(An act of cowardice?
She was thwarted by Mike (Jonathan Banks) & Co. (Turns out, this house catcanscratch.)
Are you “happy with the way things went down”?
Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton), Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), and Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) on ‘Better Call Saul’.Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television (4)
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How long have the writers known when Lalo was going to die?
And did you consider delaying it as long as possible, given how well the character was popping?
I don’t think we ever know for sure until we’re in it.
I don’t think we really tried to delay it.
I think we felt like this was the right time.
He had a conversation with Vince and Peter [Gilligan and Gould, the show’s creators].
We want to give the actors the ability to go do other work….
However, there’s a line in the script.
How did you go about deciding to shed backstory light on that throwaway line fromBreaking Bad?
Some folks felt more strongly in the room that it would be fun to pay it off.
Like you say, Jimmy’s never going to believe [Lalo is dead].
How can he possibly believe that this guy, that this problem, is never going to come back?
We were really happy that we could literally have the [line], “It was Ignacio!”
“have the [line] “It was Ignacio!”
And then Kim rings the doorbell and appears ready to shoot Gus to save Jimmy’s life.
Is this the most romantic thing that each of them has done for the other?
Whoever stays here dies, so, “Get out!
And similarly, she’s real close to pulling that trigger.
It feels like they’re truly honoring their wedding vows.
This is not a convenience to make it so that we don’t have to implicate each other legally.
This is a deep connection and a deep commitment to one another.
In your mind, do you think Kim would’ve pulled the trigger?
God, I don’t know….
I think there’s a really good chance that she would have.
Or she would’ve pulled the trigger.
One of the two.
The door just opened!”
Almost reflexive, just like, “This has to happen.
I know it’s crazy.”
She knows it’s crazy.
She knows all of this is crazy.
Your brain will scramble.
If you just come at somebody and are like, “Help!
I need to think this through.”
So yeah, I do think there was a pretty good chance that she would’ve shot him.
Mike tells them to pretend this never happened, but Jimmy looks anxiously at Kim.
I think it’s all of that stew of meaty emotions there that you just laid out.
She’s gone at the moment.
She’s just not there.
Like, how do I get her back?
He looks at her and is hoping that there’s a way for her to be okay.
Jimmy McGill is nothing if not a striver and a believer in, “There’s a way.
There’s gotta be a way.
How can there not be a way?”
And how do I help her get there?”
What can you hint about that relationship moving forward?
She’s in a not quite catatonic state, but she’s processing.
They’re going to have to deal very directly with the consequences of this.
With that obstacle gone but consequences surely sprouting up, what does that spell for the end game?
We don’t have that much real estate left, honestly.
And we have a lot of story lines still kind of waiting for us.
And we need to know what Kim is going to make of all of this.
In terms of what it says for the end game?
There are worse things that can happen to your state of being and your state of your soul."
When Mike asks Gus how he knew Lalo was running a decoy play, Gus says he didn’t.
When she says he talked him out of it, he knows there’s something weird going on here.
Why would you send the lawyer at me?
The thing that Jimmy says, “Would you launch the door for this woman in distress?”
It’s not the perfect move if you could just swap two things.
It’s not precise enough.
It’s not Lalo enough.
I think that’s the reason he doesn’t call Mike.
I don’t think he knows that Lalo is going to the superlab.
“There’s a really good chance that something’s up.
I gotta go there because that’s the most important place to defend.”
Why exactly did Gus hide the gun down there?
He’s always been one step ahead of Lalo, bugging the nursing home, etc.
That was what we felt like.
That’s not Gus' style.
It’s not his forte.
It’s not where his strengths lay.
So I think him putting it there is just there’s a chance that this all ends here.
This is the thing that Lalo wants most.
What was the biggest challenge in creating tension in that scene when certain things seem evident?
And then it sort of shifts and you’re like, “Lalo’s in trouble here.
He doesn’t know everything.”
So then it starts to be like, “Does Lalo get away?”
It’s two things.
But there’s a tactic here, there’s a play to be had.
He gives Lalo everything he wants.
It’s just this nice transition in from glee to murder.
Speaking of that, he lets out that disturbing bloody laugh right before he dies.
Was that in the script?
And what was going through Lalo’s mind at that moment of fatal comeuppance?
I think it’s exactly that.
Because he has him.
“I’ve got you!
I made it all the way here!
You did all this!
And I made it through!
And you got lucky, you bastard!”
So what can you do but laugh at that thisguy is the guy who got to me.
The rueful laugh specifically is not in the script, I don’t think.
We did different versions, with and without the laugh, and tried to see what felt right.
And when we saw it, it’s just like, “Oh, come on!
This is so good!”
It just felt so good.
There’s probably an easier way to dispose of these bodies, but it works well.
Lalo sets up his own death scene, feels thematically appropriate, and is extraordinarily evocative.
It would be fun to rewatch the “Fly” episode ofBreaking Badknowing what’s beneath Walt and Jesse.
How did you decide to bury them there?
Do we do something with the bodies at the start of the next episode?
And it felt like both of them were too important to just vanish.
And then it was like, “No, maybe they really do.”
It was just one of those things where it’s like, “Is it too much?
Is it too on the nose?
Are we making too much about building a laboratory of meth on death?
Is it too much that Lalo keeps talking about this being a tomb?”
And we said, “Nah!
It’s not too much.
Let’s do it!”
It really felt too good.
We haven’t spent any time discussing Patrick Fabian’s performance in this episode.
I understand that he spent some quality time in that pit with Tony.
They were both great about it.
He spent some time, but not all the time, on the floor during that big opening scene.
We also had a double to do some of that work for him because it’s actually really uncomfortable.
So we gave them both a big sendoff on this episode.
I’ve got to ask you a tough question.
How worried should we be for Lyle?
It feels like you’ve been spending an awful lot of time on him over the years.
I don’t know if we will see Lyle again.
I don’t know if we should be too worried about him.
What can you tease about next week’s episode?
It’s bigger still in a lot of ways.
Episode 9 is bigger and badder, and to my mind, even more heartbreaking than this one.
