The Watch - The ‘Better Call Saul’ Series Finale

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

Chris and Andy talk about the series finale of ‘Better Call Saul.’ They talk about whether or not the creators stuck the landing (1:00), the major plot points that were revealed in the finale (14:57), and the feat of long-form storytelling that is ‘Breaking Bad’ and ‘Better Call Saul’ (37:59). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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podcasting from Supermax prison in Colorado. It's Andy Greenwald! But, you know, the bread program here is exquisite. It's exquisite. Fresh baked to order. I'm glad that Jimmy McGill found his life's work. You know, you've got to find a passion in life, and he found his with various breads in depressing places.

Chris, his whole life he's been chasing dough. Andy, I'll show myself out. I am coming to you live, recorded, from an undisclosed location in Maine, but we couldn't leave the game alone. We had to come back, make sure, even though I'm on vacation, we're doing Better Call Saul, the series finale.

What a journey. We've been talking about this show pretty much every episode for the last three seasons, I would think. And, you know, it's been one of our favorite shows over the last five years, and it finally comes to a conclusion tonight.

When we had Peter Gould on a couple of weeks ago, Greenwald, he seemed, I don't know what the right word was. Was it almost like charmed by his own creation? He was very interested to see how people were going to feel about these last few episodes. And he seemed kind of like, I think we did it, but I think it's going to be divisive and it's going to be different. Do you agree with Peter Gould? I think he was pleased.

And I loved that for him. And I feel equally pleased. And not to psychoanalyze. But I did feel like these few episodes were not stressed. They felt fully invested. They felt confident. They felt in control of the story and the characters. They felt, and this is the word that I kept coming back to while watching this episode, generous.

This episode and these last few episodes in general were generous to an audience that has invested over a decade in these characters. They were generous to the performers, the cast and crew who have invested so much. And clearly, you know, people coming back for victory laps or for one last thought, one last moment. Steve Jobs would say one last thing. And I think ultimately, like, very, very generous and considerate of an audience that has been on board with a show that started with more goodwill than maybe any show in modern television history and challenged in a way. You know, not to say that it was a difficult watch, but that I don't think the show was really, you know, maybe there are a couple, you know, filigrees here and there, but it was never really fan service. It really established itself as its own beast and went out on its own terms in a way that I found really remarkable, really pleasurable, and I ultimately just really respected it. So yeah, I think his demeanor was very telling of what was ahead.

He knew what he was doing, you know, and I really like that. You like that in a finale. You are somewhat using NPR voice. And I wonder whether or not that's like a result of what we just watched, right? Like, it was in some ways a meditative series finale. I don't think we were necessarily expecting a hail of bullets like we got in Breaking Bad. And I certainly am glad with what we got. I'm very happy with what we got.

Yes. When we talked last week and the last week's episode ends with Gene on the verge of choking out Carol Burnett, one of America's most beloved television stars, I kind of had this thing where I was like, you know what? I don't think this is going to end not well. Like, they're going to do a good job. But I think that this would almost be like a corrective for some of the anti-hero television of the last decade that maybe sometimes ends with a soft landing for our anti-hero.

And I wasn't necessarily looking forward to or hoping that that was going to be the case. Maybe there was a sick part of me that was kind of like, oh, yeah, for all the catchphrases and the funny, you know, the funny commercials and all the great, cons and all this and all that, like, this is a bad guy. And I don't necessarily always look for bad guys to get punished in my pop culture. But I'm curious whether you feel like Saul was punished, despite the fact that he is now serving, I think 80-some years in his Supermax predatory. I think it's a great question.

I think I really, really loved this finale. I think, like, many people listening, I'm processing it. It was incredibly rich. It was incredibly dense. It was long. There was a lot to consider. It went in a number of different directions. So I think I'm being kind of measured because I don't want to get into the like, let's rank this or whatever.

But I do think that it was a remarkable coda on an era of television. And I think you were correct to say not just for the Albuquerqueverse, but specifically for the era of difficult men on television. And I'm really impressed by that. And one of the things, the names that kept coming into mind while I was watching this episode, isn't someone who had appeared on any of these shows. It's, and I'm going to get her name wrong, but there is a,

there is a Disney, right? A woman who is the air to like all the Disney stuff. Oh yeah, Abigail. It is, Abigail Disney. And her whole life is like,

millionaires are evil. All money is to be given away. And I will devote my life to using this fortune that I was given without any choice to places I feel that it belongs. And this is, it's not a one-to-one.

She could just definitely just be the real life, Connor Roy, for all I know. But yeah. Okay, that's true. I might be about to get milkshake ducked.

But in theory, let me just say that the idea of someone being handed a fortune through no fault of their own and then deciding what to do with it in a way that feels, at least from the outside, to be equitable and generous, is noteworthy here. Because again and again, I come back to this point, no series in television history had a bigger head start in terms of all of your favorite people who made one of the greatest things of all time are going to keep it going. And they're going to do something different slightly, but it's the same world. and we're going to have some of our characters back and old friends and all of this. And time and time again, when they could have rested on their laurels

and done Breaking Bad again, or really just done the underworld, the Mike and Gus Fring stuff, they didn't. They made a season about, you know, doc review, as we love to joke. They went into the psychology of Mike vis-a-vis German mine and tunnel experts.

They did much of this last season in black and white. You know what I mean? Like they took this and they considered it. And they went right up to the point, and challenged all of us, including those of us in the audience who I think would like to think of ourselves as enlightened or intellectual or whatever, and had us wanting him to get away, right? We wanted him to get away. Or we wanted him to take the deal that was presented to him.

And we can go beat by beat. But in the end, the show took the concerns of its fictional creations seriously and their emotional life and their emotional dignity. And so no one saw this coming. no one saw Marie coming back to play this role, right? Betsy Brandt's character would be so essential. And the lovely Marisela Garcia, veteran of Briar Patch, playing Gomi's widow, shouts to her, love to see her do it.

It was an incredible reframing of our last decade plus of television watching to be reminded that the good guys, in the traditional sense, were buried in unmarked graves in the desert a decade ago. Yeah. And that their life goes on. And I thought that was really something. It was really symphonic to watch Peter Gould conduct this and have let us have all of it. Let us still care for Jimmy McGill and understand his humanity and also understand.

And I think I'm very curious where the audience will land on this, whether some people feel cheated or feel upset. Maybe we should carve it a little time to predict or consider. But ultimately, this feels right to me, which is a very, very hard and particular and subjective reaction to a series finale. but it's what we've got. I think your point about, or just even you mentioning the idea of orchestrating, there is a kind of like Peter Gould

and co as Leonard Bernstein and like kind of looking over the totality of the music that they've written throughout Abilkirky in the last 15 years. And, you know, even the scenes, and we'll go,

I can give like a quick summary of the plot of this episode, which is honestly not that narratively dense. It's really more these reveries that were shown from, seeing a scene with Mike Ermentrott, seeing a scene with Walter, obviously. But, you know,

even those scenes that he pulls from. So one is from Granite State when Walter and Saul are stuck in the vacuum cleaners way station, basically, before they go in their various directions. And one is from, I forget the name of the episode of Better Call Saul,

but this essentially I will always remember as the Piss Drinking episode through the walk through the desert episode. You know, I wonder when watching I assume obviously that Cranston came back to film that bit but I was wondering whether or not

that Jonathan Bank scene had been shot at the time whether or not they shot the Warren Buffett I would go back in time to go to when Berkshire Hathaway get started because it's that ability to see a note on the piece of paper and understand how it corresponds to the entire piece of music

you know and that's the thing that I think even though you could say he was playing the hits a little bit by bringing certain people back or having these certain moments. It's the same thing that we felt about Jesse and Kim talking outside of the Saul's office in the previous week where it's like these two characters have a lot of parallels. These two characters were the beating heart of a very cold and Darwinistic kind of society and they were the ones who actually still felt things at the end of the series that they were on or the series that they ran. I am kind of an awe of and look,

in every interview that they've done and we'll do, Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould will be like, we're not good planners, that's all fiction, we're just by the skin of our teeth here, we're paying ourselves into corners, then building more corners, blah, blah, blah. Probably true to a degree. But they have a real sense of the instruments

that they play and the music that they make that is not common, I think, in television. And I thought the construction of these, they're not flashbacks so much as they are unseen snippets of moments. that existed in Saul or Jimmy's life, I thought we're so brilliantly chosen. And there have been scenes that have featured old characters

and I felt like they were nice or they were fun. But I didn't feel like they were profound. And I thought that these were so well chosen and they were so brilliantly constructed around this theme of exactly the kind of like two guys in a bar or two guys in a storage locker avoiding the feds conversation that might happen, that Saul would have these sort of questions, right?

But if you had a time machine, what would you do with it? Like, that's just, you know, let's get another round and talk about it. A great construct and so wonderfully used in the sense that each one of these characters responded to it in a very different way. I'm going to go on a limb that I've spent a lot of time on recently because, you know, I think I've confidently been like, here are the locations they use in Florida. And then people message us being like, hey, guys, listen to other podcasts. Why don't you? They didn't go to Florida.

So, yeah. Yeah. When you want to know actually what happened, listen to the insider podcast. listen to Rissolo, you know? It's just like, you're not going to know that there are other Breaking Bad podcasts out there. I'm too busy listening to Ryan's travel log from Iceland. This is the Better Callsall Outsider podcast, and I hope you're enjoying it so far. But I'm going to go on a limb and say these were all scenes shot for this episode.

Sure. So Jonathan Banks, come on back. Oh, great. I can't wait. We're going to the desert. I mean, but also, clearly people want to come back. Yeah. And they want to be a part of it.

And they want to have their last moments. and with these characters and with this world. And, you know, this idea that has been prevalent throughout the series that finally got to be delivered by Walter White, the hero slash villain of the previous show, was incredible to me, that they landed that plane. Like, the last six seasons of Better Call Saul have been about, you've just always been this guy, right?

You've been this guy. To have Walter say it was so wonderfully constructed and felt so true, and it gave Heisenberg one last hit. You know what I mean? As opposed to being like, I'm the guy and we're just having fun again in the trailer. Like, he deduced that shit one last time. And even the opening scene with Mike,

like the opening line of the episode was, could be Jimmy McGill's epitaph. The opening line of the episode, after that brilliant blue, oh my God, we're back in color, we're back in New Mexico. The first words that you hear are slow down,

you're going to make yourself sick. Right. And that's the last, seven years of watching the show on television, right? You can't slow down. You can't stop making himself sick. You mentioned Walter having Saul dead to rights by saying, like, oh, you've always been this guy. But in a lot of ways, I thought that Walter's scene was a kind of corrective to anything

that you would think about, any sort of largesse you would describe to Walter White as a character where he was like, it's like, do you have, what would you do with a time machine? and he's just like, I have some small claims court issues I'd like to resolve. I have some copyright law I'd like to prosecute. You know, it's not like I'd like to go back

and make sure Skyler knew that I loved her or do anything that had... I mean, that was the end of Breaking Bad in an incredible way, you know? And it's amazing when characters tell you who they are, right? And Mike is like, I would imagine the first date he says

has something to do with his son. December 8th, yeah. But then he rewinds the clock and he puts it back on himself. You know, that is a character who is tragic because he knows himself, you know, and he does not fight his place in the world or his fate. In that regard, he is similar to Kim, you know, who who meets out her own justice, basically, and serves out a sentence of her own making and her own design. It's remarkable.

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And seeming, you know, he seems to have set himself up with a go bag and he has the vacuum cleaner card and he's got his burner phone. He's got his cash. And it, you know, obviously speaks to him in feeling like he needed to build up this cash reservoir for whatever reason. to go back into hiding. He gets caught. He hires Oakley from New Mexico to come represent him. Great. It's just incredible, though.

Like, these guys who are probably local Albuquerque actors, and they get, like, a gig, and it's a recurring gig, and that's awesome. And then I wonder if at some point they were doing the math, being like, I'm watching the show, too. And there aren't there many people left. But at no point in his wildest dreams was this guy, like, I'm going to be the co-lead of the finale of this show for a show?

time? Yeah, I know. Amazing. So they initially, like, Saul is looking at something like 150 to 180 years of time to plus life, plus life, and somehow negotiates it down to seven or eight years with Bluebell ice cream deliveries stacked on top. Seven years at a federal, at Bernie Madoff's resort prison with a golf tutor in South Carolina, or in a Carolina for seven years. Yeah. And it looks like he is slip and fault like the actual U.S. government. He's actually conned them out of having to sort of have any consequences

for his actions. But he finds out that Kim Wexler has also handed in this affidavit and that she is going to be basically vulnerable to litigation, civil litigation from Howard Hamlin's wife and Howard Hamlin's wife. We didn't see this

when we see Cheryl. She says to Kim, I could see you in civil court and Kim is like, yes, could. And it looks like eventually Cheryl did decide to do that or at least she was going lawyer shopping to do it. And on the plane from Nebraska to

Albuquerque, I assume, Jimmy has this change of heart. He's sitting with his U.S. Marshal and his lawyer and he decides that he's got one more thing to sell the U.S. government and it's about Kim. And this sets up a big courtroom scene for the lawyer

Jimmy slash Saul never got to be where he gives this rousing monologue about his involvement and his orchestration of the Walter White and Gus Fring criminal empire and what he was involved with and essentially goes back on the deal that he had made with the government

gets a much harsher sentence, 80 some years, but springs Kim from, I guess, civil and criminal liability. The sort of legal ease of it, I'll have to watch the episode again to really nail down, but I was kind of curious what you thought Sal could even offer the government it's half the people that he worked for are dead,

if not more. Well, I think he has nothing to offer. I think that he orchestrates a one-man show where he is going to live and direct, invalidate the deal he did in order to both ease his conscience, prove himself to Kim. Right.

You're correct to flag one thing that I'm not entirely clear on, which is even if he said, I did it, I did everything, she is still very, very, very vulnerable in a civil proceeding. Yeah. Which maybe happened.

We don't actually know. And another thing I appreciated about the episode is that it was respectful of it didn't need to tell us too much. There aren't very many words left to say at the end. And I think that they recognize that. I wonder if we get to talk to Peter again, if we could ask him, did he write like a very wordy five-page Kim and Jimmy's scene? And then sigh, relax, rip it up and then write the six lines that they say to each other because this is the better version. I'd like to think that's true, just into the sort of romantic, writer sense of it.

Yeah. I'm not really sure. But regardless, like, he confesses, right? He, and it's these little grace notes that I love. Like, remember when this show was, I don't know how it was pitched, but how it was presented to the public that this was happening, the initial conception, at least that we understood it, as we understood it. And I think Peter kind of has backed this up, was that maybe it was going to be a half-hour

comedy. Well, and that it was, Jimmy was going to turn into Saul in the first season. In the first season. And so at the very least, we would get more legal hijinks or it was a legal show. And in many ways, it was a legal show, just not like one we'd ever seen before. And so for this to become a courtroom show at the end, felt nice, felt right. It only took six seasons or whatever to get here. But, you know, he got his shiny suit one more time, and he got to lay it all out.

And it was a powerful, it was a powerful turn. And it absolutely was unlike the resolutions of any other difficult man of this era. Yeah. Because as you said, Walter had no regrets, also had terminal cancer, and went out in a blaze of glory that allowed us to be, you know, feel bad about what he did wrong, but also cheer for him for what he was able to make good and do right at the end and have some complicated empathy, if not sympathy if not empathy for him, right? Tony Suprano cut to black before consequences could be revealed one way or another

but I'm going to spoil every major show of the last 15 years Don Draper buys the world of Coke apparently right like it's still it's that same kind of thing

there is no ambiguity here and there was no ambiguity about that last scene and maybe we should just zero in on that because it was beautifully shot like one of the great lost noir's

and Kim and Jimmy so loved to watch over takeout in their apartment and they got to live it and their movie ended. Yeah. You know, and I thought that was just really thoughtful and remarkable because there wasn't more story to tell, you know.

I like the idea that she gave him a cigarette and there's like a moment of sort of pause about like, are we allowed to do this in this room? And it's kind of like you're going to be here for most of the rest of your life, if not the entirety of your life. Who cares if you spoke a cigarette in here? Did you think that, I guess the impression is that because he's sort of noted, recognized by almost everybody on that bus. My takeaway from that moment, aside from it being like this amusing comic relief, was that he is actually a criminal and maybe he's recognizing that.

Like this is where he belongs in some ways. And in some ways also like it was like, by the way, like Saul is not going to be, like he might be protected in prison to some extent. Yeah, I, the only scene that I had issue with was that scene. Okay. And maybe we could talk about it. Like, here's what I liked about the scene. And then I'll say what I did.

I liked what I didn't like, then I'd love your thoughts on it. What I liked about it was, once again, I am an easy mark. Because as soon as you saw the bus, was I like, are we going to con air this? Right. Is this con air? Right. Like, any time you see, like, name the filmed entertainments in our lifetime that have featured a bus transporting prisoners that has reached its destination safely, right?

Like, you could probably count those on one hand. So I kind of like that they were... This is a great idea for a show for you and I to do together is successful prison transports. And it's just... The entire show is just a bus driver from prison who never loses a guy. Or you follow an armored truck where they're like, we're going to, like, swap out the ATMs or whatever

and, like, do this bank transfer and they're just really good at their jobs. And then that's it. And when they stop for coffee, nobody hits them outside the deli? Ever. No, no, no. They're very... They always follow protocol. They always lock everything up.

Where was I the other day? where I went to like, I was like, went to a taco place and like 15, like fully armed and like uniform police officers were there. And I was like, hello,

and they were just like all enjoying their tacos. And I was like, I hope I'm not in a Michael Mann movie right now. You make it sound like you're Tim Roth and reservoir dogs. You know, like you've got a bag full of weed as you want to. I, this is maybe,

I don't know if this is genetics or whatever, but I assume I've done something wrong. Like I have never really, maybe jaywalking, but other than that, I'm pretty law-abiding. But immediately, I'm like, well, this is not going to be good for me. Anyway, so I liked it for the fake out and the trolling, which I think was intentional. I did like it for the, again, in speaking to the generosity and care of the characters, I think you make the right point that, like, because he is recognized as a folk hero

or as someone of significance to the other prisoners, it gives us an important sense of security, right? Because the episode did, and this is the kind of thoroughness that these guys are are known for. He mentions that incredible prison murder montage, right? So the idea of people getting shived, willy-nilly, is present in our minds. But I do think the – His sort of role in prison probably speaks to the fact that the Salamanca's, the Gusses, the mics, the

Walters, the Jacks, the Tods, like, everybody's gone. Everybody's gone. There's just Jesse and Kim out there somewhere, you know? Yeah, the color has been leached from it. He's just going to be – he's going to be a schnook. He's going to be Henry Hill, in a way. But what I didn't love about it was the kind of theatricality of it. Like it felt a little much and it felt a little like...

Oh, the Rudy, right. Yeah, a little folk heroy. When I kind of liked that he was maybe a schnuck now, that he had given up the mantle, whether you would be allowed to give it up or not. It felt that was the one thing that felt a little extra to me. But it's hard to complain about it. How did you feel about it?

I mean, I think the... Of course I immediately Googled ADX Montrose. I think it's a stand-in for Florence which also may have been the prison that the passage starts in you remember like there's the Colorado prison in the beginning of that great vampire novel, The Passage.

How's that work out? Not great, but I would love to see Saul in a reboot of the passage. And I thought that the last scene with Kim was lovely. I think that they definitely, definitely leave like that

little bit of daylight coming through the crack of the door of Burnett Kim Wicksler, attorney at law as another show if they ever wanted to do that. And the idea that Kim is still is still a little bit able to practice. I thought that her going to the legal aid place was really cool that she had unburdened herself of something and felt like now she was maybe purified to the level that she felt like she could go and do good in the world, like that she wasn't still paying for something by being in this sort of sold killing brochures and catalogs job

to sprinkler company for them, maybe she holds both. I guess the thing I really wanted to talk about were the two or three... Oh, go ahead. Before you, I just want to say, what an amazing job building a character that

we not only recognize that her walking back into that office is Captain America picking up his shield again, like that she is a superhero, but that there's an almost, if not erotic, at least romantic aspect to the stacks of unfiled papers and documents to her. That like when I see papers, I get breakout in hives. Like I cannot handle the thought of like dealing with stuff or filing it.

I could never be an attorney in a billion years, much to my grandmother's chagrin. But to have that like granular like nervous system connection with the character that I'm seeing it the way she's seeing it and it fills her with light again. Like you almost wanted that office to go technicolor. Yeah. Even though it probably wasn't that. It was probably pretty drab to begin with. I don't really, you know, and I was going to ask you,

they've been pretty definitive in discussing what comes next for them. I think Vince Gilligan has a show that's out to networks. I think Peter has said that he wants to try something else. I think they're good at being like never say never. You know, we didn't know that we were going to do it. And then we did El Camino. and we didn't know what we were going to do it, and then we did better call Saul,

but like, let's try and do something outside of the circuit here. I certainly thought that, that, like, Kim being a lawyer again is, like, something, you know? And it's not, maybe it was just important for that character,

not to be mired in the life that we saw her in for the second half of this season. Yeah. But, yeah, like, I guess I just wanted to ask you a little bit about the flashback scenes, because we talked about some of the, specifics of what they discussed in those moments.

And I think you could, this episode was called that's Saul, right? Saul gone. Oh, Saul gone. Sorry. This episode was called Saul gone. It could easily have been called Time Machine. It seemed to be, you know, that was the two conversations that he had with Mike and Walter were about this idea of like, if you had a time machine, what would you do?

And I think you're really smart by pointing out that that's also like bullshitting. You know, like it's just like a thing you say to somebody in a bar. But did you think that those scenes were happening? as memories in the real time with Saul, like as Saul is flying back to Albuquerque, he is thinking about Walter in the Granite State episode, or were they Peter and the creative team saying, these are important things to think about

in the overall thematic kind of philosophy of the show? I think also on a kind of beautiful level, Peter Gould and Finns Gilligan have a time machine. You know, they can call, up punch in dates and give us scenes that advance their arguments, validate their hopes or assumptions. Like, they can do that and they did it, you know. And I kind of loved that. Like, they created out of whole cloth three scenes that accessorized their final chapter, you know, perfectly. Like, they were, they were perfectly chosen. And again, it's always that little extra.

bit of work. You know, it's like my hero, Abigail Disney always says, you know, just like, just do the extra 10%, right? Isn't that her famous book that she maybe wrote? In the sense that, would it have felt like a finale

if we hadn't had a little mic in it? You know, are we greedy to hope for a little one last dance with Walter White? I mean, the Chuck character was controversial, but absolutely definitive in a way for what the show was

and what it was going to become, to have Michael McKean back, was right. So the scenes could have been anything, and that's kind of what I always come back to with the show. It's just like, let's use the opportunities that we have, and let's squeeze every last drop out of it, you know? Yeah. And to circle back to the thing you were saying before,

yeah, this is definitely it. And think about that. They have wrung every story droplet out of this rag. And unless you want, want the Bill Oakley and Francesca spin-off, which I'm sure those dogged performers would love. And I'm not saying they don't deserve it. That's who we're left with here. You know, and they had wonderful roles to play, and they played them beautifully. But we're done. It goes back to what you said before. He's in prison. Nobody's chasing him anymore.

Yeah. Like, let's really, let's let some. I just think they're too smart. No, I wasn't like, when we get Kim Wexler attorney at law. I was just sort of saying that. I just mean it as a compliment to them. Like, I think that they are reading this room too and being like, yep, it's an opportunity to be done. I think that what we just got was probably, ultimately, in the last, if you go back to the beginning of Breaking Bad 15 years ago, 15 years ago.

Yeah. I think it's probably, I think you could make the argument that this is the greatest achievement, long-form storytelling on American television. Yeah. I think it's a great argument. I, you know, what is it, 10 seasons of TV and a movie? 11 seasons of TV in a movie

Probably close to 70, 75 episodes What did Breaking Bad have five or six? Well, you know, that's the kind of thing They would know in the Breaking Bad And Better Call Saul, Insider. But we're too busy banging these Abigail Disney audio books here, you know? Kyah keep all this in.

What a day for Abigail. You were right. It was 11 seasons of television, of varying lengths. and a film. And the fact that they were able to squeeze all this in while they could still reasonably make Aaron Paul look like he was 20. Or have Gus Fring look like he was 10 years younger than he was when he was in Breaking Bad. Or bring Jonathan Banks back.

Or create another character like Kim Wexler and another character like Lala Salamanca and another character like Nacho Varga who could stand up to end. any of the Hall of Fame characters we met on Breaking Bad, that they were able to weave in not necessarily unanswered questions, but perhaps moments that we didn't get in the end of Breaking Bad, like what's life like for Marie, you know? And, you know, a crime against cinematography that Marie was not in color so that we couldn't get the classic purple pop that she, you know, whatever color palette was.

I think that, I think that's the most devastating thing of all. She probably had to give up, she probably's given up purple. Well, just because Hank was her purple? Like, that was her source of her. She was black now. I mean, I thought that was profound. But I also think the time machine thing is really important because in all the examples given within this show,

everything everyone says, to varying degrees, is about fixing stuff. Yeah. And that's essential to maybe it's all fictional characters, but it just seems like a recurring theme, particularly in this television moment, when characters in the face of cascading catastrophe often brought on by their own making are like, wait, wait, I can fix this. I can fix this. And no one, none of them, and I guess none of them being, I mean, Walter just kind of, yeah,

Walter too, they all play the game to a degree. And Chuck doesn't play the game, but he's reading the book. So at least he's entertaining the notion. None of them say, I would like to spend more time with people that meant something to me or that loved me or that I love. None of them. They're all like, I'll just fix it, so it'll be better now. Everything that Jimmy wants to do is about a shortcut.

He wants to get invest. he wants to, first of all, build a time machine, which is the kind of thing a kid says. He wants to simply make a ton of money really quickly for not doing anything by investing with Berkshire Hathaway the second Warren Buffett takes over. There's nothing about it that's like, I would have been a more serious law student,

or I would have listened to my brother, or I would have tried to leave Albuquerque and start somewhere on my own, if that's what was important to me, or left Albuquerque with Kim when I had the chance or something. it's all like what is the what's the angle and in a way

prison is a time machine you know because prison is a place where you're going to spend the rest of your life in this case not unlike the mall in Omaha and time is going to become a construct very different than the one it is on the outside for Gene or Jimmy or Saul or however

we're referring it and Mike's is almost religious he just wants to go back to a moment of original sin right yeah and then just let things play out clean. But, you know, the anti-TV answer to all their problems, which as, you know, as rapacious TV fans were glad they didn't choose, but Mike could have just processed the loss of his son and spent the rest of his life with his granddaughter, you know? Like, that's not glamorous. Maybe she wouldn't have had the same savings account, but she lost that anyway. You know what I mean? Like they all gambled to fix stuff. Oh, they were all just too. Like Chuck's thing, you know,

with his anger about his brother and all this stuff, like, they could. to hung out. I mean, it sounds trite to say it, and it wouldn't have created the drama, but that out, but because it's so expertly constructed, this giant, like, house of cards or lies that they all build to try to, you know, solve problems without dealing with them. Like, it makes it more painful to consider, especially now that we're at the end of it. The two ideas that I always go back to is what he says to Jeff when he confronts Jeff in, in Omaha, and he's just like, you just, you want what everybody wants, which is to be, to get in the game, you know?

And then the same thing that Kim's. said to him, which was that I didn't tell you because I was having too much fun when he's like, why didn't you tell me about Mike warning us about Lalo? And she was like, because I was having too much fun. It all ends in the dumpster. And I think that

the other thing I just really want to applaud this whole crew for is really running against something that I think is just taken over. So basically, like, I've been trying to think about this. And it's just that TV generally, actually this is almost a bigger idea, right? Like for years when we were growing up, the idea was that TV was a lesser art form

because it was cloying or commercial or sentimental, right? And the real art was in movies. And I don't disagree, considering a lot of the shows that we grew up with, which meant stuff to us, but not necessarily in profoundly artistic or aesthetic ways. It's been interesting to observe, even in this golden age,

when some of the best work being done for acting, writing, directing, cinematography, all of it is on the small screen. TV essentially still is a sentimentality machine, and that's because of it sprawl. We touched on this last week that the more time we spend with characters as an audience,

and the more time creators spend with characters as writers or as actors, you just kind of like them more, and you kind of root for them, just because you know them, which is true in people in real life too. And that allowed all of those other anti-heroes to have just a little bit of a, well, maybe.

Maybe Tony figured it out after the camera cut to black and the Journey song started playing. Maybe Don Draper, you know, did touch Nirvana and make a billion dollars spreading Coca-Cola around the world. Maybe we're going to walk away and leave you with that feel-good maybe. Movies end. And movies are plenty sentimental, but movies are always like, well, this is the time we're

spending with them and then that's it and allow you to have that definitive thing. I mean, obviously, there are sequels. I don't know if you guys have heard about that. I was also going to say I'm on page 190 of heat, too. So this is a broad statement. But I guess what I mean is, again, with their Abigail Disney philanthropy, Gilligan and Gould, like, took one for the entire medium in a way. And they were like, nope, we've done it the other way. We've seen everybody else do it the other way.

We understand why you want to do it the other way, but this has to be this way. Which is probably why, on some level, I'm processing this NPR in an NPR way. Like, I didn't get heated because it didn't give us the Con Air bus crash or the way. I don't think that we were given a Friday night lights, like, you know, the catharsis, and this is a good point. The catharsis is essentially Jimmy in prison for the rest of his life doing the finger guns at Kim, and those two being cool. They are now cool with each other again.

Yeah. And that was a great moment. And I do want to take a minute here to do something that we weirdly haven't done enough of over the course of the last few years of talking about this show so much, which is talk about Odin Kirk. Yes. We rarely do. Because it's weird. I think that the cult of Ray Sehorne is one that we both pay tithes to, and we're very much apart. We're signatory members of that religion blown away by Michael Mando's performance as Nacho.

I think you and I were both like just kind of fell in love with him as a performer and that character. There's been incredible Gus stuff, incredible Mike stuff. there was a lot of moments for Patrick Fabian over the course of this, especially towards the end of this, or the middle of this season, and the Tony Dalton comet was really amazing. But man, for the joking that we've done about Aaron Paul going back and Walter White

or, you know, I don't think we've talked enough about just how Ably and amazingly Odin Kirk handled both the time and the multiple personality. that he was essentially playing. To go from Jimmy, this con artist, as a young man in the beginning of Better Call Saul, through the early days of the Saul transformation,

into the gene transformation, also revisiting Saul as a Breaking Bad character and going back and playing some iconic scenes from Breaking Bad from a different angle. And in some ways, it's a very thankless role of those anti-hero moments. Like, there's not a lot of, of, I wouldn't say there's not a lot of highlight real scenes,

but I think it's one of the more generous leading man performances in so much as he is often seating the best parts of a scene or the best parts of an episode to another character. But they baked it in. He's a supporting character. I know. And then Jimmy McGill was a supporting character in his own family. But he's in like every shot.

Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. There was an awareness, I think, in how they frame that. But I'm so glad you said that because we could have gone another 30 minutes in this finale pot and never mentioned the actor who was the engine, which is insane. Yeah. It is an absolutely underappreciated, including by us, performance. It is an understated performance for the ages.

It is a generous performance for the ages. And there is such, it's still such a surprising performance because you don't build shows around performers with his particular charisma and gravity, which is to say he has them in space. I mean, he's a legendary performer and has been in different mediums for many, many, many, many, for decades. But what he was so amazing at as a comedian and on Mr. Show, and I mean, he was chameleonic, right?

What he communicated wasn't necessarily the charisma of a leading man or an anti-hero. It was a kind of window. into a kind of yawning, yearning humanity. Well, he was really good at playing American idiots. Like, that was always his, you know, that was always a really good thing that he did. This mix of like striving and ego and self-hatred,

like just a gaping pit of Sarlac into the American id, right? Like, that's in every sketch role he ever took on or wrote for himself or any of the things he wrote for Saturday Night Live or why he was probably the riskier choice to be Michael Scott in the office instead of the second choice and no disrespect to Steve Carell, but there's something, there's an interesting sliding doors if that had been him instead and what the part would have been. I don't think it would have run as long because I think that ultimately that that emotion that we're talking about that he carries with him does skew towards drama. And it took Breaking Bad and

Better Calls-Dal to reveal that, both to us and to himself. But yeah, I think, I mean, he led with that, he led with that emotion and that pit and that need to fill something. And that is a very interesting thing. It makes the show totally unique. It makes a performance unique. But it's made it slippery, not slipping, but slippery to talk about. Yeah, it's also interesting to think about this as, you know, you mentioned him being up for the office. I think, I can't remember who, but there were other people were reading for Don Draper.

There were other people reading for most of the roles that we love in TV. Don Draper was almost Thomas Jane. that's who the network wanted. Right. There is no show without Odin Kirk here. You know, I mean, they build it out of this supporting character from Breaking Bad, whose role expanded over the seasons, but stuck relatively close to the beats and the comic relief and the, sometimes the exposition that he was required to deliver.

And to reimagine that character, both as a leading man as the, and as the end as the anchor to an ensemble and as the nexus point for these two sides of the underworld and the legal world and to show how similar that they were. I just think it's such an amazing performance, especially in these last couple of episodes, but this episode specifically where he's Gene and then he's shorn of both Gene but isn't quite Saul anymore and isn't quite Jimmy anymore. He's somebody new as he's heading into prison. And I think, finally becomes somebody and becomes himself as he's baking bread and seeing Kim in jail. And he shoots his guns, but it's not the same guy. And maybe there is catharsis in that.

Maybe there is a bit of catharsis in that. And you should, in your right to flag it, it's another person that he's playing. He holds himself differently. He stands differently. They've lit him differently and his makeup is different. He looks more his age, which, by the way, the timeline of all this, that like, wait, Breaking Bad was 16 months. And then, you know, He's only in Omaha for two years ago. These guys came to, yeah. And then he's like, Kim walked in a month ago, and this whole like, you know, back and forth negotiating with the federal government

took four days. It was a little confusing. But anyway, that doesn't matter. What I wanted to say was it also speaks to the care and generosity and respect of the creators for the audience and for its own characters that one of my feelings as we were hurtling towards the end of this episode was, I just felt so bad for Kim again, not because she didn't own up to her own culpability, which I think was an important card to play in this season,

but that she really fell in love with and married a shithead, right? Like a real dirtbag, like really a terrible person. And I felt terrible for her. I don't know her, but I just felt, you know, I want to put... At the end of this, you felt that way? As we headed towards the finale, as we headed towards the finale of the finale, not the end of this episode, but as he was... skating towards his mint chocolate chip ice cream in the white collar thing.

I was like, I wanted to put my protect Kim at all cost t-shirt back on. And so what I loved about his confession was that he stood there shorn of all of the nonsense as I think on some level the man she kind of hoped that he was. Well, he was the manifestation of like Jimmy's kind of charm, Saul's slickness. And brains. Yeah, and kind of like played the AUS. say and the judge and you know he's got everybody dancing around in circles because he's he's the puppet master but at the end he stood up for her you know i think really she would have been fine

we'd already established that she was going to at least advise and do volunteer work and legal aid and and and you know those those docs would get reviewed under her watchful gaze again in the future and so that was fine it wasn't like a charity or it wasn't like she needed a man's whatever to make it on to make it in the world going forward but it was moving in a way that, and it was moving emotionally and also so structurally sound that he makes his confession and does a very unsaw-like thing and just takes the whole boat, you know,

and basically agrees that his life is over, at least his life as we knew it, his lives, all to be the person worthy of her respect at the end. That's the show we were watching, you know, and it allowed us to let Kim go, you know, which we're doing now too, I think, because I don't think we're getting the spin-off. Like, it worked.

And the end of his life allowed her life to maybe restart. And that's an incredibly difficult calculus to do in a script and an episode of a TV show, you know, and they did it. So you're not into Kim Wexler Prison Transport Bus Driver? Dude, if you light her like that, I'm into anything. That was what, like, maybe everybody, if you close your eyes, you have your own Sin City.

Clearly we know what Robert Rodriguez's Sin City movie was. I just saw mine, baby, and it's just her leaning against a prison wall with a Marlborough. So I'll take what I can get. We can wrap it up there. I mean, it's always funny to wrap up one of these shows. In some ways, it's kind of easier to talk about them in mid-flight than when you do get the totality of it. And I think it's going to be hard to kind of draw. I'll be interested to think what, to hear what you have to say, maybe when we get towards the end of the year and we're doing our best shows of the year.

if we get a chance to have Peter on again or maybe somebody from the cast on, you know, and discuss the legacy of this show because I do think I'm still processing their ability to draw from both series so adeptly in these last few episodes with these, you know, cuts to Breaking Bad, these moments from Breaking Bad, these pushing ahead, jumping back, showing Chuck, showing Walter. I think there's a lot still that I have to work through. but yeah, I was immensely satisfied with the ending this series.

I was too. I'm really impressed by it. I went back and I read my, and I reviewed the first few episodes for Grantland in February of 2015. I think the title of the piece is, relax, it's good. And it starts by being like, don't worry, it's good. And then I forgot that this is my move. Like, I tell you the show's good.

And then I'm like, the word spin-off derives from the ancient Latin for, Really, really relish in a lack of word count. An indulgent editor. And so, but it was interesting to read and remember that this is, the degree of difficulty for the show has always been higher than almost anything else. And, you know, both in terms of expectations, but also trying to do this triangulated, occasionally stakes free for some characters thing to please people. And it was always hard. And they acquitted themselves brilliantly. Like in the beginning of my review, I was like, I'm not sure if all these other things will add up to or whatever if it'll work, but boy, is it entertaining? And that kind of matters more. And I just feel like they had a compass even when we wavered. You know, they did over this timeline, I think, satisfy every version of a Breaking Bad or a better call Saul thing. Oh, absolutely. You know, and they did it with good humor and style and talent and grace. And that's a remarkable thing. So I don't want us to get embroiled in an argument over which show was better.

because I think fundamentally my feeling is Breaking Bad is a Pantheon show for a reason but this may have been the most difficult show Yeah but at the same time now I'm kind of starting I start to think of them almost as complimentary statements of storytelling I mean it was interesting going back to Breaking Bad and watching the Granite State episode just to see the other side of the Walter scene and some of the names

Morrill Wally Beckett. Some of the people who I was like, oh, I forgot that all these people who worked on Breaking Bad who didn't, you know, maybe wind up on Saul or weren't part of the Saul creative team towards the end. So it's not like it's the exact same people

for the last 15 years without any changes. But, man, I mean, when you think about it, these two shows are very, very, very complimentary and very much a complete and total statement about a lot of different things

pulled from a narrative pool that you wouldn't necessarily think you could get 11 seasons and television out of. Yeah, and I think that ultimately, I'm glad you got us to that point, because I think that's probably the best way to think about this going forward, which is that you don't have to watch Better Call Saul

to watch Breaking Bad, and there are many people, I'm sure, who haven't or haven't yet. But if you have the option, why wouldn't you? Yeah. Because it is in conversation with it in a way that is really special and unique and flies right in the face of my, you know,

bold pronouncements about what movies are and what TVs are, TV is blah, blah, blah, because you can do this in this medium. It reminds me of, in pod listeners, at least some of them will appreciate this, that, like, you know, you and I think Lonesome Dove is a masterpiece, maybe the greatest American novel

or at least the greatest American novel of our lifetime. You don't need to read Streets of Laredo that sequel. But when you do, you were rewarded with a richness and a depth and a feeling. It's, you know, it's fun to have the night out drinking. I would not call streets of Laredo fun.

Yeah. You know what I mean? But the hangover is part of it. I know. And you understand the totality of the experience, I think, better if you take in both sides of the coin. And so the fact that they understood that too, ultimately. You know, it's crazy that the one who got punished here, out of all the shows, hours of television we just watched, is Jimmy McGill. Now, other people died.

That's a terrible punishment. But the one who, like, the government got and was like, that's it. The only person who actually was in jail. case. Yeah. Crazy. Well, we wrap up our Albuquerque podcasting unless we have a special guest in the next couple of weeks. Andy, it was great talking to you. The watch will be back on Thursday discussing a truly extraordinary episode of industry, episode three, which aired tonight as well. So we're going to chat about that. And then you'll also have some other stuff going on on Thursday's pod. I can't wait to

find out if there's the next 10 great bluey episodes or whatever it is. I've already, Kaya has a whole of shit about it. If you're like, I have Michael Mann on to discuss this book, I will quit. I have Michael Mann on to discuss Bluey Season 3. And I did already record my Ken Byrne Civil Warlike monologue about my trip to Legoland this weekend. So you better come back soon. That's all I'm saying. You better come back to. We'll talk to you guys soon. Thursday, check us out. And we'll be back next Monday as well. We're keeping the content mill. It's turning. So thank you to Kai and Mullen for producing. And thanks to everybody involved. with Better Call Saul for making an awesome show.

Yeah, good job. Good job by you guys. Forget Brancki. Good job by you guys in Albuquerque. We're very grateful. Thank you.