Howard is gone, and life goes on.
He is just a shadow, a silhouette.
He could be anyone, or no one at all.
Giancarlo Esposito as Gus Fring on ‘Better Call Saul’.Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
Realizing you might forget.
But when Mike said this, it was to someone who desperately wanted to hear it.
Kim, lying on her side with her back to her husband, doesn’t even look at him.
And yet, life goes on, for everyone.
He recoils from the sensation of happiness, from the possibility of human connection.
These things are distractions.
Mike tries to comfort Manuel by telling him that justice will be done.
Manuel scoffs: He’s not talking about justice, but revenge.
He calls Mike a gangster.
“You’re all the same,” he says, and turns away.
Again, a theme emerges.
Do you see it?
Men going their own way.
Men walking away from carnage, tragedy, trauma.
Men left alone to live with themselves, for better or for worse.
Jimmy, of course, is not alone.
This is when Kim kisses Jimmy goodbye.
She drives away, and then he’s alone.
In the very next scene, Kim is back in court with a client, visibly nervous.
There’s a problem: She’s filed a last-minute motion to excuse herself from the case.
The judge asks why, and at first she stonewalls, but finally she says it.
“Because I’m no longer an attorney.”
Cut to Jimmy coming back to the condo, busting through the door: “You did what?”
“Why,whyyyyyy?!”
But the freakout only lasts a moment before he goes into full damage control mode.
He’s making a plan.
They’ll get a new place.
Kim’s side of the closet is empty.
Her belongings are half packed into boxes and suitcases, the rest still strewn across the bed.
Kim’s last words to Jimmy aren’t just a breakup speech.
They’re a magnum opus.
He begs her to stay, and says he loves her.
“I love you too,” she says, and then her voice breaks.
“But so what?!”
So what, indeed.
Kim finally understands: The fact that she loves Jimmy and that he makes her happy is irrelevant.
She could have made different choices, and she didn’t.
