Better Call Saul returns to give us one last blast from the past
Season 6, Episodes 1 & 2: "Wine and Roses" & "Carrot and Stick"
If there’s one thing I love about anything from the universe of Breaking Bad, (unnecessary sequel film extensions notwithstanding) it’s that it’s consistent. Other than Breaking Bad’s first season, every season finale of both shows have been a ten out of ten, as has many of each season’s episodes. Every shift of character and theme makes sense, and once you understand the characters, there’s a simultaneous feeling of knowing what they’re about to do and having no idea, but still feeling fulfilled when they do it. No one writes characters quite like the shows’ teams, and no one communicates the ideas the shows present quite like them. Consistency is what we can always rely on with two of the most beloved shows of the twenty-first century.
So imagine my shock when Better Call Saul returned for its final season yesterday (well, kind of) and we did not open with good ol’ Gene Takavic, the deeply depressed/repressed Cinnabon manager that Saul Goodman promised he would become in his final Breaking Bad scene. Instead, we open in Breaking Bad as the feds raid the mansion Saul had been living in the entire time, complete with a golden toilet that probably doesn’t talk when you shit in it and an alarming amount of pills, amongst them viagra, like we’re living in a bad r/okbuddychicanery post. (Alright, stupid, niche internet culture reference…lemme just check that off my list of bullet points.) If anything, the joke in this scene is that the bedraggled lawyer who would make commercials of very questionable budget and quality would have such extravagant tastes—I mean, we knew he had the personality for it—but it’s more about the fact that he could actually afford to satisfy them. Did you ever get the impression that Saul Goodman lived this way, even after Walter White made him rich? Pfft. He always gave off the impression that he slept in his car.
Not only is this scene shot and scored absolutely phenomenally, even tricking the audience a little by opening in black and white, but it also says a couple of things with what it shows us. Of course, Saul’s crib is decked out with several cardboard cutouts of himself, because that’s just the kind of person he is, and one of them has gotten knocked into his indoor pool. For a minute, the cutout looks like the mighty Don Eladio after Gus Fring poisoned him and let him sink in his own pool, and that’s because it kind of is—the empires of Juárez and Goodman are both over. We’re watching the death of Saul Goodman. But then there’s another detail—as the feds load up a truck with that sweet, sweet Saul Goodman loot, something falls into the gutter. It’s a cap—the cap of a bottle of Zafiro Añejo, the expensive tequila Gus poisoned one of his greatest enemies with, and Jimmy McGill and Kim Wexler scammed out of some annoying investor. This season is not about Saul Goodman’s future. It’s about his past.
Opening aside, you know every single thing you need to know about “Wine and Roses” and “Carrot and Stick” before you even see them, because they’re back half episodes of Better Call Saul. They look great, they sound fantastic, every choice of licensed music is on point, and the show continues to be one of the only shows on television that truly puts effort into how the characters act and communicate. There’s a moment in the first half of Better Call Saul’s two-part return that illustrates this perfectly. Lalo Salamanca, as alive as ever and already rocking two bodies so far, dials his beloved tío to inform him that he survived the hit put out on him and that he knows Gus is the one who set him up. He calls and starts speaking in Spanish, only to find that the nurse who picks up doesn’t understand him. She asks if he needs to be transferred to someone who can, but he insists (now in English) that it’s fine. Why does he do this? To test if she can understand him.
One of the biggest themes of Better Call Saul (and, to a lesser extent, Breaking Bad) is language—how language can do more than a gun in the right scenario, how it can destroy the mind instead of the body. Part of Chuck’s death (man, remember when Chuck was on this show?) could be blamed on his own delusion, but the other could be blamed on his brother’s words, and how they caused him to fall apart. English, Spanish, German are all tools to incite violence, to sow confusion, to plan. Of course, German didn’t stop Werner Ziegler from getting a bullet in the brain, nor did Spanish protect those cartel men out in the desert, but it was all words that got everyone into those scenarios. Werner kept expressing that he wanted to go home. Jimmy saved Lalo from prison and was forced to go get the bail money. In both “Winner” and “Bagman”, language is what keeps the characters moving—well, all except Nacho Varga, who spends his first two scenes in “Carrot and Stick” without uttering a word. Maybe it’s because Nacho’s beyond saving.
The idea that Nacho will not be surviving our final pass through Albuquerque has become so commonly repeated amongst fans that it’s become a bit of an in-joke, but damn if “Wine and Roses” doesn’t make the audience think that this is a certainty. When the federales arrive on the scene at Lalo’s home, the audience is first shown a singular ant crawling over a dead mercenary’s finger, a visual callback to the season five episode “The Guy for This”, opening with Jimmy being taken off the street to meet Lalo. As he gets in the car, he drops the ice cream cone he was holding, and a colony of ants swarms it to get some of that sugary goodness, representative of the corruptive danger Jimmy had submersed himself in by getting involved with the Juárez Cartel. Now, the danger stands alone, and Nacho is a man that belongs to no colony, serves no queen. He scampers through fields and drainpipes, sporadically guided by Fring man Tyrus to a motel with a prepaid room and round-the-clock food delivery. It almost seems too good to be true.
And that’s because it is. The opening of “Carrot and Stick” returns us to Mike Ehrmantraut in his element, where he and his men quietly enter Nacho’s domicile to inform the women he keeps around that he won’t be coming back. “But we like it here!” one of them protests. “Well, now you’re gonna like it someplace else,” Mike responds, as matter-of-fact and resolute as ever. They crack Nacho’s safe, where he had hidden fake IDs for both him and his father back in season four. Working under the assumption that Lalo is alive and can therefore use Nacho to prove that he was targeted, Gus has decided that Nacho is more use to him dead and allows the cartel to find him by leaving the phone number of Nacho’s motel in the safe. Before Mike leaves, he decides to take Nacho’s father’s ID out—Mike may be ignoring his somewhat-protégé’s calls, but he has his code and he sticks to it, something he doubles down on later when he lets Tyrus put a gun to his head. It’s on one hand a gesture of solidarity, both to himself and Nacho, but it’s also a firm indicator of the fact that Nacho cannot escape his situation. His ID doesn’t leave with his father’s.
All of this setup, in true Better Call Saul fashion, explodes into a big payoff. Nacho notices someone is watching him, realizing he would be dead already if the cartel knew where he was and that Gus is keeping tabs on him for a reason, and decides to leave—just as the cartel arrives. As the Cousins go from room to room, Nacho tries to hotwire a truck and get out of there, but he and a cartel hitman notice each other at the exact same time—you guess what happens next. It’s action that could remind any viewer of the scattershot tension of Breaking Bad, (especially “One Minute” with how a car is used, although this time the Cousins were able to get out of the way) but it still has this show’s meticulous craft and attention present. Nacho catches a body, but more importantly, the Cousins catch one of their own—a fellow hitman, because they need Nacho alive. Considering Lalo is entirely absent from “Carrot and Stick”, how is he going to get to his prueba that he was targeted?
Lalo is in a situation where he is trying to prove something but can’t locate his proof, but in contrast to him is James M. McGill, trying to fake something with plenty of “proof” in mind. The problem is that he has to actually plant it, but the solution is that he has none other than a freshly morally reset Kim by his side. Despite the fact that this episode directly follows season five’s finale, Kim becomes the stick in her pairing with Jimmy rather quickly. It’s no coincidence that she starts wearing darker suits this episode—like the completely grey title sequence, her morality has left the zone of ambiguity. Rhea Seehorn does fantastic work (Sam Layton could not have seen this coming!) in her new position, playing the role of someone fit to match Jimmy’s speed with such an ease that it suggests that this was always in her—she just never felt like she could tap into it.
The centerpiece of Kim and Jimmy’s story in “Carrot and Stick” is the Kettlemans, a couple who have likely been long forgotten by fans that haven’t gone through season one in a long time. Out of jail and supposedly having learned their lesson, (wife Betsy recounts the horrors of having to send her children to public school following her sentencing) they’re a prime target for the lawyer duo to spring their plan into action—which, it turns out, is to frame Howard Hamlin as a cocaine addict.
When Kim teased the idea of really digging into Howard at the end of season five, I assumed they would be going after him on a purely legal—if not immoral—basis, but yet again, expecting complete and total consistency has made me a surprised customer. I had truly no idea what I was expecting when Jimmy swaggered into the country club Howard (and season two personal favorite Cliff Main) golfs at, but I certainly wasn’t expecting him to (literally) drop a dime on the guy. Not to mention that the scene beforehand perfectly illustrates Jimmy’s attributes in his little team of two: his charisma. Everyone knows that Jimmy is the man when it comes to stuff like this, and despite getting called out by Kevin Wachtell, (they really brought everyone back for these two episodes, didn’t they?) he manages to spin it into a case of supposed antisemitism that gets him into the locker room. (“You’re saying the quiet part out loud, I think.”) Saying “Bob Odenkirk was insanely fun to watch” is about as redundant as saying “Rhea Seehorn was great in her role,” but it bears repeating. Ten seasons of playing this character have never stopped him from both sticking to his guns and testing new ground, and it really shows as he continues to give us a stellar performance.
The cinematography helps that, too. Think of the shot where he tries to rope the Kettlemans into his scheme—go to Cliff and testify that Howard was on cocaine while HHM was representing them in their initial case—only to be turned down, despite husband Craig’s clear interest. Jimmy walks away, frowning, but as the camera pans around him and the Kettlemans call him back to negotiate, he’s framed by a very familiar Statue of Liberty inflatable—and he’s smiling. Jimmy McGill set the stage, and now Saul Goodman, accompanied by the figure that will loom over his office years in the future, is going to set the terms. That’s the magic, the power of Better Call Saul—that it can take something as simple as a walk and make it into a statement about what makes a character feel confident, happy, in control. It’s scenes like this that put a scene from “Wine and Roses” in further context—“I have clients who need me,” Jimmy bluffs after accidentally letting Lalo’s name slip out under questioning. Needing to make an exit fast, he ducks into a nearby courtroom, only to find it empty. Jimmy isn’t Saul when he’s in court—he’s Saul when he’s not.
So it’s the perfect buildup to the Jimmy/Kim double punch that fans have been waiting for for two years, in short. They arrive together on the Kettlemans’ tax service, and instead of standing rigid, the inflatable is quivering in the breeze, bending, like it’s flexible. Morally flexible. They walk up to the door past a frail old woman, and what they see and don’t see says everything about where they are right now. Jimmy pays her no mind, despite his professed love of the elderly for the show’s first three seasons. If he was still an elder law practitioner, he would be hurrying to get her car door for her and offering his card, but that’s not who he is, or ever really was. Kim, meanwhile, gives her a look before following, and it’s this sight that makes her certain that she’s doing the right thing. The Kettlemans, in fact, have not learned their lesson, and now it’s Kim’s job to play Robin Hood and make things right. Even though she uses the carrot/stick analogy (derived from an old idea of how to make a mule work efficiently—a carrot to entice and reward, a stick to punish and motivate) where she is the force and Jimmy is the lure, their roles are reversed here, and that makes me wonder if Kim still has farther to descend. The Kettlemans deserved what they got—their lives are by no means over, so they’ll be fine—but how will she be able to justify ruining Howard if their plan works?
Better Call Saul has, like I said, always been about language, and now its two most prominent speakers are thinking with one brain. As the episodes progress, Kim muses on how much she enjoys her new identity as what Jimmy started the series as, a case-by-case lawyer who sticks her neck out for the supposed little guys. “Sounds like the day from Hell,” Jimmy chuckles as she recounts her recent, Sisyphean case. “It was one of the best days of my life,” Kim responds flatly. This show has always seemed to be about Jimmy’s moral descent, but that’s always just a bit cut off by the fact that we know where he ends up—so maybe it was Kim we should’ve been watching. With its final season, Better Call Saul seems to be tossing the rules its most principled and moral character once held so dear out the window—or, like the cup meant to represent the honesty she shared with her husband, in the trash.
“Wine and Roses”: 9/10 (A-)
“Carrot and Stick”: 10/10 (A)
Rewatched the season six trailer, and I’d say a good eighty percent of the shots come from these two episodes. I’ll bet the rest are from episodes three and four. We haven’t even gotten started.
I kinda skipped over the “Lalo casually implants the suggestion that the man he will kill and use as a body double should shave his facial hair to look like him” scene, but you know how good it was if you saw this.
I think the Cousins seeing what they thought was Lalo’s body is the most emotional we’ve ever seen them as adults. Not saying much, but it’s worth pointing out.
I really thought Hector was going to shit himself again when he took Gus’ hand. I really did.
Why did I expect Craig to be totally jacked when Besty called for him to remove Jimmy from their office?
You’re supposed to wear a face covering when you weld, right?
LEAVE ERIN ALONE BE NICE TO ERIN
James Urbaniak as the club manager! I knew I knew that voice from somewhere.
“I want you to know I don’t blame you personally. I know you’re just following orders.”
“She needed to use the phone,” Craig sheepishly murmurs when Betsy attempts to murder him with her eyes after he unwittingly gives Kim instructions on how to call the IRS.
“Whatever happens next, it’s not gonna go down the way you think it is.”
“You sure?” “What’s the harm in listening?”
IN OTHER SAM LAYTON NEWS:
To my Atlanta fans: sit tight. Having a busy week and am already pushing myself to get this article out, me being a high schooler with no access to screener review copies and all. Will release the “Cancer Attack” article coupled with an episode six writeup at the relevant time. Thanks for being patient, and if you’re reading up on both of these shows, congrats! You’re watching two of the best shows on television right now!