A great show pulls back from its own brink.
WasBetter Call Saulalways about TV?
The AMC drama begins with its main character watching his own reruns.
Greg Lewis/AMC
On television, life is in color and so is his glorious past.
Before Gene, before Saul, there is Jimmy McGill, a struggling lawyer in 2000s Albuquerque.
He comes off pitiful in his nail salon office-bedroom, but don’t doubt his legal chops.
Rhea Seehorn on ‘Better Call Saul’.Greg Lewis/AMC
He builds a multi-million-dollar case against a predatory retirement chain, and brings a local bank to its knees.
Along the way, he establishes two distinct careers.
On the AARP circuit, he’s the loving grandson you pay for.
Greg Lewis/AMC
Then he rebrands as a friend to criminals in need.
Law is not his passion.
Jimmy’s true calling is performance.
This actor writes and directs, too.
But Jimmy gives them a lofty pitch.
Spoken like a cinephile, and he loves his old movies.
This talker of talks can walk the walk with audio-visual know-how.
He knows mono buries his voice.
He demands a dolly shot for maximum drama and his crew creates a makeshift wheelchair-dolly, like Godarddid forBreathless.
“It’s showtime, folks!
“: That’s him, a real Mr. Show, jazzing himself up for a long courthouse day.
His advertising earns eyeballs, phone calls, and a devoted fandom among the amoral.
His taglines toss off poetry: Gimme Jimmy, Call Saul.
InSaul’s last few episodes, though, it symbolizes Saul’s tragic legacy and his undoing.
Actually, the penultimate episode contained, for me, the ultimate payoff ofBetter Call Saul.
Undercover Gene hears a familiar voice “The Constitution says you have rights, and so do I!”
coming from a computer.
Gene flips the screen and sees himself.
In this black-and-white world, the reflection of the commercial blazes color onto Gene’s glasses.
So the show really could have ended there, with the past coming back to doom his future.
Actually,Saulcould have ended a few times inthis stunning final half-season.
Captured in a trash can, tossed into jail, the renegade lawyer looks to be spinning out.
A bit of graffiti “My lawyer will ream your ass” sends him into a giggle fit.
The laughter turned into a transformation, and a rebirth.
Gene made like Jekyll and Hyde, leaving a renewed Saul Goodman confidently plotting one final legal heist.
A sitdown with the Feds offers a sitdown with franchise history.
Marie Schrader (Betsy Brandt) looks Saul right in the face while she talks about her murdered husband.
Marie stands in for all the people affected by Saul’s actions.
Her unforced sincerity is devastating; in some ways, it’s better material than Brandt ever got inBad.
More devastating, though, is Saul’s response.
It’s vintage McGill honesty, truth with a lying purpose.
Yes, Walter White (Bryan Cranston) reallydidkidnap him and throw him in front of an open grave.
Yes, the meth kingdidorganize the simultaneous assassination of ten men in three prisons.
He was scared, and remains scared.
Isn’t Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) still at large?
Saul Goodman, the Victim: One last compelling narrative.
It’s a lie, of course, and not one he even bothers hiding.
Wouldn’t it convince a jury?
And “Saul Gone” had flashbacks that made his primal capitalist sin clear.
Always about the money with this guy.
We live in loud times for TV drama.
I already miss Mike’s silences.
And I missed that quiet instinct in the finale.
Is it conventional, satisfying, satisfyingbecauseit’s conventional, or just a bit disappointing?
Is it damning with lavish praise to say I expected more?
Having out-maneuvered the federal case against him, Saul out-maneuvers his own out-maneuvering.
One last time, he turns a court into his theater.
His plea starts out as another rerun, a word-for-word re-enactment of his performance for Marie.
And then the path changes, and Saul Goodman admits everything.
He was the fuel on Heisenberg’s fire and the burning started long before anyone turned meth blue.
He references the death of Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian).
And Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) is… present.
I don’t know.
She was always his target audience, but something about her role here felt like a demotion.
In season 1, she’s the kind of steady attorney Jimmy aspires to be.
(Her HHM job could’ve been his, but Chuck kiboshed Jimmy’s hiring.)
There was a spark between them, fatal as a cigarette, delicious as a cigarette.
What did Kim see in Jimmy?
But wasn’t it a hoot to throw those bottles into the parking lot?
And why not get somebody else to pay for those drinks?
Make it expensive alcohol: shots of Zafiro, all night!
Jimmy was fun, and they were fun together.
Seehorn and Odenkirk had great chemistry, less romcom than screwball.
You believed these were two people who keep getting frustrated and then fascinated anew with each other’s surprises.
They brush their teeth together, help with each other’s cases, and pull each other toward destruction.
It wasn’t ever just about the money with Kim but wasn’t their apartment kinda small?
Recall their tantalizing season 5 trip to an open house, with those glass bricks in the mega-shower.
Kim always feels some sort of higher calling.
And she excels at surprise exits.
She leaves the cozy confines of HHM to launch her own practice.
She ditches a fine career in corporate lawyer-ing to become a pro bono superstar.
And finally another moment of final-season devastation she leaves the law entirely.
All of these moves were unexpected.
Jimmy got the big showcase moment in the last episode.
I guess that’s his right as the title character.
Odenkirk was as stupendous as Seehorn; fill their next couple Septembers with Emmys.
But I preferred the nonchalant resurrection of Kim Wexler in the Central Florida Legal Aid.
She walks into a shabby office full of desperate people and offers to volunteer.
Paradise is Doc Review.
But once I started, I couldn’t stop.
Gould and co-creatorVince GilliganpushedBreaking Bad’s stylistic innovation to new heights, even as they cannily downshifted their focus.
Nacho juggles his Salamanca duties with a regular gig at his dad’s upholstery shop.
It is a Big Courtroom Scene, the kind of only-in-movies moment Jimmy previously tried to create with chicanery.
“I’m James McGill,” he concludes, re-becoming the self he buried.
The people in the courtroom do not applaud, but I worry they could have.
Here at the end, Jimmy does “the right thing.”
Am I as cynical as Slippin' Jimmy if I add air quotes over that phrase?
It’s aCrime and Punishmentending, and nobody ever says Dostoyevsky wasn’t cynical enough.
At long last, he puts on a good show that is also morally good.
At long last, comfort TV!
Kim and Jimmy endBetter Call Saultogether.
She visits him at a rough penitentiary, and offers him a cigarette.
In the trade you call this a callback, and “Saul Gone” had a few.
Walt himself appears in a flashback set astrideBad’s penultimate episode, baffled at Saul’s time-travel question.
The handoff between protagonists was rich with meaning.
“So,” says the scientist, “You werealwayslike this.”
Saul really was a just bug to him.
AndBetter Call Saulwas this bug’s life, lessScarfacethanDeath of a Salesman.
Certainly, it’s wonderful to see Seehorn and Odenkirk together one last time.
Yet something about their last moments in the prison yard feels a tad too expected.
Instead, she takes a long cold walk home, going three miles with a cello on her back.
That feels like a rehearsal for something likeThe Third Man, a ferocious stroll with no look back.
Here, she gives him a meaningful gaze.
It’s a kindness.
On the bus to his forever home in prison, the disgraced lawyer looks out the window.
I think he would like you to think he looks better than he has in a very long time.
This is the part of the narrative when the convicted man feels, at last, free.
But the other prisoners know him better, maybe, than he know himself.
“Better Call Saul, right?”
No no, he swears: “McGill.
I’m McGill.”
Not anymore, pal.
His legend precedes him.
They recognize the man from all the commercials.
“Better Call Saul!”
they chant, “Better Call Saul!”
their stomping like that moment when a whole arena starts in on “We Will Rock You.”
If you scanned some spiritual awakening in his big courtroom moment, look closer at Odenkirk’s performance here.
Jimmy’s embarrassed, frustrated, trapped again.
And then, for just a second, he smiles.
It’s nice to have a mob that adores you.
How could hardened criminals fall for such an act?
How could anyone buy what this not-so-Goodman was selling?
Why did his obvious lies become more real than the truth?
Why do we always call Saul?
Because he’s on television, dummy.
That’s Ned Beatty inNetwork.
Finale Grade: B+
Series Grade: A
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