WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE LAST EPISODE OF BETTER CALL SAUL
the last episode of Better Call Saul (Netflix) can either die as Bob Odenkirk’s Jimmy McGill, aka Saul Goodman, aka (briefly) Gene Takovich, or end up in a prison cell.
The event marked the sublime finale to Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s brilliant series both ways. Saul, a depraved and flashy-dressed huckster lawyer. breaking bad, Died only metaphorically so that Jimmy could reappear and regain his identity.
It’s not that he didn’t have much life to look forward to. He was sentenced to 86 years, all of which he would spend in a high-security prison called “Rocky’s Alcatraz.” It didn’t have to be.
Early in the episode, like other episodes set in the “Gene” era, it was shot in black and white – Jimmy’s legal adviser Bill Oakley (Peter Disces) explained that the Federal Reserve was “a warehouse of evidence”. “I was baffled by his client’s optimism when I had.” Proving his guilt, asked him: “Where do you see this ending?”
“I’m on top, as always,” said Jimmy cheekily. For a moment it seemed that he had been proven right.
Jimmy somehow managed to pull off a plea bargain where he would serve only seven years instead of the life plus 190 years that was at stake for him.
He fulfilled his wish to serve in the same comfortable, medium-security prison where con man Bernie Madoff was imprisoned. He could even choose which wing he was sent to.
But when Jimmy used what he knew about the death of Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian) to try to make another concession, which was ruled a suicide, he was shunned by his guilt-ridden ex-wife Kim Wexler. (Laer Seehorn) had already leaked the full story of Howard’s murder by Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) to the Federal Reserve and Howard’s widow Cheryl (Sandrine Holt) at the risk of imprisonment herself.
This was Jimmy’s turning point. Despite the terrible things he did as Saul, the many people he wronged and hurt, the murders – including that of Hank Schrader – breaking bad — he was complicit in some way, but there was one last little glimmer of decency inside Jimmy that hadn’t gone away yet.
In court, to Oakley’s horror, Jimmy basically ignited the agreement he made with the federal government by confessing to the crimes he was accused of. Michael McKean) and ruined Howard’s life.
Gilligan and Gould (writer and director of the finale) are too good to give us a simple, happy, personal tale of redemption.
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Jimmy had not confessed to taking the burden off his soul and asking the court for forgiveness. I was.
She brought out the best in him. He brought out the worst parts of her.
There was a brief reconciliation of sorts in the moving final scene. Kim posed as his lawyer and boasted of her way to meet Jimmy.
In an echo of a moment they had just met early in the series, they shared a cigarette. As she walked away, Jimmy gradually hid behind a wall. Then he was gone.
we already saw a cameo from breaking bad confronting better call saul, Cranston, McKean, Saul/Breaking Bad Regular Jonathan Banks.
Rather than unfair fan service, their common theme – regret and inability to change the past, only redeem it – was central to the overall story.
This was the perfect finale. breaking badof. The only thing that makes it better is that Odenkirk and the criminally overlooked Seehorn win the previously shamefully denied Emmy.
