The Watch - The Return of ‘Better Call Saul’, Plus, the Season 3 Finale of ‘The Boys’

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

Chris and Andy return to share their thoughts on the most recent episode of ‘Better Call Saul’. They pay homage to the show's incredible writing (2:00), wonder what the fallout of this episode will be (15:00), and discuss whether a flash-forward is imminent (35:00). Finally, they share their thoughts on the Season 3 finale of ‘The Boys' (40:00). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Associate Producer: Mike Wargon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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 from his podcasting Super Lab. It's Andy Greenwald. Chris, we've podcasted a lot over the years, especially as we are tonight. Mm-hmm.

Podcasting immediately after a television show airs. And we've podcasted in these circumstances with a lot of different emotions coursing through our veins. We've been excited. We've been overjoyed. We've been incredulous, which was the case with the last season of Game of Thrones. I don't know if I've ever felt this level of electric relief before. I don't know if I've ever felt this sensation that I'm feeling right now. So Andy is, of course, referring to the return of Better Call Saul, which we are both thrilled to be discussing with you today. we're going to get into that episode, obviously, starting right now. If you have not watched Better Call Saul, you should stop listening.

This is going to be a spoiler-rific discussion of the latest episode. The return, it was obviously a little bit of like a semantic difference between is this a second half of the season, or is this just a continuation and we weren't supposed to look at the last episode that we saw as some sort of mid-season finale? Andy and I, we both, I think, had varying degrees of, We're going to do the boys later, right, too. And we're going to do the boys later. We'll talk about the season finale of the boys later in the podcast.

But we wanted to get right into Saul and we want to talk about it. And when we talked about the previous episode, which ended with Howard's death, I think that we were a little bit like you, I mean, I think you specifically felt like a little letdown, whereas I was just like, I'm very curious to see where this goes. And we got a little bit in our heads about, is this a sufficient kind of like, not a cliffhanger, but like structurally, this doesn't feel right with the season split in two. And now

here we are and we're back. And this is a podcast about accountability. Yeah. We've always said that. So, always. I want you to be accountable. Chris, the words Mia Culpa get thrown around a lot here in the Roman Senate. Maybe not enough.

Definitely not on the internet. Mia Maxima Culpa, I would say. Look, I I never should have doubted these guys. You know, I mean, this was an incredible episode of television on a lot of levels. But, I mean, I just want to be here just a guy with a microphone on a Zoom connection,

even though we are roughly within walking distance of one another. And just be present. That's right. I wouldn't attempt to walk. And just be really honest about the fact that I don't know why I don't know why I doubted the ability of some of the greatest television writers and plot sculptors in a generation, if not of all time, doubted their ability to have a sense of the story they were telling on a show that has been designed at every turn to their specifications. Do you know what I mean?

I do know what you mean. We like to talk about, and this is something that we've said before, but I always feel like it's worth stating again. Vince Gilligan and his crew, many of whom are on Better Call Saul as well, received an enormous amount of praise, all of it is deserved. But I think the praise that they would push back on for Breaking Bad was the idea that they were mini Heisenbergs crafting the perfect recipe from Jump, right? That they, the reality of Breaking Bad was a lot more Jesse Pinkman. Like skin of your teeth, like just pulling it out, making it up as you go along and writing themselves into corners and figuring out cool ways to get out of those corners. Better Call Saul, both both the in conception, in design, and in, honestly, in stature, because AMC was like,

whatever you want to do, is much more like Burner in the Super Lab. Like, they could tell, they didn't intend for it to go six plus seasons and all this. They're on the record. But they have the ability to plan this stuff in advance. And so if me, the aforementioned Schmoe with a microphone, can sit here a couple weeks ago and be like, I think they ran out a story. That was perhaps an elevated temperature take. The thing about this episode, and we're going to get into the details and the specifics

because that's always where, you know, the true art comes from is how they actually execute, no pun intended on this stuff. But more than anything else, I was like, oh, they absolutely have a much firmer handle on how much story is left and how to allocate it than I realized. They saw the end of the roads for certain plot lines and characters, and they pumped the gas and took those speed bumps like Jesse Pinkman in the last scene of El Camino. And I love it for it. Here's the thing.

Two things can be true at once. And I think that what you saw over the course of this season was the chaos and the genius, sort of the chaos and the precision of this show. And sometimes those two things can be the same thing. Yeah. The previous episode was called plan and execution. These guys might just be guys with a whiteboard in Albuquerque.

I mean, guys like, you know, just generally, not all men. They might just have a whiteboard in Albuquerque and just be dialing stuff up and seeing what works and seeing what doesn't. but it's not like they haven't been, they don't have a blueprint for what they're doing, and it's not like they don't have a very specific kind of story that they're telling in a very specific kind of way. And I think what you were sort of really, like,

reacting to the last time we spoke, and to some extent I did as well, was the reality that we know Lala is not in Breaking Bad, that we know that the Salamanca's are all gone. And him being the big bad and the adversary, and more than anything, the plot engine for the rest of the season. Now, it's not like Andy and I are like dying to have some Alexander Paine

Reverey in Nebraska with Gene. You know, it's not like we were like in a rush to get out of Albuquerque or in any kind of, like, tell the story you want to tell. But I think that as Lalo became just this almost superhuman adversary, scaling walls and speaking German and all this stuff, it became kind of like, How can you make a DeiSX Mac and a character that we know is actually quite vulnerable because he's not in the subsequent series? And I think that we were getting a little hung up on that.

Now, I will also say, that Better Call Saul was airing at a time when there was also like 150 other TV shows on. And I think maybe there was a little bit of, we were a little gamey. And to watch it now with a little bit more breathing room and just to see like, oh, my God, masters are at work. It's pretty amazing. I still hope we get a chance to talk to Peter Gould about it because one of the things that I think must be fun is to get, I think it would, I imagine their process, well, I'm sure as frustrating as any creative process can be, I imagine there's a lot of fun in it because I think they are rational and logical about decision making in a way that Gus Fring would be proud of in the sense that if you take Lalo, who has become not just Deus ex Machina, but like literally as empowered as a deus, you know what I mean? Like, he can do anything.

He could scale, jump across cliffs. Obviously, an aspiring documentary filmmaker as well. Oh, my God. I mean, he invented the Born films. You know what I mean? I didn't realize this, but Paul Greengrass's whole shit, he owes to that Lost Donald audio tape. He, I think they probably ran the numbers.

Well, like, who is an adversary for him? What can he actually, who can he stand toe to toe with? And it's certainly not Saul and Kim who are still basically normies. And in fact, Saul is, you know, someone who gets out of scrapes with his brain in the series. He does not become a superpowered macho action hero, except, I guess, in that film, nobody, which is not canon. Mike, yes, but we also know Mike's fate, you know.

So I just really admire the fact that they were like, well, what's the, not how much more can we extract from this phenomenal character, but what's the best way to go? And I think they made a decision that, you know, I'm sure there were moments in the writer's room where they were like, okay, is this weighted correctly? There's still, I don't know, how many are left in this season? Four? Five? I believe five. Five whole episodes left. Now without Lalo, much like the conversation they had when they had, I don't know, 11 left without Nacho, right? Yeah. But 10 times out of 10, now that it's done, it's easy for me to say this. I had nothing to do with the decision making, but this is what I want from it. I want the best possible full expression story, which this episode gave us. I mean,

if you dilute the action of this episode, like other shows have done in their final seasons and stretch it out over three hours, you know, there's a cliffhanger. The episode ends when Lalo guns down Gus's henchman. And then we have a whole other hour of them talking before the, that's less than. That's not as good as this. And it felt just, oh boy, it was really thrilling. to both watch the scenes and realize they're going for it. Do you think I should do a little bit of a recap just for listeners? I mean, obviously people have just watched the episode. Yeah, let's talk about the episode.

But these were the broad thoughts of just like two people who have loved the show and have consistently, and I feel like we should be honest about it. At times, we've struggled with watching it correctly. You know, like the rhythms of it week to week have sometimes confounded us in ways that other shows have not. I don't think you can apologize for the fact that this is a fairly, unique in its both its conception and its success, sister show to one of the most critically lauded and beloved shows of all time. And that is often the prism through which you're going to view it.

And as we got closer to the end, I think that the specter of Breaking Bad, both in the rumored cameos and in how will it connect and will it go past Breaking Bad? And what will that going past Breaking Bad tell us about what happened to people after Walt dies, etc. I think that that's natural to kind of start to like get a little bit. of, like, you know, you're in a little bit of a hall of mirrors with the past and with the future. So let's just run through what happened. The episode was called Point and Shoot, obviously, a fun allusion to Lalo's directorial, never-to-be-seen directorial debut, which was his video letter to Donald Audio.

But who knows, maybe that tape is still out there. I think it was the inspiration for Cloverfield. Like, I really feel like, because remember, what year are we in? We're like in 2003 or four? It's post-blayer, though. You know, I mean, like, maybe... Do you think Lalo does a lot of found footage? Basically, what happens is Saul and Kim are held hostages by Lalo in the moments after Lalo's assassinated Howard.

Lalo wants Saul to go kill Gus and provide photo documentation of the murder. Saul, and I think that there is a little bit of ambiguity here, and I can't wait to talk to you about this moment, but in hopes of saving Kim, negotiates for Kim to go instead of him to go kill Gus. Now, that moment I thought was as thrilling as the last final shootout was watching these two lawyers try to lawyer their ways in and out of a situation and try to deduce what they wanted out of it. You know, Kim gets, as far as pulling a piece

at Gus's doorstep, but is subdued. Meanwhile, Lalo and Saul have a brief interrogation, but mostly Lalo is using Kim or whoever he was going to send as bait to draw people away from the factory where the super lab, where he suspects the super lab is hidden. Kim confesses to Mike about what you was sent there to do.

Mike sends guys to Saul's condo, to rescue Saul and to also try to catch Lalo. Lalo breaks in. Gus follows shortly after to the factory with a smaller, yeah, to the lab with a smaller group of bodyguards. Lalo kills them and begins filming Gus demanding that he show him the lab. After being shot in the bulletproof vest,

Gus acquieses. And they do some saber rattling back and forth verbally. Gus threatens Lolo, buying himself a little bit of time because Lalo seems a little bit like this guy, you know, at the very last moment still talking shit. And Gus has a plan. Gus has hidden a piece. You may have seen people remember from a couple episodes ago.

He pulled out a gun and put it in a piece of like, I don't know, like a tunnel in there in the super lab. I guess expecting some kind of showdown to eventually occur there. And he kicks out a light socket. grabs his gun, there's a shootout, he kills Lalo, who smiles as his last gesture. He gives out this big, big, big, Cheshire Cat smile.

Gus has been shot, but seems to be okay. He's getting medical attention. Meanwhile, Mike goes back to Saul and Kim and says, just go about your daily lives, like nothing happened, and he removes Howard's corpse, is going to stage a suicide somewhere far away from Albuquerque, and in reality,

buries Howard, with Lolo. And one of the more chilling shots of either series, which is this overhead kind of unmoved God shot of Lalo and Howard being buried

in the bottom of the super lab. And that's it. It's a very tight, taught thriller-esque episode. There's not a lot of B-plot going on and you get to the end. And I don't know, I felt that the actual,

that Nacho's death actually hit me at the end of this episode. and the unintended cost of doing business, I guess is the way I kind of was looking at what was happening because there was a moment at the very end of the episode where Mike just kind of very flatly and without a ton of judgment says,

this is kind of what you guys were doing to Howard anyway. And I think that that is an idea that will be reckoned with in the coming episodes without having seen any of them. I think that that is something that is going to be how do Kim and Saul feel about their culpability and what initially, I'm sure, felt like we're just being attacked. We're somehow caught up in this crazy fight in a cartel.

How could this happen to us? But in reality, these little ripples coming off of their behavior, off of their actions, I think, is kind of like the central idea of the show. First of all, Chris, exemplary recap. Thank you, man. You only missed one thing that I thought was crucial to the episode. Yeah. Which is from his sickbed where he's being attended to sort of triage while waiting for a Mexican doctor to cross the border to attend illicitly to his gunshot wounds,

Gus deals with the management vacuum at Poeos Hermannos. And, you know, above all, what I respect is professionalism. You know, and I'd like to think in that moment, my thoughts, you know, I was, I had a lot of adrenaline. It was a great episode. but my thoughts did turn to you and just your masterful, like, responsible way of scheduling this podcast, you know, when people are,

when I'm not available, or if you yourself are out of, out of pocket. You know what I mean? I feel like you have that same kind of, like, cool analytical mind and the Rolodex of like who you trust to take over. And that person is Sean,

it's not me. I was going to say, do you think you're as responsive? Yeah, no, it's not me. But I respect that. Sorry, who's this again? I'm sorry, I thought I blocked this number. Yeah, I think you've, let's start up at the beginning, but I'm glad that you flagged the shadow of their culpability because I thought that scene in particular was the strongest of the episode, an episode that had no shortage of strong scenes.

But that Mike Kim saw scene in the way of his shot, and we should give credit to Vince Gilligan for directing the shit out of this episode, as he does when he flies in, he takes that sweet hour and 20 minute flight from L.A. when he lands, the energy changes and Albuquer, everybody knows. Is just posted up in ABQ for production? No, I don't think so. He's not, I mean, I'm sure he's there a bunch, but they're in production for a long time,

and this is Peter Gould's thing, and Melissa Bernstein is there producing. I think Vince comes and goes, but when he's there to direct, I know from running, from running into people at the airport, like when he's there to direct, he settles in and he gets it done.

Right. But he doesn't settle in the way Jonathan Banks does, which we have talked about in the show. just wearing, just flowing floral shirts and taking selfies with people. So we need to come back to that in that scene. But, yeah, I think that it's worth, there's something about the show that is so thoughtful. And again, I do apologize for not considering this, that the show is remembered and talked about, the show meaning the enterprise, all the Albuquerque stuff, the Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.

people cite and celebrate the moments of action or violence or intensity when things finally popped off or finally blew over or, you know, Hank found out or Hank died, right? I'm people. Yeah. Box cutter is still my favorite breaking bad episode. But the show has always been absolutely in a class by itself when it comes to showing the consequences in the fallout. It's also why I like box gutter. is because of the breakfast scene afterwards. Yeah. Exactly.

And so I don't know why I was doubtful that at the very least they wouldn't nail the opening five minutes of this episode, you know, after a few weeks. It was, it was incredibly horrific, you know. And Ray Seahorn is, again, just proving, I don't think there's like a limit to what she can do within this character, maybe just acting in general. These are not the brief for what she had to do in this episode was not in the audition side seven years. ago, do you know what I mean? Nor was it necessarily like in the tape that Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould watched of her on, was she on Whitney? She's not Whitney, yeah.

Yeah. So I don't feel like that was necessarily known as being in her skill set, but it's just incredible. But so let's fast forward the tape a little bit, though, to talk about the moment you said that had some ambiguity. So the way that I watched that moment when Saul is like, send her, don't send me, right? Yes. Was he wanted her to escape, right? that he assumed he was done.

He's like, whoever stays here is getting killed. There's no world in which Lalo is like, great, you guys did the job. Now you can go about your lives. They're dead. But do you think that in his face, was he saying go? Like just drive? Absolutely. Leave.

I was. Now, the first time I watched it through, I thought so too. I was like, is he being a coward? Does he not want to be a murderer? Does he think that Kim somehow will get away with this? But as that scene goes on and as he looks at her, her reaction, I don't think ever, ever considers that. Her reaction is much more like,

you can't let me go. And it's actually, it winds up being perfect because Kim has had this interaction with Mike. You know what I mean? She knows that Lalo might be out there. So she almost is like prepared for what's going to be there at the door, although she does pull the piece. But I felt like what he was doing was,

whoever stays here instead. If you leave, you have a shot. you know, you could at least dogfight your way out of this. But if it's just you and Lalo, there is no way he's like, thank you for filling your end of the bargain. And I will be letting you go now. Side note, you and I have some beautiful oceanfront property on our Kim and Jimmy really married in any tangible way, island.

This episode was really helpful in that regard because when stripped to the rawest emotions, she loves him. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, that was never really in question because of the things that they have done, but they had a kind of, like, legalese brinksmanship to their relationship that was part of the playfulness. And stripped of that, and again, this is performance base, but she would do this for him, you know, in a tangible and gutting way.

So I thought that was remarkable. I guess the next piece of it that's worthy of discussion is, and again, let me just say, when you have two supervillains facing off, nitpicking goes, out the window. Like what you want from, you know, Lex Luthor and Magneto, sorry, nerds, I know those are two different universes, like going head to head, is you want them to just constantly be one-uping one another. That's the goal of it, right? So this was a chess match between Lalo and Gus, a chess match predicated on not just knowing your opponent's next move, but the next three moves. Because to talk it through and tell me if I'm, if I, if I miss something here.

Lalo goes there with this plan to send Jimmy or send Saul, I should say now, to assassinate Gus. He knows the plan will fail. He also knows Saul will send Kim. Yes. He knows that sending Kim. You think that he was like, he's going to make her go. Okay. The reason I say that is because what seems to trigger Gus's reaction is he says, why would he send her?

that seems to be the thing, almost as if if Saul had been at the door, Gus would have listened to Mike. Maybe I'm over-waiting that moment, but the attention paid to Gus saying, why did he send her? That seemed to be the impetus for him then leaving the house.

Yeah. The best part about this episode to me was the way in which the writers would present a plan that a character had, and then literally, tear that plan and half in front of the character. So now maybe some of that was intentional. Maybe Lala always intended for Kim to go.

Maybe he had no intention of coming back to Saul's after he left. Maybe he did or didn't think that they would be successful in killing Gus. And maybe he thought, well, there's like a 50% chance or a 30% chance that they actually get a shot off or something like that. There's all these like kind of things. But ultimately what he wanted was he initially said for Saul to go, they tear that up and say, no, Kim should go. then Kim goes, and she's going to kill Gus,

because thinking that might be the only way to save Saul, and that gets torn up by the fact that that is like one of those heavily guarded houses in the history of New Mexico. And he's not even in that house. And he's not even in that house because he's bought out half the block. Then it turns out that the Gus plan of you send some people over here and some people over there is exactly what Lalo wanted. So that gets torn up for Gus.

And he shows up undermanned at the super level. lab. But Lalo's plan to entrap Gus and get this, apparently, I got to say I need more trust among the Salamanca men. You know, I think that there just seems was Aladio Salamanka or is he just

kind of tangentially related to that family? Boy, good question. It doesn't even matter. There's a lot of there's Bolsa. I don't have the org chart. My point is that it just seems like something that like at a certain point there needs to be like a discussion where it's like take my word for it. I think that

Lalo being like, I have to go to Germany. Yeah. Seduce a widow, break a guy's leg in half, come back from Germany, and then set up the most ornate plan ever to surveil this place from a sewer and then kidnap a man. Okay. And they can watch a Judy Holiday movie and then get to this place all to film Gus admitting that this is his lab.

I was like, just, why don't you guys just take this one on credit? Okay. You know what? You make a good point. Let me walk back my previous assertion that everything about this was planned in Lalo's diabolical mind. Because when he does have Gus there at camera point, he does say something like, we don't actually now have the time that I had hoped to have, which suggests that he was going to film the lab, unmolested, have the proof. And then, you know, Gus can't hide from Lalo, but he can't hide from his bosses that still think he's working for them. So then they could scoop him up with the proof and torture him by the Alberica for hours, you know, to their heart's content.

So I think I may have been wrong about that, although they clearly pivot and anticipate moves like Queen's Gambit-level champions. That is a much better, even a more elegant way of looking at it than the way I'm saying with tearing pieces of paper up. It is chess moves. And it's who planned further in advance? And it's Gus, because it's always Gus. And Gus had a gun somehow feeling like one day I'm going to be in this place and I'm going to need a piece. And I think this is also the time when we can like get a little meta with it and say that, that kind of anticipatory

storytelling is the hallmark of the Gould and Gilligan Enterprise and the thing that I love so much about them and this has served them well across their many shows and it serves them especially well in a prequel show that is robbed of some natural stakes

as we have talked about at infinita. But like is in these moments when they fundamentally understand that audiences actually don't always want to be surprised. They want to be led up to the doorstep. In this case, I mean that literally, and be delighted. And it's kind of a fine distinction to make.

But when Kim went to the door of Gus's house, we knew from our history with the show, she's not going to succeed in killing Gus. Gus isn't even in the house. It probably won't be Gus. What we don't know is how this plan is going to be undone and then what will happen. That said, the way that is filmed, the way that it is scored, heightens tension in a pretty delicious way, right? We're enjoying it. And I had the same impulse, sorry, same reaction when Gus and his skeleton crew get to the laundry and he looks at the fan and it's creaking. And then you see

the laundry bag swinging. We already know Lalo's there. But isn't that fun? Yeah. You know, isn't that more fun than being totally blindsided? That's that's master, that's master class level stuff to know that. You don't, not everything is a surprise. It just has to deliver. This death when we got to the end of the episode when Gus kills Lalo and you know Lalo is able to fend off an entire sort of special commando unit coming into his house

so there has already been this created idea that you know we got Thanos on our hands in some so some extent and he gets taken down at a pretty albeit elaborate but somewhat more normal way my reaction wasn't like

oh yes finally like this really bad guy got killed or I'm almost sad because this character has been taken out of the show. I felt that way a little bit more about Nacho, to be honest. It's that this was essential, and it was essential that it happened now. And this goes back to what you were saying about how could we ever have doubted these guys. I remember on bad, there were certain character deaths that occurred that felt sudden and then in retrospect very earned and very set up.

but there are always those deaths, the reason why they mattered was because of what it did to the people afterwards. So the one, for example, that I always think about is also in a similar era of Breaking Bad to Better Call Saul where I think maybe some people were like,

well, they just keep coming up with super bad guys for these dudes to be faced off with is when Todd kills that kid. And what happens after that, aside from establishing Todd as a true psychopath, is it just breaks Jesse, right? Like, it breaks the character going forward and puts him in a completely different headspace,

even though he's already gone through all this trauma. And I feel like that's what the Lalo death will do to Saul's characters. Is this will be this thing that they don't recover from, even though we see Saul in Breaking Bad with the suits and the snappy dialogue and everything else, something's going to happen to these two people because of Howard and because of Lolo,

that I think will make those deaths feel so significant, more than they even feel now. Well, I feel, I don't know where you are with this, it's a temperature check moment, but like I now feel satisfied with the answer to one of the show's central questions, you know, at least from like a Reddeter perspective, which is how significant were Ignacio and Lalo

to Saul Goodman that years later, when he is, you know, black-bagged and brought out to the desert, that's what he assumed. That's the bill he assumes is coming to. Yeah. You know, there's the first things he said in his first appearance when Walt and Jesse and has a bit of foreshadowing when Lalo has him tied up. He basically says the same thing he'll eventually say to Walt and Jesse in the desert.

He was like, Ignacio, like, he's basically trying to throw Lalo or Nacho under the bus in a way. No, absolutely. And that's a sense that's added something now to the character going forward, whether it's in the span of Breaking Bad, should people, you know, the lunatics who are watching the series chronologically or at least rewatching, or Nebraska, that's just like he has always, since this moment anyway, he has lived his life assuming a Salamanca, a something is coming for him and is going to finish the job. I do want to do a quick side note here and just talk about Giancarlo Esposito for a moment. You know, I feel like I rarely talk about him on this show because he's just so in the pocket. You know, this is a character that was revelatory when he created it 10 years ago. Nice to have him back in it. But I've never been like, I have not, we have not talked about it very much.

You know, it's just like a nice, dependable presence. This was a, in a very gust-fring way, a reminder that Giancarlo Esposito is a Hall of Fame on-screen shit-talker. I recently, I think I talked about this. Pimp. Yeah. Yeah. Like I recently watched, rewatch the Jim Jarmish movie Night on Earth,

which I highly recommend to people. Even if you only watch the first segment, which features John Carlos Spizito very young and a very young Rosie Perez. And he's so electric. And it's so funny, you know, that this actor who was like the third rail of the subway, in terms of how he approached performances for so many decades,

has now become more famous than he ever was for stillness, for just a deep sense of calm and quiet. Yeah. But so he was still still. in this moment, but you know that he just threw, he threw a little New York into it in a way that I really welcomed. And I was glad they let him switch back in English just so, just so he would just be able to just do a couple more rotations.

Did anything about Lalo being like, well, I'm surely going to kill you? So what, what bother is it if you want to just talk some trash for a while? I mean, if the character hadn't been behaving that way for two or three years, then maybe it would have been a problem. but there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary in that. He has entered into every situation, even incredibly long odds situations acting like he's ultimately going to win. So, no, I didn't mind that.

And look, I just say it again like that. It's such a tool in the showrunner's arsenal of time and expectation. And I did not think that they would take Lalo off the board in the first episode back. I didn't. And then let's put a pin in one thing, which is what this means going forward, And just if you don't mind, we just take a moment to talk about that mic scene at the end, which was, to me, a Hall of Fame,

Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul scene. Me too. I thought I agree. The way that it was filmed, the way that it was lit, the way you were aware of what was going on in the living room in the same way the characters were, in the way that it played to Jonathan Banks' strengths

as the guy who's going to explain to you and bend reality into how it's going to be. Yeah, and he's going to be this tree bark, like this tree stump, who is, moved by everything that's going on around him. But again, you know, the cumulative nature of the show, which is its true genius, when he puts on the gloves to pat down Howard's corpse, there's a visceral feeling of disgust

that ripples from Jonathan Banks' performance to the audience at this point. Because we know this isn't how he dreamed any of this would go, you know, that he was a cop, that he lost his, that all of these things. And so every act, he's able to do all of this. He's the best there is at it. But whatever, you know, threads of humanity are left, they are getting tested each time. But, yeah, I was just thinking about, like,

just Odenkirk and Seahorn. Okay, so Chris, here's a Daddy's Nilean thing that no one's expecting here. But when your kid is like one or two, and you're like, your friends also have one or two-year-olds, and you're like, let's get them together. They'll be friends. They're two.

And then the kids sit on opposite ends of the room playing with the same toy. Right. And then you worry that your kid is antisocial, and you're like, no, no, it's called parallel play. Like, they're not actually ready to socialize yet. But somehow they are playing together, even by being in the same room, and that is having some sort of additive effect to their experience in their life. Sehorne and Odenk are parallel playing this scene. They are completely siloed in their own super fucked up traumatized headspace, but they're absolutely in harmony. You know, it's just, it's beautiful to watch with, and then again, the way they're, it's framed with Jonathan Banks standing there and with all the gnarly shit that's happening

the other room and the camera peeks out with the characters every so often. That's what the show does best. And then he drops that hammer blow of we're only finishing the script you guys started. Right. You just didn't know what movie you were writing. Right.

Yeah. And that this was always sort of like the direction this was going in the first place. Because in some ways, you know, we've had, what was it? How long was it? Were we off for like a month between Saul episodes? Like five weeks?

track of time, but yes. So we've had it quite a while to sit there with Howard's death, but I think the fact that we didn't get Saul and Kim's sitting with it, they're going to sit with this next week. And I guess we could segue into what we think is going to come next. You know, this isn't Game of Thrones where you're breaking down Brand's dream, but we know that they've been toying around with this black and white flash forward of Gene now in Nebraska and feeling like the walls are closing.

around him. We don't know what happens to Kim, though. We know she has some Nebraska connections. Lalo's gone. Natcho's gone. There's not really a lot else for them to do in this current Albuquerque moment, right? Like, I wonder whether or not we're going to jump ahead. Yeah, that was my takeaway, and you can, you know, we, you and I are clearly now very comfortable being wrong about this show. So what's one more log for the fire. I finished this episode and felt we got one more. We got one more in Albuquerque. Yeah.

And then we're jumping into the black and white future. That feels right to me. But again, whatever they do is going to be right. I don't presume to know more than them. But yeah, in terms of where else this can go, I think certainly the Mike Gus storylines are settled now into the world that we saw. We also know, I don't want to spoil. I imagine people listening.

No, I mean, we don't know when this is going to happen, but it's been reported that the last significant cameo from Breaking Bad is coming this season, right? I feel like that's been reported. So without saying who, you could probably guess, my guess is that's next week, unless it's in some sort of, you know, across time thing that happens later in the season.

Or some sort of like, you know, a vision of something that happened or, you know, yeah, right. So, and I got to say, I'm just really excited about it. there aren't many shows that get to become new shows, but still carry the emotional DNA going forward. I'll say the other thing that fits into this narrative that I think you and I are both mostly in agreement about is that my senses that Kim is alive coming out of Albuquerque,

but where and how? And is she waiting at home? And that's why Jean is worried about his ride home from the Sinabon, or is he there to find her? We don't, has she found him? Is she the queen of the south living in Mexico? We don't know. Yeah.

We don't know. That story, that is the story of the show, I feel like. You know, the other stuff has now either fallen away or been gunned away. And I'm happy for that. I think that's just, that makes sense. I guess if I had to be succinct about it, I would say that Lala's death now makes me feel like not only are they ending Better Call Saul, but they are in some ways ending Breaking Bad again. And that's pretty momentous, you know, like it's.

Meaning that whatever comes next will break the mold again in a different way. finally get us out of that Albuquerque? I think it'll inevitably make us feel somewhat differently about that. Like, I think El Camino was, you know, an interesting experiment both in feature-length storytelling for Jesse, and it was largely a thriller action movie. And while it had some making amends or some like coming to terms with what had happened on the show, felt like a little bit more of a, wouldn't it be cool to make another one of these or to do something or I always wondered what happened to Jesse the next day?

I feel like in some ways, getting into the further future past Breaking Bad allows us to kind of like see what happened on Breaking Bad in a different way, you know, and to understand it in a different way. I agree with that and I look forward to it because one thing where the we know what happens next aspect of the series helps is and the point that you were mentioning, which is what happened to Howard and, you know, by extension, the Hololo events will weigh heavily. on Kim and Saul going forward. Well, we know how it weighs on Saul. Not much. I mean, maybe a little bit, but he's able to compartmentalize his way right past this one

into the most success of his entire existence. I was rewatching some Saul breaking bad scenes the other day just for fun. And it was like, there was one where he explains money laundering to Jesse at the nail salon. And Jesse's just like, you know,

incredulous about this. But like, that is not a haunted man. Like, now maybe you can, you know, retrocast that. is like he's like you said, compartmentalizing or whatever, but it'll be very interesting to watch these two sort of behavioral arcs kind of match up and lay the pieces of paper over one another. I mean, it's never going to work totally and lay on top of it because there's no, no universe where Bob Oden Kirk was like, tell me some more haunted backstory for this guy.

I mean, when he got on set, that was not the case. But the black and white future gives us a chance to see what a reckoning might really look like. We get to have all of it at once, which I think is. is hopefully the way, you know, considering how it may or may not shake out, but I think that may ultimately be the triumph of the show. I'm excited for it. I just, you guys did it. Good job.

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limited time offer. Let's talk about the boys. Yeah, season finale. Okay. I'm going to ask you a question that I don't really think you can answer fully just because I don't, I mean, I've never read the boys' comics.

I don't know how much time you spent with it. None. By all accounts, and this obviously is spoilers for the end of season three for boys going forward, by all accounts, so this deviated somewhat from canon, you know, from boys' canon, especially in regards to soldier boy being homelander's test tube father. And that obviously brought in an extra layer to all the Ryan stuff at the end. Could you tell it all?

did it feel at all different than maybe some of the stuff that had come before it knowing that Eric Kripke and the people who make the boys, I'm sure they knew that they were going to do this. It sounds like around

middle of writing season three, they were like, this would be interesting to add this. I hear your point, and I don't actually know what the canon is in this case, but I'm going to answer your question

with a different question, which is a question that they must ask themselves in the boys' writers room all the time, which is how do we get away with this and keep this going? Now, that sounds cynical. They are not cynical. They're doing a great job making one of my favorite shows on the air.

But what I mean is, how many more seasons can we have Butcher and Homelander walk into a very small room and have them both walk out of it? How can we make Homelander at once the most loathsome and evil person on the planet? and also somehow maintain some shred of pathos or have some audience empathy in him to keep him going. And to me, those are the questions that get us to a place of fathers and sons and complicated emotional, literally blood ties. you know, because again, I love the show for the fun of it and the ideas of it and the sort of, you know, cultural, pop cultural, real world skitching that it does in really smart. I think actually pretty, especially this season, pretty sneaky Trojan horsey kind of ways. I don't watch it to do the Carrie Matheson crazy string wall of like nine people walk into a vault studio.

and immediately change who they're punching. You know what I mean? Like I couldn't talk you through every single character's shifting loyalties in that last battle. It was wild to me. And again, I was impressed because suddenly they lined themselves up in a way where everybody walked away from it alive. Sure. You know, that was a choice and I think ultimately a successful one. But that's my answer to your question.

I think that they are doing a really remarkable job of something that is sort of hard to articulate and is ultimately really challenging, which is at the root of all these comic book stories, which is how do we keep the status quo, but also keep pushing forward? And I think that by going deeper, the show is succeeding. I thought that I had a similar reaction to who's on whose team from the scene in the apartment when they basically, like, briefly imprisoned Annie and the office in the flat-out building, right? Right. And then to the studio where it sort of seems like may have switches sides and

Homelander's Switches Sides, it's Ultra Boy Switches Sides, and everybody is kind of like, who am I? Yeah, exactly who am I fighting? That felt like a bit chaotic. I found this season deeply satisfying. I personally don't really care about Ryan, but I get it. Like, I don't feel like this kid has thus far been kind of like the reason why I watched the show, but I understand why I'm kind of putting him more in play as a full character

and not just some kid who's like, Daddy, want to have a catch? in the background makes sense. Watching that child sort of exist in the world of the boys next season, maybe as like a more of a participant is going to be pretty funny. And then on top of that, I thought, yes, like, everybody seems like insanely bulletproof in this show with the exception of noir. And, you know, Maeve taking a nuclear blast while she falls all the way to the ground was like a little like, okay.

But at the end of the day, like, this is not better call solved. And I don't mean that in a pejorative way. It's like, this is not a show about people dealing with necessarily the ramifications of their actions. No, this show has me. So I'm not, I can ask some questions as I'm about to, but I actually don't care so much about the answer. I'm not just trying to, like, cause trouble or be a troll here. Like, I was surprised with the just lack of hesitation, the show demonstrated in just keeping Mave and Soldier Boy on the board.

Right. When I didn't know what it would necessarily cost them to sacrifice them both. Yeah, I think that Jets and Ackles did like a really good job and was very entertaining, but I don't know. Like, it just seems like they have him on ice for the season, the series finale or something. Yeah, like just in case in the same way that, you know, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that is back a little bit of Stormfront before her schedule meant that she couldn't be. Um, um, the Mayve thing, I really like, is it Dominique McGilligate? I like her. I like that character. No character felt less essential to the show as it has as it has gone on than she has. I don't know. whether they just wrote themselves into a corner or whatever.

And so I thought giving her a last heroic beat was enough. But again, I won't be mad about seeing her again. I think the other thing that always hangs over the show, and again, I bring this up as a sign of my allegiance to it, is that this really doesn't bother me. But at the ends of the seasons, I'm always like, so wait, I'm sorry, who works for who and why is everybody okay with it? Like Starlight is the most famous person in the world other than Homelander,

and she walks in the 70th floor of the tower to steal the compound and walks out. Then she joins the boys, which is, I guess, is a CIA sanctioned group who has a nice office in the flat iron building. Right. I thought they were being hunted. I don't, that stuff, but the show is just so wonderful in the way that it just delivers the plot consistently, humming at such a fun and thoughtful pace that it's only at the end when you sit back. at the end of a long, you know, when you're having a great meal, you eat everything. And it's only after you put down the dessert spoon, you were like, actually, I was full at the third course.

That's only when you do feel the ramifications. Yeah, that's what happens. I had a handkering for a, you know what, it was kind of funny. Just a straight up Nestle ice cream sandwich. Oh, that sounds tremendous. Yeah, like the chocolate waver, vanilla ice cream, everything has been made by a robot somewhere. like just shoot it right into my adrenal gland. Like it was quite satisfying.

I got to say, ice cream sandwich is still doing it. But you know the halo effect of something like that that's designed to make you feel good? Doritos are like this too. Like one thing that as you age, I feel like a bag of Doritos, I'd still feel really good about my decision making

for like an hour afterwards. Sure. And then the clock shifts as you age. To the point where like you can still hear the latent crinkle of the bag in the trash. This is how I feel about the Greenwald 4 p.m. coffee. Like when it hits the, It's just like, oh, God, why don't I do this all the time?

And then when I'm freaking Requiem for dreaming on a Zoom call, it sucks. There's no other way to live for me at this point, if we even call it living without it. You know, I burn clean energy. I'm more of a green tea guy, you know? I do know that. I do know that. Try to get off fossil fuels. You are more like Congresswoman Newman.

You know what I mean? Like you're, you, you paint the right picture. You say the right thing. Yeah, I also don't know of any other show that uses its position in the marketplace better. And what I mean is we spend a lot of time talking about beginnings and endings of things, obviously, and how creators should ration out, dole out their story, never leave anything on the whiteboard, put it all out there. The boys carries itself with the confidence of a show that's going to go for many more seasons in a way that I love. You know, there is no hemming and hawing about, well, we should really, you know, square that off and just in case or be tidy here or be less ambitious. Like, there's the feeling that is harder to do than it sounds that all of the momentum of the season has reached a pause, not a stop.

And then when we rejoin, it'll be go time again, you know, in a way that I really, I really enjoy and I really respect. But do you think it's interesting or noteworthy that when we talk about the show, at least certainly I do, the way I talk about it. I'm always talking about like the way that it's built, almost as if I'm like an architecture critic, which isn't how I engage with it when I'm watching it. It's just what I'm left with, that feeling of, man, they did that well. I don't mean to be like persnickety about like what team are these people on or what is Victoria Newman's plan and how come that's not been made abundantly clear. Like I think that one of the things that I've tripped up a little bit on with the show is

that it's clearly satirizing a certain kind of behavior. and a certain political ideology and it's been very effective at doing that so much so that some of the people who I think follow that ideology are like, wait a second, the boys is making fun of me? Like, hold on. And Eric Kripke has been very funny talking about like, have you not been watching the show this whole time?

Like, it's never been like about you. They've never been objectively pro-fascist here. We're not like weighing both sides here. One of the things that it's sort of been struck me, and I think in some ways this is a, challenge for any show. It's a challenge for Better Call Saul. It's a challenge for all mankind. It's a challenge for is that when you're dealing with a fictional world and an ensemble of characters is convincingly depicting what the outside world looks like. Okay. Yeah. Of basically like,

so the final scene, or I think it's the final scene of this season is that that rally, you know, there's basically this rally where a bunch of Homelander fans are there at Homelander lands with Ryan and one guy who's like a protester is like, you know, fuck you to Homelander. And Homelander zaps his brains out. And there's this brief moment where Homelander seems to wonder whether or not he's going to lose the support of his fan base. And instead he just enthuses the more.

Like they're just more and more passionate about him. Led by Janine's stepdad, who happens to be there, who leads the cheer and does the pivot, right? They hang on him as if he's finally going to realize what he's in league with. And it's a real, I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get it with it. That's, you know, that's how much, that was a, it's pretty on the nose. And I guess that that was the moment that I was like, oh yeah, there are people in this world. Now, I don't, I don't mean that in the, like, who will think of the innocent people in, uh, when Clark Kent

and Bruce Wayne are fighting in downtown, uh, Madropolis or whatever, but like, it was just sort of like, this show is somehow convincingly existed only in the halls of law, the halls of power, like, and to some extent, Huey is an avatar for the north. normal person, but it's hard to effectively satirize the people of the world. That was something that was popping up in my head as I was watching those final moments of the season. I think it's a good question to ask, good point to make here, because the inciting moment of the show is these superhero monsters are literally running over us, normals, right? And the boys are the, you know, the, non-superpowered humans who are going to end this and take this down.

Right. With Huey as the face of it, but put her as the more extreme end of it. Over the three seasons, the boys and their human point of view has become increasingly enmeshed in the superhero world with Starlight being on their side and them having some nuance about who is actually a monster and who isn't, leading to the season when the boys themselves have powers. I think you're asking the right question here because I think there does need to be a little bit of a reset in terms of perspective

of who's rooting for who because the show does carry such a lot of powerful ideas and if it just becomes about the 10 people we like, eight of whom have superpowers, it loses some of that. I think they're aware of that and I'm curious to see where it goes going forward, especially if the butcher Huey have powers thing is at an end,

although we have no reason to think that it is. Well, butchering might now. Now, in Butchers, like, I have a death sentence. You might just go for it. Even more, yeah. I think, so I'm curious where they go, that especially when they concede is so hard to write around, which is there are nuclear,

there are countries with nuclear weapons, and then there's people with, there's normal people with, you know, spears. So what are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to make them credible antagonists of each other? The one thing I want to add about the show is just, I think that the tide started to turn the season with just recognizing what Anthony Starr is doing, which is up there with any performance on television and any show.

He was astonishing this season. I saw that he's become like a one of his reactions has become like a real meme over the weekend. He is, and he was on Banshee too. I mean, this is a major, major, major league talent. But like he's just graduated a couple tears on the show. It's unbelievable. It's to the point where like, could you imagine any other actor, even famous actors playing this part or playing it as effectively?

I couldn't come up with anybody. The thing that I wanted to say that I also really, really respect and appreciate is if you had come to me after season one, which I really enjoyed, and told me that even though the conceit of this show is that it's a superpowered universe and anybody can die in horrific ways and we can always be rebooting or reimagining or recasting, you know, that the seven is such a fluid entity, that this many seasons in, A-Train in the deep would be so essential to the show. I never would have believed you. Yeah.

No disrespect to the actors playing those parts whatsoever. I just didn't see the road, you know, or the reason. But the performances and the nuance and the places that the creators were like, no, we're just going to keep going with this and see what's waiting for us if we keep pushing has really been rewarded. I really like that, too. It's also helps, it's part of that undergirding of sort of classic storytelling that helps push against what otherwise could be a kind of pop nihilistic approach to what matters.

For sure. It doesn't, and I don't think it takes itself that seriously, which I think is essential. We can wrap it up there. Thank you to Mike for producing us today. On Thursday, I think what we'll do is catch up on some of the stuff we've missed over the last couple of like five, ten days. Triggerpoint I really want to talk to you about. You don't have to watch it. But I will say, Triggerpoint features one of the great McBain scenes I've ever seen in my life.

And it's not... And where is it? Where's the show? Triggerpoint is from the kind of bodyguard, visual family tree. It is a British thriller, and it's currently all the episodes are up on Peacock. So if people have Peacock, they can check it out. Really funny element of this is that they seem to have just uploaded straight up the British TV show. So the commercial breaks are there, and it will just flash TriggerPoint, and then it goes to black, and then it comes back and it says, trigger point.

So my wife and I are now like, what show are we watching? I want to talk to you about Trigger Point, and then what we do in the Shadows is back. Nathan Fielder's new show rehearsals coming out, and hopefully we will go see Thor. I think Chris and I are going to go see Thor, but tomorrow morning is the Emmy Noms in one of the most competitive years ever. So competitive that it became a topic on the show

because we had 40 things to watch in April and May. So I'm not going to make predictions. I have no idea, but there's going to be some major head scratchers and snubs, and we will not be there to cover all of it tomorrow. But boy, well, we have really whittled our take into some sharp points by Thursday. And I can't like to talk about it.

Andy, I will talk to you on Thursday. Thanks again to Mike for producing. We will be back with you later in the week. Have a great week, Branskies. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's, like low prices in every aisle. And when you download the Ralph's app, you can clip and save more

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