Hey everyone—thanks for having such a lively conversation, I remain so thrilled to see this level of engagement proving the worth of what we're trying to build here. I've made this week's review free for all, so if you've been bugging people to start reading Donna's reviews and want to show them what they're missing so they'll join us, you can send them a link!
I think that might have been the line that broke me. It's just such a thing we've become conditioned to believe in stories--love conquers all, love is better than anything, love is worth fighting for, love makes us great. But it's not really true, is it? Love can help you be a better person, but it can also make you selfish, cruel, vindictive; keep thinking about this corny line I saw somewhere about how love makes "a universe of two," like that's automatically a good thing, but what if it isn't, always. What do you do with that? How do you live with it? I'm more of a Jimmy/Saul than a Kim, ultimately (even before you get to the Nutrigrain bars). Even if it would mean the end of the world, I'd want to stay together.
Funny how after all this time speculating, they still managed to catch me off guard, with the most anticlimactic, devastating kind of scene. I love how it underlined what makes Kim such a terrific character--she's always been smarter than everyone else on the show, with this kind of self-awareness that is both endlessly compelling and really, really tricky to pull off in the writer's room. Because once you introduce the idea that she knows what's going on, that she's an actual grown-up, you can't just have her do dumb shit to motivate the plot (which is what I initially thought was going on re: Howard). Somehow, they managed not to compromise her, right up till the end. Of course Kim would leave. What else could she do? (All that talk of "how does Jimmy become Saul," when the answer was always: when he has nothing else left.)
My bet is that Kim's married, with kids now. Gene will meet up with her one last time, kind of a Remains of the Day type of thing.
Anyone else spend the final few minutes wondering if Walt was going to show up? I like how much BCS has turned him into this (completely self-centered and unaware) force of karmic retribution. Gus, Mike, Saul--he brings everything down.
I think that's why this show constantly hurts us so much. It's not afraid to be honest, and it understands its characters to such an extent that it lets their actions and reactions be true in a way we don't often see.
Yes, I definitely wondered if Mr. Mayhew was about to walk in. After the show ended, I immediately watched Saul’s intro scene on Breaking Bad and noticed that he’s wearing a different outfit, so it’s not meant to be that day.
Alan Sepinwall pointed out in his review that the registration date on the LWYRUP license plate is 2005, and "Mr. Mayhew" doesn't show up till 2008. Maybe next week!
Side note, why is it that my phone doesn’t seem to let me like certain comments when I tap the heart? I’d be giving all sorts of love to great comments like this if I could.
This episode made me think a lot about Jimmy's ability to compartmentalize. Thinking about it, this shows up in the very beginning--as of the pilot, Jimmy is spending so much of his time looking after Chuck. Given what we later learn of how wounded Jimmy was by Chuck's disdain for him, only a person who is deeply, poisonously good at shutting themselves off from their own feelings would be able to continue being Chuck's caretaker like that.
I've always been confused about how the final pivot to Saul would work because Jimmy just doesn't seem like an emotionally reactive enough character to have one defined "snap" and break bad. Some potential progressions like "Kim breaks up with him, so he's so mad at the world that he decides to go all in on being bad" or "Kim dies, so he's so distraught he stops caring about right and wrong" seem like they'd work thematically and narratively but didn't necessarily seem to fit the character to me (I mean, I think this team would've made those stories work too). Chuck's death, the desert, even Howard's death in this very episode--Jimmy's inclination is to put it in a box and move on (present before Mike's speech after the desert but very much strengthened by it), not to have a dramatic emotional reaction that changes him as a person.
So what we're shown instead is that, as others have noted, maybe there's just nothing of Jimmy left. Every part of Jimmy's life--his family, his non-criminal work, his self-image, his past, and finally his marriage--is now too toxic to emotionally touch. It all must be put in the box and moved on from. It almost feels like Jimmy and Saul are full-blown alternate personalities. Saul was created to be an occasional tool, but he's all that's left to retreat into once being Jimmy became too painful.
So it doesn't seem like Kim leaving caused some big emotional blowout that turned him into a different person. He just compartmentalized his entire self away, leaving behind only the thing that he had already separated from that self: the Criminal Lawyer. Saul is amoral because he built a wall around Jimmy's Morals; he's self-centered and self-obsessed because he hid Jimmy's Relationships in the attic; he doesn't care about what kind of lawyer he is because he put Jimmy's Lawyer Brother and Jimmy's Lawyer Wife in the deepest mental hole he could possibly dig.
And that feels -exactly- in line with the character I've been watching.
(Also interesting in that BB is about watching Walt unearth all the darkest parts of himself he had shoved down, where BCS is about watching Jimmy shove away all the best parts of himself. Both becoming the bad guy, but in very different ways.)
Oh wow. Also makes me think of the first scene in the Omaha timeline. He goes about his normal day as Gene, and then when he gets home he takes out a box with all his old memories on it.
The dramatic transition to the Saul Goodman era was great and all, and I think it pointedly answers the question of how and when Jimmy finally becomes Saul Goodman, but what I really loved about this episode was that it also showed how Mike became the Mike we know from Breaking Bad.
Mike has been pretending all this time that what he really wants is justice, for his son, and later on for the people victimized by the Salamancas, but what he really wants is revenge, which Papa Varga unwittingly clarifies for him.
The most striking moment of the episode for me was Papa Varga walking away as Mike stood quietly, sadly behind the lattice of the chain link fence, looking more like a prisoner than a free man.
For all his righteous talk about justice and the difference between good and bad, Mike really is, deep down, a corrupt and evil person.
And I think that moment at the fence was when he realized it.
There was also a side-by-side shot with the chain link fence in Mike's foreground and open space in front of Manuel. Both fathers who lost sons, but Manuel is the one with clarity.
It's hard to believe that the writers weren't planning much further than the season they were writing. The parallels between Manuel and Mike are so significant that it feels like something they'd been planning since season 1.
There were so many parallel moments in this episode. As Mike looked on after hearing that what he really wants is revenge brought me back to Jesse when he was fresh out of rehab. (Paraphrasing) “I know who I am, I’m the bad guy.”
Another instance is when Saul says to Kim, “Someday we will wake up and go about our day without thinking about this,” is exactly what was said at the group grief counseling session that Mike and Stacey attended.
Non Vince Gilligan show but also reminiscent of Don Draper in Season One of Mad Men to Peggy "This never happened. One day you'll be surprised at how much it never happened."
I thought this episode also had a lot of Gus becoming Gus. Generally I've been disappointed with the way this series has handled Gus because I think it's sort of demystified him, but this ep had a lot of moments that show how Gus became the ultra-cautious completely closed off Gus we see in Breaking Bad. That great scene with the wine showed Gus briefly allowing himself to open up slightly and indulge a little after finally conclusively winning his conflict with Lalo and the Salamancas, but he cut it off because he realized he can't open up even that little bit anymore. That scene and the steely reserve with which he handled the meeting with Don Eladio in Mexico are the beginning of the more polished Gus of Breaking Bad
This episode was definitely the hardening of the three main characters (Gus, Mike, and Jimmy) into the people we know them as in Breaking Bad.
It's hard to say who I feel worse for since each of their falls is accompanied by a deeply personal revelation about how they're emotionally broken in Breaking Bad. The falls for Gus and Mike came as a surprise, though, because I didn't think the show would be this specific about the moments in which they became who they were always going to be.
It struck me that Vince Gilligan has one clear obsession here, as both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are essentially about the same thing: how we deal with our inner darkness. Walter embraces it and he's pretty much okay with it. Kim is fucking terrified of it.
Breaking Bad is ostensibly about a good man who "breaks bad," but the show does a very good job convincing us he was never really a "good man" to begin with and the villain inside him was waiting to get out. And so when Better Call Saul started, it was ostensibly about a good man who "breaks bad," but I think the show has done a very good job convincing us that Jimmy McGill is, at his core, a decent person, and it was never him who was the Walter of the show. It was Kim.
“[Walt] was never really a "good man" to begin with and the villain inside him was waiting to get out.“
I agree that evil was alway lurking somewhere inside Walt, but it was also a way for a powerless man to gain power. Kim recognizes her inner demons and deals with them because she is confident and in control, while Walt sees power as a way to become the man he wanted to be.
To echo what Donna says in the first paragraph, one of the reasons I loved the BB finale was that we finally got that bit of self-actualization from Walt - "I did it for me". He finally acknowledges that the world of awful he's brought on everyone around him was for his own benefit, and tries to do something small to make it better. It's not enough to undo everything he's done, but it's something.
I don’t really see strong parallels between Walt and Kim. True, she is the driving force behind doing something terrible to Howard, but Walt is motivated by a lust for power and a joy in inflicting pain on his enemies. Kim spelled out her motivation in tonight’s episode: she was having fun, and she didn’t think it would ultimately hurt Howard that much.
I've been thinking a lot about intent vs. impact the last several years, and while of course Kim never intended to hurt Howard THAT MUCH, she did, in fact, intend to hurt Howard to such an extent that she consistently put herself and Jimmy at risk in the name of the con when Jimmy had shown a willingness to call it off or delay it, and it's that inclination that connects the two characters, I think. Simply the CAPACITY to be subsumed so entirely by the desire to hurt someone.
In sociology we talk about this a lot. This is rather reductive but I will share that my personal perspective is that our society generally uses a psychological framework to understand people and motivations and so that leads to an over-focus and over-valuation of intent. I’m contrast, the sociological framework is very focused on impact and outcomes. The pernicious thing about intent is that it is always invisible. So to focus on intent allowed both bad actors and the well-intended a distance from their impact that incentivizes avoiding accountability.
You can also over-rotate into being too outcomes focused so it’s not a panacea, of course. But between the two frameworks, a sociological mindset is more likely to lead to behaviors that actually help people consider the consequences of their actions.
So, all this to say, I totally agree that the difference b/w Kim and Walt is significant because she eventually hit a realization that her actions and the impact could not be justified or rationalized. Whereas, even with Walt’s eventual admission, it doesn’t signal that he thought his motivations weren’t the right ones, just that he recognizes that he needed to dress them up in more palatable rationalizations so he could continue doing what he wanted to do.
Or was she deluding herself; thinking she genuinely wasn't hurting Howard THAT MUCH, and only when confronted by the terrible outcome of their plot as it came to pass, did she face up to the reality of how much they actually DID hurt Howard, when's Lalo's actions meant she could no longer pretend it was just a fun, (relatively) inconsequential prank.
Oh absolutely, I think you're on to what caused such an existential crisis in her because even their "prank" was pretty fucking awful unless they intended to come clean at any point, which I don't think was the case. Ruining a man's career and reputation to the point where everyone he loved and respected him believed him to be a drug addict when he was not even close? That was already bad, Kim! And Jimmy! Jimmy, I think, was in it for the lulz and some emotional pain and, I think, would have eventually caved and tried to make things right when he saw how much it had affected Howard. Kim, I think, realized she never had that in her. She wanted to destroy Howard, period, she fucking REVELED in it.
Also, I think seeing Howard shot in the head right in front of her in her own living room for sure contributed to her realization of (sorry!) how it’s all fun and games until somebody really gets hurt. There’s enough violence and death in BCS and BB that maybe it’s easy to initially not think much about the real trauma Kim is experiencing after witnessing Lalo kill Howard in cold blood and then be forced to go on with her day — and her marriage to some extent — as if nothing had happened! That’s … A LOT
I completely disagree. Neither one of them are decent people on any level and together they are absolutely horrible and dangerous to the world around them as Kim correctly pointed out. The only difference is that Kim is more self aware. It's the two of them and their sick symbiosis that are the equivalent of Walt in this show
This episode was brutal in its quietness. The pivotal scenes were all achingly muted, to me. Gustavo at the bar was like a ghost; Kim in the parking deck kissing Jimmy to both stop his manic rationalizations and to serve as a stop gap for all age couldn’t say; Mike with Nacho’s father fumbling to say Justice in Spanish. And of course, the final conversation between Jimmy and Kim which ends with just the sound of tape stripping from the roll, affixing another box.
First of all, THANK YOU Myles for starting this site! This is the first episode of BB/BCS I’ve caught in real time (late to the game on BB and then waiting for Netflix to air BCS, finally finished Season 5 a couple weeks ago, had no idea what I was going to do without Donna’s coverage of Season 6 :)).
What I found particular poignant about Jimmy’s soliloquy? about turning the corner was that it was the same thing that Mike told Jimmy following their time in the desert. Neither Jimmy nor Kim could wait that long though..
Waking up one day and not thinking about it is the same thing Mike’s daughter in law said about Matty when they were in group session. The idiom is being passed along…
I can't fully articulate it yet, but it feels like the path this comment takes tracks roughly with the progress of characters' moral compromise. The first person to say it is describing the loss of someone who accepted corruption unwillingly - Matty, at his father's instruction, and possibly because he thought it would help keep his family safe. Instead it got him killed (arguably his integrity got him killed, because the cops who killed him might not have if he'd jumped at the initial offer). The next person to say it is Mike, telling Jimmy how and why he's going to get over the experience of nearly dying several times over in the desert on a drug money errand that will free a remorseless killer. Then Jimmy says it to Kim about a death to which they were both major contributing factors, and she's the first person to refuse the promise that she could forget the moral ground she gave up for her own aggrandizement, or enjoyment, or convenience. What starts out as a devastating admission of loss -- that after losing someone you eventually start losing the grief that felt like all you had left of them -- becomes a rationalization to live with choices that hurt others, until Kim realizes that she doesn't want to be the kind of person who can forget what she's done. I think she's the first person in the ABQ-verse I've seen walk away from the easy thing. But did she walk away soon enough to actually get out?
From Jimmy to Kim, from Mike to Jimmy, from Matty's widow to Mike in therapy. Hit me like a punch in the gut, and has everytime it's been brought back.
During this episode, I kept thinking about the last two episodes of season 3, particularly Kim’s storyline in those episodes and her car crash. I remember at the time being really stuck and amazed by Kim’s decision to take a step back and lighten her work load. It was such a self aware and emotionally intelligent decision for a universe where characters are always digging themself deeper (which Kim had done plenty of in the series). Kim’s car crash made her realize that she could have seriously hurt herself and others, so she course corrected before it become too late, before she could do serious damage.
But this time, in season 6, that decision did come when it was too late. She had already done serious damage. Her realization and decision this time only after she has destroyed herself and others. And that is one of the things that make Kim and this episode so tragic to me. She has always had the ability and insight , more than any of the characters in the breaking bad, to make smart, self-aware decisions; but as the series went on, that ability increasingly become clouded and overcome by other things, other desires. And in this episode, she finally finally gets that back and for her to see things clearly but in took utter devastation for that to happen. But unlike with the car crash, it’s too late. The damage is done.
Also, is Kim the only character in the breaking bad universe to successfully walk away of her own volition? Other characters have had many chances to walk away, other characters have walked a way for a brief time and then sucked themselves back in, other characters have wanted to walk away but external forces prevented them from doing so...but I can’t think of anyone else but Kim who has actually successfully walked away. They’ve either been killed (mike, nacho, hank, etc) or forced to walk away as fugitives (Jimmy/Saul, Jesse).
- Kim's comment a while ago to Rich that she would have ended up as a cashier if she hadn't moved to ABQ and gone to law school is haunting me. What is she doing now?
- There's some symmetry this season with Kim and Nacho in contrast to Mike. Mike is choosing to stay in the game, but Kim and Nacho prove that you're not stuck; you CAN choose another path for yourself once you're on a bad choice road, but you have to accept the consequences, the heavens may fall. Nacho paid with his life, and Kim is no longer the world's best lawyer and hardly has a fantastic safety net to fall back on. Mike doesn't want to accept not having a ton of money for Stacy and Kaylee, fine. But that doesn't mean his only choice is to glare at Gus and then go do whatever he says, and just thinking you're different from the other cartel people is not the same as actually being different, as Mr. Varga points out. You actually have to do something different, otherwise the result of your actions is the same.
- And Jimmy/Saul can decide to opt out too, no matter what Chuck and Howard and so many others said about him being unable to change. Walter White was a struggling teacher when he decided he could be something different and someone bad. I wonder if this show will end with Saul deciding to be good.
I strongly suspect we'll learn more about what Kim is or has been up to. It made me so sad to think about all the lost souls out there who are brilliant but just can't do it anymore and end up starting over. It doesn't mean she's miserable, but a piece of her is gone forever.
We've seen how the law (and working hard at the law) gave Kim an identity, allowed her to argue with the upbringing that told her she was nobody. And then it gave her a cause, too. How she loved being a public defender! I hope she finds something that will allow her to remake that identity, atone perhaps, and then eventually grow into a mission and a passion. (That's a lot to ask of 4 more episodes, but I'm a dreamer.)
Count me as a dreamer too. I hope Kim has a good life, even if it is different, and if she runs into Gene out there, her life stays intact. I don't think these showrunners want to torture us too badly -- they gave Jesse a happy ending, so here's hoping.
Oh yeah, agreed we will see her and what she’s been doing. She started over once before so I’m sure she’s getting by, but is hard to think of her as not a lawyer when she cared so much and was so good at it, and when she had come so far in her life.
Thanks as always, Donna. I wonder (and I haven’t read all 112 comments) if anyone shares my take on Gus’s interaction with the sommelier. Absolutely, Gus is charmed by the guy, and may regret what his life choices don’t allow him to have. I also heard something else as Reed Diamond’s character was speaking, and I sensed Gus’s wheels turning (because — Esposito’s face and eyes!). In Côte-Rôtie they make wine. They’ve been doing it for millenia and they’re very good at it, making something that is unique, and specific — entirely their local product while also being one of the world’s best. Yes, it’s an intoxicant, potentially danerous and addictive, causing social and physical harm. But it’s also a work of art, and a point of pride. It makes people like the sommelier enthusiastically tell great stories about it. At this point Gus is thinking of his unfinished superlab, and what he wants to make there. Gus is proud, and vain, and we’ve just been reminded he’s full of hate. He manifests his hate by being better than everyone else — even taking pride in his chicken business that’s just a front and a laundry for his drug operation. This story by the charming, smiley sommelier is what Gus is thinking about a few years later when he learns about the high-yield blue meth and meets Walt, and why a guy as careful and methodical as Gus takes Walt on as chief of the superlab despite all of Walt’s evident red flags. Making and selling the Côte-Rôtie of crystal meth appealed to Gus’s pride and vanity and hate, and it eventually got him killed.
It really helped at the final moment of this episode to know I'd be able to come and read your review, Donna. Thank you for that. I did find it fairly overwhelmingly sad, but that's because I care so much. At least, for the time being, it eases the tension of fearing Kim will be killed.
Leave it up to Vince & Co. to barrel towards the finish line like this. While some have complained about the pacing, I find it thrilling that they've set up so many things that they can essentially just start tearing out the Jenga pieces like this in the back half of the season, our feelings and emotions be damned. If Rhea doesn't finally win an Emmy after this episode I will go 100% Lalo on the voters, watching from the gutters, and charming your widows.
Prediction: They tie up the loose end that Kim went back to Nebraska after leaving Jimmy, somehow they cross paths and (this is too much to hope for from V & Co so I'm already setting myself up for being crushed) maybe these two kids get some sort of happy ending from the mayhem that has been the Meth Wars of ABQ.
I had started to believe that Jimmy and Kim were going to be put in an impossible situation and be forced to be these caricatures of themselves forever -- it is somehow much less obvious and much more painful that their end comes not because they deny who they are, but accept it fully, instead.
As Emily VDW is to Deadwood, Alan Sepinwall is to Sopranos, and MZS is to Mad Men, Donna is to the ABQ-verse. I look forward to these reviews almost as much as the episode itself. They add clarity and reinforcement to art that I think is great but can’t quite find the words to articulate HOW it is so.
Long-winded way of saying, thank you, Donna. I can’t wait for the final four episodes and recaps.
Hey everyone—thanks for having such a lively conversation, I remain so thrilled to see this level of engagement proving the worth of what we're trying to build here. I've made this week's review free for all, so if you've been bugging people to start reading Donna's reviews and want to show them what they're missing so they'll join us, you can send them a link!
"I love you, too... but so what?"
I think that might have been the line that broke me. It's just such a thing we've become conditioned to believe in stories--love conquers all, love is better than anything, love is worth fighting for, love makes us great. But it's not really true, is it? Love can help you be a better person, but it can also make you selfish, cruel, vindictive; keep thinking about this corny line I saw somewhere about how love makes "a universe of two," like that's automatically a good thing, but what if it isn't, always. What do you do with that? How do you live with it? I'm more of a Jimmy/Saul than a Kim, ultimately (even before you get to the Nutrigrain bars). Even if it would mean the end of the world, I'd want to stay together.
Funny how after all this time speculating, they still managed to catch me off guard, with the most anticlimactic, devastating kind of scene. I love how it underlined what makes Kim such a terrific character--she's always been smarter than everyone else on the show, with this kind of self-awareness that is both endlessly compelling and really, really tricky to pull off in the writer's room. Because once you introduce the idea that she knows what's going on, that she's an actual grown-up, you can't just have her do dumb shit to motivate the plot (which is what I initially thought was going on re: Howard). Somehow, they managed not to compromise her, right up till the end. Of course Kim would leave. What else could she do? (All that talk of "how does Jimmy become Saul," when the answer was always: when he has nothing else left.)
My bet is that Kim's married, with kids now. Gene will meet up with her one last time, kind of a Remains of the Day type of thing.
Anyone else spend the final few minutes wondering if Walt was going to show up? I like how much BCS has turned him into this (completely self-centered and unaware) force of karmic retribution. Gus, Mike, Saul--he brings everything down.
I think that's why this show constantly hurts us so much. It's not afraid to be honest, and it understands its characters to such an extent that it lets their actions and reactions be true in a way we don't often see.
Yes, I definitely wondered if Mr. Mayhew was about to walk in. After the show ended, I immediately watched Saul’s intro scene on Breaking Bad and noticed that he’s wearing a different outfit, so it’s not meant to be that day.
Alan Sepinwall pointed out in his review that the registration date on the LWYRUP license plate is 2005, and "Mr. Mayhew" doesn't show up till 2008. Maybe next week!
Side note, why is it that my phone doesn’t seem to let me like certain comments when I tap the heart? I’d be giving all sorts of love to great comments like this if I could.
It seems like a display thing. If you refresh, you’ll see the heart is there.
You are right! Thanks!
This episode made me think a lot about Jimmy's ability to compartmentalize. Thinking about it, this shows up in the very beginning--as of the pilot, Jimmy is spending so much of his time looking after Chuck. Given what we later learn of how wounded Jimmy was by Chuck's disdain for him, only a person who is deeply, poisonously good at shutting themselves off from their own feelings would be able to continue being Chuck's caretaker like that.
I've always been confused about how the final pivot to Saul would work because Jimmy just doesn't seem like an emotionally reactive enough character to have one defined "snap" and break bad. Some potential progressions like "Kim breaks up with him, so he's so mad at the world that he decides to go all in on being bad" or "Kim dies, so he's so distraught he stops caring about right and wrong" seem like they'd work thematically and narratively but didn't necessarily seem to fit the character to me (I mean, I think this team would've made those stories work too). Chuck's death, the desert, even Howard's death in this very episode--Jimmy's inclination is to put it in a box and move on (present before Mike's speech after the desert but very much strengthened by it), not to have a dramatic emotional reaction that changes him as a person.
So what we're shown instead is that, as others have noted, maybe there's just nothing of Jimmy left. Every part of Jimmy's life--his family, his non-criminal work, his self-image, his past, and finally his marriage--is now too toxic to emotionally touch. It all must be put in the box and moved on from. It almost feels like Jimmy and Saul are full-blown alternate personalities. Saul was created to be an occasional tool, but he's all that's left to retreat into once being Jimmy became too painful.
So it doesn't seem like Kim leaving caused some big emotional blowout that turned him into a different person. He just compartmentalized his entire self away, leaving behind only the thing that he had already separated from that self: the Criminal Lawyer. Saul is amoral because he built a wall around Jimmy's Morals; he's self-centered and self-obsessed because he hid Jimmy's Relationships in the attic; he doesn't care about what kind of lawyer he is because he put Jimmy's Lawyer Brother and Jimmy's Lawyer Wife in the deepest mental hole he could possibly dig.
And that feels -exactly- in line with the character I've been watching.
(Also interesting in that BB is about watching Walt unearth all the darkest parts of himself he had shoved down, where BCS is about watching Jimmy shove away all the best parts of himself. Both becoming the bad guy, but in very different ways.)
This is brilliant.
Oh wow. Also makes me think of the first scene in the Omaha timeline. He goes about his normal day as Gene, and then when he gets home he takes out a box with all his old memories on it.
The dramatic transition to the Saul Goodman era was great and all, and I think it pointedly answers the question of how and when Jimmy finally becomes Saul Goodman, but what I really loved about this episode was that it also showed how Mike became the Mike we know from Breaking Bad.
Mike has been pretending all this time that what he really wants is justice, for his son, and later on for the people victimized by the Salamancas, but what he really wants is revenge, which Papa Varga unwittingly clarifies for him.
The most striking moment of the episode for me was Papa Varga walking away as Mike stood quietly, sadly behind the lattice of the chain link fence, looking more like a prisoner than a free man.
For all his righteous talk about justice and the difference between good and bad, Mike really is, deep down, a corrupt and evil person.
And I think that moment at the fence was when he realized it.
There was also a side-by-side shot with the chain link fence in Mike's foreground and open space in front of Manuel. Both fathers who lost sons, but Manuel is the one with clarity.
It's hard to believe that the writers weren't planning much further than the season they were writing. The parallels between Manuel and Mike are so significant that it feels like something they'd been planning since season 1.
That's a fantastic observation made even more powerful by the fact that Kim essentially has the same realization in this episode.
There were so many parallel moments in this episode. As Mike looked on after hearing that what he really wants is revenge brought me back to Jesse when he was fresh out of rehab. (Paraphrasing) “I know who I am, I’m the bad guy.”
Another instance is when Saul says to Kim, “Someday we will wake up and go about our day without thinking about this,” is exactly what was said at the group grief counseling session that Mike and Stacey attended.
Ah- and as already noted in another comment, Mike says this to Saul after their desert trek. The wisdom passes on…
Non Vince Gilligan show but also reminiscent of Don Draper in Season One of Mad Men to Peggy "This never happened. One day you'll be surprised at how much it never happened."
Season 2. To be pedantic.
Bravo
I thought this episode also had a lot of Gus becoming Gus. Generally I've been disappointed with the way this series has handled Gus because I think it's sort of demystified him, but this ep had a lot of moments that show how Gus became the ultra-cautious completely closed off Gus we see in Breaking Bad. That great scene with the wine showed Gus briefly allowing himself to open up slightly and indulge a little after finally conclusively winning his conflict with Lalo and the Salamancas, but he cut it off because he realized he can't open up even that little bit anymore. That scene and the steely reserve with which he handled the meeting with Don Eladio in Mexico are the beginning of the more polished Gus of Breaking Bad
This episode was definitely the hardening of the three main characters (Gus, Mike, and Jimmy) into the people we know them as in Breaking Bad.
It's hard to say who I feel worse for since each of their falls is accompanied by a deeply personal revelation about how they're emotionally broken in Breaking Bad. The falls for Gus and Mike came as a surprise, though, because I didn't think the show would be this specific about the moments in which they became who they were always going to be.
A couple of incredible shots that stayed with me:
the view of Mike from beneath the fire in the barrel--very much a frame of Mike in a hell of his own making
The shot of Saul’s “best lawyer in the world” mug, another replacement, edited, less colorful.
The mug killed me once I realized he was no longer the 2nd best lawyer (again), because the 1st quit.
Exactly. Ugh. So brutal
Goddamn </3
The reflection of the fire in Gus' glasses at the Eladio pool
Oh yes, I caught this on rewatch and holy smokes
I was prepared for the possibility that Kim could die.
I was prepared for the possibility that Kim and Jimmy could break up.
I was never prepared for the possibility that Kim WOULD GIVE UP LAW, that unexpectedly broke me.
It struck me that Vince Gilligan has one clear obsession here, as both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are essentially about the same thing: how we deal with our inner darkness. Walter embraces it and he's pretty much okay with it. Kim is fucking terrified of it.
Breaking Bad is ostensibly about a good man who "breaks bad," but the show does a very good job convincing us he was never really a "good man" to begin with and the villain inside him was waiting to get out. And so when Better Call Saul started, it was ostensibly about a good man who "breaks bad," but I think the show has done a very good job convincing us that Jimmy McGill is, at his core, a decent person, and it was never him who was the Walter of the show. It was Kim.
“[Walt] was never really a "good man" to begin with and the villain inside him was waiting to get out.“
I agree that evil was alway lurking somewhere inside Walt, but it was also a way for a powerless man to gain power. Kim recognizes her inner demons and deals with them because she is confident and in control, while Walt sees power as a way to become the man he wanted to be.
Yes, this is a very good way of putting it, thank you!
To echo what Donna says in the first paragraph, one of the reasons I loved the BB finale was that we finally got that bit of self-actualization from Walt - "I did it for me". He finally acknowledges that the world of awful he's brought on everyone around him was for his own benefit, and tries to do something small to make it better. It's not enough to undo everything he's done, but it's something.
I don’t really see strong parallels between Walt and Kim. True, she is the driving force behind doing something terrible to Howard, but Walt is motivated by a lust for power and a joy in inflicting pain on his enemies. Kim spelled out her motivation in tonight’s episode: she was having fun, and she didn’t think it would ultimately hurt Howard that much.
I've been thinking a lot about intent vs. impact the last several years, and while of course Kim never intended to hurt Howard THAT MUCH, she did, in fact, intend to hurt Howard to such an extent that she consistently put herself and Jimmy at risk in the name of the con when Jimmy had shown a willingness to call it off or delay it, and it's that inclination that connects the two characters, I think. Simply the CAPACITY to be subsumed so entirely by the desire to hurt someone.
In sociology we talk about this a lot. This is rather reductive but I will share that my personal perspective is that our society generally uses a psychological framework to understand people and motivations and so that leads to an over-focus and over-valuation of intent. I’m contrast, the sociological framework is very focused on impact and outcomes. The pernicious thing about intent is that it is always invisible. So to focus on intent allowed both bad actors and the well-intended a distance from their impact that incentivizes avoiding accountability.
You can also over-rotate into being too outcomes focused so it’s not a panacea, of course. But between the two frameworks, a sociological mindset is more likely to lead to behaviors that actually help people consider the consequences of their actions.
So, all this to say, I totally agree that the difference b/w Kim and Walt is significant because she eventually hit a realization that her actions and the impact could not be justified or rationalized. Whereas, even with Walt’s eventual admission, it doesn’t signal that he thought his motivations weren’t the right ones, just that he recognizes that he needed to dress them up in more palatable rationalizations so he could continue doing what he wanted to do.
Or was she deluding herself; thinking she genuinely wasn't hurting Howard THAT MUCH, and only when confronted by the terrible outcome of their plot as it came to pass, did she face up to the reality of how much they actually DID hurt Howard, when's Lalo's actions meant she could no longer pretend it was just a fun, (relatively) inconsequential prank.
Oh absolutely, I think you're on to what caused such an existential crisis in her because even their "prank" was pretty fucking awful unless they intended to come clean at any point, which I don't think was the case. Ruining a man's career and reputation to the point where everyone he loved and respected him believed him to be a drug addict when he was not even close? That was already bad, Kim! And Jimmy! Jimmy, I think, was in it for the lulz and some emotional pain and, I think, would have eventually caved and tried to make things right when he saw how much it had affected Howard. Kim, I think, realized she never had that in her. She wanted to destroy Howard, period, she fucking REVELED in it.
Also, I think seeing Howard shot in the head right in front of her in her own living room for sure contributed to her realization of (sorry!) how it’s all fun and games until somebody really gets hurt. There’s enough violence and death in BCS and BB that maybe it’s easy to initially not think much about the real trauma Kim is experiencing after witnessing Lalo kill Howard in cold blood and then be forced to go on with her day — and her marriage to some extent — as if nothing had happened! That’s … A LOT
I completely disagree. Neither one of them are decent people on any level and together they are absolutely horrible and dangerous to the world around them as Kim correctly pointed out. The only difference is that Kim is more self aware. It's the two of them and their sick symbiosis that are the equivalent of Walt in this show
This episode was brutal in its quietness. The pivotal scenes were all achingly muted, to me. Gustavo at the bar was like a ghost; Kim in the parking deck kissing Jimmy to both stop his manic rationalizations and to serve as a stop gap for all age couldn’t say; Mike with Nacho’s father fumbling to say Justice in Spanish. And of course, the final conversation between Jimmy and Kim which ends with just the sound of tape stripping from the roll, affixing another box.
Goddamn.
First of all, THANK YOU Myles for starting this site! This is the first episode of BB/BCS I’ve caught in real time (late to the game on BB and then waiting for Netflix to air BCS, finally finished Season 5 a couple weeks ago, had no idea what I was going to do without Donna’s coverage of Season 6 :)).
What I found particular poignant about Jimmy’s soliloquy? about turning the corner was that it was the same thing that Mike told Jimmy following their time in the desert. Neither Jimmy nor Kim could wait that long though..
So glad to have you here for the finish, Jason. Ugh, that’s s perfect observation ::heartbreaking emoji::
Waking up one day and not thinking about it is the same thing Mike’s daughter in law said about Matty when they were in group session. The idiom is being passed along…
I can't fully articulate it yet, but it feels like the path this comment takes tracks roughly with the progress of characters' moral compromise. The first person to say it is describing the loss of someone who accepted corruption unwillingly - Matty, at his father's instruction, and possibly because he thought it would help keep his family safe. Instead it got him killed (arguably his integrity got him killed, because the cops who killed him might not have if he'd jumped at the initial offer). The next person to say it is Mike, telling Jimmy how and why he's going to get over the experience of nearly dying several times over in the desert on a drug money errand that will free a remorseless killer. Then Jimmy says it to Kim about a death to which they were both major contributing factors, and she's the first person to refuse the promise that she could forget the moral ground she gave up for her own aggrandizement, or enjoyment, or convenience. What starts out as a devastating admission of loss -- that after losing someone you eventually start losing the grief that felt like all you had left of them -- becomes a rationalization to live with choices that hurt others, until Kim realizes that she doesn't want to be the kind of person who can forget what she's done. I think she's the first person in the ABQ-verse I've seen walk away from the easy thing. But did she walk away soon enough to actually get out?
I love the echos the writers make, this was an astute one to point out!
From Jimmy to Kim, from Mike to Jimmy, from Matty's widow to Mike in therapy. Hit me like a punch in the gut, and has everytime it's been brought back.
During this episode, I kept thinking about the last two episodes of season 3, particularly Kim’s storyline in those episodes and her car crash. I remember at the time being really stuck and amazed by Kim’s decision to take a step back and lighten her work load. It was such a self aware and emotionally intelligent decision for a universe where characters are always digging themself deeper (which Kim had done plenty of in the series). Kim’s car crash made her realize that she could have seriously hurt herself and others, so she course corrected before it become too late, before she could do serious damage.
But this time, in season 6, that decision did come when it was too late. She had already done serious damage. Her realization and decision this time only after she has destroyed herself and others. And that is one of the things that make Kim and this episode so tragic to me. She has always had the ability and insight , more than any of the characters in the breaking bad, to make smart, self-aware decisions; but as the series went on, that ability increasingly become clouded and overcome by other things, other desires. And in this episode, she finally finally gets that back and for her to see things clearly but in took utter devastation for that to happen. But unlike with the car crash, it’s too late. The damage is done.
Also, is Kim the only character in the breaking bad universe to successfully walk away of her own volition? Other characters have had many chances to walk away, other characters have walked a way for a brief time and then sucked themselves back in, other characters have wanted to walk away but external forces prevented them from doing so...but I can’t think of anyone else but Kim who has actually successfully walked away. They’ve either been killed (mike, nacho, hank, etc) or forced to walk away as fugitives (Jimmy/Saul, Jesse).
- Kim's comment a while ago to Rich that she would have ended up as a cashier if she hadn't moved to ABQ and gone to law school is haunting me. What is she doing now?
- There's some symmetry this season with Kim and Nacho in contrast to Mike. Mike is choosing to stay in the game, but Kim and Nacho prove that you're not stuck; you CAN choose another path for yourself once you're on a bad choice road, but you have to accept the consequences, the heavens may fall. Nacho paid with his life, and Kim is no longer the world's best lawyer and hardly has a fantastic safety net to fall back on. Mike doesn't want to accept not having a ton of money for Stacy and Kaylee, fine. But that doesn't mean his only choice is to glare at Gus and then go do whatever he says, and just thinking you're different from the other cartel people is not the same as actually being different, as Mr. Varga points out. You actually have to do something different, otherwise the result of your actions is the same.
- And Jimmy/Saul can decide to opt out too, no matter what Chuck and Howard and so many others said about him being unable to change. Walter White was a struggling teacher when he decided he could be something different and someone bad. I wonder if this show will end with Saul deciding to be good.
I strongly suspect we'll learn more about what Kim is or has been up to. It made me so sad to think about all the lost souls out there who are brilliant but just can't do it anymore and end up starting over. It doesn't mean she's miserable, but a piece of her is gone forever.
We've seen how the law (and working hard at the law) gave Kim an identity, allowed her to argue with the upbringing that told her she was nobody. And then it gave her a cause, too. How she loved being a public defender! I hope she finds something that will allow her to remake that identity, atone perhaps, and then eventually grow into a mission and a passion. (That's a lot to ask of 4 more episodes, but I'm a dreamer.)
Count me as a dreamer too. I hope Kim has a good life, even if it is different, and if she runs into Gene out there, her life stays intact. I don't think these showrunners want to torture us too badly -- they gave Jesse a happy ending, so here's hoping.
Oh yeah, agreed we will see her and what she’s been doing. She started over once before so I’m sure she’s getting by, but is hard to think of her as not a lawyer when she cared so much and was so good at it, and when she had come so far in her life.
The show indeed ended with Saul deciding to be good. Well done!
Thanks as always, Donna. I wonder (and I haven’t read all 112 comments) if anyone shares my take on Gus’s interaction with the sommelier. Absolutely, Gus is charmed by the guy, and may regret what his life choices don’t allow him to have. I also heard something else as Reed Diamond’s character was speaking, and I sensed Gus’s wheels turning (because — Esposito’s face and eyes!). In Côte-Rôtie they make wine. They’ve been doing it for millenia and they’re very good at it, making something that is unique, and specific — entirely their local product while also being one of the world’s best. Yes, it’s an intoxicant, potentially danerous and addictive, causing social and physical harm. But it’s also a work of art, and a point of pride. It makes people like the sommelier enthusiastically tell great stories about it. At this point Gus is thinking of his unfinished superlab, and what he wants to make there. Gus is proud, and vain, and we’ve just been reminded he’s full of hate. He manifests his hate by being better than everyone else — even taking pride in his chicken business that’s just a front and a laundry for his drug operation. This story by the charming, smiley sommelier is what Gus is thinking about a few years later when he learns about the high-yield blue meth and meets Walt, and why a guy as careful and methodical as Gus takes Walt on as chief of the superlab despite all of Walt’s evident red flags. Making and selling the Côte-Rôtie of crystal meth appealed to Gus’s pride and vanity and hate, and it eventually got him killed.
Any thoughts?
Wow, yes to all of this!
It really helped at the final moment of this episode to know I'd be able to come and read your review, Donna. Thank you for that. I did find it fairly overwhelmingly sad, but that's because I care so much. At least, for the time being, it eases the tension of fearing Kim will be killed.
Leave it up to Vince & Co. to barrel towards the finish line like this. While some have complained about the pacing, I find it thrilling that they've set up so many things that they can essentially just start tearing out the Jenga pieces like this in the back half of the season, our feelings and emotions be damned. If Rhea doesn't finally win an Emmy after this episode I will go 100% Lalo on the voters, watching from the gutters, and charming your widows.
Prediction: They tie up the loose end that Kim went back to Nebraska after leaving Jimmy, somehow they cross paths and (this is too much to hope for from V & Co so I'm already setting myself up for being crushed) maybe these two kids get some sort of happy ending from the mayhem that has been the Meth Wars of ABQ.
Will join you in Laloing anybody that stands in the way of RS winning an Emmy
100% into making Lalo into a verb now.
I had started to believe that Jimmy and Kim were going to be put in an impossible situation and be forced to be these caricatures of themselves forever -- it is somehow much less obvious and much more painful that their end comes not because they deny who they are, but accept it fully, instead.
As Emily VDW is to Deadwood, Alan Sepinwall is to Sopranos, and MZS is to Mad Men, Donna is to the ABQ-verse. I look forward to these reviews almost as much as the episode itself. They add clarity and reinforcement to art that I think is great but can’t quite find the words to articulate HOW it is so.
Long-winded way of saying, thank you, Donna. I can’t wait for the final four episodes and recaps.