Mr. Reindeer
White Lodge
- Apr 13, 2022
- 775
- 1,738
Just a quick note to say it’s great to see you around these parts, and I’m so glad you’re enjoying the show!
Better Call Saul - the final stretch
- Thread starter Jasper
- Start date
Agent Earle
Great Northern Hotel
- Apr 12, 2022
- 78
- 133
Many thanks! Yeah, I've become something of a lurker on this forum
There's not much to say about Lynch- and TP-related stuff right now, unfortunately, but I'm skimming over ongoing debates in various threads with relative regularity. This one really caught my eye for previously stated reasons; I plan on reading your thoughts once I get to the concluding stretch of episodes (which should be around Christmastime).
Mr. Reindeer
White Lodge
- Apr 13, 2022
- 775
- 1,738
All I’ll say is that I found the finale very satisfying! (Will be posting more extensive thoughts later, so don’t read thatMany thanks! Yeah, I've become something of a lurker on this forum
)
Mr. Reindeer
White Lodge
- Apr 13, 2022
- 775
- 1,738
If you’ll briefly indulge me, I want to get personal for a moment, because this season has been sort of an odd experience for me. For a variety of reasons, I quit my job as an attorney (criminal prosecutor) several months ago and am debating whether I’ll continue to pursue a career in the legal field at all (let’s just say that I don’t know many happy lawyers). For almost the past decade, most of my friends and acquaintances and mentors have been people in the legal field, and this is a show that I’ve shared with several of them, because it really is one of the most accurate depictions of many mundane aspects of lawyer life out there. So, a lot of the material with Kim giving notice to the Bar, Jimmy working in a Cinnabon and reflecting back on his old life as a lawyer, etc., has really hit home for me at a time when I’m at a crossroads and considering abandoning a field that has been in equal parts good to me and detrimental, but where I’ve undeniably felt at home. I started law school when the final season of Breaking Bad was airing, so there is a degree of this feeling like a “full circle” moment. To quote Saul, quite a ride.
That out of the way, specific thoughts on this episode...
What a satisfying end not only to Jimmy’s journey, but to the Breaking Bad saga. The timing of the flashbacks were perfectly chosen, and I loved the payoff of the H. G. Wells book that we’ve seen throughout the final season. The idea of traveling to different moments in time to allow these characters to contemplate the choices they made, the “bad choice roads” if you will, is so simple and elegant in the way that so much of Breaking Bad is. These writers don’t play games: they lean directly into the obvious storytelling choices, playing fair with the audience, but executing those obvious choices insanely well. The Mike scene was heartbreaking. The Walt scene was hilarious (keep in mind that this is right after Hank was murdered and Walt had to abandon his family, and of course the prick’s only regret was leaving Gray Matter! Also notice the moment when he glances at the watch that Jesse gave him...this after he had just effectively signed Jesse’s death notice the day prior).
I love that Mike takes accountability for his choices; Walt doesn’t, Chuck doesn’t. Jimmy ultimately, finally, does.
It was great to open on those gorgeous New Mexico desert vistas one more time. Like the Washington woods in Twin Peaks, such an iconic landscape that instantly evokes this franchise.
It’s hilarious to me that in Breaking Bad times, Vince Gilligan was so timeline-phobic, insisting that although the show takes place over exactly two years (between Walt’s fiftieth and fifty-second birthdays), it was taking place in the eternal now (i.e., each of the five seasons was set in whatever year it was filmed). So that the Pilot is set in 2008, but in subsequent seasons there were anachronistic uses of video games, cars, etc. that hadn’t existed in that period, culminating in the reference to Osama bin Laden being killed. Better Call Saul, in contrast, has embraced being a period show taking place largely between 2002 and 2004, with dates frequently being seen on props, era-appropriate technology, etc. This episode in particular, by nature of its “Time Machine” premise, is timeline-obsessed, in a total reversal from Vince’s prior stance, with many specific dates being named in dialogue (the date Mike took his first bribe—St. Patrick’s Day!; the date of Matty’s death; the date of the prison shankings in “Gliding Over All”).
Things I was not expecting in this episode: Marie Schrader; Steve Gomez’s previously-mentioned but never-before-seen widow Blanca; mention of Dan Wachsberger (Gus’s lawyer); mention of Gray Matter and Gretchen and Elliott.
The scene of Jimmy pacing in a cell muttering “this is how they get you” over and over might be the purest most primal glimpse we ever get at the true James Morgan McGill.
It was so great to see Bill Oakley (and his eyedrops!) back, and playing such a prominent role in this finale. The poor hapless schmuck just can’t catch a break. I have to say, the one moment in the episode that really rang false to me from a legal standpoint was Bill actively engaging in conversation with Jimmy on the plane in front of the U.S. marshal, and even volunteering information that could cause Jimmy to talk more. He should have shut that down pronto.
Jimmy proves himself the smartest (or at least craftiest) lawyer in the room when he turns the AUSA’s case back against him in the plea negotiation. He recognizes that a prosecutor who has never lost a case is likely gun-shy to take a weak case to trial, and by adopting a duress defense, all the strengths of the government’s case against him as an accessory of Walt become strengths of Jimmy’s defense (the more monstrous Walt seems, the more likely a juror is to buy that Jimmy was terrified). It’s a brilliant strategy proving once and for all Jimmy’s legal acumen, and also a great acting moment for Odenkirk (“All I need is one”).
Gonna be pedantic here, but I may have found one final teeny timeline error in the Breaking Bad universe: Jimmy says, “as Steve Jobs used to say,” seemingly implying that Jobs has ceased to be (to quote Monty Python), but Jobs was still alive in 2010 when the scene takes place.
Note that the airline they fly on is Wayfarer, the same airline whose plane collided with a chartered flight in Breaking Bad, sending a pink teddy bear into Walt’s pool.
I wonder what the “toe-curling” testimony he offered against Kim was? Presumably it was a complete fabrication (because all the actual facts were already in Kim’s affidavit), but what more fictional facts could/would he add? Somehow something incriminating enough to guarantee that she would fly across the country to show up at the courtroom, but she’s not in custody and presumably hasn’t been charged with anything. It’s sort of an odd plot point (and frankly, although it’s played as a grand romantic gesture to get her there to witness his redemption, it’s kind of shitty of him to put her through the temporary fear of a false criminal accusation leveled at her by her ex. That must have been a crummy few days/weeks for her before the court date).
I do really like the fact that in “Waterworks,” Kim on the phone call tells Jimmy to turn himself in. Jimmy, being shitty, tells HER to take her own advice, never thinking that she’ll actually do it. But it actually acts as a wake-up call for her, and then upon learning that she actually did it, Jimmy has his own moral reckoning. Kim said a few episodes ago that they’re not good together as a couple, but they end up each inadvertently inspiring the other to finally take accountability for their actions.
I love Kim once again working as support staff in a law office, albeit at legal aid as opposed to the HHM mail room as she did nearly twenty years earlier. It’s a sad but satisfying end to her character arc, and at least she can get some level of fulfillment from helping others.
In a universe full of amazing song choices, perhaps the last we’ll ever get is “Only Believe” by the Harmonizing Four, expressing a sentiment Jimmy McGill has lived by for most of his life, and the sort of philosophy that any good con man has to embrace (“all things are possible if you only believe”). Recall Saul in Breaking Bad saying, “If you're committed enough, you can make any story work. I once told a woman I was Kevin Costner, and it worked because I believed it.” I love that they turned this throwaway gag into an entire character arc. (Tangentially, I at first thought the lyric was “Only Belize,” referring to the famous euphemism when Saul suggests that Walt have Hank killed!)
“It’s showtime.” Jimmy’s last great con is finagling a ridiculously generous plea offer, then throwing it away to prove to the woman he loves, to Chuck’s memory, and to himself that he can finally take accountability for his actions. What a satisfying ending for this character. Who could have dreamed this way back in 2009 when Bob Odenkirk first popped up in Breaking Bad as goofy corrupt Lionel Hutz-esque lawyer Saul Goodman?
I’m blanking: is it ever made clear whether Jimmy legally changed his name to Saul Goodman? I thought he did, but it’s implied in the finale that he didn’t (the judge says that he has “requested to use the name Saul Goodman”).
I love imagining how pissed off Walt would be at Saul’s claim that Walt couldn’t have done it without him.
The cut to the EXIT sign when he mentions Chuck is a little showy.
“I tried. I coulda tried harder. I shoulda.” Odenkirk’s delivery of that killed me.
I like him taking possession back of his James McGill name, but this is somewhat contradicted by the later prison scenes of him being happily called Saul by all the inmates.
As someone who’d been hoping to see Chuck again, I will say I felt the Chuck scene a little underwhelming, but I think that was the point. The nature of their relationship is, as Chuck says, they have the same conversation over and over.
Jimmy’s happy(ish) ending, surrounded in prison by fellow criminals who could understand and respect him, felt earned and appropriate. It ends as a strange anti-morality play of him simultaneously accepting accountability for past actions but also not really changing in any meaningful way, accepting himself as the grifter and criminal Chuck always told him he was. Even Kim simultaneously respects him for nuking the cushy plea deal and confessing, but also admires his skill in conning the feds into it in the first place (and she cons her way into a prison visit with an expired bar card!). It’s all weirdly amoral, in a way apropos to this show and this character.
It’s amazing to me in this day and age that the show ends on two characters sharing a cigarette, such a colossally verboten act in 2022. If David Lynch ever watches this show, I imagine him approving. The little touch of color on the lighter flame and the glowing cigarette end was such a good touch (very Sin City).
The final lines in the Breaking Bad universe: “With good behavior...who knows?” Such an appropriate ending to the legacy of Jimmy McGill as well as the entire Breaking Bad world.
That out of the way, specific thoughts on this episode...
What a satisfying end not only to Jimmy’s journey, but to the Breaking Bad saga. The timing of the flashbacks were perfectly chosen, and I loved the payoff of the H. G. Wells book that we’ve seen throughout the final season. The idea of traveling to different moments in time to allow these characters to contemplate the choices they made, the “bad choice roads” if you will, is so simple and elegant in the way that so much of Breaking Bad is. These writers don’t play games: they lean directly into the obvious storytelling choices, playing fair with the audience, but executing those obvious choices insanely well. The Mike scene was heartbreaking. The Walt scene was hilarious (keep in mind that this is right after Hank was murdered and Walt had to abandon his family, and of course the prick’s only regret was leaving Gray Matter! Also notice the moment when he glances at the watch that Jesse gave him...this after he had just effectively signed Jesse’s death notice the day prior).
I love that Mike takes accountability for his choices; Walt doesn’t, Chuck doesn’t. Jimmy ultimately, finally, does.
It was great to open on those gorgeous New Mexico desert vistas one more time. Like the Washington woods in Twin Peaks, such an iconic landscape that instantly evokes this franchise.
It’s hilarious to me that in Breaking Bad times, Vince Gilligan was so timeline-phobic, insisting that although the show takes place over exactly two years (between Walt’s fiftieth and fifty-second birthdays), it was taking place in the eternal now (i.e., each of the five seasons was set in whatever year it was filmed). So that the Pilot is set in 2008, but in subsequent seasons there were anachronistic uses of video games, cars, etc. that hadn’t existed in that period, culminating in the reference to Osama bin Laden being killed. Better Call Saul, in contrast, has embraced being a period show taking place largely between 2002 and 2004, with dates frequently being seen on props, era-appropriate technology, etc. This episode in particular, by nature of its “Time Machine” premise, is timeline-obsessed, in a total reversal from Vince’s prior stance, with many specific dates being named in dialogue (the date Mike took his first bribe—St. Patrick’s Day!; the date of Matty’s death; the date of the prison shankings in “Gliding Over All”).
Things I was not expecting in this episode: Marie Schrader; Steve Gomez’s previously-mentioned but never-before-seen widow Blanca; mention of Dan Wachsberger (Gus’s lawyer); mention of Gray Matter and Gretchen and Elliott.
The scene of Jimmy pacing in a cell muttering “this is how they get you” over and over might be the purest most primal glimpse we ever get at the true James Morgan McGill.
It was so great to see Bill Oakley (and his eyedrops!) back, and playing such a prominent role in this finale. The poor hapless schmuck just can’t catch a break. I have to say, the one moment in the episode that really rang false to me from a legal standpoint was Bill actively engaging in conversation with Jimmy on the plane in front of the U.S. marshal, and even volunteering information that could cause Jimmy to talk more. He should have shut that down pronto.
Jimmy proves himself the smartest (or at least craftiest) lawyer in the room when he turns the AUSA’s case back against him in the plea negotiation. He recognizes that a prosecutor who has never lost a case is likely gun-shy to take a weak case to trial, and by adopting a duress defense, all the strengths of the government’s case against him as an accessory of Walt become strengths of Jimmy’s defense (the more monstrous Walt seems, the more likely a juror is to buy that Jimmy was terrified). It’s a brilliant strategy proving once and for all Jimmy’s legal acumen, and also a great acting moment for Odenkirk (“All I need is one”).
Gonna be pedantic here, but I may have found one final teeny timeline error in the Breaking Bad universe: Jimmy says, “as Steve Jobs used to say,” seemingly implying that Jobs has ceased to be (to quote Monty Python), but Jobs was still alive in 2010 when the scene takes place.
Note that the airline they fly on is Wayfarer, the same airline whose plane collided with a chartered flight in Breaking Bad, sending a pink teddy bear into Walt’s pool.
I wonder what the “toe-curling” testimony he offered against Kim was? Presumably it was a complete fabrication (because all the actual facts were already in Kim’s affidavit), but what more fictional facts could/would he add? Somehow something incriminating enough to guarantee that she would fly across the country to show up at the courtroom, but she’s not in custody and presumably hasn’t been charged with anything. It’s sort of an odd plot point (and frankly, although it’s played as a grand romantic gesture to get her there to witness his redemption, it’s kind of shitty of him to put her through the temporary fear of a false criminal accusation leveled at her by her ex. That must have been a crummy few days/weeks for her before the court date).
I do really like the fact that in “Waterworks,” Kim on the phone call tells Jimmy to turn himself in. Jimmy, being shitty, tells HER to take her own advice, never thinking that she’ll actually do it. But it actually acts as a wake-up call for her, and then upon learning that she actually did it, Jimmy has his own moral reckoning. Kim said a few episodes ago that they’re not good together as a couple, but they end up each inadvertently inspiring the other to finally take accountability for their actions.
I love Kim once again working as support staff in a law office, albeit at legal aid as opposed to the HHM mail room as she did nearly twenty years earlier. It’s a sad but satisfying end to her character arc, and at least she can get some level of fulfillment from helping others.
In a universe full of amazing song choices, perhaps the last we’ll ever get is “Only Believe” by the Harmonizing Four, expressing a sentiment Jimmy McGill has lived by for most of his life, and the sort of philosophy that any good con man has to embrace (“all things are possible if you only believe”). Recall Saul in Breaking Bad saying, “If you're committed enough, you can make any story work. I once told a woman I was Kevin Costner, and it worked because I believed it.” I love that they turned this throwaway gag into an entire character arc. (Tangentially, I at first thought the lyric was “Only Belize,” referring to the famous euphemism when Saul suggests that Walt have Hank killed!)
“It’s showtime.” Jimmy’s last great con is finagling a ridiculously generous plea offer, then throwing it away to prove to the woman he loves, to Chuck’s memory, and to himself that he can finally take accountability for his actions. What a satisfying ending for this character. Who could have dreamed this way back in 2009 when Bob Odenkirk first popped up in Breaking Bad as goofy corrupt Lionel Hutz-esque lawyer Saul Goodman?
I’m blanking: is it ever made clear whether Jimmy legally changed his name to Saul Goodman? I thought he did, but it’s implied in the finale that he didn’t (the judge says that he has “requested to use the name Saul Goodman”).
I love imagining how pissed off Walt would be at Saul’s claim that Walt couldn’t have done it without him.
The cut to the EXIT sign when he mentions Chuck is a little showy.
“I tried. I coulda tried harder. I shoulda.” Odenkirk’s delivery of that killed me.
I like him taking possession back of his James McGill name, but this is somewhat contradicted by the later prison scenes of him being happily called Saul by all the inmates.
As someone who’d been hoping to see Chuck again, I will say I felt the Chuck scene a little underwhelming, but I think that was the point. The nature of their relationship is, as Chuck says, they have the same conversation over and over.
Jimmy’s happy(ish) ending, surrounded in prison by fellow criminals who could understand and respect him, felt earned and appropriate. It ends as a strange anti-morality play of him simultaneously accepting accountability for past actions but also not really changing in any meaningful way, accepting himself as the grifter and criminal Chuck always told him he was. Even Kim simultaneously respects him for nuking the cushy plea deal and confessing, but also admires his skill in conning the feds into it in the first place (and she cons her way into a prison visit with an expired bar card!). It’s all weirdly amoral, in a way apropos to this show and this character.
It’s amazing to me in this day and age that the show ends on two characters sharing a cigarette, such a colossally verboten act in 2022. If David Lynch ever watches this show, I imagine him approving. The little touch of color on the lighter flame and the glowing cigarette end was such a good touch (very Sin City).
The final lines in the Breaking Bad universe: “With good behavior...who knows?” Such an appropriate ending to the legacy of Jimmy McGill as well as the entire Breaking Bad world.
Last edited:
Cappy
White Lodge
- Aug 4, 2022
- 556
- 550
Yeah the Steve Jobs line made my ears go up as well, but i loved the episode so much that it doesn't even matter to me. Speaking of weird continuity though.._ its funny to go back and watch Breaking Bad season 2, and hear Hank spout off everything on Tuco's rap sheet except his vicious assault on Mike Ehrmantrout in 2002-ish.
Mr. Reindeer
White Lodge
- Apr 13, 2022
- 775
- 1,738
I do plan to do a semi-chronological rewatch of both series and El Camino once the last season of Saul is on Blu Ray. By semi-chronological, I mean that I’m not going to watch every single flashback (or flash forward) in exact chronological order, but I’ll do Better Call Saul first up through “Fun and Games,” then Breaking Bad, El Camino, and finally the last four episodes of Saul. It’ll be interesting to see how much continuity stuff like this crops up. My sense is not much because it feels like it holds together very well, but I’m sure there are small moments I’m not remembering like the one you mentioned.
Jackwithoneeye
Glastonbury Grove
- Apr 14, 2022
- 108
- 135
I loved the last few episodes of Better Call Saul. I was really pleased to see them stick to the black & white cinematography for all things post BB. Really added to me, the sense of depth, highlights, shadows. The scene where Kim breaks down on the bus, the speech from Hank's widow. Beautiful, moody, evocative, cinematic. I also got the feeling that when Saul/Jimmy testified in the courtroom , they lit him and did his make-up so he resembled Michael McKeon a bit more. or maybe that's just a coincidence due to the receding and thin hair.
I also remember being a kid and seeing Carol Burnett's parody of Mildred Pierce all in black and white - "Mildred Fierce" - and here she is doing a full on dramatic noir scene with Bob Odenkirk in black and white ! Amazing.
I also remember being a kid and seeing Carol Burnett's parody of Mildred Pierce all in black and white - "Mildred Fierce" - and here she is doing a full on dramatic noir scene with Bob Odenkirk in black and white ! Amazing.
