The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6 Episodes 1 and 2 Recap

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

Ben and Joanna start by discussing the events leading up to the final season of ‘Better Call Saul’ and how the series stands up against the prequels that have been made for other franchises and ��Breaking Bad’ itself. They then analyze some of the pivotal scenes in the first two episodes of the new season and speculate on where some of their favorite characters are headed. Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Ben Lindbergh Producer: Chris Sutton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Are you ever curious what's going on behind the scenes in Hollywood? You watch a Netflix show or a Marvel movie and you wonder, why was that person in it? Why did this movie get made? I'm Matt Bellany, founding partner of Puck News, and I'm covering the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. With my new show, The Town, on the Ringer podcast network, I'm going to take you inside Hollywood with exclusive insight

on what people in show business are actually talking about. Multiple times a week, we're going to bring you short, Digestable episodes featuring some of the smartest people I know breaking down the hottest topics in entertainment to tell you what's really going on. Follow the town now and listen on Spotify. Hello and welcome back into the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson and joining me,

fresh from escaping near death in the desert, I believe. It's Ben Lindberg. Hi, Ben. Joanna, hello. I am so excited for South Season. It's great to be back in Albuquerque. Oh my gosh. Even better to be here with you.

We've got a lot to discuss. Saul spring and then to be followed by Sol Summer, it's a great time to be a Saul fan. So I just want to break down a little bit. Well, first of all, Prestige TV program reminders, just so you guys know, there's so much going on in the feed. There's We Crash. There's Atlanta. There's winning time. I believe we'll be launching a Barry watch-along podcast also.

So there's a lot to check in on. But the reason why we decided to do Better Call Saul alongside what. what Chris and Andy are doing over on the watch with Better Calls All is that it's like the final season of this huge show, a show that we love dearly and we feel like it's worth the double breakdown. So what Chris and Andy are going to be doing every Monday night is sort of like an instant reaction. God willing in the AMC screener stream don't rise. They will be doing here every Monday night with like an instant reaction. And then Ben and I will have the advantage of like a couple days of like reading cast interviews and reading Reddit theories. whatever it is to give us a little bit more of a breakdown.

Are you a theory person, Ben? I am, although with this show in particular, it could go a couple different ways. Because on the one hand, I feel like no matter how much I think about this show, Gilligan and Gould will outthink me. And so I almost just concede from the start that I can't keep up with them. On the other hand, this is a show that really rewards that sort of speculation, I think, because it's not going to be one of those series where you get to the end and you realize that, oh, I gave this series too much credit.

I was digging too deep into this thing. It always goes deeper than you are going to go. So I have no anticipation, no expectation that I can keep up with the twists and turns of this plot. But in a way, when you invest in it that way and you think about it and yet you still can't foresee what's coming, I think that just makes it all the more impressive. It's fun to try. It's really fun to try. This final season, as Chris and I mentioned on The Watch, is going to be broken down into two chunks.

We've got seven episodes running between now and May 23rd, so this is Saul Spring, and then Summer of Saul kicks off in July, July 11th through August 15th. So we will have a little bit more time left with these characters that we love so much. But not too long, and I'm so glad that it won't be a long wait because I can't take a longer wait than this. I mean, the last season of Breaking Bad was really two seasons separated by a year, right? This is less than a two-month hiatus here, which is about what. what my blood time pressure can tolerate. Like my nightstand is going to look like Saul in the opening sequence here

with a bunch of blood pressure medication. So let's get it over with before I collapse. What's your tie collection like? Is it equally impressive? It's more like the monochromatic ties that you see at the start of that sequence than the technicolor dream coat that comes later. All right.

So we're going to be starting here with two episodes because AMC and their wisdom dropped two episodes to start with. We're doing episode one, one, and roses, directed by Michael Morris and written by Peter Gould, co-creator of the series, and carrot and stick, directed by the other co-creator of the series, Vince Gilligan, written by Thomas Schnauz and Ariel Levine. Something that I was talking to Chris a little bit about, we didn't dig too much into it,

but, you know, the pattern that we've noticed so far with the episode titles of season is that is like an X and Y construction. Wine and Rose is carrot and stick. We know the names of episodes three and four, rock and hard place, hit and run. Do you have any thoughts or theories about this particular naming construction? Yeah, you know, in season one, almost every episode title was one word that ended in O, which was a pattern, but wasn't necessarily like the secret code that explained better calls all. Then again, in season two, the first letter of each episode title spelled out Fringsback, right?

So they could be sending us some sort of message here. If anything, maybe this structure to me mirrors just the dualities at the center of this series. I mean, Kevin calls Jimmy two-faced in the country club scene in the premiere, but who isn't two-faced in this series? It's Jimmy and Saul. It's Kim, whose face is literally bisected by shadow in the restaurant scene. It's Mike the killer and Mike the kindly pop-pop-pop. It's like Gus the Chicken Man, Gus the ruthless drug dealer, you know, Lalo, the smiling, easygoing guy and Lalo the Killer with no conscience. or Nacho, the loyal lieutenant and dutiful son,

and Nacho the drug dealer and trader. So maybe the structure of the episode titles echoes that, though I think a lot of this season will be about our characters kind of picking a lane, right? I mean, by the end of the season, it's not going to be Jimmy and Saul, but presumably Jimmy Orsall, and we've seen Breaking Bad,

so we know which one it's heading toward. Yeah. There's this thought, you know, you start to think about like what other and episodes might be called, Chris floated the idea of Walt Jesse We'll talk about that in a second Wolves and sheep is something obviously that gets play at the end of this episode that could show up

I also like this idea that it might turn into like versus In the second part of the season There was already a season 5 episode six episode Wexler versus Goodman But what if we get Wexler versus McGill Or McGill versus Goodman or you know Whatever it is as it all breaks down Gene versus Saul who knows

Who knows if we're spending more time in the cinema this season. We don't know. I think we will. I want to ask you about the, we understand completely what the title of carrot and stick means in episode two. It's explicitly shouted out in the way that they deal with the Kettleman's. Right. And not just the Kettlements, by the way, right? It's kind of a recurring theme throughout the episode. You have Mike with Nacho's ladies' friends, right? Like, take the money in the next five seconds, or you're out of luck or Gus with Nacho, right? Do you want to help him out or use his father as leverage? So consistent. Some sort of a...

Usually it ends up being the stick, but not in every case. Carrots and sticks for everyone, well, sticks for everyone, I guess. But for wine and roses, obviously the track Wine and Roses opens the episode. There's a couple implications of that phrase, Wine and Roses, days of wine and roses, meaning like days of opulence, but also, you know, an allusion to the famous film Wine and Roses, which is about, you know, alcohol addiction and sort of lost weekends. So do you have any thoughts or theories about why they went with that name?

Yeah, there could be multiple layers to it. I think it is a pretty explicit reference to that film, and the creators have shouted that out as being an influence in the writer's room. And, I mean, you can see why, right? Because it's a tragic romance between two characters, you know, star-crossed lovers, Joe and Kirsten, J&K, right? Just like Jimmy and Kim. He's a drinker who introduces her to drinking.

She has an addictive personality and she can't kick the habit. And then she's the one who spirals while he reforms, which is sort of what seems to be happening. with Kim and Jimmy right now. So it seems like it is pretty clearly an ode to that. And so maybe that movie is a clue for anyone who is doing theories. Go back, watch that film. Maybe there will be something there. I love that. I think I'm going to like hang up this call and go watch the film immediately. So, you know, in terms of that addictive personality question, Kim, as we know from Kim Flashbacks is the daughter of an alcoholic, this idea that Kim at the end of, I mean, kind of throughout,

but specifically at the end of season five, that addiction to the grift is something that we're seeing blossoming in her. Chuck in an earlier season also pointed, he called Jimmy an alcoholic. He said, you're my brother and I love you, but you're like an alcoholic who refuses to admit he's got a problem, meaning his addiction to the grift, I think. And so I'm worried for everyone all the time on this show, but I'm very worried for Kim, and I think that's a great, a great shout out to that. Right, yeah.

plus the significance of the tequila to their relationship, right? It's a night of drinking that kind of allows them to unlock their true natures, or at least Kim's, and lets them take their romance to a new level. So drinking has been sort of central to them. That's not really their main addiction, but it has helped enable their addiction. Let's talk about that for a second. We have an email address. Kim Wexler lives at gmail.com.

Then I know we can send emails to. We've already gotten a bunch of really great fun and interesting emails. we're going to address them throughout, but let's start with one from Stephen here to talk about that tequila bottle top. Stephen says, and this is in reference kind of to a conversation Chris and I had about the house that opens the episode, who when, it's obviously Saul slash Jimmy's house. Is it also Kim's house? Right. When did this happen that we're watching? We're intentionally kept in the dark about that. So Stephen wrote, I think the opening was probably a contracted mover packing seized assets after government agents have taken.

in all their evidence. In Breaking Bad, Saul is in a sleazy little office, not befitting someone living like that. Given nothing female except the stray panties is in the house, I'm guessing that scene happens after whatever befalls Kim and before Breaking Bad. Betsy Kettleman saying that they lost everything and Kim telling her she has no idea, feels like a pretty big foreshadow. And of course, the big moment at the end of that sequence is the tequila bottle top in the gutter of.

very sort of like rosebud citizen cane moment of the snow globe falling to the ground, this one small item that carries so much weight and meaning, a reminder of simpler times, et cetera. We see this bottle top that Kim has kept as a memento of the first grift that she did, the first con that she did with Jimmy. What do you think? When did this all take place? When is that house being gutted?

Yeah. I mean, it's got to be breaking. Bad end of Breaking Bad, sort of a repo scenario, you know, just seizing all of Saul's assets, as Stephen suggested, I would think. The thing about Saul and Breaking Bad is that we knew almost nothing about his home or his home life. Like, he could have been going home to Kim every night for all we know, right? But this sequence sort of depresses me because it suggests that there's very little of Jimmy left at this stage. Like the office, the car, the suits, that's the exterior. Like, that's the facade. That's the image that Jimmy is projecting to the world. But if his home looks like this, it suggests that that's just who he is. That's who he is on the inside now. He's lost whatever element of Jimmy remained. And yet he was hanging on to the tequila topper. Now, he didn't take it with him. You know, Gene Tackovic has the better call sol commercials, right? That he watches on those snowy nights. But he left the tequila topper, which suggests, you know, he was hanging on.

to some vestige of who he used to be and the significance that Kim had to him, but that he's not taking that with him. And I've got to think that Kim was not with him in this house because, I mean, I know that she sort of steals Saul style in this episode, which we can talk about. But I give her too much credit as an interior designer. I mean, her taste is too good for her to live in a house with a gold-plated toilet. Yeah, not too much in the underwear. I just really don't think that's Kim underwear for sure. There's another theory that this, you know, because there are a couple years between where we are in, if the timeline is to be believed, there's a couple years between where we are in Saul right now.

It's like four years, isn't it? Right? As best as we can tell, which I know it's all. But I mean, a lot could happen and there is a prevalent theory that this house seizure happens between Saul and Breaking Bad, that like maybe he and Kim get the Sam Piper money. We're going to talk about all this in a second, but like get the San Piper money, you know, are living large. something happens, whether it's a divorce, whether it's a, you know, whatever it is,

something happens that turns Jimmy into Saul irrevocably and that's where the seizure comes into effect. I'm still leaning towards end of Breaking Bad post-Sall exit from Albuquerque, but we shall see. We shall see. I love, I want to shout out, you already mentioned the monochromatic ties, but I love how that sequence opens with the monochromatic ties, making us think it's another black and white sequence before they turn more and more colorful and we figure out we're in our first color opening for a Sol episode.

Right. And you've got to think, I mean, unless they have another spino in them, which I wouldn't put it past them, but this could be the last word on the Gilligan verse, right? I mean, we've been living in this world for almost 15 years at this point between Breaking Bad and El Camino and Better Call Saul. So this is going to be the last word, at least in terms of the real world timeline. you would think it might also be the last word in terms of the timeline of Albuquerque of these characters that we care about. And so if we are going to jump ahead to Gene Tachovic and beyond, then you would think that they're going to get us used to this time frame.

And you know, you saw in this scene a shot of H.G. Wells as the time machine, right? Which Saul slash Jimmy is also reading in one of these early season six episodes. So there's going to be a lot of timeline hopping, I would think. at various points in this season. But also this idea of like, take me back to when I had a soul or I had Kim or whatever it is that he lost. Yeah. Like those simple, innocent times of early better calls off.

Of this show. Yeah. So innocent. Slipping Jimmy. Yeah. Exactly. The other thing we want to talk about sort of like a bigger picture thing before we get into, we're going to break down the episode character by character.

But this whole new, the Jesse Walt news, I haven't had a chance to talk to you, Ben, about this. But this idea that Peter Gould at Paley Fest. just came out and was like, guess what? I'm not going to try to hide it from you. We're not going to make Aaron Paul do it, Andrew Garfield. Like, Walt and Jesse are in the show. It's happening.

Aaron Paul was surprised. He told T.R. that he was surprised that they announced. He thought he was going to have to keep the secret, but he was delighted that it was out there so that he could talk about it. Obviously, they're not talking details. But he said, I'm excited that we did and how we did. And I think people are going to be thrilled about it.

I mean, what else is he going to say? People are going to be disappointed. But do you have any thoughts or feelings about Walt and Jesse being in the season? and about how much or how little you would want to see of them. With any other series, I might have some misgivings about this because I don't need Walden Jesse to swoop in like Luke Skywalker saving Baby Yoda, or to stick with Star Wars, which is on brand for me. I also don't need better calls all to hand off to Breaking Bad directly the way that someone

hands the Death Star plans to CGI Carrie Fisher at the end of Rogue One, right? Despite all the connective tissue between these two series, Better Callsall stands on its own, which is an incredible accomplishment. It's something I really value about this series. And so I would hate for this to be about, you know, oh, the whole reason we were watching this is to just sort of set up breaking bad. It's more than that, right? It's its own thing. And so that might give me pause, except that, again, I just kind of trust in the creators here not to take this too far. and, you know, a lot of timelines, a lot of questions about the timeline, as we said, and the years between these two series, I would think that this would probably be a sparing sort of screen time role. I mean, maybe kind of a cameo thing, maybe kind of a background thing. Another thing that makes me think that is that Better Callsall plays it pretty fast and loose with the ages and appearances of actors, you know, as a prequel that takes place years before.

for a series that has been off the air for some time. Better Call Saul is definitely from the Outlander school of like our protagonist just aged 20 years. Let's give them three gray hairs and we're good, you know? Oh, wow. Way to shout out Claire on Outlander. I love that. Okay.

So in this case, like, it's a de-aging issue, right? Which I'm kind of worried that if I rewatch Breaking Bad now, which I'm interested in doing after Saul ends, that it'll just seem like everyone's Benjamin buttoning because they just like look more youthful than I'm used to seeing them now? I will say I was watching some Saul scene specifically as a refresher. And because Bob, like, his hair is longer. Right. And he's a little trimmer on Saul than he is on Breaking Bad.

And so, like, his face is a little more youthful, but he doesn't look markedly younger. So I think the way that they did it keeping his hair short in this series and all that, it sort of makes it work. I think it works for him when, you know, Hank's. strolls in or Go Me or Gus, it's like, okay, it's a little bit of suspension of disbelief here. And, you know, Breaking Bad started airing 2008, right? Almost 15 years ago. And Aaron Paul is not someone about whom I would say he hasn't aged a day. He is 42 and Jesse's supposed to be 19 when Breaking Bad starts. So yeah, it's a good thing. I mean, there's a lot of wig work in the series,

like in the flashbacks. It's kind of like the Dexter Morgan approach of like, let's slap a wig on Michael you all and now he's young Dexter so that works but yeah if we're shoehorning like substantial roles for Walt and Jesse in here you know I would say that it could be I mean it could be after the timeline of Breaking Bad except that one of those guys is no longer living at that point so it's tough to figure exactly how this happens you mentioned sort of this idea that you don't want Saul to just lead into Breaking Bad that the whole existence of Saul shouldn't be oh this is how we got here to breaking bad. And they've said, they've made big sweeping statements like you'll never look at better breaking bad the same way again once we're done with Saul, et cetera. But you wrote this great

piece for The Ringer.com about this idea of Saul breaking the prequel curse. And I was wondering if you could expand on that a little bit, like what you think it is that Saul accomplished that broke that curse. Yeah. I mean, to me, Saul is one of the best spin-offs ever. I think it's almost undeniably the best prequel ever, and I'm a tough grader when it comes to prequels. Like, I'm a very anti-prequel person, which could be because I saw Phantom Menace when I was 12, and it just disillusioned me for life. But I think there's just a structural problem at the heart of most prequels where, you know, when you tell a story, typically, you start at the most interesting point, right? That's when you pick up. You know, we could do a prequel to this podcast episode where we're both just like

looking over our notes, but it wouldn't be very interesting, right? we should record when we start talking. I don't know. My notes are pretty fascinating, Ben. No, your notes are great. No shots at your notes. But usually you start at the exciting point, right? And then maybe you have an ending in mind or you eventually arrive at a satisfying ending.

And then you get to the end. And if the IP is successful and someone wants more of it, which is a common situation now, where we're expanding everything. Everything is a universe. Everything is a multiverse. And so we're inundated in prequels now, whether it's Lord of the Rings or Game Thrones or Harry Potter, whatever it is, you can only go backward in a lot of these cases. And that's a problem because you probably didn't plan to make that prequel from the start. It's just like,

hey, we like this thing. The audience wants more of this thing. Let's graft a prequel onto this existing property. And that doesn't work all that often. For any number of reasons, one reason is that you have sort of an inherent lack of suspense often, if you just know what's going to happen. and one of the miracles of Saul is that there's so much suspense, even though we do know where a lot of these characters will end up or that they will survive. And yet we're still just on the edges of our seats, which is really a testament to the writing of this series

and the acting and all of the other craft involved. But that's tough to do. And I don't know that the model for Saul is really replicable. It's like, let's have Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould. Like, let's have an incredible cast. Let's have Bob Oden Kirk, who's a comedy legend, but also turns out to be a great dramatic actor. and Ray Sehorne and everyone else who rounds out this cast.

I don't know that this is something that other creators could look at and say, here's how you do it, here's how you pull off a successful prequel. But Better Callsall just somehow steered between all of those pitfalls and delivered a series that somehow incredibly stands up to the original, which just amazes me. Like if anyone was out there saying, yes, this spinoff about this crass character of a man who's just a supporting act. in Walt and Jesse's story is going to be, you know, as high quality, as critically acclaimed

as Better Call Saul. I mean, if you were out there, you should be the head of programming for some network somewhere because I did not see that coming. There were a lot of doubters out there and understandably so. And, you know, the season finale and the series finale here will be the 63rd episode of Better Call Saul. And there were 62 episodes of Breaking Bad. And that's probably unintentional.

But if that were a flex, I would have to tip my cap. Like, we just took this as a challenge, you know. Speaking about the content on The Ringer, something that I was reminded of, Alan Siegel did a great sort of oral history of Breaking Bad that's on this feed, that our pal Steve Allman sort of cut together great stuff with, you know, Brian Kranz is on there, Bob Odenkirk's on there, Peter Gould is on there, Reese Seahorn is on there.

Like everyone's talking about the origins of Saul and how it got here. And so hearing Peter Gould especially talk about their original plans, what they thought the show was going to be versus what it wound up being, even the basic building blocks, like the relationship between Jimmy and Chuck or the relationship between Jimmy and Kim fluctuated based on the way that the actors were playing it. It's always been a gift of these creators, Vince and Peter and all the people working on Breaking Bad, their ability to sort of be very liquid when it comes to reacting to. certain storyline beats that are working. Saul was only just to be a three-character, three-episode arc, you know, all that sort of stuff. And so the idea that because Michael McKean decided to play Chuck as not indulgent of his brother, but nettled by his brother,

we get this whole storyline with Chuck becoming sort of Jimmy's biggest enemy. And in doing so and making Jimmy so eager to please Chuck and Chuck being unwilling to see Jimmy for anything other than slipping Jimmy, you insert this great tragedy. And for Kim and Jimmy, the dynamic that they found in those two actors, then this becomes, this is what Peter Gold says,

like this becomes a tragic love story, which wasn't necessarily their original intention. Their relationship, but it's so loosely defined in season one. You go back and watch and it's not even a will they or won't they. It's like a have they already? Have they? Yeah, exactly.

Are they currently? Like, who knows? Will they ever? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so I think that, all the things that it became, which is this great tragedy. And the labels that get thrown around a lot in that oral history are like the idea that Bob Unkirk, great comedian, turned this character into like an Arthur Miller character,

a Willie Loman character. And that tragedy, when this was supposed to be kind of like a zany antics show, is a miracle. It's incredible. And one more big picture thought along those lines. I wanted to ask if your experience of watching this series Mirror's Mind, because especially at this late stage, I'm not sure there's anything like watching Better Calls Hall because I am constantly just pulled between these seemingly conflicting feelings. Like, on the one hand, the level of craftsmanship on display in every line and shot of this show,

I mean, writing, directing, acting is, if not unmatched, certainly unsurpassed, I would say. So I always feel like I'm in good hands here. You know, it's like I feel none of the anxiety about the resolution of the series that I would normally feel heading into a final season. Like, will it end well? You know, like, will I feel like my investment of time was worth it? Will they tie up that lingering plot thread from season four, right? After 10 combined seasons of Saul and Breaking Pad, like, I'm not that worried, you know? Like, Gilligan and Gould, like, they're going to land this plane somehow.

And, you know, it's good to be back in this TV version of Albuquerque where we've been living in spirit. for so long. So part of me is suezed by Saul. I'm like Jimmy in the nail salon with the massage chair and the foot bath and a cup of cucumber water, you know, just like settling in to watch this cast and crew work their magic. But the other part of me knows that the fruition that will come of this will be devastating in some way, you know, whether it's because someone dies or because something even more devastating than that happens, right? Like they lose themselves. become someone else entirely. They turn their backs on who they are.

And so that part of me, when I'm watching this, I'm like, you know, Chuck walking down the frozen food aisle. It's like, I can't bear to watch this. Like, I'm on the point of fainting. So you have these two kind of conflicting parts of me. And I don't know that there's any other series that like delivers the contentment and just the confidence that they know where they're going with the anxiety about where they have decided to go and what that will do to us psychologically. There's a couple things that, well,

first of all, first things first, I think you know cucumber waters for customers only then, so you're not allowed to have anything. After hours. Secondly, I think that there's a couple things that that brings to mind. First of all, that confidence that we have in them because, well, I don't know how you feel, but I feel like they landed the Breaking Bad plane. Yes. Very well. And that feels like a near impossibility to do with a show that is so massive and under so much scrutiny. I know that not Everyone loved the Breaking Bad finale, but I thought it was masterful. Me too. And it certainly doesn't have that lingering reputation that lost unfairly God or Game of Thrones rightly God, et cetera.

You know, for a huge show, they tied it up really beautifully. So there's that confidence. But there's also the way in which they instill that sense of surety, despite the fact that they massively changed the show based on how the actors played things. They're so good at going back and tying things in and making it feel so intense. all along. One thing I noticed on my season one rewatch was how often Kim is shot in shadow, not just in these final seasons, but from the beginning, those famous shots of them in the parking garage of the light slanting. And he's just a little bit in shadow and she's fully in shadow. I don't believe this was their plan. But it goes back and you go back and it feels intentional.

And then stuff like, and this is where we get to actually talk about the episodes, them bringing in the cattlemen's in this episode, bringing in season one characters that maybe we haven't thought about for a really long time. I think about the kettlemans constantly. Oh, do you? Are you forever thinking about camping in your backyard? I think that that just makes it all feel so intentional to bring in those season one references and make it feel like one cohesive story we've been watching all along with a steady hand at the tiller. How did you feel seeing your number one preoccupation the kettleman's come back into the full? It felt great. I was glad that I also did a season one rewatch. I rewatch almost half the series, like, in the last week and read a lot of recaps. I still feel kind of unprepared. I feel like I should have gone back and binge breaking bad, too. Like, it's just, it's a really rich text. Like, there are all kinds of callbacks that unless you have watched these series obsessively, you're probably not going to pick up on. But yes, the Kettleman's coming back or, you know, the thermos that has been kind of a recurring character in the relationship.

of Jimmy and Kim since season two. I mean, there are a lot of illusions here that I would imagine are lost on a lot of viewers who are like, hey, I like the show, but I haven't seen this since early 2020. And a lot has happened since then, just like in the world. So if you haven't done like a wiki refresh, like maybe a lot of that is lost on you. That's why we have two podcasts on the ringer feed for you. Yeah, exactly. That's what we're here for.

But yeah, I mean, like our colleague, Miles Surrey, he did a great profile of Tony Dalton last week. And in that, Gould was quoted joking about Lalo and a spinoff starring Lalo as like the cartel detective or something, which like I'll just say, you know, better calls all started with people joking about a spinoff star. I would watch it. I would watch it. But I'd be into a family drama starring the Kettleman's. I mean, like a coach, Mrs. Coach dynamic here with these two. defrauding the elderly in the desert for six seasons. Let's start the campaign for Better Follow Lolo right now.

Hashtag Better Follow Lalo. But yeah, I think that the Kettlemen's are such a great little treat here. I, unlike you, do not have a thirst to see much more of them. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. Zepbound is approved

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with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulfonel urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-99 or visit Zepbounds.lily.com. Let's talk about Howard. Here's my big question for you. Howard has been this interesting figure throughout the entire series, someone who was originally

pitches an antagonist before I think the show makes the good case that Chuck is the real antagonist to Jimmy and Patrick Fabian is such a good job as playing him as he's like a little unctious he's got the like two white teeth and the hair and all that sort of stuff but there does seem to be like if anyone is

not two-faced it might be Howard Hamlin I feel like does he deserve anything remotely near what Jimmy and Kim are cooking up for him here. Yeah, his face may be bronzed. He may have spent a lot of time in the tanning booth, but, like, that is who he is seemingly. And the character of Howard, like, also a really rich character who, like, we don't necessarily get to see things from his point of view so much in the

series. So we see him through Kim's eyes or through Jimmy's eyes and their interpretation of his actions is always changing. So for a while, like, he is the big bad who is stopping Jimmy from getting a job at HHM, right? And then we learn later, it was chalked. all along. And so Howard has been getting a bad rap. So there are times when he's actually looking out for our protagonists here, or at least not actively opposing them, but then there are other times where he is holding them back and he is holding them down. And he is like sentencing Kim to a season's worth of doc review, right? And she feels like she was sort of, you know, not allowed to fly freely under Howard's wing, right? So I think they both bear him grudges of like varying in

at varying times in the series. So I'm not saying I'm crying for Howard here necessarily, but I also wouldn't say he necessarily deserves this. If anyone deserves some kind of comeuppance, it's probably the people who are plotting against him here. I think he's the perfect target, though, because I think that we're not, he's not like an innocent bunny that we're so upset.

You know, like at times Walt would target people on Breaking Bad and we would just be unable to follow. I mean, actually they're, plenty of Walter White stands who will follow him anywhere. But like, you know, there were just like some people who got caught in the crossairs that were like, oh my God, well, what are you doing here? But this, we're allowed to quasi root for Jimmy and Kim. We want them to, you know, we want Jimmy to get the sandpiper money. He put that case together in the first place. And we'll talk about that in a second. But at the same time, he's the kind of target where you're like,

a little bit, but don't go too far. And I feel like we all can see that this is going to go too far, very quickly. Probably already has, but like is probably only going to get worse. The idea of Jimmy focusing on Howard is so interesting to me, especially like how he was treating him last season with like the bowling balls and the escorts and all of the Penny Annie stuff that he was doing with him because it feels like Jimmy, and I haven't, I haven't gotten into my later season rewatch, so maybe I missed a crucial key moment here. But it seems to me that like, so Chuck dies and Jimmy very explicitly like buries that and doesn't deal with it and transfers his anger and frustration with Chuck and his grief with Chuck to Howard.

Feel free to contradict me if you disagree. And that I think parlay is into what we might want to think about in terms of how Saul is in Breaking Bad because whatever happens with Kim and I've got like four or five decent theories cooking on that, but whatever happens, is he going to process it? Or is he just going to lean into Saul and do all the shit that he does in Breaking Bad instead? You know what I mean? Given how little he's actually processing Chuck's death. What do you think?

Put some gold plating around his heart and don't. And toilet. Yes, exactly. So, yeah, I mean, I think a lot about this monologue that Mike delivers to Jimmy in the penultimate episode of season five, the one about choices and the road that you're on. So Mike says, you know, 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. And the road we're on let us out to the desert and everything that happened there and straight

back led back to where we are right now. And nothing, nothing can be done about that. I think a lot about that in terms of Jimmy's arc, because in some ways, like, he's been on that road since he stole from the register at his dad's shop, right, after meeting the wolf who bilks his dad out of ten bucks. And yet, it's also tragic because it sure seems like he could have gone down different roads at various points in this series. Like, Walt was always going to break bad.

Like, he always had Heisenberg in him. Jimmy could have avoided this seemingly. And so Chuck, you know, wasn't wrong that Jimmy would be dangerous if he had a law degree. But it also becomes sort of a self-fulfilling process. prophecy because Chuck treating him that way is what finally turned him, right? At least, you know, at one stage of this series. And so it's hard to say whether like he was definitely leading down this road and nothing could have turned him from it or whether it was the actions of others that are really cementing that road ahead of him. So whether it's Howard, whether it's

Chuck, whether it's now Kim, right, who is turning him down that road even more. I mean, that's kind of the tragedy of Jimmy and also of Kim to some extent. It's like, did they bring this out of each other? Was this in them the whole time? Did they have to meet to unlock this in each other? You know, they were clearly attracted to each other because they both had this lying inside them somewhere, maybe more dormant in Kim than in Jimmy, but this drew them to each other, I think, more so than any kind of physical chemistry. So Howard, you know, maybe he's kind of the fall guy. He's like the one that these people are burning in effigy in their heads right now. And yeah, like, you know, Jimmy even feels a little bit bad for the Kettlemans at this stage.

Like, he's given them some money after Kim just destroys them. I don't think we feel bad for the Kettleman's as the audience, but I don't know that we're weeping for Howard either. So I think you're right. Well, yeah, I think the Kettleman's and Howard and like what Kim wants to do with the Sandpiper money, which she lays out in the season five finale. which is like fund her pro bono work. It's all incremental, right?

The Kettlemans and Howard are like bad enough that maybe we don't feel too terribly for them or maybe Kim can tell herself that her attitude toward them is justified or in pursuit of the sandpiper money she's telling herself it's all justified because it's going to fund this pro bono work that I want to do. And that's the like the slip for Kim, the slippery slope for. Kim because I think it yeah slipping Kimmy because I think if it if it were a huge reversal for her I mean it's the same thing happened with Walt and Heisenberg right like it's an incremental thing and and if it were a big you turn for her character this would be a terrible show so I think

giving us a Howard and a Kettleman's and and this pro bono sort of veil that she drapes everything in I think is is incremental to the kind of story that they want to tell yeah because there's been so many moments in this series where Jimmy slash Saul shocked Kim in some way. I think back to the season four finale, I think it was, where Jimmy is delivering his reinstatement speech to the bar to try to save his law license. And he gets everyone crying, right? He brings out that letter that Chuck wrote to him, but then he add libs and he goes off script and there's not a dry eye in the house, including Kim's. And then they get out of that room. And Jimmy reveals that it was all an act. And he's just like crying about how he had them all going.

But he also had Kim going. So she was taken in too. And now she's the one shocking him, right? So in this episode, like we see Jimmy is relieved when he looks through that restaurant window and he sees Kim with her pro bono client. Like he smiles like, okay, the old Kim is still in there, right? And she does say that working with these underprivileged clients who she never had time to devote herself to before made this her best day at work ever.

And yet at the same time, during this best day ever, she was still finding time to scheme about Howard, right? So is she more excited about helping these people or about taking other people down? I mean, it's both, right? That's why, like, her last name, Wexler, it's like the German word vexler, right? Someone who changes or switches. And Kim is always kind of hopping from one side of that line to another and having to fight her worst impulses. but now she seems to be giving in and even driving Jimmy to some extent. Ben, you said a lot of great things in the short time that I've known you, but Wexler, Vexler,

someone who changes is my new favorite thing that you said. I thought it was you slagging off the Dexter Wigs, but now it's name semantics. All right, let's go. Let's hop over to the drug cartel. I'll talk about Lolo. A brief refresher on the drug cartel dynamics is that it's the Salamanca's, which is Lalo, Hector, the cousins versus Gus and Tyrus and Mike. and bolsa in the middle, all reporting to Donald Lodio.

And what's wild about that is that those are the dynamics in Breaking Bat. So nothing is going to change about these drug cartel dynamics. But much like we know the outcome of what's going to happen to Jimmy as he turns into Saul, but Kim's the real wild card. I think Nacho is the real wild card in all of this because we don't know if we have a heart, we care about Nacho, Michael Mando is so good at making us care about him. So we don't know how that's all going to pan out. But Lalo is alive?

Is he alive in Breaking Bad? It's a question mark. We don't know. conflicting reports. But Tony Dalton is here to delight us further in this season. We got a listener, Carrie wrote in and said, Win that car, speaking about the car at the very end of the episode, that follows Jimmy and Kim away from the Kettleman's.

When the car followed behind Saul and Kim, I yelled, No, that's Lalo. I'm very scared yet excited. and anxious for the rest of the season. Chris and I talked about this on the watch. I was certain that it was Lalo. I've since been told by people who know that it is not Lalo and I should have listened to Chris

that Lolo was going south, not north. I haven't seen any further, so I don't know who it is. All I know is that I've been told by people who know that it is not Lalo. Yeah, I didn't read this as Lalo initially because we do see him driving away from the border. I mean, that said, like,

Lalo has been known to change course and change direction and show up in places where he's not expected. Might as well be named Vexler, right? But, yeah, one does not simply walk into New Mexico, right? So, like, you got across the border. Somehow he can't just drive across. So I assumed that that car, maybe it's someone working for Gus.

You know, Gus and Mike, I mean, they know about Lalo's relationship with Jimmy, right? And also, Kim. I mean, Mike was eavesdropping on that call in that incredible scene, you know, when Lalo confronts Jimmy. and Kim. So maybe they know, hey, if Lalo does come back across the border, we have the sniper set up in case he decides to attack us. But if he goes another route, then maybe he goes and consults with his legal team. So we'll have someone tail them. I don't know. It could be that. It could be some other character from season one we haven't thought about for several years.

No, it's like there's no way of telling. Oh my God. It's the like proprietor of the nail salon or something like that. Yeah, of course. I was trolling through the Better Calls, all Reddit, a fantastic place to be, very smart people on there. And someone was pointing out that in the scene where Lolo calls Hector and when he calls Casa Tranquila and he says, sorry, that was a terrible American accent on that word, he says, one a Saturday's receptionist says, I'm sorry, let me get someone who speak Spanish. And then he switches to English to tell her no problem. He just needs to talk to Hector. That's a way for Lolo to find out that the person who's handing the phone to Hector does not understand Spanish and so that he could like speak freely in Spanish and the person one.

And it's just like 12 layers deep on the Lalo deviousness, which is why hashtag better follow Lalo would be a great show to watch. Like, you know, he's always got 90 gamus running. Do you have any thoughts and theories about what he's doing? He needs proof for Hector about the hit that he knows in his heart of hearts that Gus, you know, arrange his hit. Do you have any thoughts or feeling about where he's going if he's going? South. I do. Can I just say something about this scene, the conversation between Lalo and Hector,

can the cartel not do better than the bell? Come on. Like, Stephen Hawking had his, like, computerized voice system on his, like, Apple II in the 80s. Like, the cartel can't spare a sliver of that mountain of Salamanca cash where they just, like, the cousins pull that seven million bucks for Lalo's bail money without, like, signing it out or anything. They can't, like, take a wad from there to get Hector a more efficient communication method here? Like, time is of the essence, guys. Like, the spelling method is not expedient. I'm just saying, like, Lalo, nice of him to bring the bell, nice of him to like, you know, pour rum in Hector's insure or whatever, but like, let's, let's upgrade the communication method. Anyway, that's been on my mind for a while. Lalo is a smart guy.

Like, he's been grooming this guy as his corpse, right, for like, who knows how long with the dental records and the facial hair and everything. And he has like, you know, no conscience when it comes to what he will do and whom he will kill to get his way. It's like when we see him in the courtroom and his fake family's there and the family of the poor travel wire guy who he killed by like, you know, dropping from the ceiling suddenly. Like he just grunts. He doesn't care. Like he's not bothered by this. And so I would think that he is on nacho's tail here, right? I mean, everyone is at this point. But if Lalo can get to Nacho, if he can make him talk and force some sort of confession, that would be a form of proof. I mean, I'm worried about Nacho for many reasons.

One reason being that if you go back and watch the first scene where Lalo meets Nacho and he's making him tacos at the restaurant, he says you're going to die, you know? And he says it in that smiling, joking way, like these tacos are going to be so good that they're going to kill you. But this could be like, you know, Obi-Wan. Like, I have a feeling you're going to be the death of me kind of line. Like, maybe this is a bit of foreshadowing, right? So that's why I'm worried about Lalo tracking down Nacho. And to be fair, like, I get where Gus is coming from in all this,

because Gus is wrestling with, or at least Mike is trying to make Gus wrestle with, how to handle Nacho here and whether to reward him for his faithfulness to Gus, at least. But Nacho is always looking out for himself, right? I mean, he's a survivor as he demonstrates in this episode. And he's betrayed everyone he's worked for. I mean, Tuko, Hector, Lalo, right? Like, these are all bad dudes, but so is Gus. So if I were Gus, I would not want Nacho working for me either.

I will just say that much. Let's talk about Nacho for a second. So, I mean, and I should say, if you rewatch that season five finale, it's so personal for Lalo, right? Because it's not just like a hit on himself. He had this home filled with, like, lovely people whom he thought, you know, like an old, abuela type and like all this sort of stuff. He says to Hector on the phone, like, they came to my house, my house, my home lane. Yeah.

And the fact that Nacho insinuated himself there and the fact that like, I don't know, I mean, I'm sure there's some wounded pride for Lalo here in terms of like he's the one who brought the rat into his house and got his family killed. But also there's that moment in the season five finale when he's getting one of the assassins to call and report that he's dead. You know what he mean? And he looks over at the bottle of tequila that he was sharing with Nacho by the fire.

And he knows who opened the door. And there's like a personal hurt there because he was like really embracing nachos. So, okay, so let's talk about Nacho, who's in a lot of danger. We got an email from Jonathan who is sort of responding to this conversation we had around the safe, the stuff that happens with the safe.

Chris and I talked about it. Jonathan says, help me understand. and why did they go through the trouble to switch the safe? Was that to frame Nacho, which is what it sounded like from your podcast? If so, shouldn't Gus be worried about Nacho turning on him and giving him up if caught? It just doesn't make any sense. Here's the answer from Peter Gould to Entertainment Weekly that should hopefully clear things up. I still think it's a little unnecessarily complicated, but here's what Peter Gould said.

He says, they wanted him, meaning Nacho, waiting in the motel where the cousins are going to show up, and Nacho catches on just moments before. If he had caught on just 45 minutes later, the cousins would have gone. robbed him and he'd be tortured and dead. That's why they, meaning Gus, etc., give Nacho the gun because the real setup is hoping that he's going to be trapped in a firefight with the cousins, and one way or another, Nacho will be killed in the action. So they were hope, it seems like a messy plan for Gus to just hope that Nacho dies in a

fire, like in a shootout in the motel. But that, according to Peter Gould was the plan. Frame Nacho, have him go out in a blaze of glory. What complicates everything, of course, is the fact that Lalo's still alive. And we're going to talk about how Gus knows that in a second. But what did you think of all the safe switching and the document planting, et cetera? It's a bit baroque. I will admit to watching that scene multiple times to figure out exactly all the intricacies of what was going on there.

But I think, you know, it's, I guess, a risk for Gus to take that, you know, you don't bet on the cousins to take the nonviolent route or like the non-lethal route. Like, generally they are coming in, but you would understand why the Salamankas would want to capture Nacho and talk to him as well. And if that happens, then Gus is a goner too, which is why, like, he's feeling the strain in this episode, like the facade of his face, that great Junco Esposito face that, you know, never cracks. I mean, you can still see the strain with multiple characters here, really, in this episode, because we see Jimmy slip up, right, and give the prosecutors,

follow his name. And normally Jimmy's got the gift of gab, right? He can talk himself out of trouble. Here he is potentially talking himself into trouble. But you also see Gus break a glass, right? I mean, breaking a glass in case of emergency. Like, that is what is happening here. And yeah, he's still cool enough to sweep up the glass with his bare hands without sticking himself with a shard or anything. But he is normally so meticulous and so cleanly that he would not be the one breaking this glass. So you can see that this is getting to him too. And small wonder because like he's kind of out on a limb here. So you have masterful sort of frame compositions in the show. One that I think is incredible is in the scene where Gus and Juan go to talk to Hector,

we get an upshot as Hector reaches out his hand to shake Gus's hand in an active piece. Question mark. We see his hand obscuring. the half of Gus Fring's face that, I guess, spoiler, if you haven't watched Breaking Bad, Hector will be directly responsible for blowing off in one of the greatest, you know, death scenes in all of TV history on Breaking Bad. So like the hand is covering the half of Gus's face that's going to be blown off. Just now I just want to go rewatch that episode. That's why the bell has to be there, Ben, for that incredible moment. But one of our listeners, David wrote in and said, I wondered how to Gus.

arrive at the conclusion, Lala lives after the meeting with Hector and Balsa, I can't tell if I miss something. I just think the fact that Hector was trying to play it so nice to, you know, throw off suspicion, pinged Gus's suspicion. The fact that Hector was being conciliatory

made Gus think, oh shit, Lalo's alive because Hector wouldn't be this nice to me if Lalo were actually dead. Do you have any other interpretation of that? Yeah, the shadow, the hand thing. which arguably a bit heavy-handed, so to speak, perhaps. I don't know. I like it when they get a little like over the top.

It's not the first allusion to that scene in Saul, I think. But I think more than just playing nice, it's the fact that Hector looks Gus in the eye, which I believe only happens once in Breaking Bad, and that's when he's about to blow him up. Because Hector never looks at Gus. I mean, they have history here where, like, Hector made Gus look at Max after he killed.

him, right, that started this whole vendetta and this revenge story. If you look at Breaking Bad and I think Better Call Saul up to this point, like Hector is always slouched. He's looking down, you know, he won't meet Gus's eye. The one time he does is when he knows he has him and he's about to blow him up. He's about to detonate that bomb. And here, he thinks he has him too, right, because he thinks Lalo's on the way or he's going to bring proof to the Salamanca's. So he thinks he has Gus dead to rights. He's wrong. But this is a, another little bit of foreshadowing of, I think, Gus's demise to come years hence. All right.

Let us talk about Mike. I don't know. I don't have a ton to say about Mike in these episodes. There's just some, like, bigger picture questions still hanging over, Mike of, like, how does he go from here to his relationship with Gus and Breaking Bad? And his relationship with Saul and Breaking Bad. One theory I've seen floating around is that it's going to be Mike who actually killed. Like, because as you say, that duality, that characteristic, either or nature of everyone, for Mike in terms of the pop-up of it all, he has this softness for Nacho.

Like when we meet Mike at the beginning of Better Calls All, he is actively mourning his son, who he feels responsible for his death. And so there has been like a little bit of a transference of those protective emotions over to Nacho, right? And so we see him set Nacho up in this episode, though. but protecting his dad, you know, so there's some push and pull here with Mike. Will Mike be the one to kill Nacho, thus cementing his bond with Gus? Or will Gus give Nacho clemency, thus earning Mike's loyalty forever? What do you think feels more likely? Yeah.

There's a pattern in the show of like speaking truth to power and that paying off for characters. Like, you know, you're dismissed by someone and then you turn around and you stand. up to them. It's like when Kim thought after the Tukum-Cerry debacle that Mesa Verde was going to let go of Schweikert and Kokely, like, she turns around, she goes back to Kevin's office and she like gives him a dressing down where she says, like, actually, this was your fault. And then she kind of does that later on in the series to Howard, who's kind of blaming her for like exposing Chuck's condition. And she's like, you're the one who was hiding this all along. So this could be a case too where, you know, Mike, he looks like he's about to leave, like he's been told, you know, Gus gives the order to bring Nacho's dad.

And Mike turns around and he locks the door and he says like, no, you shouldn't do this. This is not going to go the way that you think it's going to go. It could go in the way that Mike is ultimately the one delivering Gus's justice, which he has done before, right? I mean, we saw him do this with Werner Ziegler, right? And that clearly pained Mike. Like, they were friends. And Mike has a kind of code, you know? Like, it's blurry at times.

But there are things that he won't do or at least doesn't want to do, right? Like he was a lawman for a long time before he became a lawbreaker. So he doesn't want to kill Nacho. And I hope for his sake that he won't be the one to deliver this. But maybe standing up to Gus in this way, advocating for Nacho, maybe that is something that earns Mike more trust and more respect from Gus, right? I'm really curious to see how it goes. And I'm really curious.

I mean, Mike was originally introduced as sort of the second protagonist of the show. And I think he's been edged out by our interest in Kim and the flashiness of Lalo and stuff like that. So I'm really interested and hopeful because Jonathan Banks is so good. And like, given everything they gave to him in season one and I was like so, I was so sure he's going to win the Emmy in season one. Like I would love for him to be given something really meaty to play in this final season. So here's hoping. All right. So the last people.

you talk about. I'm just going to let's talk about them together. Jimmy and Kim slash Saul. Let's talk about them all together. Let me run through our operating theories of what might happen to Kim Wexler. Obviously, we care about. We are invested in Kim's well-being. Kim Wexer lives at gmail.com being the email address that we put forth for this podcast. We got an email from listener Bernie who says, I'm starting a go fund me for Kim's trip to best quality vacuum. You win. The email that he gave us is Kim needs a new dust filter for her Hoover Max extract pressure pro model 60 at dama.com. Bernie says we're relying on that ringerverse bump to really get the message out. So I'm invested in Kim surviving all this.

There's been an interesting growth in the better call Saul fandom, a lingering, I think, sentiment from the Breaking Bad band fandom that is wanting to see Kim as the ultimate villain of this, of her betraying Jimmy. there's this popular Kim Longcon theory that she's been working in Long Con the whole time, which I think is absolutely ridiculous. Because I think it's very clear from the way all the actors are playing it and all the writers are writing it that Kim loves Jimmy. She absolutely does.

It would have to be a really long con. They go back to the mailed room. But there's a couple options here. Kim dies. That's been a prevalent question. Kim does take her vacuum exit. before Breaking Bad. Something, she crosses a line so bad that she needs to be disappeared.

And that's how Saul knows about the vacuum exit strategy in the first place because Kim went through it. She's alive and well and pulling the strings Lady Macbeth style of Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad, that she's just been there all along speaking into the Bluetooth device that he has in his ear at most times. The way I see it, and Days of Wides and Roses is a really good sort of blueprint for this, is I feel like she's going to cross a line. No matter what, Kim is going to cross a line, a line that we would not want for her to cross because we care about her. And Jimmy will feel ultimately responsible for that.

And that will break him so deeply that that's how we get Saul and that he's only really grappling with. with it as Jean. So I don't think it's like her betraying him. I think it's her doing something and whether that results in her death or her disappearing or whatever it is, it results in him losing her. That that brokenness is what he's carrying into breaking bad. What's your gut instinct on this? Yeah. I mean, in the season five finale, when Jimmy's at Mike's house and he says, if anything happens to her, I can't do this, I can't. You know, he's like speaking for all of us in that moment. But now I'm not just worried about whether Kim will die. I'm worried about whether we'll even want her to live by the time this thing is over, or like, will we even recognize her, will we think

she deserves to live, or will she do something so heinous that, you know, she'll have it coming to her, basically? And I like your theory about some kind of break between these two characters, really forcing the final transition between Jimmy and Saul, because like something dramatic. and significant has to happen here in pretty short order. I mean, there could be a time jump, I suppose, at some point in the season, which we have seen, I think, in season four there was one. So that could happen. But, like, right now, as we resume here, Jimmy is further away from being Saul than he's

been for a while, right? Like, he's the one who wants to stay on the straight and narrow more so than Kim. So there has to be something that pushes him over that line and pushes him over so irrevocably that he becomes the Saul that we see in Breaking Bad, though I do like the idea because of the quote you read earlier about how we'll never watch Breaking Bad the same way, that kind of makes me think, like, maybe there is some kind of, you know, invisible hand of Kim who is like guiding those events,

and we will be clued into that now and we will watch things differently. Because if it's just about the fact that we know Jimmy slash Saul's backstory now, like maybe we'll watch those scenes differently, but would that force a total reinterpretation of those events? I don't know. So to me it seems like maybe there has to be something more significant there. But, you know, will there be like a reunion between these two in the Gene Tachovic timeline? Yeah.

You know, if Kim just skipped town or something, they come back together. I mean, that's another thing I'm wondering about, obviously, is like the ultimate end for Jimmy slash Saul slash Gene, right? Like, will there be some form of redemption here? because like we've been with Jimmy for so long now. We've watched him every step of the way. We've seen how he turned into Saul and how he was pushed along that path. And we sympathize with him, even though he's done lots of terrible things. Like, I think if this series ended with him like bleeding out on the mall floor while like smoke on the water plays or something, you know, like we'd feel like, okay, we've seen this before, right, with Walt slash Heisenberg.

but also like we've seen that sort of ending for so many characters in the like white male anti-hero era of TV that Saul kind of links us back to through its connection with Breaking Pad. I mean, whether it's Tony Soprano or whether it's Walt or whether it's Dexter Morgan, like, you know, things catch up with them at the end and they pay a price. And so I wonder whether they'll go in a different direction with Saul slash Jimmy. I mean, maybe that's exactly what I wanted to mention. if you look at the breaking bad finale as sort of our guidepost here for the way in which Vince and Peter think about what a character deserves, the idea that like

Walt dies and not only dies but dies and stops by Skyler's to tell her it was me all along. Like I did it for me. My justification for doing it for my family, just sort of like Kim's justification for doing it for pro bono, was bullshit. Really, I did it for myself.

the fact that he dies and Jesse lives and escapes, I think that tells us something about like, but the question that we don't know the answer to is, do they view Jimmy Saul as someone as a Jesse or as a Walt? And we should remember like where we met Saul in Breaking Bad in Season 2 episode 8. He's kidnapped by Walt and Jesse. He's in the desert right before he becomes their lawyer. And he says basically like Badger has been arrested.

interested. Badger is selling drugs for them. They're worried that Badger's going to expose them to the DEA. Saul is acting as Badger's lawyer. And so they're trying to make sure that Badger doesn't snitch on them. And so he says his solution that Saul offers here is, why don't you just kill Badger? I mean, follow me guys. You got mosquitoes buzzing around, biting you on the ass. Why don't you go running for the, you don't go running for the, gunning for the mosquito's attorney. You go grab a fly swatter, so to speak. I mean, I'll do respect. Do I have to spell this out for you? So how do we get from Jimmy to Saul in season two episode eight of Breaking Bad who's saying kill Badger, Badger, who's like a soft dummy and doesn't deserve to die, right? That's the big question of this whole

this whole series has to answer. How do we get here? That's the only thing that makes me like the long con theory. It's like that would be the ultimate betrayal that would just send Jimmy over the edge, right? It has to be something really that makes him snap in that sense. And I will say that like I would guess that the rest of the season not going to be a lot of lighthearted hijinks, you know, it's going to be like maybe a tough watch at times. But like, Saul is never really like a bad hang. Like even when you're on the edge of your seat, it's just so well crafted that it kind of carries you along. And I love that in this episode, in these episodes, we went from Mike agonizing over Nacho to that country club scene that's like straight out of curb. It's like extremely like lariatur.

David energy out of Odin Kirk here. And so, like, that mix of, like, drama and comedy, which, you know, I know that the creators at some point said that, like, one of their misgivings about making this a half-hour comedy was that they don't feel like they have the comedy chops to play in that space. Like, they're funny for a drama, basically, is what they think. And I think they might be selling themselves short here because, you know, these shows are hilarious at times. But it is true that, like, when you're going from the heaviest material of all time to something more lighthearted to, you know, Chicago sunroofs and like cobblers. Like that stuff definitely plays up, I think, when juxtaposed with that other stuff.

So we got to see like one more moment here. And granted, this is like part of the descent of Jimmy and Kim and like going to the dark side and everything. But also it's kind of like madcap, you know, Odin Kerr getting to just like showcase his comedy chops here. So this was a lot of fun too. Like a couple things are at play here. One, that Peter Gould.

old quote is in Alan Siegel's great oral history podcast. I really do recommend people listen to it. And I had the same reaction you did where I was like, you're selling yourself short, buddy. But also, yeah, they've cast these great comedic actors, you know, like Bob's concerns that he was not enough of a dramatic actor to hold down an hour long drama as a leading man. But he has obviously proven more than capable. Cranston was obviously a comedian before, you know, he became Walter White. He was the dad of Malcolm in the middle or like Elaine's boyfriend on Seinfeld. like that's who Brian Cranston was. Michael McKean, of course, is like a comedian, you know what I mean?

So like the genius of casting these comedians to do these heavy dramatic lifts is fantastic. But yeah, also, and I think I talked to Chris about this a little bit, but also I feel like the point of those really fun grifty scenes are to make us complicit, to give us a taste of what Kim is being seduced by and what Jimmy can't get away from, right? It's fun, right? You know? Yeah, we want to crack open the tequila too. Yeah. Also, you know, the season five finale, Jimmy says to Kim, am I bad for you? Right?

Which, like, first of all, a little late to be asking that question, probably at that point. But now the question is, like, who's bad for whom, right? I mean, maybe it's a mutual thing. But we understand now that Kim is kind of the architect of Saul Goodman, right? I mean, she designs his office from Breaking Bad. She recommends his ride. You know, Saul Goodman can't drive a Ford. So, like, she is the mastermind tier.

And whether that masterminding persists into the timeline of Breaking Bad or not, she is clearly the one. I love that. The scene in the restaurant where she's talking about all those details. And the way in which that scene is juxtaposed with her talking, I originally saw them as separate, but I was reading some people's interpretation of the scene. The scene where she's talking about her pro bono client, who was a poor kid who got swept up in something like a rich kid was doing. And he got caught because he was driving the car. and the rich kid gets the limousine lawyer and the poor kid gets whatever he can get.

And her sense of wounded justice around that, the class-inspired frustration and the chip on her shoulder that she takes with her as someone who had the mom that she had and had to work her way up, like tooth and nail from the mail room, again, someone like Howard who is like, you know, a poster child for Silver Spoon, you know. And so that fueling her. and maybe inspiring some of that sort of like we need to get the the bling associated with Salt Goodman like maybe there is it's not it's not quite out and out greed again there's writers do this great job of mixing that like gold toilet mentality in with this like very understandable and relatable chip on your shoulder I had to crawl like claw my way here yeah it's it's always a blend of both and that's I mean this series constantly plays with which One is ascendant, right? Like, which side of their nature has the high ground?

And again, we know where it's going, at least for one of these characters. But this relationship, like, I don't know that we can call them like the OTP. I mean, it's a fraught relationship, but it's one of the best in TV. I mean, just the way that it was so undefined at first that it was allowed to breathe and grow and find its true nature. And now that it's become this tragedy where these characters carry each other, care about each other and yet they're leading themselves down this dark path. I mean, it is devastating stuff, you know? Or I anticipate that it will be by the time that it's all said and done. Two last things before you wrap up. Number one, Peter Gould told Entertainment

Weekly that is one more description of episode three was shattering, shattering, Ben. You and I have not seen this episode yet, but oh my God. I hope that just means literally like something literally breaks, then we can all like laugh. But I think it's just going to be our hearts and minds that are going to shatter, I guess, in episode three. We have so many more episodes to go. And then the other thing, I guess I just want to touch on the gene. We didn't see any gene in this episode, but I just wanted to like refresh in case people forgot that where we left Gene is he's been exposed by a taxi driver who recognizes him.

So he's in danger. I have a theory. I mean, I don't know if they would do this. But I feel like the summer of Saul that we're going to get the back half of the season is going to be mega gene heavy. I could be wrong. Maybe they'll just light touch gene all the way through. But I feel like we've got to spend more time there.

What do you think? Yeah, I would think so because for one thing, the last time we see him talking to Ed the Disappearer, you know, flip-flops, right? He's about to request another disappearance. And then he says, you know what? Not this time. I'm going to handle it myself.

So presumably we're going to see how he handles it, right? Exactly. All right. Jimmy, how are you going to slip out of this one? that does it for us. As I mentioned, the PrestiGGV podcast feed is a lot going on. Atlanta, winning time. We crash upcoming Barry.

And then Ben and I will be back every week with our sort of like deeper dive. We really are going to rely on your thoughts and questions in the mailbag to let us know, sort of, you know, as I said, Chris Nadia, you're going to do a great job every Monday night, breaking down the episode. How much deeper do you want us to go? What unanswered questions that they're left for you to ponder? So email us at Kim Vexler. No, Kim Waxler lives at gmail.com. Chris and Andy have to talk about all of TV. And there's about to be a bunch of great TV on.

So we have a more limited mandate here. Nothing but better calls all. So we can be the house of our to their midnight boys here. However, I have no Albuquerque restaurant recommendation. So I leave that to Andy. This episode was produced by Christopher Sutton. And we will see you next week.