A review of this week’s Better Call Saul, “Rock and Hard Place,” comes as soon as I take care of you and the Key Master…
“Goodbye, Dad.” – Nacho
The writers of “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul” proudly admit how much each show has been invented over time and how many aspects of each have been happy coincidences. For example, Jesse Pinkman would die within a few episodes after introducing Walter White to the ABQ drug scene; then Vince Gilligan was allowed to watch Aaron Paul at work.
Few characters across either series are more symbolic of this improvisational quality than Nacho Varga. Nacho only exists at all because he mentioned the names “Ignacio” and “Lalo” to Walt and Jesse during Saul Goodman’s first appearance on Breaking Bad when they dragged him into the desert to scare him. When they decided many years later to do a Saul prequel series, Gilligan and Peter Gould had to come up with an Ignacio to explain why Saul would name-check him at such a tense moment. The funny thing is that that never quite happened. The original plan was for Nacho and Jimmy to be frequent antagonists in season one — but the original plan was also for Jimmy to be turned into Saul Goodman before the end of that first year. As the creative team fell in love with Jimmy McGill, Nacho became an early victim of the storytelling and disappeared from most of the second half of the season before he and Mike briefly crossed paths in “Pimento.”
But Gould and everyone else liked Michael Mando’s work for obvious reasons, and they clearly liked having someone at the end of the cartel who didn’t exactly fit into the franchise’s pre-existing archetypes. Nacho started out as Tuco’s sidekick, but he was never as unpredictable as Tuco, nor did he have the pride of one of the Salamancas. There was an understated certainty similar to Mike’s — it’s one of the reasons the two got along so well and why Mike was willing to stick his neck out for the kid
— but Nacho generally comes off as a brawler, more concerned with getting out of other people’s messes than seeking power for himself.
In a show where Odenkirk, Banks, Esposito and others are 15 years older than we met them on Breaking Bad but play around 20 years younger than they are now, Mike Nacho (played by an actor who is about to graduate from 41st birthday). how a young adult stands out less than on a show where age wasn’t as visibly odd.
Nacho’s story finds a tragic, powerful, and ultimately fitting ending in “Rock and Hard Place.” After escaping the Cousins in the motel parking lot shootout, he continues to elude them by demonstrating the ability to hold his breath while submerged in a puddle of oil on the bottom of an abandoned tanker truck. (Nacho isn’t as smart or talented as some, but he has all the willpower one could ask for.) However, he understands that he deserves a pardon and not a commutation of the death sentence Gus arranged for him . After a final, painfully muffled phone call with Mr. Varga – the father doesn’t know this will be their last conversation, the son can’t think of anything else – he calls Mike and offers a deal: he will then sell any story Die Gus wants to die as long as his father is kept out of this ugly affair. Gus and Mike argue about everything – Tyrus literally has a gun on Mike when he takes Nacho’s call just to make sure Mike’s affection for Ignacio doesn’t interfere with the boss’s plans – but it’s an acceptable compromise. Mike has Nacho smuggled across the border, lets him enjoy one last meal – and one last drink to take some of the sting out of the punches he has to deliver to make the whole scam look real – and talks him through exactly like them Things will work out with Hector and Juan Bolsa. When Nacho discovers the broken glass from the mess Gus made in “Carrot and Stick,” Nacho creates his own change of plan, but otherwise goes along with it. Juan offers him a choice between a good death and a bad death, and Nacho chooses the best possible death for himself – one where he can finally tell all those Salamancas what he thinks of them and take credit for what he’s done , can boast of putting Hector in that wheelchair and then blowing his brains out before the Cousinsor anyone else can wound him and take him to torture. (By the way, he saves Mike the sniper the unfortunate task of having to kill him.) The cousins help Hector riddle his corpse with bullets afterwards, but a dead man can no longer be harmed.
Luis Moncada as Marco Salamanca, Daniel Moncada as Leonel Salamanca, Mark Margolis as Hector Salamanca – Better Call Saul _ Season 6 Episode 3 – Photo Credit: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
From left: Luis Moncada, Daniel Moncada and Mark Margolis as Marco, Leonel and Hector Salamanca.
Greg Lewis/AMC
It’s a hell of a farewell scene and an entire episode that serves as a reminder of why the show worked so hard to keep Nacho in the game, even when there didn’t seem to be a necessary plot feature for him. Mando is fantastic throughout – so tired, so dejected, yet so adamant about ending things on something similar to his own terms when he can. It’s a tour de force, especially the phone call sequence and Nacho staring at the Salamancas for the last time.
The rest takes Kim and Jimmy’s con on Howard a little further – this time with a slick, classically-tuned prank in which Huell and a friend copy the keys to the Namaste mobile while Howard goes out to lunch – and finally gives Kim a break Jimmy’s brief “friend of the cartel” phase. Thanks to Jimmy’s verbal slip-up last week, Suzanne Ericsen is dismayed by prosecutors to find they have taken Lalo Salamanca into custody and released him on bail (even multimillion-dollar bail) for using a fake name . She attempts to get through to Lalo’s attorney through the supposedly more respectable Kim, and suggests that Jimmy has the right to waive attorney-client privilege and tell authorities anything he knows, albeit by the alias “Jorge.” De Guzman” was deceived. Kim is shocked at the news, but not as kindly as Suzanne assumes. Kim is particularly terrified to be reminded of this whole dangerous escapade since she so thoroughly threw herself into Howard’s sting. Whether or not she had jumped on such a sketchy idea in response to the trauma of being threatened by Lalo, she was able to get it all out of her head until Suzanne brought her back. And finally, she frames Suzanne’s offer to Jimmy in a way that would make it easy for him to say no: “Are you going to be a cartel friend, or are you going to be a rat?”
Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman – Better Call Saul _ Season 6 Episode 3 – Photo Credit: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy
Greg Lewis/AMC
Earlier, while Jimmy is paying off Huell and his accomplices, our favorite pickpocket asks Jimmy why he keeps doing such criminal stuff now that he has a successful and legitimate life as a lawyer. Jimmy borrows Kim’s testimony about how they will do a lot of good for many people: both the Sandpiper victims, who may not see the class action lawsuit proceeding at its normal pace, and the potential future clients of Kim’s pro bono defense firm . But you can see that even Jimmy has lost sight of that a bit – that, as always, he’s caught up in the game itself and not really thinking about the possible harm he might be doing to himself or others. It’s a far more cavalier attitude than Jimmy’s occasional collaborator, Nacho Varga, has allowed over the years. Nacho and Jimmy didn’t get to interact as much as anyone planned, but you have to keep in mind that the scrappy, busy part of Nacho would be impressed — or at least ruefully amused — if he knew Saul Goodman was calling his name years later to get out of unexpected difficulties. That was obviously never Nacho’s plan, but he learned long ago what happens to men who try to plan anything.