Better Call Saul ends one of its central arcs with the idea of a "good death"
Season 6, Episode 3: "Rock and Hard Place"
I’ve long held the opinion that Better Call Saul hasn’t felt like itself after Chuck died. The first three seasons were nothing short of television magic—of all the characters from Breaking Bad who could have been given their own spinoff, Bob Odenkirk’s charmingly charmless lawyer was probably not what anyone was expecting. Sure, he was incredibly watchable and everyone knew that Odenkirk had the power to bring him to life again, but how could he lead a series? He could lead a series that was made for Breaking Bad fans? But then Better Call Saul was there, and it brilliantly meshed Jimmy McGill’s dishonest but relatively safe life with the conflicts of the cartel all around him. There was nothing like Better Call Saul on TV, and it further separated itself from its more violent, showy cousin with a small roster of new characters.
But then its best new addition was gone, and suddenly the show started to slip more and more into Breaking Bad territory. Season four slightly confused itself, both in the pacing and substance of Jimmy’s story and with its tone, including the most ridiculous and out of place scene the show has ever produced, (a shootout where two men with pistols kill over twenty heavily armed opponents) and it ended up being my least favorite season of the show since its first. And then came five, which was…better, but it still just wasn’t the same. There were more action setpieces, and while there were plenty of scenes focused on the dangerous dialogue I had fallen in love with, the introduction of Lalo (being a fantastic character aside) felt like another step into Breaking Bad’s territory. We already had a couple of characters, namely new guy Nacho and pre-wheelchair Hector Salamanca, to establish the cartel presence in this pre-Walter White world.
All of this is to say that “Rock and Hard Place” was Better Call Saul’s test to see if it could finally balance itself out, and you know what? I kind of think it did.
While there are no new characters that can beat Kim or could beat Chuck, I’ve always liked Nacho. Even in season one when he felt underdeveloped, Michael Mando played him with a quiet, threatening magnetism that made him instantly watchable, and when he really got his turn from seasons onward, (except when they kind of did nothing with him throughout season four) I liked him more and more. I knew it in my heart of hearts that he would not be surviving this season, but the genius of “Rock and Hard Place”’s placement in this season’s canon is that it comes so soon. I fully expected Nacho’s demise to cap the mid-season finale—I did not expect to see it this soon.
But then comes the difficulty with writing about this episode. It’s so straightforward, and at the same time, so good, that it becomes difficult to say anything beyond “all of that was really cool.” Rarely do I love a linear episode of Better Call Saul to this degree, but “Rock and Hard Place” is about going from point A (Nacho is alive) to point B, (Nacho is dead) and longtime Better Call Saul director Gordon Smith makes a hell of a meal out of it.
One choice I really enjoy is having Nacho spend the first fifteen or so minutes of this episode on his own. The first several minutes are entirely devoid of dialogue, just Nacho running and being forced to hide in an oil tanker to escape the Cousins. Better Call Saul and its older sibling love to use color and lighting as symbolism, so it’s more than just a cool aesthetic choice when Nacho is ringed by a circle of light as he emerges from the oil, as if he’s been told that this episode will be his last and is just playing along until he can be done and ascend. It’s Nacho that turns himself in, and it’s Nacho that willingly goes along with Gus’ plan to frame him as a rival Peruvian cartel’s paid pawn. It fits with his character—he’s always been what other people need him to be.
Before Nacho turns himself in, he decides to call the one person that he had truly been working for since season two—his father, who he had been so ready to run away with when the time came. I love performances where the actor is clearly trying to restrain emotion, and Mando gives a pretty spectacular one when he’s on the phone. There aren’t a lot of words exchanged between them, but once again, it’s as though Nacho knows that his time is coming. Maybe he knew the instant he crippled Hector, or left Lalo’s gate open. Regardless, the call to his father was about getting to hear him more than anything, not about a proper goodbye. Like it’s to remind him what this was all for.
The central idea behind Nacho’s character is that he always seems to be under somebody’s thumb, and he seems like he’s going along with the plan set up, as per usual. He lets Mike bloody him up a little to make his “capture” look like a struggle and recounts his involvement with the Peruvians just as he was supposed to. It seems like it’s all going to according to plan—but there’s a moment in this altercation where I feel as though you can see Nacho change his mind. When cartel man and generally useless person Bolsa is encouraging Nacho to tell the “truth,” his eyes shift over to Gus, and despite Hector (on his other side) being his most prominent source of hatred and fear, the sight of the man who pushed him when he could have just left Hector crippled is what sends Nacho over the edge. “I hate every last one of you psycho sacks of shit,” Nacho snarls at everyone present, and you can tell that he means it. “I put you in that chair,” he jeers at Hector, having fully accepted his role one more time, now as the man who’s going to die.
But he doesn’t. In a movement that was so fluid that I found myself rewinding it several times, Nacho slices his restraints, stabs Bolsa in the leg, and grabs his pistol, ready to die but ready to die while taking a representation of his enemy with him. Bolsa doesn’t have the balls to kill—he’s just a pencil pusher in the cartel’s world, so much so to the point where the fandom makes fun of him for this very reason. But it isn’t violence that got Nacho into this situation—it was decisions, words, planning, and he’s had enough of it. But then comes the aftershock of a rash decision, and Nacho’s expression shifts from frenzied to neutral as he looks around. He knows that if he dies right now, that will be the end of it, but if he takes Bolsa with him, he puts his father in danger, and then all the work he did for the men surrounding him would be for nothing. So Nacho chooses the path of least resistance, and, instead of submitting to the higher-ups as he has so many times before, he shoots himself in the head.
What makes this scene work is the simplicity that I had grown to love Better Call Saul for, the way it moves both quickly and slowly. Mando commands the scene with his presence here, setting its tempo with every word that comes out of his mouth. The mere idea that Nacho could die this early instead of later is a little insane, but it feels earned, in a way—he couldn’t keep running forever, and he was going to have to meet his end at some point. The way it’s done makes it feel almost triumphant, now that his father is (hopefully) safe and he got to go out by his own hand. In a really surreal and disturbing image, the Cousins pick up Hector’s wheelchair and carry him over to Nacho so he can shoot his corpse, but it’s useless now. Nacho is gone, and he died no one’s property.
Does this mean that, with the exit of its most cartel-centric character, Better Call Saul is going back to basics? No, obviously. Lalo’s still out there. But what’s better than going back is evolving, and it really feels like, with “Rock and Hard Place”, that the show found that balance it needed. Of course, it can’t resist just one more Breaking Bad tie-in—the episode’s opening shows a blue flower growing from what we can reasonably assume is Nacho’s death spot, and any seasoned veteran will know that blue symbolizes purity in this world. Putting it at the start only for us to understand what it is at the very end feels like it reaffirms my idea that Nacho knew where he was going to end up, but it also feels like something a little less depressing—that now, Nacho is free.
Rating: 10/10 (A)
It didn’t feel right to include the one scene of Jimmy making a copy of Howard’s key when the episode clearly finds one plot more important, but yeah, it’s great. What did you expect? The use of classical music to score the movement of the scene was immaculate as usual, it was fun and high energy, everyone’s favorite large man made an appearance, bravo Vince, bravo Peter, etc.
Oh, and Kim had something with that judge who thinks Lalo’s “Jorge De Guzman” alias is bullshit. Setup, I assume.
Mike murmuring “do it” when Nacho had a gun to Bolsa’s head was so awesome. The respect he had for him by the end is heartening.
“Yeah?” “It’s me.” “Yeah.”