Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill Photo Credit: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
If you thought Kim and Jimmy’s plan to embarrass Howard Hamlin and get Jimmy’s share of the Sandpiper agreement sooner was just pillow talk, think again. This opening pairing of the final season of Better Call Saul proves that Kim meant every decision she made in season five, whether it was her dedication to volunteer legal work or her role as Mrs. McGill (Mrs. Goodman?) and everything that belongs to.
For now, that means she’s happily drowning in 20 public defender cases, plotting her former boss’s downfall, and putting her husband back in cahoots with the Kettlemans (they’re back!) and then saving his bacon when that goes wrong. Jimmy loses his breath when Kim makes a phone call blackmailing the Kettlemans into shutting up about ruining Howard. It’s then a very cocky Kim who leaves behind the Kettlemans and their seemingly crushed cheating. “Wolves and sheep,” Jimmy mutters as he and Kim drive away. But who’s who in this grumbling as he grows increasingly uneasy about his wife’s willingness to operate like him?
In this fast-paced two hours that felt like a mini-season, we catch up with Lalo, who has nothing else on his mind than catching up with Nacho. He knows Ignacio is responsible for letting the mercenaries into his estate, and any spell that masked his Hector-trained malice will be dropped. A local neighbor becomes his second-in-command when he needs a corpse to fool everyone into believing he was killed in the attack, and he apparently went so far as to plan exactly that scenario: we learn he’s credited for the extensive dental work of the man had paid, presumably to match dental records.
“Wine and Roses” / “Carrot and Stick”
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“Wine and Roses” / “Carrot and Stick”
Showrunner Peter Gould wrote the opening script, and he knows Gus wouldn’t accept the news of Lalo’s murder without irrefutable evidence. Lalo knows that too, which is why the long game of the self-sacrificing neighbor and the dental work are absolutely believable. In fact, Gus doesn’t accept Lalo’s death and ultimately outwits Hector by confirming that he is alive.
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It’s all bad news for Nacho, who is on the run, relying only on phone calls to Tyrus to get him to safety. Mike, still in pain from what Gus ordered him to do to Werner Ziegler, can’t bring himself to take Nacho’s calls. He thinks Nacho’s loyalty to Gus should be rewarded, but Gus lets him make Nacho Gus’ own scapegoat in case Juan Bolsa and Don Eladio get proof that Gus paid the hit squad to kill Lalo.
Nacho sets off on foot to a small motel hours away from the Lalo massacre. Tire tells him to stay out of sight as two men are traveling in a truck to rescue him.
But with everyone else, from Jimmy and now Kim, to Gus and Juan Bolsa, thinking they handle things, only Nacho seems to realize he’s lying in wait for his own death. Trapped in a hot, dark room with no air conditioning and a man across the street spying on him, Nacho decides to take action.
Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler Photo Credit: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
The result of “Carrot and Stick,” directed by Vince Gilligan, is the world’s most breathtaking action sequence since Hank’s showdown with the Salamanca cousins in Breaking Bad classic “One Minute.” Nacho uses a truck to save himself in a shootout with Juan Bolsa’s minions and, in a brilliant recall, the cousins. Now trapped in the truck, Nacho shoots straight at Leonel and Marco and shoots them through his windshield. He makes it to the motel lot, but we don’t know if he’s alive after so many Salamanca bullets hit him head-on.
Or maybe we do. In A Gem of a Cliffhanger, Mike finds himself in an altercation with Tire and Gus over his refusal to hand Nacho’s father over to Gus. Tyrus’ gun is aimed squarely at Mike when Mike gets a call. He says it’s Nacho, and this time he answers. “Not my call,” he says to Nacho before holding the phone out to Gus and telling him that Nacho wants to speak to him. But does he? Is he really on the phone? Did Mike set his phone to ring when he went to the trailer door to lock it? Or did he just get a call at that moment?
“Whatever happens next, it’s not going to turn out the way you think it will,” Mike tells Tyrus. That probably goes for us nervous viewers as well, but we’ve been warned it won’t be a smooth ride.
Crazy observations
- Kim makes performance art out of her cheating work with Jimmy. The funniest Kim scene of the series: Her binoculars trained on Howard and Cliff on the golf course as she very seriously takes a stick of gum out of her pocket, removes the silver wrapper and pops it in her mouth without a glance from her to follow their mark. It’s a small but deliberate choice that’s the hallmark of Rhea Seehorn’s performance, which is finally asking for an Emmy nomination.
- If there were an Emmy for the actor whose performance and impact has become more memorable and impressive throughout the series, it would definitely go to Nacho actor Michael Mando. Nacho seems doomed since Gus dragged him into a double agent role against Lalo, but in this ominous universe with unlikely happy endings, wouldn’t it be great if Nacho and his father could escape together?
- Every previous season started with a Gene Flash Forward. Season 6 instead begins with what we can only assume is a group of law-enforcement movers confiscating the contents of Saul’s house after the Walter White saga was released. The most notable goodies in the garish collection: a bulletproof vest, lots of prescription pills, a gold toilet on a throne, a life-size cutout of Saul, and the fancy stopper of a bottle of Zafiro Anejo tequila. It is the only sign of the house that Kim could ever have lived there or been part of Saul’s life.
- In addition to Jimmy being shaken by Kim’s newfound confidence after defeating the hapless Kettlemans, in “Wine and Roses” Gould telegraphs Jimmy’s descent into the jittery criminal butt-kisser he becomes as the Saul Goodman we see in Breaking Bad. When Jimmy meets ADA Khalil and APD Detective Roberts in the courthouse, he’s so shaken by the unexpected confrontation about “Jorge de Guzman” — the alias Lalo used when Jimmy pleaded to bail him out of $7 million to be released from prison – that he rants, inadvertently mentioning his client’s name Lalo. He covers quickly (successfully?), but then has to go to a quiet room to calm down. Pull yourself together, Jimmy; from here it only gets worse.
- Hector Salamanca is a bitter, arrogant man who raised all his nephews in the most violent ways. We know the result for Tuco and the cousins. But whatever happens to Lalo, it’s still pretty incredible to think of how it was Salamanca who finally silenced Gustavo Fring with all his charges, one smarter than the other (with a little help from Walter White ).
- Just like when Jimmy needed extra writing space in that Sandpiper bathroom, toilet paper saves him the day once again when Kevin Wachtell climbed on his Huffy bike and nearly ruined the caper at the golf club. Cheers to Team Saul’s appreciation of TP’s versatility.