, I mean, that is really what led to Chuck taking his own life. So is he gloating here that, hey, I built up this successful persona in practice and I am a success? Or is he acknowledging that the heavens have already fallen or are still falling and he's just embracing it? and say, I'm still here, the heavens fell, and here I am? Or how did you interpret that?

It's interesting. I was looking into that phrase because, like, so it's a legal phrase, right? You see it on seals written in Latin and stuff like that. And it's interesting because Chuck says that to Howard, right? Jimmy's not in that scene. So he didn't see Chuck say it. But I would, I'm happy to assume that Chuck has said that more than once in his life. So maybe it's something that Jimmy is just like her.

Chuck say and he's decided to say it in this sort of like mocking empty echo of it. And I was trying to figure out like how, like, because I have not heard it outside of much outside of this. There are other legal, like Latin legal phrases that are much more commonly said. So I was like looking at on the Wikipedia page for this entry of like where it's been around. And Cosser says it in JFK. At one point, I was wondering if I feel like the better call sell. writers would be people who have seen J.F.K. a couple times. So maybe they got it from

JFK. As opposed to some of the other references, I was like maybe. Or maybe they just, you know, they've soaked enough in the legal world that this phrase picked up. But yeah, for me, it just feels like he got, this is Chuck's worst nightmare is Jimmy's not only a lawyer, but he is like a shasty cartel lawyer echoing Chuck's words in, in like complete mockery of what Chuck builds. I saw, I don't know if you saw this meme on Reddit, but they gave the old onion headline, the worst person you know is right.

And it's a photo of Chuck. It's like, yeah, this is Chuck's nightmare. I don't know. What do you make of it? Yeah, I mean, everything he warned about with Jimmy has come true. And it was sort of a prophecy that he helped fulfill by rejecting Jimmy and never giving him the respect that he was trying to earn.

But he was right. That was in Jimmy all along, the capacity to become Saul. He had to be pushed to it. But ultimately, just for telling his doom was not off. I mean, I guess we should mention so that people don't say, you missed that the painting over the bed in Kim and Jimmy's hotel room is a painting that cropped up in breaking bat a couple times that Walter was sort of like interested in. He was like, it was a painting that was commissioned for the show, an original, but it was sort of like this motel. hella art that Walt sees a couple times and it's a man about sort of pulling away from his family sort of to indicate like the disconnection of Walter from his family. So in in the scene where

Jimmy's family of two with Kim breaks apart, it's notable that it's there. Anything else? Do we miss anything? Just wanted to mention there was a tribute to Julia Clark Downs at the very end of this episode, who was apparently a legal consultant on the show, who had, worked as a lawyer in the Albuquerque area and apparently was killed in an accident and this was the farewell to her. But maybe we should credit her for some of the legal verisimilitude that we see in this series, which I have a lot of lawyer friends and sometimes I get texts from them after each episode. Do you? Yes. Hello, Peter, if you're listening. And, you know, they will point out this or that just sends them back to some scene from their own legal life, for example,

like Saul talking about soft tissue damage in this episode when he's on the Bluetooth in the shower and how that can often be a tactic that you can use to extract more money for your client. His bucket of neck braces that he's like rifling through. Exactly. Yeah. So I haven't seen a whole lot reported on how that consulting went or what exactly that relationship was, but that seems pretty important to the fact that even lawyers, I'm not saying

that Saul is always completely true to the legal profession. And, you know, I saw people questioning, like, well, can Kim even appear in court after she has resigned from the bar? Even if she has resigned beforehand, could she file a motion? Did she do that before she resigned? I'm not so concerned with the TikTok of all of that. But I think those scenes pass muster not just for legal lay people like us, but also I think they don't really challenge the suspension of disbelief of some lawyers more so than many like courtroom dramas do, which take a lot of liberties. So just wanted to mention that that was apparently what that tribute was to. Well, I don't have a ton of lawyer friends, but I am going to reach out to like the two that I can think of and ask them what they watch. Because I also want

text from lawyers at the end of an episode of. I can give my friends your number. I'm sure that you have. Great. Put me on the text thread. Yeah. I love that. All right, well, that is it for us for episode nine. We only have three more to go. I'm going to miss this. I just want to shout, okay, while we're talking about partnerships, the X and Y, I just want to say that I love podcasting with Ben Lindbergh, because I was in the notes doc of this absurdly late last night on the West Coast.

And Ben was on the East Coast. I saw his little initials pop up in the Google Doc, which meant that he was also in it. And it was like one in the morning over there. Your dedication to the cause warms my heart. So thank you, Ben, for everything you do. I outlasted you in the outline doc last night, I think. But you were probably up bright and early this morning. So I hope you had a breakfast bar when you got up to finish off the outline.

And everyone, go ahead, take one. We'll be back next week. Sounds good. This episode was produced by great Christopher Sutton, and we will see you next week. Bye. The right window treatments change everything. Your sleep, your privacy, the way every room looks and feels. At blinds.com, we've spent 30 years making it surprisingly simple to get exactly what your home needs.

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