The Watch - Breaking Down the Penultimate Episode of 'Better Call Saul'

Episode Date: August 9, 2022

Chris and Andy talk briefly about the continued fallout at Warner Bros. and HBO Max (1:00). Then, they get into this week's penultimate episode of 'Better Call Saul', the Emmy-worthy performance by Rhea Seehorn in this episode (12:12), and what could be coming in next week's series finale (40:14). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me on the other line of podcaster exploring new horizons and irrigation. It's Andy Greenwald. I got to keep that. You got to keep it. Chris got so excited. He's so excited and knock my mic on. It's Andy Greenwald. What's up, brother? That was awesome. That's representative of how real this pod is. You know what I mean? Like when we're excited, we're not going to hide it. Oh, yeah. Worts at all. We don't cut anything out. Even like the tears, the laughter. Andy, we're here to talk about the penultimate episode, and I mean it this time, the penultimate episode of Better Call Saul, longtime watch listeners will know that this one snuck up

on me. I just thought, I thought, I was like, the series is over. What a treat to be able to talk about this with my bud, Andy, and what an episode to chat about. I'm trying to think if there's anything else we wanted to get to today. You know, I do. I have one quick thing, just like a programming note. If you're listening to this, you're probably excited about the imminent end of Better Call Saul, one of the best dramas of the decade. But you also might be aware that there's a bigger, bigger TV event happening this week, which is on Wednesday on the Disney Plus service, the first half of Bluey Season 3 is dropping. And you're going on vacation at the right time, buddy, because... Is this why you've been so cagey about what you're going to talk about on Thursday?

Is it? I don't know. Are you going to do 15 minutes solo on Bluey and Tank Us? Tank us or elevate us. Chris, small sample size. I don't notice that when I go away, you have like these like incredible monologues about television. Yeah. And then what I'm here, you're just like, yeah, I didn't, I didn't watch that. I didn't check that out. Look, I got to be me. And people have come up to me, Chris.

Who? Person, person has come up to me and been like, we need more Dattington content. Yeah. That's the lane. That's the lane. Maybe you should see if you can get yourself on Parent Corner on Guess the minds this season. Their parenting issues are a lot more fraught than mine. I have younger children. So I don't think I don't think I can hang on that corner. You're not like the father of Jacob All

Lordy. I mean, I'm not sending out panic grams being like, my child is taller than Tarzan. Like, I don't have that issue yet. Okay. All respect to the podfather, but I'm a couple, a couple laps behind. Look, Bluey's the best show on TV, but we're going to talk about maybe the second best and better calls all tonight. Other house cleaning things. Yeah. Not especially just to say that we recorded on Thursday, I can't believe us, listen to us. What's happened to us? I was about to say, we recorded before the earnings call.

I mean, we talk about industry. I know. I'm not saying we slipped, but I'm just saying since when was this pot about earnings calls? You know what I mean? This pot is about me liking a cartoon you don't like. But you know what? I loved your confidence. You were just like, let's do this.

I do not think that this is really going to wind up being like the end of HBO Max and we're going to have to re-record in 15 minutes. And that's why I trust you with my life, man. Yeah, I'm a doctor. So I think the takeaway from this event was both, I think the whole thing was overhyped and a little bit undersold. And I think it's going to take time for it to shake out to understand what it means. We should just want to circle back to say the takeaway from the earnings call that we did not

wait for was essentially that within a year or in a year, there will be one streaming service. They will have all of the assets of HBO Max and all of the assets of. of Discovery Plus. And this was not really a secret or a surprise. The CEO of Discovery doesn't buy WarnerMedia to keep all of the assets in separate boxes that doesn't make any sense. Right, especially when the Discovery assets

have much less subscribers than the HBO assets. Yeah, and are they flavors that go well together? Do they make sense? Does one skew male and one skew female? Does one lean in and the other one wins out? Do you remember the bit on The Simpsons where they're like making fun of like hacky comedians and they're like, like white guys walk like this.

The black guys walk like this. That's basically what the internet's reaction to David Zaslov's presentation was. Anyway, that all makes sense from a consumer and a business point of view. What it completely obscures is whatever is happening behind the scenes. And we can't speak to that. And, you know, people's jobs are on the line

and people's futures. The shows that were greenlit or being redlit, which is a new thing. Is that a thing? I just made it up. sounded pretty good. Let me know how you feel about it. We don't know.

It's going to take time to shake out. Is some essential soul of HBO or HBO Max being removed in all of this? Again, we don't know. Casey Blois is still steering the ship. Succession Season 4 is still filming. So I think everybody hopefully is taking a deep breath and let the backgirl discourse play out in real time. You know, I don't know what more there's to say about it other than combining assets of a streaming service makes sense when there are too many streaming services.

the only thing I was going to ask the thing that that we didn't get a chance to get into the specifics on nor will we be getting into the specifics on them here but needless to say there were a lot of numbers

thrown around in terms of the profitability or the revenue generation of these various services specifically the HBO Max you know and everything and I guess I was just struck by the fact that I don't think that

is there any streaming service that doesn't act as kind of either a creative or financial albatross around the neck of the conglomerate that owns it? Well, no, because they are all massive... And I know Netflix is sort of separate, and Amazon and Apple are separate. So I guess what I'm really talking about is the Paramount Warner Peacock group of services. I am not Conrad Kay and Mickey Down. As evidence on Thursday's podcast, I don't understand money or financial systems at all.

That said, my extreme layman's understanding of all, all of this is that the corporations in question, the media conglomerates in questions, who are talking about Paramount Universal and Warner, which is now Warner Discovery, made a giant bet over the last few years on the future of the business. And the future of the business was going to be streaming. So they pivoted everything towards that, which was going to necessitate huge losses in the short term with the idea of growth in the long term. And that's the sort of play that allowed Amazon to lose money for many, many years while showing growth.

until it eventually became profitable because it started a cloud service. Which is not untrue, by the way. I don't, again, I don't understand money or Jeff Bezos. But in my understanding, Amazon was just losing money while they were like, yeah, we'll sell you that. Sure, we'll sell that too, until they came up with Amazon cloud services and businesses were like, that we need. Yes. So anyway, all of this is to say, yeah, they're ringing up huge, huge losses. But shareholder growth and how long that can continue?

I don't know how long some of these companies can continue to splash around in the ocean. with the biggest boys, Amazon Apple, and to a degree Netflix, that's TBD. The other financial thing I did want to hit on, because again, I get it. You love that stuff. I did see someone take a shot at us for, I guess, not being clear about, because we had some comments last week, or we reported. What was the forum for this comment? You know, I let stuff just flow through me.

It was Facebook, wasn't it? It was you on Facebook. I love Facebook. I'm going, remember, remember there was a time when I was just like, let's get back into emails, because I could just really call it. I know where the culture is moving. Back to Facebook. The idea was that as things are being pulled off of HBO Max, right, whether it was movies or Mrs.

Fletcher or camping. We were like, word Rungo. Or we were maybe being glib about that as if this was somehow malicious or it was being done, like, it was retribution. Or they were trying to sneak one by us. Right. all of this, everything has to be paid for. Like, that's something that is absolutely clear. And as someone, I'm just going to throw it out here.

Let's just say I know someone very well who had a show made by one studio, a studio that is under the same conglomerate as a streaming service. But let's just say this person's show, prior batch, not on the streaming service owned by the company. Because those two arms, the same company, yeah, can't agree on the price. So even though they should just live on forever, they don't. And that's something that is going to be a wake-up call for both creators and consumers alike.

But we didn't mean to be glib. It's not like things are falling away haphazardly necessarily, but people are looking at it being like, well, we have to pay a licensing fee to someone or maybe multiple ones. Or maybe they're expensive shows because of all the executive producers or studios involved. Things are going to fall away. It's just it is what is going to happen. What's the Hail Caesar line that Ray Fine says to Alden-Arenberg where he's like, were that it was so simple, you know? Would that it were so simple? Well, yeah, it's, I was reading today about, it was, there's an article in deadline about the Warner stuff.

And it was largely about J.J. Abrams and about Demi Mon being canceled. But, you know, and Zazlov and him having a kind of, a summit to sort of decide which way to go with their very lucrative for bad robot agreement. And it took pains to mention that under his agreement with Warner Brothers, J.J. Abrams is still somewhat prolific producing things. that are Warner Brothers sanctioned, but for other services. It's just that he hasn't made anything for HBO Max is the issue or for the HBO streaming property. So it's like exactly what you're saying. You can still be winning even if it doesn't appear to be a win in the W column. And whoever's keeping score or whenever the game ends is very much fluid and influx.

And we're going to talk a little bit at the end of this podcast, I think, about the first episode of The Sandman. on Netflix, and I'm going to hopefully be covering it more on Thursday. But that's really important to note. Sandman published by DC Comics eventually under their Vertigo imprint, owned by Warner, developed by Warner Brothers films for many years, and then assumed by many that it would eventually end up on HBO or some HBO-affiliated service. It's not.

It is a Warner Brothers studio production for Netflix. And does that make sense? Honestly, I don't know. I would have had a different... And I'm saying I like the show. I'm excited about the show. I'm talking purely from a business point of view. At different points over the last six to ten months,

I would have given you very, very different answers. Yeah. I would have said, and I still kind of believe, that it makes sense for Netflix, because even though Netflix is having a creative upheaval, like Umbrella Academy proves that genre storytelling that has a lot of runway in front of it, a lot of stories to tell,

does well for them. And it's like Sandman's number one around the world on the top ten list. That's very, very significant. significant. But at this moment, if you went back to the new Zazlov controlled Warner and said, like, we have this grown-up thing that would do really well around the world, would they want it now? Would Casey want it? Does Netflix look at this and be like, we'll get three seasons out of it? And I know that you, Neil Gaiman and Alan Heimberg and everyone have plans to tell the entire comic book in like eight to ten years. But we don't care about that. We're just going to get the three years we were going to get out of it. I don't know if anyone can answer that right now. And in three years, the Lance could be completely different. But that is a really interesting example from a business perspective. From a creative perspective, we'll talk about it later in the show.

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Let's get into this episode of Saul, which is the penultimate episode of the series written and directed by Vince Gilligan, who is the creator of Breaking Bad. So he gets his sort of final say. And appropriately enough, and obviously spoilers for this episode of Saul starting now. Appropriately enough, this one continues to mix DNA with Breaking Bad into this episode. So this one's basically black and white and Kim all over. A lot of this is the Gene Tackavik treatment of Kim Waxler's post, post like Howard Hamlin life, essentially. So if you go back to the moment where Kim leaves Jimmy that night

and wonder what's going on with her, you find out largely with some blank spots in this episode. Kim has been leading a pretty pedestrian life in Florida, where she works for a sprinkler company and does catalogs and brochures for them, apparently with the same fastidious sort of attention to detail that she brought to her legal career. She's dating, I believe, an unnamed guy, but even if he's not, he frankly does not really deserve a name since the highlight of his day. Chad, Chip, Bobby, like, he's just like, should we have mayonnaise or miracle whip?

Do you think the amazing race is hard? Like, just... For what it's worth, less people think that we're just typical coastal elites, that conversation about Hellman's or Miracle Whip, in tuna salad was a fraught conversation that happened many times in my childhood. Well, he was going for Dukes, which I guess is, I personally have never sampled it, but is that a southeastern United States thing?

Is that a Publix thing? I don't even know. Kim's Brunette, she seems miserable, but also like she's doing penance. And I think that's sort of the big thing I took from this one, which is an episode of TV that I thought was profound. Not only for what the story it was telling,

not only for the performances and the writing and everything and the way it was shot, but perhaps unique in many of the series that we've talked about over the last 10 years of chatting about television in that I feel fairly confident that Better Call Saul is not going to make us feel good about these people. What's name in this episode, by the way? It's episode 12 as of you and I recording. Oh, the name will be released later tonight probably.

I guess so. And I guess you could take a couple of clubhouse guesses, based on the people who appear in this episode. But not only just the tone of the episode as a whole, and I think the oppressive feeling of the... It has a name. Oh, go for it. Waterworks.

Oh, well, pretty good. Speak to the Emmy-winning. There should be Emmy-winning scene. Ray Sehorne gives on a commuter bus or a shuttle bus at the airport. You know, the black and white photography has become almost oppressive and how depressing it is and how drab and flat it is. I think the need for Kim

or Kim's compulsion to atone for this past life going as far as to drop off an affidavit at the district attorneys and confess to Cheryl about what happened really with Harold, Howard.

And Gene's sort of dissent after the phone call with Kim in the pay phone booth to the point where it's almost like he's begging to be caught, you know, it goes further and further down the rabbit hole of not just getting away with identity theft, but then messing with like, I'm going to have a drink in this guy's house. I'm just going to kind of taunt the system almost because I just keep getting away with it, to paraphrase

Jesse Pinkman. And then that very last scene with Marion, which is why you hire Carol Burnett. If we were kind of wondering last week, like, it's cool. Like, I'm sure there's got to be something coming here with this Carol Burnett character, because while it seems like she had a great time on set, like it's strange just to have her be in this kitchen drinking schnops. And then you get that moment where, and it was lost to me, the pop culture like sort of overtones of this guy who's going to kill Carol Burnett. Yeah.

That's who this guy is. What was your general takeaway? We can go through this sort of beat by beat in a second. I was blown away by this episode. I think it's one of the best hours of TV in recent memory. I know that it sounds like now I'm just almost doing performative mea culpa's not nearly as meaningful. as Kim. Yeah.

But you're dropping off your affidavit to Pete Gold's office. It's also on brand for talking about this show in this world to kind of find the lane and really, really dig deep in it. And never ever waver. I'm really blown away by how snookered I was. I mean, first of all, let's just, can I just do a quick pause and say something? One of the greatest feelings that we can experience as people or adult people is to be surprised by our art and entertainment.

And I feel like we kind of have forgotten that and we always want to like not, you know, we collectively, like we want to jump ahead or we want answers or you want to be online and we want to theorize. It's awesome to be caught flat-footed by people who know what they're doing. You know, it's fun to go to see a magician perform and be like, I don't know how you did that, but I'm dazzled and I'm in awe. And that's kind of how I feel about this because I completely agree. I also would say that the shows that you and I have felt most passionately about over the last

couple of years, whether it's like the bear or mayor of Easttown have felt that way, have felt like, oh shit, this is different, this is, this feels real or this feels, you know, like something I haven't seen or feels like something I haven't seen before, but continue, I'm sorry. Not at all. I'm glad that we get to, we get to sort of link up and cry Hosanna about that, because I think Kim has never not been who she is. She's one of the most brilliantly, sharply drawn characters in recent memory on television. And we as either bad TV fans or breaking bad TV fans spent a large,

portion of the last six plus years, seven years now, anticipating a gruesome end for this character. Something terrible would happen. She would be pushed too far or something would catch up to her. But Kim is a good person who has had a strong moral compass even when she has deviated from it in her life. And I watched this episode and I'm like, this is always where it was going. This is always where it needed to go. And I love that feeling. I love that I was wrong about it. And I love that I missed it completely. That we didn't even take a moment. to consider that as an option over the last few years. At least I don't think I did.

I don't think either of us did on this pod. Because here's the thing about Better Call Saul. They fucking did it to us again. This is a show about a bad guy. It's a show about a bad guy. And they changed the timing and they changed the narrative. And we met someone who we thought was shallow and they made him deep. That's what the project of the show was.

But the depth doesn't always mean you find gold. It just means you follow those. hollow, you find a hollow place that can't be filled that someone is always going to try to fill. And I just feel really worked up honestly about the artistry at play here because, not just because I didn't see it coming, because who am I? But I feel like many people in the audience kind of forgot. And at times during the last few years, we've been, you know, we've either discussed at arm's length or maybe poked holes in the idea that Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan and their crew were considering actively,

Better Call Saul, as an act of, as a corrective in some ways to some of the issues of Breaking Bad, which, you know, as discussed by us even as recently as the other week, like kind of had it both ways in its ending. It gave the moral,

it had the moral ending in Granite State. Felina got to, he got to kind of make up for everything. His family got paid off. His best friend or his surrogate son, he saved him. Yep. There was a feeling that he,

even if, like, he wasn't a good guy, made up for a lot of his wrongdoings. That he made up for it. That it was somehow worth it, maybe if you squint and forget about Hank or whatever, right? Like, that somehow that whole calculus worked. We're not getting that here. And what was so brilliant about this episode

was the way that it kept switching, jumping tracks, starting with Saul anticipating seeing Kim for what, you know, might be the very last time, letting the Kim portion play out, returning to that Sal scene, and you can see in that moment when the road permanently divides. Yeah.

And in a very human-relatable way, I mean, both of us, I'm sure, people listening, whether it's not necessarily over a divorce settlement, but there have been moments when you've reached the end of something with someone and you're never going to agree on the terms of it. And you're going to go,

and in this case, you know, we saw the trauma, we saw the breaking point, And we now understand why Saul is the way he is. He can't go there and deal with it. And she can't live with it. So what do they have to say across that table? I mean, it was devastating and it was powerful. Did you get the impression when she's in the office in color and she's seeing that office, I guess, for the first time?

Yeah. That they had had much communication in between the point where she had left him and this divorce being settled. No. I think intentionally no. I think she has laid pretty clear boundaries and continued to, you know, and the other points in the episode as well. It was so strong and powerful, and then we got to run it back and talk about the Florida stuff, but it was so strong and powerful that the cross with Jesse,

which you guys know, like I'm generally not allergic to, but I get a little itchy. Like I don't know if we need it always. But I thought this was a really nice grace note because it did sort of square the circle of like, yes, Kim existed in this universe. yes, there was a moment. You know, the guy who doesn't do paperwork is Emilio, who is soon to be dissolved in the bathtub. Right. So now we can kind of get our sense of where we are.

Yeah, there were a couple of good callbacks to bad end to Saul, like, Victor Sinclair is an alias that Jimmy uses in the second season. That's when she's like, that's when she says her name is Jazeel, their brother and sister who are con. It's not dissimilar to the con that Jeff and Gene were running on guys in Omaha. Why don't we go through the episode sort of beat by beat? So obviously I was asking you about whether or not you felt like they had had much interaction

in between Kim leaving and her coming into the office. There's a little bit of wet eyes. There is that like one moment of kind of humanity in Saul before Kim walks in. But obviously they have that pretty hostile separation. A hostile on his side.

Hostile on his side. I mean, he's pretty much just like have a good life or whatever. But you know, for the most part. He's fully in character. I mean, it's the most devastating use of the Saul character that we've seen. Yeah.

To see him do it to her. Let's go back to the Florida stuff. I mean, you're a Florida fiction connoisseur. How did you feel? Yeah. They did it. We talked about this and I was like, damn, but they won't really go there.

I mean, okay. Well, there was a rumor. Wasn't there something about that's where they shot Cranston and Pink and Jesse? That came out last week, which made me excited about what was to come. But we also have to take a moment here and say, by all accounts, you and I've never met Vince Gilligan, but by all accounts from people who know him have worked with him, he's a lovely guy.

Like, people are like, how come he didn't break bad, like in his brain? Like, why is he a well-adjusted, friendly, homespun, folksy guy to everyone? Apparently, that's true. It doesn't matter if it is, but that's nice to know. But he does have a little Heisenberg in him, not because of the way he plots TV shows, but by the way he extracts money from Sony Pictures Television Studios. Because this episode was so expensive. They'll never tell us.

They'll never tell us. But this episode was so beautiful. It was so well directed. And it had to have been so expensive. Not just because they were like, hey, we got to go to Florida. But the Florida sequence of Kim's life there up to her office, especially her office, I've been watching it thinking about how much location scouting went into that. And then location building with a production design team.

So you have the windows just so so that you can play that scene on the secretary on the phone with the exercise bike and then came in the background. The rehearsals, the casting of people there to play these parts so beautifully. And then just the inserts, dog. Well, also the granular research into like Florida culture of like these people make, as it deviled eggs that they were making to make it look like Florida State colors. Yeah. Well, I also think, in that case, I think they probably had a PA researching Cornhusker stuff

last week and they were like, hey, well, you have the college football wiki open. But like the shot of the cars in the parking lot with the heat waves coming off of it, I mean, if you have time to get that shot, nobody's asking you to make your days in a way that's awesome. It was beautifully directed and I loved it. Okay, but yeah, Florida. This is why they spent the entire season shooting Tony Dalton in a sewer.

I guess they had to save their money for Florida. Oh, my God. So Kim has this life working for a sprinkler company. I found those scenes to be the other side of the coin of the way that Saul has been presented this entire time where they've sort of really relished in these montages and in these process-oriented episodes.

And this is kind of like what happens if you apply those outside of the realm of cartels and lawyers. And it's just like, this is what Better Call Saul would be if it was just about this person who's miserable but is going about her life in a Florida sprinkler company. Did you think that she was punishing herself? Yes. By the way, no character has ever been devoted

to oral hygiene like Kim. It's great. that she's stuck with that routine. Incredible, incredible moment, just once again brushing those teeth. Yes, I mean, I think that, again, we've spent a lot of time with her. She is an incredibly rigorous person, disciplined person.

And you don't build those walls around yourself without intention. You know, she didn't slide into this. She is participating in it. You know, she even brings. brings up the miracle whip thing. You know, she is engaged in the commerce of this particularly small society, right? Like, she has chosen this dude to sleep with and watch the amazing race with. And yeah, I think she thinks it's what she deserves, you know.

She certainly doesn't think she deserves any more than that. And I love the detail that you mentioned, too, which is just she's very good at this job, too. Yeah. I mean, I just thought that was so interesting to watch her. Like it wasn't just like, I'm going to literally phone it in and just find out everything as a follow-up question. She's engaged with what it is. She even goes to the factory floor to kind of see what they're working on with this. And then she winds up getting to the end of the day.

And the cumulative end product of her entire day of work is one line at the bottom of this catalog. And I also have to say that much like the whole show doesn't work without the two of them, you know, Odenkirk is the lead and his name's in the title. But it really exists and succeeds because of the double. dynamic of the two of them. It wasn't until Kim's life was in black and white that I fully understood on an aesthetic and creative level why Gene is in black and white. Because, yeah, I mean, glibly, all the color has been drained from his life. It's boring now. I get that. But the way that it was used and used sparingly up to now, it did also feel like just kind of a, like a fun little aesthetic choice. Like we're just going to, so you know, you can tell where we

are in time. And then we go to one of the most brightly colored places in America, and it's also been leached. And her life has been leached. Yeah. Yeah. And someone who has been so alive, it was really affecting. And her performance, I mean, you said at the beginning, the Emmy winning, Emmys don't matter, guys, but this one does. It really does. This performance in this episode alone was God level. It was staggering. A couple of other Florida things to mention. One is just how similar her life was to her life with Saul or Jimmy, you know, the

sort of more like quotidian conversations about what to eat or how to eat it. Yeah, we saw a lot of that, yeah. Watching TV at the end of the night, that used to be her and Jimmy's big thing is getting Thai food and watching classic movies, you know, and this is sort of like, if you adjust

the dial, just a couple of things to the left or right, it's hell on earth. You're stuck with this fucking guy who's like, hey, there's outback in satellite beach want to go like and that was a great detail by the way just because like the amount of outbacks in florida is so mind-blowing sometimes like but yeah like i just thought that the idea that she was essentially living very much the same life but minus this key you know chemical component that was maybe love maybe it was just the thrill of the illicit or the thrill of being

involved in like this consequential life and now she doesn't have that but like yeah the the idea that just basically the meaning had been sucked out of her existence and then she kind of gets it back she goes back to albuquerque after this conversation with jean i guess briefly like did you were you surprised that that's what the conversation was because we saw a version of it from a distance with no audio yeah i was surprised because I really, really just respect the decision-making that led to giving us knowledge of the conversation, but ignorance of the content of the conversation until this week like that. The way these two episodes were in conversation with each other was just so masterfully done. You know, they are of a piece. They are deeply connected. And we pointed out last week that

it was rare for Saul to end with a cliffhanger like that, just walking into a house. And the handoff thematically and narratively was just really remarkable. But yeah, I didn't have any idea. I certainly didn't think that they had spoken. I think the takeaway that I had, again, for no good reason whatsoever, was that he was somehow given the runaround. Oh, I definitely thought they spoke, but I thought the ingenious thing was the way that we see it

from the perspective of the camera in the previous episode in Breaking Bad. it looks like he's exasperated or scared or upset in some way. But when you get it from the Kim perspective, he's basically kind of being a bastard. Yeah, he's being an app. I mean, he can't drop the character down. And so it raises the question, who is he underneath all of it?

And what is his response? I mean, it's addict behavior, right? Like he then, now we know from last week, that as soon as this call happens, he decides to be somebody again and get one over on people. and take what he feels he's owed, which is what happens with the extra trip upstairs

with the watches and the cigars. I mean, it's just affectation at that point. It's just he wants to be impressive. And in that moment when he's like, oh, a hat person, I need a cigar, take a drink. That's the same thing when he's showing Kim his tacky-ass office. He's like, look at what I've done.

Look what I have. I don't think there are enough superlatives and we couldn't do it on this podcast to talk about her performance, both in that telephone scene and then later. The Albuquerque sequence is just pretty astonishing. So if you had any money on there being any kind of continuation of Albuquerque Underworld television, I think that kind of put it to bed.

That was essentially like, you wouldn't ask Clint Eastwood when he's making another Western after Unforgiven. I don't think you're going to ask them, you know, what are you guys going to do in Albuquerque after that sequence because it's a ghost town because Mike's not in the parking booth. There are no lawyers eating lunch. She's wearing like a parka. It's like the winter of discontent. She's wandering through these halls. She's been replaced.

Everybody's been replaced by other versions of them doing the same kind of work. And Albuquerque, you know, Albuquerque is a phenomenal and interesting and surprising and weird place. I've spent a lot of time there. And but if you shoot it differently, it's just a place. I mean, one of the things that it's good for shooting in is it can be a lot of different places. Yeah. It took Gilligan and this crew to be like, we're going to make a show about the way the sky looks here. essentially. And it was such a bold choice to shoot it in a completely opposite way. And by the way,

shout out to whoever knew that they'd be trolling us by having Kim in a parka and then see the Alaska Airlines logo. Because anyone who had like the, she goes to visit Pinkman, like, obviously the timing, you know, but I thought that was pretty funny if it was intentional. I imagine everything is intentional. But yeah, it's a ghost town now. It has also lost its whatever it was. And I found that pretty powerful and moving too. And again, just on a process level, the casting of Howard's widow, she wasn't a widow and she was cast, like Sandrine Holt, what an interesting conversation.

Because the character is, you know, we harped on it. Like, why are we spending time with her for this one scene? And, you know, in the same way that when they cast Francesca, I don't know if they knew that we're going to be using you in a lot of different ways over the course of many years. With the Sandrine Holt piece, they were definitely like, you're coming back and you're going to be able to do X, Y, and Z thing in a lot of surprising ways. Kim laying it all out in a deposition, basically, in a legal document.

It was such a devastating and, of course, totally appropriate place for this to end up. You know, it was, and to see it written out, brutal. That's where I felt like the version of myself that watched the last few years, of this show kind of died. Yes. Because when you read the clinical version of the plot of this show, it's not really that ambiguous.

You know what I mean? They set up this guy with the intention of destroying his life and it worked just not the way they thought it would. And then they let that lie live on to disgrace his memory. And she goes back to Cheryl for this, not absolution, I think,

it was legitimately like I think, but I should be punished. You know what I mean? Like, I have not suffered enough. And I, in some ways, I think she was like, she could hear something in Gene's voice that was like, you haven't suffered either. Or at least you didn't learn any lessons from this.

So I need to go back and take this on. And it's so brilliantly paired with the Jesse scene where he's like, is this lawyer good? Because I need someone who can just make bad things go away. Yeah. It's just what we all want for life. We just want it to be easy. We want to take it away.

And again and again, that's what this show has lionized. And I think it's had a really interesting reckoning with the morality behind those decisions. And it's done so, particularly in the last few years, in a way that is, I think, deeply respectful, artistic and also entertaining. So, you know, like Mike, one of the great characters of the last 15 years in television, his job was to make things go away. And he was the best there was at it, right? Like, he was brilliant at it. And we couldn't wait to see him do it again. but there are people who used to be those bodies

and it all came due, you know, and it's kind of remarkable the degree to which we as an audience are so, and this is a great thing, and playing with this and poking at it and considering it is what makes it art, honestly, because it was entertaining already. But like, I think if you had polled all of us two weeks ago, we're like, and then Gene will find Kim and they'll have a happy ending. What world does that come from?

TV brain. It's entertainment brain. I was, I completely, I mean, like, that's, that's, I was like, she's from Nebraska. He's in Nebraska. Yeah. One day she's going to come up to the Cinevon, like in the last five minutes of the show, and it's going to be like, it was always you. The thing that really hit me hard, though,

is her, I would probably guess sendoff from this series. Is that scene with Jesse? I think then you have to take a step. Oh, no, I think she's back. I think she's going to be in next week. I do. Fair enough. if it was her last scene

I think I could make the argument for why it should be. Obviously anything can happen next week and in a lot of ways I don't think I've anticipated a series finale like this since Breaking Bad but there was a lot of like symmetry to the characters

of Kim and Jesse to me when I was watching that scene of these two people who I think were the sin eaters for sociopaths maybe. I don't know. I mean, like, they were the ones who went along with it, but never stopped feeling it. And, you know, the way in which Jesse, as this, as Breaking Bad goes on, becomes increasingly unraveled by several examples of the sheer inhumanity of the world that he's involved with, whether it's, you know, the Christian Ritter, whether it's Jane, whether it's, you know, the kid, like, it goes on and on.

and then the literal punishment that he endures throughout and through El Camino it's like that's that I think Kim is that same character in this show where it's like she's the one who never stopped actually feeling and she was very good at holding it in and at times egged it on but when she's on that bus and it comes flooding out of her I think that you see like the parallels there

I mean and I don't even have words for that scene I can't imagine what it was like to shoot it to be there while I was filming. I don't know how many takes they took, but it was, that was, that was a very special kind of acting. And it was really just, it was just remarkable. But I also think that now we need to pay attention

in a way that I don't think we did before. And I'll put the marker down. Like, yeah, Kim survives the show, but what does that mean? What does she have to live with? What did she do to her life? What was done to her? What choices did she make?

And that is a really interesting thing to consider particularly in the light of, and you just mentioned, El Camino, which was kind of again, kind of cute with it. He was punished for what he did, but he got away with it, you know, and we wanted him to get away with it. And but get away with it, you know, and then his story's over because what's the next story? Someone recognizes him. That's not the story we want. We want that to be at rest. We want that to be done. Yeah, I mean, I... Kim is going to have the consequences. And I think that's really a powerful. thing. And especially, we'll probably talk about this more next week, but, you know, the shadow of

Skyler has been over the series as well, a character who was not given a lot to do and then given a very unfortunate kind of retrograde female second lead part to play, which is the scold, keeping Walter from having fun. And I think that the performer and the writing was much better than that. And I think that's pretty, you know, that's pretty reductive to say that's what it was, but that's certainly how it was interpreted. And it was a box that was created for that interpretation when they sort of gamed out what the series was going to look like, which they did, by the way, almost 20 years ago, right,

whenever the pilot was written. So it's from a different era. So to make Kim literally his partner in all things, participant and then also moral center, it's a much more complicated and nuanced part. And it's remarkable. I mean, just this race Seahorn thing, like, I don't know, we might need a couple weeks just to keep circling back to it

because Oden Kirk is great. Great. Odin Kirk is amazing. And our love for him is partly because we love him as a performer and a comedian and just as a person in our lives and on our screens in different parts. And also when you see someone do one thing and you're like, you can do that too. Yeah. We saw Ray Sehorne do comedy. I mean, she was on like Whitney and stuff. But for the most for most of us, she was not someone that we were noticing or turning our heads towards.

And this is like Cranston. Like someone coming in at a certain age in their career and being like, okay, clear out. I'm ready. It's cool. The last line that she has would be good enough as a character sendoff. The line that Jesse asks, you know, how good is this guy or is this guy that good? And she says when I knew him he was. And then she blows out smoke, or I think before she says the line, she blows out the cigarette smoke like she's spitting up. It's kind of like almost like she's exercising a demon.

But she blows out the cigarette smoke. She says her last line to Jesse and she walks out into the. torrential downpour of Albuquerque, which does happen. Yep, right? Flash floods. And then the rest of the episode we get Jeem. And, you know, the incredible, incredibly intense emotion and raw humanity of the Kim section is sort of offset by this Pink Panther sequence that we get with Cheam. Which I was dying. I was so amped up from what had just come. I had to pause. I was so tense. Because you know it's going to go wrong, but you don't know how it's going to go wrong.

God made commercial breaks. And they still surprised me. Yeah, I needed him. And Gene just stays longer and longer and longer. I don't believe that the character has been given a name, but it's the con mark that has cancer, played by Kevin Sussman, who is on Big Bang Theory for like 10 years and tons of other stuff.

And he eventually, like, he's prolonging his time in this house as he's, like, going further and further into these more nefarious deeds. His official name is cancer victim. Cancer victim. While this is happening, Jeff is getting more and more nervous. And then behind Jeff pulls up a cop car and he thinks that they're stalking him, but instead

they're having this argument about whether or not it's possible to get a good fish taco in Albuquerque. I would leave that to you to answer the question. Thank you. I didn't do enough research. I will not comment. Because you were probably like that other cop who was like, why would I be getting fish this far from a body of water?

You can get good fish there, but it wouldn't be like my go-to order. Gotcha. I don't know if you noticed, but one of the cops in the car was the guy in Bourne Legacy, whose talks to Edward Norton about outcome. Yes. No, but now it makes sense. I was riveted. So Jeff just spins out and drives his car right into another car and gets arrested.

Gene gets out of the house. He gets the phone call eventually. He's doing Saul hands to his mobile phone. He gets the phone call from Jeff. Jeff sort of keeps it on the down low. and then it turns out that they're going to need to bring Marion in on this. And we get the Marion scene. We get the final scene of the episode where Gene goes over to Marion's house

and she has looked him up on Ask Jeeves, another incredible early 2000s hit from this show. And he tears the phone cord out of the wall and wraps around his hands like he's in a Hitchcock movie. They shoot it like he's in a Hitchcock movie. He now looks like a killer. with his glasses and his hair slick back, and he's so much taller than Carol Burnett.

And then one little sort of moment of softness creeps into him, and she clicks her life alert and announces that Saul Goodman is in her house and he runs out the door. What did you think of that sort of final marrying sequence? Well, I mean, it was brilliantly shot and performed. It's awesome. You were right about Carol Burnett. It's just like, it's not just, it wasn't just a victory lap.

Like, let's give her something really meaty to play. I mean, she's not known for being a dramatic actress, but she's just a great performer. And that was amazing to watch. I was really just, you know, that experience of that you had in real time over many years of being like, I still like Walter, but boy, he's really acting erratically, but then I kind of like watching him do it. And you're sort of feeling his high. It was a one-episode journey for, you. for Gene Jimmy Saul,

who has always skated and skirt it, right, and then justified and never actually done direct violence himself. And then within a span of a few moments, he's about to smash an urn containing a beloved dead dog's ashes over the head of a cancer victim that he's just drugged. And once again,

fate and circumstance takes that choice out of his hands. And then is he going to strangle this lady? Is he going to tie her up? What's he going to do? Is he going to rip her life alert off of her neck? Like, yeah. Because he's used all his words. The words always worked.

And, you know, the cocktail and the wagging fingers, like, he was back briefly, right? And I think that's what ultimately this was all about. Like, he had the watches and he had the drink in his hand, and he was in control of the situation again. And that was probably a bigger high than breaking in in the first place that he was going to get this low life out because they had no evidence. And he was going to beat these cops. And he already knows that it's a no bail bondsman. and state and all these details, you know, that wouldn't be relevant necessarily

to the management at the mall synobon. It's rough. It's rough. And it's a, you know, it's just an amazing moral caricature and portraiture, not caricature. And then leads to, you know, now we have a finale. And that title has been released as well.

And what's the title? It's called Saul Gone. Oh, wow. So, good pun. Bad puns and, you know, truth nicely done I mean this show

has been very granular over like it's been pretty meticulous about documenting these last couple of days or weeks or however long it's been since you met Marion to now

I think I think probably at least weeks or months because of the amount of care and work that goes into like you know setting up the department store you know all that stuff but

how much further into the future do you think this is going to go like where do you see this trajectory because I'm out of guessing I mean, the only guess that I have is informed by two things. One, the truth matters. I think that's kind of what the show is ultimately saying that you can't fake it.

And Saul Goodman is not true. You eventually have to be somebody. Yeah, you have to be somebody. And Saul is gone, I mean, but also over as his gene. The only thing left is Jimmy. I don't know if he legally changed his name to Saul. I would imagine if and when he is arrested, if that's something that happens on the show, it'll be James McGill, right?

Like, he'll be back to that, which would make a lot of sense. It would make sense potentially for him to be back in Albuquerque. I mean, I don't know in the best way. I mean, that's where we started this conversation. Like, there is a version of this now where he does see Kim again in a courthouse, but not as lawyers. I mean, that's possible. She could be testifying against him. Yeah.

That's all in play, and we don't know. I mean, I kind of am a fan of not just because I love Kim and I don't want her to suffer anymore, but I appreciated her thoroughness where she's like the DA might not choose to do that. And that's also for a show that has always found a lot of hay in the kind of illegal minutia.

That's also true. And on law and order, everything gets prosecuted. But on this show, I don't know, maybe not. Yeah, I mean, there's a moment there where I felt like

in Sandrine Holt's reaction to Kim bringing this affidavit to her, that it almost felt like she was going to be like, I don't really want to deal with this. You know what I mean? Like I've made peace

with the version the truth that I thought happened, you know? I mean, someone said to me once, you know, that absolute honesty is not a kindness. Right. You know, you have to think about, Kim did this for herself. And I think that, to her credit, she knew that she did it to herself. She knew that it would cause, if not fresh pain, but an enormous avalanche of old pain to Cheryl. Is that her name?

Like, that's probably worth noting, too. You know, everybody is, as Saul says, you know, Everybody's gone. Everybody's dead. So why do you have to be punished? Yeah. Why does this ledger have to be settled? And I think it's pretty interesting and exciting to have all of the major characters

kind of asking a question that is the job of the finale to answer. I'm so glad that they're doing this because it's hard. Like that's a really heavy. But again, when you think about the dominoes that were set up, that like the Gary piece, obviously a different actor, but like the plan, or at least, say loose version of the plan. I don't think Jeff driving a cab and recognizing Saul two years ago was as let's just throw

an uncooked noodle at the wall like Walter at the diner with a gun, you know, which in the end of Breaking Bad, like they've said, we didn't know. We just threw that down as a challenge to ourselves to figure out where he was coming from and why he had that gun. I think they knew a lot, which is cool. But I also think that those guys are so good at what they do that they knew. what was going on with Kim during Breaking Bad. And so that they knew where she was.

And they knew they had an idea of what she was doing. Not necessarily when they were making Breaking Bad, but that the idea of what happens to Gene, which has been getting laid out throughout the entire series of Better Call Saul, they must have also known at some point where Kim was going. Yeah, on that point,

the other credit I really want to give them is there's a difference between loving your own characters and taking care of them. And I think that at times that's maybe been a little muddled or misunderstood, certainly by me, where, you know, I sometimes was like, well, I love Mike too and seeing him be awesome is great. Yeah. But there's nothing more to teach us. Once the German stuff happened, like in the Super Lab, which was just an incredible thing, incredible season, maybe my favorite. There wasn't that much more to do.

So, you know, when he shows up or Walter shows up, it's like, we love these guys too. We're all having a party. They have taken care of Kim Wexler, the fictional character, and treated her with, you know, dignity and respect and consideration of who this person might be and how she might react. And I think they've done the same thing for Jimmy and Saul. And that's awesome. That's just really cool to see that not that anyone would accuse them of this. I don't mean to set up like a straw man argument.

It was, they've never been like, yeah, well, they'll shoot guns in the desert for seven more years. That's never been their project. Yeah. And I saw in the Times, New York Times, they were in the Recap of the Breaking Bad episode, there was a discussion about how there was a point about last week's episode of salt, about how by the time most serieses

get to their finale there are so many strands, so many characters that need to be brought to a conclusion and Saul doesn't really have that problem.

It's got two people. You know, it's really got two people that it has to sort of figure out what happened to and what it means. You want to just

chat briefly about Saman before we go? Yeah, I've only just started it and I'm looking forward to talking to, hopefully to my old friend Alan, who is the showrunner of it.

But I will say that like it is one of the crazy things of one's life when one gets older, I guess, to wait 30 years and then have something, right? Because like Sandman, like for many people in the world and many people listening, is a hugely important and like existentially defining experience. Having read that when it was coming out, basically bridging middle school into high school and ended in college. And I was, you know, this won't surprise anyone, dramatic person. I was like, I'm done with comic books. That was like when I was in high school. I'm not going to read them anymore. But I'll buy the

last three issues of Sandman. And that'll be the end of my nocturn or whatever. And, you know, reading it and being like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if movie or whatever. And then the entire world changes and the industry changes. And suddenly it's not just possible for there to be a Sandman TV show. It's like Neil Gaiman being there being like, no, I want this in there. No, I still want. And not to discredit, we're going to talk to Alan about his creative process.

But there were times when I think I would have wanted maybe. even something different, like, what would it, what should it or could it be on screen? But this is so lovingly and almost slavishly in the best possible. Can slavish ever be good? But I mean it. They have recreated the experience of reading the comic book in a way that might be off-putting because it's not a normal way to begin a show. This doesn't tell you that like in 40 episodes, there's going to be an entire episode

about William Shakespeare writing The Tempest, right? Like that's not foregrounded here. But that's coming, I guess, because they're doing it. And it was kind of amazing. And you know what Netflix were like, we got to get this tempest tease in there, though? Yeah, right. Like we got, we've got some sets on hold and Stratford on Avin. We got a good deal on it.

Somebody looks up from Flores Lava of season three and is like, are they really not going to tease the tempest? It's, but I thought it was beautiful. And it, and it was really engaging. And I thought, like, it just weird that like for 30 years, this wasn't my concern. But for 30 years, I was like, well, who's going to play Morpheus? No one looks like that. and then Tom Sturridge is born at some point in this timeline. It just grows it to someone who looks exactly like the character in the comics.

It's kind of a trip. It's amazing. Do you have any history with it? We can talk about it later. I just didn't know if you read this comics. I mean, I don't have any history of the comics and I'm also not a big dreams guy. You're not a dreams guy. You want to unpack that for a second?

Sure. I mean, I just don't find them that interesting. Like mine are pretty... So, they don't tell other people, yeah. Mine are pretty like, oh, I'm anxious about work. That was pretty obvious, like, in my, you know, my dreams. Oh, I'm not an interesting dream guy either, yeah. And I never really have, like, I'm soaring or, like, I have, like, it's like, whenever there's dreams on shows or movies, I'm just like, this is bullshit.

It's not how there's an element in this. And I understand why they did it. And I think it'll go in different places because there's also nightmares who are boyhood holder ripping people's eyes out, which is cool. But when they're like, this is the dreaming and it's just like castles and dragons, which is accurate to the book. But I'm like, I have never once had a dream with a castle or a dragon. Yeah. I had a, here's a dream I had the other night, you ready? Oh, for sure.

Everybody loves this. Everybody loves this. It's going to be short. I was continuing a conversation I had had with someone that day, and I asked a question, and the person opened their mouth to answer. Oh, no, and then said, it opened their mouth to answer, and jazz came out. Oh, that's pretty cool. Saxophone bebop came out of her mouth.

That's awesome. That's a cool trick you learned, and then I woke up. But that's not a TV show. Right? Yeah. That's my dream. What's interesting one I've had in months. We'll come back. We'll talk more about dreams. We'll talk more about Sam. We'll talk more about industry and reservation dogs later in the week.

Andy, have a good one. Thank you to Kai for producing. And thanks to everybody for listening. Happy Bluey Day on Wednesday.