movie review better call saul

‘Better Call Saul’s’ Brilliant, Emotional Finale Is ‘Breaking Bad’ in Reverse: TV Review

By Daniel D'Addario

Daniel D'Addario

Chief TV Critic

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Spoiler alert: This review contains spoilers for “Saul Gone,” the series finale of “ Better Call Saul .”

It turns out that there was one person the once and future Jimmy McGill would put ahead of his own self-interest.

In the striking and elegant finale to one of TV’s most consistently strong dramas of the past decade, Bob Odenkirk ’s Saul Goodman, to borrow a phrase, broke good. Having finally been apprehended, Saul structured a plea bargain that would have him in and out of prison in a plausibility-stretching-but-who’s-counting seven years. But then he saw and took an opportunity to clear the name of his ex-wife Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), and to reclaim his real name, the one he used before “Saul” committed himself to full-time chicanery. Jimmy will almost certainly spend the rest of his life behind bars, in the knowledge that he was delivered there in a moment of grace.

The end of this spinoff of “Breaking Bad,” some fourteen years after the mothership debuted on AMC , marks the likely end of this creative universe. And the “Saul” ending fits into Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s puzzle with a slight, intriguing tension. The vision of “Breaking Bad” was pitch-dark. That show’s conclusion, with the warped criminal Walter White achieving everything he wants before dying, serene in the knowledge that he was perfect, gave fans perhaps too much of what they may have wanted. Now, that show’s spinoff denies us the juicy pleasure of seeing Saul pull off one last big score, forcing us to reckon with the more complicated satisfactions of suffering for having done the right thing.

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This finale felt meticulous, from the way it pulled in on Saul’s moral crisis — with the chaos of various ancillary characters involved in the drug trade now simply a list of crimes for which Saul must answer — to the deployment of key supporting characters to make its points. Odenkirk has likely never been stronger than in the courtroom scene, seeming utterly certain in his decision to use his lawyering skills on someone else’s behalf and yet quietly thrilled that the scheme is working.

Seehorn’s performance as Kim remains incandescent, with her pretending to be her ex-husband’s lawyer in order to share a final cigarette in prison a melancholy reminder of all the grifts they pulled together in happier times. While I’ve, at times, found direct allusions to “Breaking Bad” on “Better Call Saul” to be somewhat clumsy, this episode’s flashback cameo of Bryan Cranston as Walter earned its place. “So you were always like this,” the kingpin tells his attorney, as the pair discuss an early slip-and-fall scam Saul pulled. Walter was forced into a life of crime, or so he tells himself; Saul was born for it.

Their discussion takes place within the context of Saul waxing unusually philosophical; he’s wondering if Walter has any regrets. (If I have one note about this scene, it’s that Cranston makes a bit too much of a meal out of Walter’s refusal to understand the question; I’ve become accustomed to the less jagged rhythms of Odenkirk’s lead performance and of “Better Call Saul” generally.) Later, Michael McKean returns for another retrospective scene, playing Chuck, the brother Jimmy betrayed. The scene McKean and Odenkirk share is sweet and sorrowful for what lies ahead; it’s imbued with a promise that Jimmy will care for his brother, one we know he doesn’t keep. Jimmy notices that Chuck is reading the novel “The Time Machine.”

This finale operates a bit like a time machine, too, and not merely for its skips throughout moments in Jimmy’s life. Nearly nine years ago, after a flurry of anticipation, “Breaking Bad” ended in strikingly imperfect fashion. Its tidiness made the episode a tightly constructed narrative machine, but the easy resolution lacked grit and texture. It’s perhaps unsurprising that series creator Vince Gilligan has repeatedly undertaken attempts to embroider more of the story. He’s done so with the feature-length film “El Camino,” which follows Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) after the events of “Breaking Bad,” and now with the story of Saul, which gave him and Peter Gould (who wrote and directed the episode) a second chance at a series finale.

“Saul” was, to this viewer, an achievement that might never have been made without its predecessor series and one that improved upon it. Its treatment of “Slippin’ Jimmy” falling away from grace hit notes of sorrow that the more operatic “Breaking Bad” couldn’t quite achieve. (And, not for nothing, but this show had a better sense of humor.) The finale ratifies that sense once and for all, with the baleful parting of Jimmy and Kim — once united against the world, now separated by a prison wall, and the knowledge that one escaped their mutual pull towards the thrill of wrongdoing, but one couldn’t, quite — matching anything from “Breaking Bad.” It might not have registered, though, for it spoke in glances rather than shouts. The last we see of Jimmy is what Kim sees of him, a man who’d look like a ghost to her even if he weren’t so definitively a part of her past. The camera tracks her gaze as a prison wall blocks him from view, and he is gone.

In all, “Saul” will be remembered as an achievement from an era of television that seemed to have ended before the show itself did: It had a willingness to putter around the edges of its story and a faith in its audience that recalled, say, “The Americans,” something that’s far less in evidence among newer series today. (Notably, it’s a tie to AMC’s era as an emergent driving force in adult dramas, an era that, pending a Sally Draper prequel series at some future date, seems to have wound down.) The show’s willingness, especially in its last stretch of episodes, to alternate major and striking moments with quotidian sequences of characters’ ordinary existences — a conversation with a bartender, a day at the office — that seemed to run just a little too long was a striking choice. It had the texture of real life, which is perhaps not what one would expect to be seeking from a show about a corrupt lawyer enmeshed in cartel wars.

And yet that’s what made it work to its last moments. The show’s willingness to be repetitious and have Saul begin the story of his fall for a second time in the final episode before a judge, just so that he can alter the story enough to let Kim off the hook, is played long. It’s a tease that delivers all the more once viewers realize what’s happening. And it’s the last act in an inversion of what we’d seen on “Breaking Bad,” a six-season long confidence game: Those who thrilled to Walter White’s transformation into Scarface got to watch the endless capering of a man who literally could not help himself from doing wrong, who needed to pull cons even while trying desperately hard to remain incognito. And at the last moment, we see what he’s been hiding all along: A human heart.

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Critics’ conversation: was ‘better call saul’ better than ‘breaking bad’.

THR's TV critics reflect on the final episode and cumulative creative legacy of the 'Breaking Bad' spinoff after six seasons.

By Angie Han , Daniel Fienberg August 16, 2022 3:49pm

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[This conversation contains spoilers for the full run of AMC’s  Better Call Saul , including the series finale, “Saul Gone.”]

DANIEL FIENBERG:  So we’ve taken some time to let the  Better Call Saul  finale marinate in our brains (and for readers to watch and process), so let’s start, naturally enough, at the end of things.

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Angie, did Jimmy/Saul/Gene get off too easy? Did he get what he deserved? Did the end of the finale feel right to you?

ANGIE HAN: Better Call Saul has been the story of the struggle between the two sides of Jimmy McGill’s nature — on one side a basically nice dude who sincerely cares about people like Chuck and Kim and his elder law clients, and on the other the born swindler who can’t help trying to get one over on everyone around him. The tragedy was that because of Breaking Bad , we always knew the latter would ultimately beat out the former.

The idea of a time machine (which, as Walter White snidely points out, is just a roundabout way of talking about regrets) comes up again and again in “Saul Gone,” often as a way of emphasizing what Jimmy/Saul/Gene can’t undo. He can’t change what he did to Chuck, or with Mike and Gus, or with Walter, or to Kim, and Better Call Saul knows that all of it matters, that even the stuff he’s gotten away with legally has taken a toll on his soul. But in that final twist, it allows him to start trying to repair something that had seemed irreparably broken. You can’t go back. But you can choose how to reckon with your past as you move forward.

What about you, Dan? If you had a time machine, would you change anything about the Better Call Saul finale, or do you think it’s perfect just as it is?

And I adore that the finale is exactly as sincere as you want it to be.  Better Call Saul  truly found its heart and soul in the second season when it became less of a thriller-comedy and more of a romance-thriller-comedy. The finale had some funny bits, like Jimmy negotiating for ice cream, but it was much more about the idea of the redemptive power of truth and love and how those things bloom if you believe in them and wither under the glare of cynicism. 

Has Jimmy turned a permanent corner, won the battle with his inner demons and embraced his better nature? Has Kim found a way to be satisfied with using her legal skills for altruism, and will the erotic charge she got from scamming people become a thing of the past? Will she periodically visit Jimmy in prison and, when he gets released in five years on some technicality, will she be waiting for him with a single, shared cigarette? Sure! 

So is that “perfect”? Nah. But it’s appropriate to the show.

AH: Jimmy and Kim’s endings are a little unusual for this universe in that they’re left ambiguous, by which I really just mean that they don’t die. And you’re right: Since so much of what Jimmy (and Kim, to a lesser extent) is battling is his own demons, there’s every chance that that means he could revert back to old patterns in prison. But that, too, seems apt for a series that’s been all about the choices Jimmy made to get here. One of the finale’s more obvious moments of irony comes when Walter listens to Saul’s anecdote about a scam-gone-wrong in his youth, and sneers, “So you were always like this.” Saul’s face falls a little in response, and I winced myself to hear his journey dismissed so carelessly. It seems to me an act of grace to keep Jimmy alive to continue fighting that fight, even after we’ve stopped watching.

But I notice we’ve been talking almost exclusively about Jimmy and Kim so far, because notably, the cartel stuff barely factors into the final few episodes at all. What do you make of the choice to steer away from Mike and Gus in the last hours of the series?

DF:   With the flashback to “Bagman,” they at least got Mike into the finale, while Gus probably had the best imaginable send-off in “Fun and Games,” especially with the scene with guest star Reed Diamond at the bar. I think the show succeeded in coloring how we’ll view both characters in the  Breaking Bad universe   without needing to address the cartel stuff anymore in the finale.

Let’s talk a bit about the  Breaking Bad  of it all in the finale and the finale season. What did the return of Jesse and Walt in the second half add for you? Personally, I enjoyed Jesse’s scene with Kim — two former sidekicks who became the hearts of their respective shows — but the first appearance in the RV felt like a, “We know fans want to see the other side of that first Saul appearance in  Breaking Bad , so … here!” rather than narrative necessity. I did think Betsy Brandt brought some real gravity to the finale, as well as the strange “Hey, remember that one time Hank and Gomez appeared in  Saul ?” memory. And then they kinda had to include Blanca, Gomez’s widow, just because it would have been mean not to.

I don’t want to spend too much time comparing Better Call Saul to its predecessor when both are superb shows in their own right, but I do think we’re meant to notice the contrast between them. From a distance, they have roughly similar arcs: Both are about seemingly unassuming, ordinary men turning increasingly toward the dark side. Where they differ is in what each journey seems to say about each man, and how we, as the audience, are encouraged to respond to it. If Breaking Bad was a hallmark of the aughts-era antihero craze, Better Call Saul , especially in the beginning, felt like a response to it. Walt breaking bad was a dark fantasy; Jimmy becoming Saul was a tragedy. Both got their own version of a happy ending, or at least as happy an ending as these writers could give them within the logic of these shows. Walt got to go out in a blaze of glory — dead, but victorious in his way since he’d accomplished most everything he set out to. Saul got to go back to being the best version of Jimmy (at least as far as we’re allowed to see).

Put them together, and that’s 120+ episodes of masterful television — and in our era, where shows are lucky to run four or five seasons and you’re as likely to get eight episodes in a season as 13, we may not see anything like this again for a long time.

That then brings me to my last and closing question: Are you already for a different show in this universe? Do you have a different story that you need to have told, a different mystery explained? My own feeling is that I don’t need anything else in this Albuquerque-centric sphere, but I also didn’t need a show about Saul Goodman. I trust Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan. I trust Thomas Schnauz and Gordon Smith and Gennifer Hutchison and Alison Tatlock and Ann Cherkis. If they say, “Yup! We’ve got something!” I’m there. I know that’s a wishy-washy answer.

AH: I couldn’t even begin to speculate about what other spinoffs I might or might not “need” from this universe, because I was so dead wrong about how compelling a Saul Goodman prequel could possibly be. Therefore, I’ll just say that at this point, that whole team has more than earned my trust and my appreciation, whether that means they decide to go back to the Bad / Saul well a dozen more times, or opt to never return again. So for now, I guess we’re Kim: Taking in one last long, lingering look at the man who was once Jimmy McGill and has become Jimmy McGill again, before stepping out the gate to move on with the rest of our lives.

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Better Call Saul (2015–2022)

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'Better Call Saul' finale soars as a meditation on consequences and regret

Eric Deggans

Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman. Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television hide caption

Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman.

(Fair warning: This story has LOTS of spoilers about the Better Call Saul finale episode, "Saul Gone.")

In the end, the question that loomed largest in the poignant, masterful series finale of AMC's magnificent drama Better Call Saul wasn't whether main character Saul Goodman – a.k.a., Gene Takavic, a.k.a. Jimmy McGill – would go to jail.

Carol Burnett as Marion. Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television hide caption

Carol Burnett as Marion.

Arrest and incarceration seemed inevitable, given the events of last week's episode, where Saul – who had been hiding from the law under the name Gene Takavic, working a soul-deadening job as manager of a Cinnabon restaurant in an Omaha mall – was exposed to police. He'd been found out by the mother of an accomplice to a new scam he'd put together, unable to resist the lure of getting back in the criminal game.

(Shout out to comedy legend Carol Burnett, who knocked it out of the park playing feisty mom Marion. And props to the show's producers, who had the guts to cast her for their final few episodes, in a role that began as a glorified cameo and grew into one of the most pivotal exchanges of the series.)

Bob Odenkirk & Peter Gould On The End Of 'Better Call Saul'

Instead, the question that hung over the show's final episode was a simple one: Would Saul ever grow a conscience? Would he ever let himself feel real regret?

An ambitious spin-off idea

Better Call Saul began in February 2015 as an ambitious project: a follow-up to one of the most acclaimed dramas in modern TV history and an origin story for Saul, one of Breaking Bad 's most outrageous characters.

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Catching up with 'better call saul' like a con artist would.

The spin-off kicked off with a scene showing Saul after the events in the Breaking Bad finale. He's living under the radar as Gene Takavic, working a menial job, depicted in footage shot in a drab, black-and-white format that seemed both elegantly cinematic and drained of all life or enthusiasm. Right away, it established the elaborate two-step that would define the series, toggling between Gene's drab life in the present and his evolution into Saul, which intensified in the last few episodes. Those images answered a question that had been nagging Breaking Bad fans since they watched high-school-teacher-turned-drug-kingpin Walter White meet his maker in that show's finale two years earlier. Whatever happened to Walter's fast-talking attorney, an amped-up counselor for drug cartels who had TV ads like a personal injury lawyer and patter like a used-car salesman?

After that quick introduction to Gene, the first episode of Better Call Saul jumped back in time six years, transitioning to color and introducing viewers to aspiring attorney Jimmy McGill (Saul's given name). Once known as "Slippin' Jimmy," for his habit of falling in front of businesses to scam injury settlements, he was struggling to make ends meet and caring for his brother Chuck, once a brilliant lawyer, who had to step down from his law firm.

Peter Gould, Bob Odenkirk and Vince Gilligan shooting the series finale. Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television hide caption

Peter Gould, Bob Odenkirk and Vince Gilligan shooting the series finale.

In 2015, I talked with star Bob Odenkirk about playing Saul/Jimmy/Gene, and series co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould. Odenkirk said the crew on Breaking Bad had always joked about Saul getting his own spin-off series, while Gilligan marveled at how "heroic" the character could be, referring to Saul's efforts to take care of his brother.

Missing Your 'Breaking Bad' Fix? 'Better Call Saul' Will Hit The Spot

But Gould, who would later write and direct Better Call Saul 's finale episode "Saul Gone," said at a press conference back then that the show would turn on a niggling question. "Why be good?"

"Usually, in fiction, behaving ethically always ends up having good results," he said. "And we all know, in life, sometimes being ethical lands you in the s------, so to speak."

Creating the best drama on TV

Better Call Saul would spend the next six seasons exploring that answer, producing some of the best drama on television. We saw Saul confront his brother at a hearing before the bar association, exposing his sibling's unbalanced belief that he was overly sensitive to electromagnetic fields. Chuck, played with agonized grace by Michael McKean, eventually committed suicide.

Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler. Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television hide caption

Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler.

We saw Saul marry Kim Wexler – played masterfully by the Emmy-nominated Rhea Seehorn – a much better lawyer who is attracted to the rule-breaking scams her husband dreams up until, seeing the awful collateral damage they can bring, she decides to leave him and the law behind.

It's a testament to the show's quality that these new characters became just as compelling as figures from Breaking Bad who rejoined the party, including Jonathan Banks' magnificently tortured cop-turned-cartel enforcer Mike Ehrmantraut, and Giancarlo Esposito's controlling drug kingpin/fast food entrepreneur, Gus Fring.

Even Odenkirk's real-life heart attack — which came as he was filming one of the show's final episodes and nearly ended his life — didn't stop the completion of the story.

The series showcased the increasing dissonance between the guy Saul thinks he is trying to be – a sharp, savvy lawyer who finds the simplest solution to any problem – and the toxic consequences he creates for others. The finale season wove all these threads together in a tremendous climax, when a lawyer who is being scammed by Kim and Saul is unexpectedly killed by Gus' biggest rival — a murder which would not have happened if the lawyer, Patrick Fabian's officious Howard Hamlin, hadn't been wrapped up in the couple's con artistry. Producers took massive creative swings that turned episodes into high-wire acts. Four episodes before the finale – not long after the lawyer's shocking death — they plunged the story back into Gene's world, shifting to black-and-white images in a way that almost felt like a different series had started.

Bob Odenkirk as Gene Takavic. Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television hide caption

Bob Odenkirk as Gene Takavic.

The finale episode stuck to that black-and-white format, showing a captured Saul negotiating a deal with prosecutors for a light sentence, before realizing Kim had already confessed to their role in the lawyer's death.

Saul then lies to get Kim into the courtroom for the finalization of his plea deal, where he admits to everything he did to enable Walter White's drug empire and his participation in Hamlin's death. This is the moment Saul becomes Jimmy again; a man taking responsibility to regain the respect of the ex-wife he still loves. (Among a very long list of artful cameo appearances in Better Call Saul , the return here of Betsy Brandt as Marie Schrader, wife of a DEA agent murdered in Breaking Bad 's finale season, ranks as one of the coolest.) In the final scene, as Saul shares a cigarette with Kim during a prison visit — he was sentenced to 86 years, after all — the question Gould asked way back in 2015 seems answered. Why be good? To have a clean conscience.

Common ground between "Breaking Bad" and "Saul"

Different as Better Call Saul 's story ultimately was, its finale also revealed a fundamental similarity with Breaking Bad . Both shows are about men facing something terrible at the core of their being, admitting the horrific damage they have caused and, finally, accepting the consequences of their behavior.

'Better Call Saul' might be the greatest of all time — if it can stick the landing

In stories about antiheroes, there is always the question of what separates them from villains. Why do we root for Tony Soprano and not his Uncle Junior on The Sopranos ? Or champion Ozark 's fast-talking financial planner Marty Byrde over cartel leader Camino Del Rio? Often, the difference is values and a conscience; antiheroes have them, and villains don't.

On The Sopranos , creator David Chase seemed to relish slowly stripping away all the stuff which had allowed fans to see Tony as the kind of charismatic outlaw we love in pop culture – which forced the audience to admit they had been rooting for a psychopath all along. But Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul tell a different tale. In these shows, the antiheroes are forced to face the toxic truth about themselves, ultimately taking responsibility for the pain they have created as a final admission to those who love them and realized the truth about them long before they did. My thinking on this is influenced by a conversation I had with Vince Gilligan many years ago. We were hanging out at a press reception for Breaking Bad , which was still several seasons from its end. I noted how much I was enjoying watching this show about the slow curdling of a man's soul, as a high school chemistry teacher dying of cancer morphed into a ruthless, boundlessly wealthy meth manufacturer. Gilligan, who has a well-deserved reputation as one of the nicest showrunners in TV, gently corrected me. What if, he suggested, you saw the story as slowly revealing something about Walter White that was already there? Perhaps what's really happening is that all the things in society which kept him in check are slowly falling away, and he's flowering into the controlling, ruthless narcissist he always was at his core? This is why Saul's questions about regret, featured in two crucial scenes from the finale, mean so much. In flashbacks, he asks two of the franchise's other antiheroes – Jonathan Banks' Mike Ehrmantraut and Bryan Cranston's acerbic Walter White, in another inspired cameo – what they would change about their lives if they had a time machine.

Hiatus brain: When your favorite show returns, but you can't remember a thing

White acidly and correctly points out that Saul is really asking about regret. In other words: What would you undo in your life, if you could?

Mike wanted to undo the moment he took his first bribe as a cop. Walt wanted to take back his decision to walk away from a successful company he created, leading to a bruised ego which fueled all his subsequent dysfunction.

Saul's answers were always about making more money, executing a better scam, finding a better way to come out on top. And comparing his answers to his compatriots, Saul (and viewers) could see something important was missing.

The series began with Jimmy McGill desperate to prove that everyone in his life who saw him as a loser had it all wrong. And it ended with a bravura finale showing Saul Goodman realizing those people were more right about him than he wanted to admit.

That is the stuff of legendary television.

Correction Aug. 17, 2022

In a previous version of the story, we said that Patrick Fabian played Harry Hamlin. In fact, the character's first name is Howard.

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Better Call Saul' s final episodes have been astonishing, whatever the finale brings

Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk do career-best work in a boldly disturbing, downbeat aftermath.

Better Call Saul returned in July at a moment of cliffhanger calamity. Howard Hamlin ( Patrick Fabian ) lay dead on the floor, shot by grinning Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton). Kim Wexler ( Rhea Seehorn ) and Jimmy McGill ( Bob Odenkirk ) looked on, horrified. The married lawyers and their renegade captor were on a collision course with Gus Fring ( Giancarlo Esposito ) and his trusty-crusty lieutenant Mike Ehrmantraut ( Jonathan Banks ). Blood, bullets, and burials ensued.

What I'm describing sounds so much like Better Call Saul that it actually sounds nothing like Better Call Saul . Across six seasons, the AMC series followed a relatively small core cast. Gus and Lalo trickled in as tormentors for poor doomed Nacho (Michael Mando), right around the same midpoint when Jimmy's brother Chuck ( Michael McKean ) flamed out. Saul 's universe was vast, though, and some major characters never interacted. (Apparently, some of them never will.) This was a show that simmered. People could die, but the highest drama was in the paperwork, or the legal maneuvers, or in one of Jimmy's gradual con jobs. The hugest thing Gus ever did was start (then halt) construction on a hole in the ground.

This midseason premiere, "Point and Shoot," was something else entirely. Call it Mega- Saul , a high-fatality shock show where shady lawyers and devious underworlders all actually talk to each other. There was even a genuine showdown. That almost rendered the next episode, "Fun and Games," an epilogue. Gus mopped up cartel problems. Jimmy and Kim kept a poker face during Howard's funeral. But two depth charges awaited. First, Kim left everything: the law, Jimmy, New Mexico. Then came moral oblivion. A time jump reintroduced Jimmy as the once and future Saul Goodman, the crooked lawyer we met 13 years ago on Breaking Bad .

By my count, I've just described three perfectly good TV drama endings. Gus spent his whole Saul life edging into Salamanca territory, and Lalo's death finally gave him the druggy real estate to supercharge his operation toward a cartel coup. Kim and Jimmy were the show's emotional center, so Kim's rejection of Jimmy (and her career self-destruction) would mark a clear cutoff point. And the leap forward fulfilled Saul 's prequel purpose. Here was Jimmy finally putting on the Vader suit, Jimmy finally going to Mordor to meet Sauron, Jimmy finally creating the xenomorphs on the Planet of the Engineers. I'm stretching for good prequel comparisons because there are barely any good prequels, which is why Saul is the best prequel ever.

Except it isn't a prequel anymore. The three episodes after "Fun and Games" mostly move far past the Breaking Bad timeline. This future is white, black, and bleak. Co-creators Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan have demarcated the shift with extraneous clues. The "and" episode titles of season 6's first nine parts are gone. The faded-VHS title cards keep cutting to a retro blue screen, like someone's using a fuzzy old tape to record new TV. The familiar has become unfamiliar. Where did Better Call Saul go?

You could argue the show, and its title character, have assumed a new identity. In Omaha, the runaway Saul Goodman disappears behind the mustache of Gene Takavic, previously relegated to season-opening flashforwards. In a sudden-onset trilogy of episodes — "Nippy," "Breaking Bad," and "Waterworks" — Gene takes center stage, complete with a new supporting cast. There's cabbie Jeff ( Pat Healy ), a textbook failure-to-launcher who lives with concerned mom Marion ( Carol Burnett ). Jeff's pal Buddy (Max Bickelhaup) becomes the third man in Gene's criminal crew, as the gang springs from a luxury-fashion mall heist into regular defraudings of Omaha's rowdiest business bros. We've shifted from Mega- Saul to Nega- Saul , the show shorn of any obvious signifiers beyond the presence of Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn.

The episodes aren't just about Monochromatic Omaha. (MonochrOmaha?) "Breaking Bad" features long-promised cameos in Albuquerque flashbacks. "Waterworks" reveals Kim's future as a Florida phantom. But Gene gets primo real estate. Episodes start and end with him: Staring at a loud shirt-and-tie combo, bashing a window open at a mark's house. Trust the Saul writers for fearful symmetry. "Nippy" begins the Omaha trilogy when Saul meets Marion, conning her toward friendship with a sob story about a lost dog. "Waterworks" pushes those characters together for a disturbing, revelatory climax. Suspicious about her son's recent arrest, Marion Asks Jeeves about Albuquerque Con Men. Up pops Saul Goodman, clear as day. "There never was a Nippy, was there?" she asks. It's a hall of fame moment for 89-year-old Burnett, majestic and betrayed, tough but visibly heartbroken.

I have no idea what will happen on Monday. It's possible the finale (titled "Saul Gone") will reunite key cast members in a colorful flashback. It's equally possible that the few yet living main characters will meet again in the far future of, like, 2022. Maybe Gene assumes yet another identity. Maybe the finale is a Slippin' Jimmy feature cartoon. Maybe the four actresses who've played Kaylee Ehrmantraut will join forces to rescue the Kaylee-verse. It's certainly possible the last episode will immediately undercut literally everything I am about to say.

But I've noticed a wild array of feelings about the last few episodes. Anecdotally, I've heard love, hate, bafflement, frustration, intellectual admiration without real enjoyment, abject adoration, and everything in between. Personally, I'm in the "masterpiece" camp. This is the best and boldest run of final episodes of any TV drama I've ever seen. The biggest TV dramas tend to go volcano with their endings, ramping toward murderous climaxes or (thanks to bigger budgets and the mainstream embrace of fantasy) worlds afire. Saul did the showdown thing four episodes ago. Now we're in much freakier territory. To carry forward the Mordor analogy, we're in "Scouring of the Shire" territory now: The long sad aftermath, a feeling that what is broken will only get broker.

So I understand the clash of opinions. The Omaha shift feels singular, and willfully unconcerned about frustration. Here's a TV show with a clearly defined setting and cast — and in its final days, it's going new places with a lot of new people. Factor in Breaking Bad as part of the narrative, and you have characters like Mike and Gus with a decade-plus of screen history who have less role in the endgame than Buzz from Home Alone . The appearances by Bad 's stars feel cannily low-key, avoiding any moments of canonical drama. It would've been easy to reintroduce Walter White ( Bryan Cranston ) in his Heisenberg shadowgod peak, giving a One Who Knocks level speech to worshipful Saul. Instead, the show opted for Walt and Jesse ( Aaron Paul ) at their most Laurel and Hardy. (There's even a lingering poignance to Healy's splendid and sweaty performance; because actor Don Harvey didn't return, Gene can't even hang out with the original Jeff anymore .)

The mind leaps for comparisons. In the AMC pantheon, you could note how Mad Men 's final phase sent ad man Don Draper ( Jon Hamm ) on a cross-country quest. The ending trapped him in hippie Eden, only reachable by telephone. But Mad Men never left the rest of the cast behind — and the concluding smile retconned the whole tangent as a career-capping ad campaign. HBO's The Leftovers split everyone up on a climactic trip to Australia, but that show was always doing weird tangents.

It also lasted, like, three brisk seasons. Actually, over the course of Saul 's life, the whole notion of a six-or-seven-season TV drama has faded. Hourlongs have shrunk and grown in either direction, caught between the rise of limited series and the corporate insistence on endless universes. Meanwhile, the grinding mechanics of streaming content edge Saul -adjacent material (see: Ozark ) into three or four (boring, disappointing) seasons. I have patiently waited almost 1,200 words to compare Saul 's last act to Twin Peaks: The Return , another franchise extension that threw audience expectations to the wind. Consider: A central famous protagonist ( Kyle MacLachlan 's Dale Cooper) spent most of the Showtime revival living under different identities in far-flung locations. And the mood of Twin Peaks ' black-hole finale captures something of MonochrOmaha's deflation: An empty feeling that the characters have outlasted their own show, and are cut off from everyone they ever loved.

No fair, though. The Return was a single-season beneficiary of the miniseries and universe trends, picking up a legacy narrative for an 18-Hour Movie. Meanwhile, a more recent show like Atlanta (ending in season 4) can lose its whole cast for a few episodes, because savvy viewers expect anthology aspirations from any out-there sitcom. Better Call Saul has just been doing the damn thing as a single ongoing story right up to episode 63.

So the best comparison is the most obvious one. Breaking Bad revved toward its own finish line with the emotionally devastating "Ozymandias," then concluded with a redemptive bulletstorm in "Felina." In between those two hours came "Granite State," a chilly trip to New Hampshire purgatory. Fugitive Walt lives entrapped in a nowhere cabin. He pays his handler for casual conversation: Shades of Saul begging his secretary Francesca to gossip awhile, after he leaves her some money by a lonely telephone booth. The former meth-cooking dark lord quietly disintegrates, wracked by cancer, nothing to do but watch bad DVDs.

"Granite State" was written and directed by Peter Gould, who became Saul 's showrunner and guiding light. No big jump to see the black-and-white Saul episodes as an expansion of that Bad episode's breakaway sensibility. Of course, Walt leaves New Hampshire with a clear mission — and as awful a human being as he had become, it was hard not to root for him against Jesse-imprisoning literal Nazis.

Amazingly, Saul 's approach to its own finale has been much, much more downbeat. A phone call to Kim sends Gene down a bad choice road, hustling new cons while he drinks more and takes pointless risks. Crucial to note, I think, that the Omaha crimes are exciting . The robbery in "Nippy" gets the full Ocean's Eleven treatment, with snowbound rehearsals for a down-to-the-millisecond scheme that's nearly undone by a pratfall. Likewise, the "Waterworks" break-in is a feat of tension, with multiple moving parts (the sleeper is awaking! The cops are outside!). The new settings seem to re-inspire Saul 's zest for montages, whether we're watching Gene get closer to his rubes or quickly learning about Kim's new suburban-ennui reality.

Is it brutal to cut the leads off from each other this late in the game? Yes, but with a purpose. I think Odenkirk and Seehorn are both delivering career-best work, partially because their character's circumstances are a silent torment. They're both living in secret; their eyes are tinted windows into tortured souls. To keep friendly Frank ( Jim O'Heir ) from checking the security monitors, Gene rambles a speech that becomes a confession: "I got no one. My parents are dead… my brother is dead… I got no wife. No kids. No friends. If I died tonight, no one would care." Odenkirk's giving performances within the performance: You see the excited realization that the distraction is working, and the simultaneous realization that every sad thing he's saying is true. Kim offers her own confession in "Waterworks" — and then falls to pieces in an airport bus, crying under the weight of years of guilt and disappointment. Their single phone call is actually two devastating scenes witnessed on separate occasions from both perspectives: Jimmy/Gene's destructive rage, Kim's horrified stillness.

Is Saul heading for its own "Felina," a high-octane ending with a conclusive showdown? Or will "Saul Gone" venture further into the unknown? I'm already forever haunted by the moment when Marion figures out her new friend's true identity, and Gene starts wrapping a telephone cord around his hands. "I'm still the good friend you thought I was, okay?" he promises. "Jeff understands me. Buddy understands me. And you will, too."

He sounds pitiful, and monstrous. (Freaking Buddy understands you???) Breaking Bad offered Walt one final big awesome moment, mowing down badder guys and rescuing his old partner. Will Saul be so kind? Or will this most wanted man, the former toast of the Albuquerque retirement community, exit his TV life as the guy who almost strangled 89-year-old Carol Burnett? In its final hours, the show has pushed its main characters further than most ever shows dare. Worse for them, Better for us.

Related content:

• Vince Gilligan talks "Waterworks" and Kim's fate
• Better Call Saul producer breaks down 'Breaking Bad' episode, Kim's mystery
• Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk on the Jimmy-Kim aftermath: He's like, 'F--- this world'
• Better Call Saul star Rhea Seehorn breaks down Kim's devastating decision(s)
• Better Call Saul star Tony Dalton on Lalo's fate
• Michael Mando goes deep on Nacho's fate on Better Call Saul

Related Articles

• Entertainment
• <i>Better Call Saul</i> Was a Brilliant Show About the Inevitable Perversion of Justice

Better Call Saul Was a Brilliant Show About the Inevitable Perversion of Justice

Spoiler alert: This piece discusses, in detail, the series finale of Better Call Saul.

In the penultimate episode of Better Call Saul , which aired its finale on Monday, estranged spouses Kim Wexler and Saul Goodman—né James “Jimmy” McGill and later known as Gene Takovic—reunite to formally dissolve their marriage. Kim (Rhea Seehorn) visits Saul’s (Bob Odenkirk) strip-mall law office, a mecca for petty criminals in search of shady representation, to sign the divorce papers, and her eyes drift to the decor: an absurdly large desk, a statue of Lady Justice with her scales, walls papered with the Constitution and bracketed by Greek revival pillars that recall the Supreme Court building. “What do you think?” Saul asks. “Pretty great, right?” All she can manage to say is: “Yeah, it’s, um… yep.”

Because we’ve gotten to know the intelligent, idealistic Kim so intimately through Seehorn’s riveting performance over the past six seasons, it’s easy to imagine what she’s really thinking: that Saul has made a mockery of the values that brought her and Jimmy, the struggling public defender we meet in the series premiere , together. Once committed to helping the little guy, even if that meant deviating from the letter of the law, he’s now found fortune and fame by surrounding himself with the tackiest signifiers of his profession and building a reputation as the criminal-defense equivalent of an ambulance chaser. There could be no other trajectory for the protagonist of a show about justice and its inevitable perversion. Creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould are known for condensing complex themes into potent images, and the episode opens with Saul bouncing a ball off his Constitution wall until a flimsy pillar falls across his desk.

Breaking Bad fans have always known that Saul was heading in this direction. For us, the surprise was that initial glimpse of Jimmy as a reformed scammer turned courtroom crusader. Later, what propelled many of us through the seasons was the attachment we developed to Kim, who turned out to be the show’s moral center—not just the proverbial woman who made Jimmy want to be a better man but a hero in her own right—and who, as many nervously noted, was no longer a part of Saul’s life by the time Walter White walked into it. Contrary to our worst fears, Kim survives. But when she leaves Saul, the last dregs of his professional dignity, of his desire to serve justice rather than to settle scores or line his own pockets, trickle out behind her.

Read more: The 10 Best TV Shows of 2022 So Far

In the first scene after Kim departs from the apartment they shared, Saul wakes up tangled in garish, tiger-print bedding, next to a snoring sex worker. His new home has a Baroque-via-Versace aesthetic, with lots of gold paint, stained-glass windows, and wall-sized replicas of fleshy Renaissance art. “I’m so sorry, I’m getting another call,” he tells a client, before putting down his phone and taking a blow dryer to his audacious comb-over. His breakfast is a Nutri-Grain bar in a plastic wrapper that boasts “real fruit.” Upon arriving at his office, he hangs a disability parking permit in his window. A mammoth inflatable Statue of Liberty, tethered to the building’s roof, waves in the wind. “Let justice be done, though the heavens fall,” he declares into the intercom at his desk, in an empty invocation of a legal maxim after Kim’s own heart. Every element of his life without her is a lie or a fake or a reproduction or a performance. The idea of justice is a sick joke. “It’s showtime,” Saul says in the finale, as his criminal trial begins.

His story line is hardly the only one in the show to constitute a travesty of justice. Earlier in the same episode, Mike Ehrmantraut (the great Jonathan Banks) tracks down the father of Nacho Varga (Michael Mando, an undersung member of an ideal cast), whose murder at the hands of the bloodthirsty Salamanca family he was ultimately compelled to abet. “Your son made some mistakes,” says Mike, clearly thinking of his own broken boy . “He fell in with bad people. But he was never like ’em, not really. He had a good heart.” At least “you won’t have to worry about the Salamancas. Their day is coming. There will be justice.” Nacho’s father shakes his head. “What you talk about is not justice. What you talk of is revenge,” he says, before adding, in Spanish: “You gangsters and your ‘justice.’ You’re all the same.” His words wound Mike, who likes to think his hypercompetence and lack of malice separate him from monsters like the Salamancas. But the father is right. Vigilante violence is also a perversion of justice; so was the fate of Nacho, a young man with immense potential who spent years trying to escape the criminal underworld.

In the opposite corner of the moral matrix—the lawful evil to Nacho’s chaotic good, if you will—sits Saul’s late brother Chuck (Michael McKean), whose obsession with laws and legitimacy helped catalyze his descent into suicide midway through the show’s run. Chuck’s concept of justice, which privileged rules above genuine ethics or benign intentions, was at least as hollow and self-serving as Mike’s own moral code. The finale reminds us of that, in a flashback where Jimmy delivers groceries to his housebound brother, who responds to the ice-packed cooler of food by sniffing: “I’m hoping you didn’t steal that from a hotel ice machine.” (After Chuck’s death, the show explored the dire consequences of hypocritical, elitist mindsets like his across a justice system that doesn’t truly believe in rehabilitation.) Jimmy’s devolution into Saul is depressing, in part, because of the extent to which his justice-themed kitsch echoes Chuck’s superficial grasp of what it means to be a good lawyer. Both brothers hide their selfish motives in the letter of the law; in Saul’s case, said text just happens to be printed on his office walls.

Read more: How Better Call Saul’s Final Season Connects to Breaking Bad

Only Kim ends up living by a definition of justice that isn’t clouded by self-interest, and that existence is anything but glamorous. A snoozy desk job in Florida, a boyfriend who frets over the right kind of mayonnaise to put in a potato salad, a group of interchangeable girlfriends, a mousy dye job that literally hides her light—this is the artificially sweetened, Miracle Whip version of a life. And she very nearly manages to blow up that sun-drenched purgatory when she confesses her role in the death of Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian) to both his widow and the DA. Kim has suffered more than enough for the harm she and her ex-husband caused together, yet at one point in the series finale it seems inevitable that she’ll be ruined by civil, if not criminal, charges in yet another miscarriage of justice perpetrated by Saul Goodman.

Instead, in a final twist that made me gasp out loud, he takes advantage of the broken system to give her the vindication she deserves. Representing himself at his trial, he lures Kim to court with the suggestion that he’s going to throw her under the bus and gives one of his signature speeches, the kind that has already convinced the prosecutor to offer a plea deal that would reduce Saul’s sentence to just seven years to avoid having to trust a jury to see through his performance of victimhood. But this time, he uses his power to manipulate the system for an unselfish purpose: to divert all the blame, more than even he should have to shoulder, onto himself. And he does a virtuosic job, landing himself a whopping 86 years behind bars.

His subsequent, arguably well-earned, reclamation of his good name, Jimmy McGill, fails. On the bus en route to prison, his fellow criminals immediately recognize him as the guy from the commercials and start chanting “Better Call Saul.” But he’s Jimmy again to Kim, when she comes to visit him in the slammer, looking partially recovered from her flop era with the curl back in her hair, and they smoke one more cigarette against the wall together. If his fatal flaw was an inability to stop scheming, then hers was an irrepressible propensity to trust an unjust system. Jimmy’s great act of heroism was to use his inherent crookedness to give Kim the justice her inherent honesty never would’ve yielded. Forget Bridgerton —that’s a romance for the ages.

And it’s a conclusion that rings true to real life in the present-day U.S. More often than not, when a TV series is described as timely or relevant it’s because it literally parallels a specific cultural moment: a show about workplace sexual harassment in the #MeToo era, or a show about a pandemic during a pandemic. Among the many elements that distinguished Saul from Breaking Bad —and made it the superior of the two classics—was its rigorous engagement with justice, a preoccupation whose creeping pessimism proved timely in a more artful, profound way. Debuting in the long lead-up to the 2016 election, it unfurled its disconcerting observations into a culture inundated with misinformation and disinformation, Constitutional crises and Supreme Court chaos, where laws protecting women’s bodily autonomy are struck down while laws that would save children from being gunned down at school almost never gain traction.

If The Wire became a classic by showing us the crumbling of America’s institutions, then Better Call Saul deserves a place in the canon for the vividness with which it captured something less tangible but more elemental: Americans’ crumbling faith in the values that once gave those institutions meaning. It leaves us with a final question, too: Is the perversion of justice inevitable in any society, under any circumstances, or just within this particular society and the justice system it has built? If only Kim Wexler were a real person, I’d call her up and ask.

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Review: As ‘Better Call Saul’ Returns, ‘Breaking Bad’ Comes Into View

In the fifth season of AMC’s esteemed drama, Jimmy McGill completes his transformation into Saul Goodman and the show’s separate story lines also start to converge.

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By Mike Hale

“Better Call Saul” begins its fifth season, per established practice, with a black-and-white, vérité-style peek into the grim future of the shady lawyer Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk). Fearing that his cover as an anonymous fast-food manager has been blown, he’s descending into paranoia, camped in his dark apartment, peeking through the blinds.

These season-opening scenes serve as a kind of narrative relief valve, alleviating some of the sense of determinism inherent in a show that’s a prequel to a series, “Breaking Bad,” whose events and characters tended to have big, bold outlines. This time around, though, the flash forward offers an unexpected bit of fan service: an appearance by the vacuum cleaner repairman Ed Galbraith, played, as he was in “Breaking Bad” and the film “El Camino,” by the great character actor Robert Forster, who died in October .

Forster’s brief, characteristically businesslike turn in “Better Call Saul” is like a blessing, and it reinforces a tone: laconic, no-nonsense, amused by life’s absurdities but rarely taken by surprise. As with so many of Forster’s roles, you suspect he is there to show you how the creators (in this case Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould) would like to see themselves and their story.

So in Season 5, which begins Sunday on AMC , the best thing about “Better Call Saul” is still its minimalism, its quiet spaces, its willingness to linger on details, like a frazzled prosecutor’s struggle to get a bag of chips out of a courthouse vending machine.

But “Better Call Saul” is also on a clock. We know where Jimmy is headed, and in the opening episodes of the new season (four were made available) the springs of the narrative start to tighten more noticeably.

Jimmy’s assumption of the even smarmier, less scrupulous persona of Saul Goodman, begun at the end of Season 4 , is quickly completed, over the protests of his girlfriend and fellow lawyer, Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn). And Jimmy’s story arc, focused through four seasons on his problematic law career and his relationships with Kim and his overbearing older brother Chuck ( Michael McKean ), finally definitively crosses over with that of the drug-dealing rivals Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) and Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton).

A hiccup in the Salamanca supply line, detailed in the style of studiously deadpan comedy at which the show excels, brings Jimmy in, and as the cartel lieutenant Nacho (Michael Mando) tells him, “When you’re in, you’re in.” Once there, he encounters a pair of DEA agents, Hank and Steven (Dean Norris and Steven Michael Quezada). And voilà, the outlines of “Breaking Bad” start to come into focus.

All of this is presented with the show’s usual high degree of technical and dramatic accomplishment, and its alternately peppery and dreamlike evocations of the Southwestern landscape, urban and desert. There may be a downside, though, if a slight one, to the approach of the show’s inevitable conclusion and a perceived need to lock in on its themes. In the new season it pauses occasionally to spell out Jimmy’s reasons for becoming Saul (as Jimmy, he’d always be Chuck’s loser brother), as if the flow of the story itself isn’t enough to persuade us, which might be true.

A comic montage shows a couple of stoners going on a spree of petty crime, drug use and general life wastage because of Saul’s offer of a 50 percent discount on legal services. A subplot involves Kim’s being forced to leave her pro bono work to do a job for her corporate employer, Mesa Verde, forcing an old man out of his house. (The codger is played by Barry Corbin, another instance of the show giving work to accomplished veteran actors.)

Both of those sequences are handled faultlessly, but they’re also a little more on the nose than we’re used to from “Better Call Saul” — they push us just a little harder than we need to be pushed toward appreciating Jimmy’s corruption and Kim’s ambivalence. (The same could be said of a repeated motif in which episodes end with scenes of broken, castoff objects — a garden gnome, an ice cream cone, bottles of beer.)

To repeat a contrarian view that I’ve advanced before , my attention is more likely to flag during the Jimmy-Kim American-dream scenes than it is during the scenes from the drug plot, which may be more formulaic but are imbued with humor, tension and their own nuances of feeling. (For the other side of the argument, read my colleague James Poniewozik here .)_

Part of this has to do with the presence, on that side of the show, of engaging performers like Esposito, Jonathan Banks as the steadfast enforcer Mike Ehrmantraut (having his own moral crisis now, after the killing of the gentle German engineer, Werner) and especially Dalton as the charismatic Lalo, a wonderful creation whose menace is ever-present and hardly visible. The more we see of them, as the story lines converge, the better for “Better Call Saul.”

Mike Hale is a television critic. He also writes about online video, film and media. He came to The Times in 1995 and worked as an editor in Sports, Arts & Leisure and Weekend Arts before becoming a critic in 2009. More about Mike Hale

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Better Call Saul: Season 6 Reviews

Better Call Saul is ultimately an interesting case study of adjacency that points to a more sustainable prequel model that television in general might wish to use in future.

Full Review | Oct 4, 2023

Better Call Saul is a MASTERPIECE

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

As the timeline pushed beyond the years of Breaking Bad, the final season of this top-notch spin-off became braver, wholly unexpected, and more deliberately placed.

Full Review | Feb 18, 2023

The ending of Better Call Saul reminded us that we are still not over the ending of Breaking Bad.

Full Review | Dec 28, 2022

When a show becomes as revered during its run as Better Call Saul did, there is a lot of pressure to stick the landing. The final episodes of the series were remarkable for how much risk they took in the march to the finish line.

Full Review | Dec 27, 2022

Better Call Saul not only honored its predecessor and rose to the occasion, but even surpassed it in some aspects. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 20, 2022

One of the most visually gorgeous, carefully plotted, and emotionally involving shows in the history of TV.

Full Review | Dec 3, 2022

With Breaking Bad, we all thought Vince Gilligan was a genius. With Better Call Saul, now we know Vince Gilligan is a genius.

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Sep 26, 2022

Legendary television. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Aug 23, 2022

Long-form television drama enables this kind of deep realism, and never has it been achieved more successfully than in Better Call Saul

Full Review | Aug 19, 2022

The diabolical ingenuity of Saul's schemes... were just some of the many marvels baked into this remarkable show. Equally amazing has been its strength-in-depth cast, with Seehorn a revelation and Odenkirk, now an improbable superstar.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 18, 2022

With a plot, characters and an originality of 10, Better Call Saul is a series in which we enjoy every shot, every composition and, above all, the acting quality of its cast (hats off). [full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 17, 2022

This series can astonish and delight like little else, including in its tightly plotted and never-predictable narrative, its sublimely cinematic imagery and its many, many marvellous performances alike.

Full Review | Aug 7, 2022

Even if the show didn’t only have two more chapters left to unfurl, it would already feel like the end.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Aug 2, 2022

There’s no big drama, because it would feel like a cheat to insert some new conflict for them that wasn’t part of the step-by-step process we watched on Breaking Bad. But it’s them back in their element one last time, and it’s very, very good.

Full Review | Aug 2, 2022

Better Call Saul’s steady rise to the giddy heights of all-time classic television drama feels inexorable.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 24, 2022

So, Better Call Saul . . . six and a half series in and it is the best thing on TV — possibly ever, in fact!

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 12, 2022

... Things finally converge with Breaking Bad’s beginnings.

Full Review | Jul 8, 2022

The thrilling midseason finale brings two important characters to Jimmy’s doorstep, with their fates previewing where the series will go in its final episodes...

Full Review | May 27, 2022

It has remained faithful to that restrained rhythm... but the time has come to blow everything up. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | May 25, 2022

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, amc’s better call saul returns as confident as ever.

“Yesterday was bad. Today, I’m gonna fix it.” – Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn)

AMC’s brilliant “Better Call Saul” is about many things, but an undercurrent of trying to “fix yesterday” definitely courses through all five seasons of the show. Jimmy McGill ( Bob Odenkirk ) was first trying to fix the yesterday of his conman past, going as straight as possible before realizing that his brother would never let yesterday go. Now he’s trying to fix the yesterday of Jimmy McGill by discarding that entire part of his existence, becoming Saul Goodman, an attorney who offers 50% and only half-considers how that may encourage his new clients to commit crimes they may otherwise not commit. Meanwhile, Mike Ehrmantraut ( Jonathan Banks ) is unable to fix the yesterday of his complicity in the death of his son, while Kim is stuck between the perceived authority of Hamlin, Hamlin, & McGill, the pro bono work she finds more satisfying, and uncertainty as to whether or not she cares for Saul Goodman in the way she did for Jimmy McGill.

After the longest season-opening “flash-forward” to date, season five picks up close to where we left off last year. As it has for four full seasons before, “Better Call Saul” tracks multiple plotlines over the first four episodes. The main arc is that of Jimmy finally becoming Saul, owning the name, the style, and the bravado that he would be known for on “Breaking Bad.” He uses the networks created by the burner phones to find the people in Albuquerque who may need something better than a public defender but can’t afford Howard Hamlin. The writing on this show is so nuanced that one can track the gradual steps from Jimmy to Saul over the first four seasons, and see how what has happened to him with his brother, HHM, Kim, and others has brought him here. And he’s still trying to do some good by helping those in need of good counsel—at least, he can still convince himself he’s doing some good.

Kim Wexler isn’t so sure. One of the first arcs involves a man (played by the wonderful Barry Corbin ) who is adamantly unwilling to leave the land needed by one of Wexler’s high-profile clients. He will legally be forced to leave because of a stipulation in his deed that allows them to buy it out from him at barely over market price, but there’s an interesting parallel being drawn between Saul’s work and Kim’s. Everyone is running some sort of scam or con—it’s just in different clothing.

The start of season five also brings back a theme of process and structure to a show that has often taken the time to detail how things get done. We see more of the internal operation of Gus Fring ( Giancarlo Esposito ) as he deals with the fallout over the Mexicans learning too much about his business. Tony Dalton is excellent as Lalo Salamanca, who starts digging around Fring’s business in a way that puts Nacho (the always underrated Michael Mando ) in a tough spot. Finally, as the previews have revealed, season five of “Better Call Saul” brings back a serious feeling of yesterday with the return of Dean Norris and Steven Michael Quezada as DEA Agents Hank Schrader and Steven Gomez, respectively. Seeing Hank in this world again poignantly connects “Saul” through “Bad” and even “ El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie .” Without spoilers, he’s on the edge of the Fring operation in a way that makes it feel even more tragic that he won’t connect the dots for years.

Where does “Better Call Saul” go from here? One of many remarkable things about “Saul” is how the writers have defied the common trap of prequels in that we still feel urgency even though we know that nothing too bad can happen to Saul, Mike, Gus, and now Hank because that wouldn’t line up with “Breaking Bad.” (Although I worry more about Kim with each passing episode.) Somehow, we still feel the immediacy of their situations in ways that “Bad” didn’t even do given how breakneck that show was in its pacing. The truly remarkable accomplishments of “Better Call Saul” that make it arguably the best drama on TV are in the subtlety and nuance of the characters—both in terms of writing and performance. It’s in the relatability of how they’re often just fighting to figure out how to get through the day, and sometimes too concerned about fixing yesterday to do what they should be doing—worrying about tomorrow.

Four episodes screened for review

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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‘Better Call Saul’ Creator Explains the Series Finale

By Alan Sepinwall

Alan Sepinwall

This post contains  spoilers  for the  Better Call Saul   series finale. 

Fourteen years ago, Peter Gould wrote an episode of  Breaking Bad , “Better Call Saul,” where he was tasked with introducing a character who would serve two purposes: 1) provide legal expertise to Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, so that it would be more plausible when they kept eluding law enforcement; and 2) bring back some of the humor that Breaking Bad  creator Vince Gilligan worried that the show was losing as Walt and Jesse’s arcs both turned darker. Beyond that, and the casting of Bob Odenkirk in the role, no one gave much thought to who Saul was, let alone believed he would one day anchor a prequel series — also titled Better Call Saul  — that would come to rival the reputation of Breaking Bad itself.

Now that prequel has come to an end, with Gould (who co-created the spinoff with Gilligan) appropriately serving as writer and director for the series finale, which we recapped here . Gould spoke with Rolling Stone about why he chose to end the series with Jimmy/Saul going to prison, bringing Walt back for one final conversation with his criminal lawyer, what he thinks happens to Rhea Seehorn’s Kim Wexler, and a lot more.

When we spoke after Season Five, you said that while you were writing that year’s episodes, “the fog started to clear slightly about where we were going with all of this.” Is what you were planning then what you ultimately wound up doing? It’s similar, but not exactly. What we started realizing was that the right ending for Saul was for him to be in the justice system, as a suspect and ultimately a convict, rather than a lawyer. This guy has lived in the justice system, he’s made a farce of it, he’s played it. And it just felt like that was the right place to end the series: him behind bars. But that was pretty much all we had back then.

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How important was it to the end of Kim’s story that Jimmy be behind bars? I think that Kim was on her own journey. I don’t know that Jimmy being behind bars is axiomatic for her. But I think the fact that they both confess, they both unloaded their consciences, they are both living more honest lives, that is the core of the ending.

You bring Walt back one last time. And like in the Breaking Bad finale, “Felina,” you have the main character coming back to Albuquerque, making some amends for what he did, and getting  some small measure of satisfaction. Were you thinking about that at all when you did this? When I thought of “Felina,” mostly what I thought of was, it’s such a big, rip-roaring episode that Vince wrote and directed. It was so right for Breaking Bad . I knew that the ending of this show was going to have a different feel. It did feel right to have these two guys, Saul and Walt, in one last scene, which kind of touches on their reluctance to really be honest with themselves about what they’ve done and who they are, and what their true regrets are. Neither one of them can really quite bring himself to speak the truth.

I’ve been asking some of the other writers on the show, including Vince , what they would change about Saul or Breaking Bad if they had a time machine. And now you’ve gone and made that question part of the text of this show! So I have to ask if there’s anything you would change about either series, just to have made your life easier on this one. It’s a difficult question, because usually the things in the writers room that we struggled with on either show, where we said, “Oh, if only we had done that differently,” those problems led to an interesting solution. So it’s really hard for me to wish that things were easier, because having them be a little difficult was helpful. There’s that old Orson Welles quotes that “lack of limits is the enemy of art.” Sometimes having to live with choices that you’ve made makes things more fun.

If I were going to pick one thing — and it’s hard to say I’d want to change it, because it seemed so right — it’s what a scumwad Saul was to Francesca on Breaking Bad . We got there [on Better Call Saul ], but only barely.

Can you think of a specific example where the struggle to work around the plot of Breaking Bad led to a more interesting solution? The obvious one is the Lalo-Ignacio dialogue that Saul was spouting in the first episode where we met him: “It wasn’t me, it was Ignacio!” And “You’re not with Lalo?” For a long time, we were wondering, “What the hell is he talking about?” And even after we had Nacho, who was obviously Ignacio, we asked, “What did he do?” And how is Lalo involved? We just didn’t know. It really helped guide us to where we landed. That was certainly one of them. But the other thing is, why on earth does he have that crazy office? What was the point of it? What is he really after? And ultimately, the question that we started with, which seemed insolvable, which is: What problem does becoming Saul Goodman solve?

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The version of Better Call Saul that we’ve been watching since 2015 basically ends with “Fun and Games.” The cartel characters mostly don’t appear again, the main title sequence is different, and the focus is almost entirely on Jimmy and Kim. Why did you decide to structure the season like that? There’s a lot of different pieces to the show, but ultimately, the through-line, the core, the emotion of the show, is about this guy’s journey — about Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill/Gene Takavic, his journey. We felt like just answering the question of how he became Saul Goodman wasn’t enough. We wanted to know, was there ever a chance for this guy, even in a small way, to redeem — redeem is a big word, I don’t know if he redeems himself, but is he always going to be trapped in this cycle that he has been in? It felt right to continue the story, because the man’s life continued. Of course, that was the idea, really from the beginning. That’s why we started the way we did, at the very beginning of the show, of showing Gene Takavic, and coming back to the Gene story. I think we would have really left something on the table if we hadn’t finished the Gene story.

Walt appears again, you bring both Chuck and Marie Schrader back as well. Were there any other characters you wanted to include in the finale but couldn’t? Oh, man. You’re talking to the writer-director of the episode. I would have loved to have Patrick Fabian back, to have Dean Norris back. Anna Gunn would have been great if it fit in the story. I love our entire cast. Giancarlo Esposito is one of the best, most fun actors to work with there is. So I would have wanted them all. I’m greedy. We didn’t want to make a kind of overstuffed epic, and I hope we didn’t. We wanted it to feel like a drama, and not like a collection of scenes. I would have absolutely brought them back. And of course Michael Mando, Nacho’s shadow hangs over the whole season. The feeling I had about this episode was that it was a little bit like A Christmas Carol . Gene becomes Saul, and he’s visited by three ghosts. And each time he’s visited by one of these ghosts, you realize this guy is trapped in the cycle. It’s not an exact analogy, but hopefully those flashbacks help to illuminate the change that he’s making in this episode. He’s making a change, and it’s a tough thing to do.

To your mind, do you think what Saul does in the hearing will get Kim out of legal trouble with Cheryl? No, I don’t. I think that Kim is on her own journey, and I think he knows that. He does feel bad about what’s happening with Cheryl. But I don’t think Kim would like it if Jimmy pulled some maneuver that protected her from Cheryl. He doesn’t save her; she saves her . They’re done with saving each other by this time. What he sees is that she had the courage to face what she’s done. And she did something that I don’t think Jimmy/Gene ever thought she would do, which is not only to turn herself in, but actually to sit across from Cheryl Hamlin, who they both lied to disgustingly, and be 100 percent truthful.

Over the years, whenever I’ve asked you if Jimmy was really Saul yet, you’ve said that in the scripts, you would keep referring to him as “Jimmy” as long as Kim did — i.e., until the transformation was complete. I’m curious if his name in the script and stage directions for this episode kept shifting in the black and white scenes of this episode, or if you just used one of Jimmy, Saul, or Gene throughout. Since this is an episode where he goes from Gene to Saul and, eventually, back to Jimmy, I was pretty careful to use the name that felt “right” at every moment.  I called those moments out in the script. [Gould emailed me: “Here’s a screenshot of one of the pages to illustrate.”]

Finally, Vince says that, at least for now, this is the conclusion of the Heisenberg universe. You’ve been doing this for 15 years. how does it feel to be at the end of it? I haven’t figured out how I feel about it. It’s really upsetting. In my daily life, the thing that’s most upsetting is that I’m not seeing all my collaborators and co-consiprators on the show every day. My life for the last 15 years has had a very regular rhythm of going into the writers room, of being on set, of being in post. It’s the wonderful thing about this job. Just when you’re exhausted with one phase of it, the next phase begins. In my heart, I keep feeling like we’re about to reopen the writers room for Season Seven. But of course, that’s not happening. My fervent hope is that as many of us as possible get to work together again. And, of course, these characters mean so much to me. I love writing all of them, but especially I love writing Jimmy, and Kim, and Mike. Their voices, I’m going to have to really struggle, in whatever I do in the future, not to have those voices peek through. They’re deep in my heart and deep in my soul, and I don’t think that’s ever going to end.

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Better call saul, common sense media reviewers.

Breaking Bad spin-off is a darkly comic tale of ambition.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this TV show.

The series explores how the law can be used to see

Saul Goodman is a lawyer who uses tactics he learn

The main characters are middle-aged and White. Mos

Guns are used to threaten, kill, and hurt people.

Main characters date and have sex under the covers

"F--k," "s--t," "a--hole," "p---y," "d--k," "damn,

The Cinnabon brand is prominently featured; off-sc

Social drinking and cigarette smoking; the illegal

Parents need to know that Better Call Saul is a spin-off of the acclaimed drama Breaking Bad , focusing on ambitious lawyer Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk). Positive messages include the importance of the law, with the warning that it can be bent and used to aid powerful people. But the show…

Positive Messages

The series explores how the law can be used to seek justice -- or twisted to protect criminals. Even then, the definition of "justice" is fuzzy.

Positive Role Models

Saul Goodman is a lawyer who uses tactics he learned as a scam artist in order to help criminals. He's unscrupulous and loyal only to himself. Kim Wexler tries her best to do the right thing, even leaving her firm to join a philanthropic cause, but many times she's reduced to being Saul's conscience. Howard Hamlin shows some integrity in his work as Saul's boss, never allowing him to mix him up in his corrupt cases, but he comes off as cocky and arrogant.

Diverse Representations

The main characters are middle-aged and White. Most Mexican and Latino characters are either drug dealers, laborers, or undocumented immigrants, such as Nacho Varga (played by Michael Mando, who's Guinean-German Canadian), a small-time drug dealer who dreams of making it big, or Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito, who's multiracial), a criminal mastermind. Black characters are small-time criminals and ex-convicts; Huell (Lavell Crawford) fits into the stereotype of a built but dim-witted Black sidekick, used for comedic relief. A long story arc portrays senior citizens as gullible and powerless. Most women in the show are someone's mother, daughter, or wife, except for Kim Wexler (Rhea Sehorn), who's a lawyer, but she's often reduced to being Saul's conscience. Chuck McGill (Michael McKean) has a mental illness that manifests as a fear of electromagnetism, which leads other characters to dismiss him to the point that he's forced to retire.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Guns are used to threaten, kill, and hurt people. The show's first season is the most graphic; someone slits a character's throat, a man's foot gets chopped off with an axe, etc. Violence continues in later seasons, but it becomes less graphic. Many characters die in non-gory ways. Death by suicide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Main characters date and have sex under the covers, implied through moans and movements. Male buttocks are seen several times. Sex workers offer their services.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"F--k," "s--t," "a--hole," "p---y," "d--k," "damn," "hell," "son of a bitch," "douche bag," and so on. "Chingar," which means "f--k" in Mexican Spanish, is used as well.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

The Cinnabon brand is prominently featured; off-screen, the chain has sponsored several Saul-themed promotions. Better Call Saul is also part of the Breaking Bad franchise, which includes movie, video game, and TV spin-offs.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Social drinking and cigarette smoking; the illegal drug trade factors prominently in the plot. Methamphetamine and cocaine are smoked and snorted. Characters who sell drugs often handle packages of meth, cocaine, and heroin. A subplot in Season 4 has characters building a meth lab.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Better Call Saul is a spin-off of the acclaimed drama Breaking Bad , focusing on ambitious lawyer Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman ( Bob Odenkirk ). Positive messages include the importance of the law, with the warning that it can be bent and used to aid powerful people. But the show is filled with violence and moments of peril: Characters use guns and knives to threaten and kill people. People are injured and die, including a death by suicide. Main characters date and have sex under the covers, and male buttocks are visible in various scenes. Characters use words such as "f--k," "s--t," "a--hole," "p---y," "d--k," and "ass," among many others. The show heavily leans into stereotypes of Latino and Black men as drug lords and criminals, and women are largely sidelined except for lawyer Kim Wexler (Rhea Sehorn), but she's largely reduced to being Saul's conscience.

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (21)
• Kids say (54)

Based on 21 parent reviews

Excellent spin-off has violence, sexual dialogue, language and some drug content

Pure excellence, what's the story.

Long before he met crystal methamphetamine wizard Walter White ( Bryan Cranston ), Saul Goodman ( Bob Odenkirk ) led a very different life, with a different name -- James "Jimmy" McGill -- and ambitions to leave small-time lawyering behind. He's also living under the shadow of his vastly more successful but currently ill older brother, Chuck ( Michael McKean ). But when an inspired scheme to scam a hit-and-run driver goes awry, it changes the course of Jimmy's career and spawns a new slogan: BETTER CALL SAUL.

Is It Any Good?

When word got out that there might be a Breaking Bad spin-off about shifty lawyer Saul Goodman, fans of the AMC series were practically giddy, maybe because it allowed a story they loved to live on. But could show creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould really spin Saul's story into gold, and was Odenkirk up for the challenge of starring in a dramatic series that put him in the spotlight? The answer is yes. Better Call Saul retains the bleak yet darkly hilarious vibe of its predecessor. And just as Breaking Bad did when Walter and his protégé Jesse Pinkman ( Aaron Paul ) started cooking together, Saul eventually shifts into high gear and delivers real promise as an addictive drama that's full of surprises and, more importantly, thoughtful storytelling.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Better Call Sau l's premise and its success as a Breaking Bad spin-off. Does it deliver the same brand of drama or offer up something new? What other popular TV shows spawned spin-offs, and how did they fare?

Will people who haven't seen Breaking Bad enjoy Better Call Saul? Who's the target audience, and how can you tell?

What's Better Call Saul 's take on the state of the American legal system? Or the idea of justice? How does the show's point of view compare with that of popular courtroom dramas such as Law & Order ?

How does the show perpetuate stereotypes about Latino and Black men? Why is this damaging in real life?

• Premiere date : February 8, 2015
• Cast : Bob Odenkirk , Michael McKean , Patrick Fabian
• Network : AMC
• Genre : Drama
• TV rating : TV-14
• Last updated : January 22, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

Giant Freakin Robot

Better Call Saul On Netflix Is The Most Effective Prequel Ever Made For One Reason

Posted: May 28, 2024 | Last updated: May 28, 2024

When Better Call Saul was first announced, Breaking Bad fans met the news with cautious trepidation, as the AMC original series had already concluded with one of the most tightly wrapped and satisfying endings in television history.

Many fans felt that a prequel series could only serve to muddy the legacy of the show by spoon-feeding audiences a bunch of details that are better shrouded in mystery. Instead, Better Call Saul was written to round out the world of Breaking Bad, without wasting time explaining each and every little connection to the original show, making it one of the greatest prequels of all time.

Respects The Viewer’s Intelligence

Prequels are often plagued with one simple issue that makes them patently insufferable. While some prequels offer audiences a glance into how characters became the way that they are, gained their skills, or met their cohorts, most are bogged down with tying unnecessary connections to the original project.

In the case of Better Call Saul, for instance, the show never depicts Jimmy/Saul purchasing his iconic white Cadillac, because fans can safely assume that the impetus for that purchase simply came from the character thinking “hey, wouldn’t it be cool to buy a white Cadillac?”

A Prequel That Did The Exact Opposite

The best example of a prequel that fails in this regard, in an antithesis to Better Call Saul, is 2021’s Cruella. The movie, which serves as a prequel to the One Hundred and One Dalmatians franchise, concludes with a post-credits scene that reveals that Cruella de Vil gifted the Dalmatian puppies to Roger and Anita.

This is one of the most baffling and unnecessary added connections in prequel history, because the origin of the dogs was never a mystery that required solving- the audience could have just presumed that these characters got dogs because they wanted to be dog owners.

The Fine Details

Better Call Saul alludes to certain objects or characters that later appear in Breaking Bad but never breaks its own neck trying to force them into the narrative. In the final season of the show, Saul encounters the giant inflatable Statue of Liberty, which eagle-eyed fans already know will eventually adorn the roof of his shady office, though the series leaves it open-ended as to how and why he eventually took possession of the ornament.

The writers of Better Call Saul recognized from the very beginning that the series should focus more on the emotional and psychological growth (or lack thereof) of the characters, instead of the fine details.

Enrichens The Original Series

When Better Call Saul does provide additional context for a certain object or relationship, it only serves to deepen the existing depiction of it in Breaking Bad.

The big reveal that a pair of characters are secretly buried under an important location after dying in the show’s final season makes a Breaking Bad rewatch even richer, and seeing the bond between characters like Mike and Gus develop over the course of several seasons sheds light on why characters made certain choices in the original show.

Furthermore, Hector Salamanca’s iconic bell receives a menacing backstory that fans could never have previously predicted, which strengthens his presence across both shows.

Now Streaming On Netflix

If you haven’t yet had the chance to catch Better Call Saul, it’s currently available to stream in full on Netflix. The series completely lives up to its predecessor, and is widely considered by fans to be on par or better than Breaking Bad.

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Better call saul season 6 ending explained (in detail).

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Kim Wexler's Story in Better Call Saul Mirrors Jesse Pinkman's In Breaking Bad (& 1 Scene Proves It)

Jimmy’s bcs finale prison call hides a sad secret about gene, better call saul's finale finally gets the antihero crime genre right.

• The Better Call Saul ending closes the book on the Breaking Bad universe and provides a satisfyingly complete story.
• Jimmy's life as Gene Takavic is exposed and he faces the consequences of his actions, while Kim seeks catharsis.
• Flashbacks reveal Jimmy's guilt and regret, particularly his desire to change the act that led to his brother's suicide.

The following article contains discussions of suicide.

The Better Call Saul ending helped the series earn its place alongside Breaking Bad as a television heavyweight and tied up the strange, dark, and often funny story of Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), better known as Saul Goodman. In the Breaking Bad spinoff, the plot shifts focus to the eponymous lawyer who helped Walter White (Bryan Cranston) grow a drug empire. Better Call Saul centers on the on-the-run former lawyer’s backstory as he morphed into Saul, and it's crosscut with post- Breaking Bad sequences showing what Jimmy is up to since disappearing to Nevada and assuming the identity of Gene Takavic.

The ending of Better Call Saul season 6 perfectly closed the book not just on its own show but on the entire Breaking Bad universe , at least for now. Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) receives the catharsis she seeks, Jimmy finally faces the consequences of his actions , and even side characters from both shows appear for a requiem in scenes sometimes taken right from Breaking Bad . The Better Call Saul ending is dramatic and dire, but it also has glimpses of hope that make for a satisfyingly complete story.

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Jimmy McGill's Gene Takavic Is Caught In The Better Call Saul Ending

Jimmy's secret life is blown wide open.

The Better Call Saul ending saw Jimmy’s life as Gene Takavic in Omaha finally exposed, as he was arrested and faced justice for being an accomplice in Walter White's crimes. Better Call Saul season 6 also saw the final days of Jimmy and Kim’s relationship. The second half of season 6, all in black-and-white, depicts how Gene was finally cornered by the police and arrested after he reverts to his “ slippin ’” ways.

At the same time, Kim's monotonous new life is turned upside-down by a surprise phone call from Jimmy. This prompts her to sign a full confession to the Howard Hamlin scam and their role in his murder. For the second half of Better Call Saul season 6, it almost seemed like Jimmy was willing himself to be arrested, participating in crooked jobs similar to his scams in Illinois.

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The Better Call Saul ending begins with Jimmy on the run after Marion (Carol Burnett) grows wise to Gene’s real nature and calls the cops on him. Before Jimmy is quickly caught, a series of flashbacks to unseen moments from both Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad illuminate Jimmy’s feelings in the present . Disappointing one more friend, Marion, and these scenes of Jimmy’s guilt in flashback set the table for Jimmy’s court appearance.

Why Jimmy Asks Mike & Walt About A Time Machine In The Better Call Saul Ending

Jimmy's request demonstrates his guilt and regret.

Better Call Saul 's ending includes a series of flashbacks: one opposite Jonathan Banks as Mike Ehrmantraut during Better Call Saul season 5's incredible "Bagman" episode , one opposite Bryan Cranston as Walter White during Breaking Bad season 5's "Granite State," and one opposite Michael McKean as Chuck McGill shortly before Better Call Saul begins. All three are connected by the overarching theme of regret and hark back to an Easter egg from the Better Call Saul season 6 premiere.

Mike believes if he'd never been dirty himself, his son would still be alive.

Jimmy's first conversation is with Mike. To kill time as they cross the desert, Jimmy asks what Mike would change if he had a time machine. After initially picking a date in 2001 (presumably when his son, Matty, died) Mike settles on the first time he took a bribe. He would've nipped his dark streak in the bud. Matty died after reluctantly accepting a police bribe on his father's advice, so Mike believes if he'd never been dirty himself, his son would still be alive.

In a second flashback, Jimmy asks Walt, the same question to which Walter White cites leaving Gray Matter as his biggest regret — a typically self-centered answer that speaks to his lust for greatness and glory. In both scenes, Jimmy's own replies are meaningless. He tells Mike he'd use a time machine to invest in Berkshire Hathaway and become a billionaire, and gives Walt some story about injuring his knee during a "slip 'n' fall" scam.

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Needless to say, both are just Jimmy deflecting, and his true regret lies hidden within the "time machine" question itself. Throughout Better Call Saul season 6, a copy of HG Wells' The Time Machine has been shown in Jimmy's possession, and the finale reveals this originally belonged to his brother, Chuck. The real moment Jimmy longs to change is ruining his brother's career in Better Call Saul season 3 — the act that led to Chuck taking his own life.

Saul Goodman's Plea Bargain Explained

He knew how to play the legal system.

After running from Marion's house and grabbing his precious shoebox at the end of Better Call Saul , Jimmy hides in a dumpster. The glance toward his diamonds and the Disappearer's business card suggest he's planning yet another extraction, but the police catch up before he gets the opportunity. Languishing in his holding cell, etched graffiti reading " MY LAWYR WILL REAM UR ASS " sparks a classic Saul Goodman scheme in Jimmy's mind.

Bob Odenkirk earned 5 Golden Globe nominations for Better Call Saul , but didn't win any of them.

He phones old lawyer friend Bill Oakley (Peter Diseth), who Francesca (Tina Parker) revealed was now working as a defense attorney earlier in Better Call Saul season 6 . Essentially, Jimmy intends to wrangle a ridiculously light sentence by exploiting his knowledge of the court system. He knows only a single juror ruling in the defense's favor is required, and gives the prosecution team a preview of his " I was a victim too " performance.

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This proves enough to sow doubt in the prosecution's mind whether they can secure a conviction, giving Jimmy leverage to negotiate a deal whereby he pleads guilty (foregoing the need for a trial) in exchange for a cushy sentence. He also preys upon the threat of ending lead prosecutor George Castellano's flawless record and whittles a life sentence down to seven years at a prison of his choosing.

Why Betsy Brandt's Better Call Saul Marie Schrader Cameo Is So Important

The return of marie schrader was essential for jimmy's redemption.

While Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul were confirmed in advance, the Better Call Saul ending dropped a surprise cameo from Betsy Brandt as Marie Schrader . As the widow of a DEA agent who died chasing down Heisenberg and his cohorts, Marie is permitted to observe Jimmy's sentence meeting, but the prisoner makes a point of inviting Hank's wife into the room. This is likely for Jimmy to send the prosecution a message:

" If I can look directly in a widow's eye and lie through my teeth, I can probably convince at least one juror I'm telling the truth ."

Brandt's Better Call Saul cameo makes Hank's death an even bigger deal, showing how the ramifications of Breaking Bad 's "Ozymandias" episode are still being felt while also doing justice to those who survived. Jimmy performing his victim act in Marie's face then shows how far he's sunk morally as Better Call Saul 's ending looms, setting up the eventual redemption nicely.

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Why Jimmy Finally Confesses In Court At The End Of Better Call Saul

The finale was a true turning point for jimmy.

Jimmy performs a miracle by negotiating a seven-year sentence at the end of Better Call Saul , but something changes his mind. When Saul finally gets his day in court, he throws everything away by spilling his guts in a shocking confession scene. The redemption of Saul Goodman tentatively begins when he hears that Kim came clean , but only during the plane flight to New Mexico does Jimmy decide to tell the truth himself.

Kim's selflessness is the penny-dropping moment Jimmy needed

Through Bill, Jimmy learns that Kim not only signed a legal affidavit regarding the Howard Hamlin incident but showed said affidavit to Howard's widow, opening herself up to a world of civil litigation. Kim's selflessness is the penny-dropping moment Jimmy needed, and he realizes the time has come to cleanse his own soul. Because Jimmy wants Kim to see he's taking responsibility, he steps off the plane and tells the prosecution a bunch of fresh off-screen lies about Kim's involvement in the Howard scam .

This lures Kim to the courtroom, where Jimmy fully intends to rescind those accusations. He just needed her to be there, and briefly incriminating her was the only way. When Kim left Jimmy in the Better Call Saul season 6 episode "Fun & Games," she pointed out how they encouraged each other's dark sides. While hard to disagree, Kim inspiring Jimmy to come clean in Better Call Saul 's finale proves they're also capable of bringing out each other's goodness.

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Jimmy correcting the judge shows he's finally accepted responsibility.

The man entering court is Saul Goodman, complete with a garish suit, arrogant swagger, and ridiculous name. All of this pompous showmanship is designed to give Saul Goodman one last dance in court. With each confession he makes, a part of Saul dies and a part of Jimmy is reclaimed until only the latter stands before the court. There's a vital moment in Better Call Saul 's finale when Jimmy lays bare his involvement with Heisenberg, then turns back toward Kim for approval. She remains stone-faced, and Jimmy realizes he hasn't gone far enough.

Returning to the court's podium, the jail-bound ex-lawyer digs deep and drudges up his deepest regret — a trauma Jimmy has never properly confronted with Chuck killing himself in Better Call Saul season 3. After laying every last sin on the table, Jimmy corrects the judge when she refers to him as "Saul Goodman," confirming his criminal alter ego is now dead for good, and tying into the Better Call Saul season 6 finale title, "Saul Gone."

When he looks back at Kim this time, her expression has softened, showing a mixture of pride and relief that Jimmy McGill is now a man without skeletons clogging up his mental closet — the final stage of his transformation and redemption at the end of Better Call Saul.

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Is Kim Wexler's Better Call Saul Ending Happy?

There are some slithers of hope for kim after better call saul.

When Better Call Saul revealed Kim's post- Breaking Bad fate , it wasn't pretty. A dull job that doesn't make use of her extraordinary talent, a partner she shows barely any interest in, and an uncharacteristic refusal to make decisions or choices for herself. Kim's life is still pretty bad by the time Better Call Saul 's ending, as a lunch break scene proves she can't even pick between Red Lobster and Topkapi. However, Gilligan and Peter Gould do weave a slither of hope at the end of Kim's Better Call Saul story, as she volunteers at a free legal clinic.

Kim is still being punished for her Better Call Saul wrongdoing, but there are bright spots to be found.

The services provided are very similar to Kim's pro bono work from earlier in Better Call Saul season 6 — offering legal aid to those who can't afford it — and reclaiming this aspect of her life represents Kim taking the first step out of her current rut. Maybe reconnecting with her very first love (the law) will eventually coax Kim's old personality back, restore her confidence, and lead to a career change down the line. Kim's fate isn't happy in the traditional sense, but her new job allows the audience to imagine things can get better.

The Better Call Saul ending also doesn't confirm whether Kim still gets sued by Cheryl Hamlin. Jimmy's imprisonment might spare his ex-wife a costly lawsuit, and when Kim turns up in Better Call Saul 's final scene having evidently traveled far for the occasion, she certainly doesn't appear broke for cash, but Jimmy can't contradict the affidavit his ex signed. Jimmy's confession was inspired by Kim; it wasn't about saving Kim since this would've negated her own redemption arc (confirmed by Better Call Saul 's Gould via Rolling Stone ).

Better Call Saul proves that, much like Walter White and Saul Goodman, Kim Wexler and Jesse Pinkman share a number of similarities in their stories.

Jimmy McGill's Final Fate In Better Call Saul Explained

Jimmy will likely die in prison.

Because Jimmy decided to turn his court hearing into a therapy session, the deal he cooked up becomes obsolete. Rather than seven years playing golf, Jimmy gets 86 years at the end of Better Call Saul , which is at the very prison he said he didn't want during the initial negotiation with the prosecution. Just like Kim's ending, however, there are glimmers of light poking through the gray of Jimmy's future.

Prison isn't a fun place for an ex-prosecution lawyer, but for an ex-defense lawyer who achieved renown for getting criminals off the hook, it's not so bad. Because of his reputation for defending crooks and the respect earned through his achievements with Heisenberg, Jimmy is immediately accepted by his fellow inmates, even if he can't escape the shadow of Saul.

Even better, Jimmy's courtroom confession has healed the bad blood between him and Kim. Visiting under the pretense of his lawyer, Kim is able to share a cigarette and a conversation with her ex-husband, burying the hatchet after six years of acrimony. Kim and Jimmy aren't back together, and Better Call Saul 's star couple will likely never see each other again.

A small but sweet detail in Better Call Saul's series finale reveals a sad truth about Jimmy McGill's ending that flies under the radar.

However, two small details confirm Kim and Jimmy's relationship is at least mended by the ending of Better Call Saul. First, the cigarette burns in color as opposed to black-and-white, proving the gloom of the Gene timeline is starting to lift. Secondly, when Jimmy gives Kim the classic gun fingers as she departs the prison, she subtly makes a gun shape with her own hands.

Better Call Saul leaves audiences to assume Jimmy spends the rest of his life incarcerated, and that the final shot of Kim walking away represents the last time they'll ever see each other. While hardly the most uplifting conclusion, Jimmy dies an honest man. In the words of his brother, Chuck, during Better Call Saul 's series finale flashback, " There's no shame in going back and changing your path ."

How The Better Call Saul Creators Explained The Ending

Vince gilligan and peter gould put an intense amount of thought into the finale.

While fans can debate and theorize over the Better Call Saul ending, it is insightful to hear from the creators. Both Gilligan and Gould spoke at length about the development of the final episode and why they felt this was the right direction to take the story in the end. Gould ( via THR ) specifically spoke about how the finale differs from the Breaking Bad ending , which was a violent confrontation. Gould explains the difference ultimately comes down to how Jimmy and Walter White differ, pointing out that Jimmy never picks up a gun the entire series:

" His ending is not going to be violent in the same way. He’s a man of words, so of course the ending is gonna have words ."

One of the biggest questions going into Better Call Saul season 6 was the fate of Kim. As she is not a character on Breaking Bad , many viewers feared this meant she was destined to be a victim of Jimmy's shady dealings and would get caught in the crossfire. As Gilligan revealed ( via Rolling Stone ), they knew Kim was one of the characters most vulnerable to dying, but killing her off was not something they really considered. He explains:

" I guess it just didn’t feel right to kill her off. That was probably never on the table, honestly ."

Instead, Kim got to share the finale with Jimmy, making their relationship a key part of where the show leaves off. With Kim free but with a disappointing life and Jimmy behind bars for the rest of his life yet owning up to his mistakes, it is not surprising that fans are split on whether the Better Call Saul ending is a happy one or not. However, Gould admits there were not any conversations about how the ending should land on audiences, saying

" I think we just wanted to be honest. We don’t really think about it in terms of, 'This is a happy ending' or 'This is a sad ending. M y mother used to say, 'Where there’s life, there’s hope.' I guess in the end I subscribe to that."

Better Call Saul pulls off a one-episode redemption arc in its finale, and it's better than the endings of Breaking Bad, Ozark, and The Sopranos.

How The Better Call Saul Ending Connects To Breaking Bad

The prequel series ties the franchise together.

The Better Call Saul ending connects to Breaking Bad both narratively and thematically. Marie, Walter, Jessie, and Bill all show up, either in the present timeline or in flashbacks. The scenes with these characters are brief, but they’re an important reminder of just how far Jimmy has fallen in his life. From the drug kingpin he associated with to the innocent people he hurt, it’s made clear Slippin’ Jimmy is not just a small-time crook.

the Better Call Saul ending is a closing of the door on the Breaking Bad universe.

Thematically, the Better Call Saul ending is a closing of the door on the Breaking Bad universe with the last person involved in the events of that series finally receiving their comeuppance. The ending of Better Call Saul proves how Jimmy’s small steps toward darker activities led him to happily fall in with terrible, dangerous people.

Both Walter and Saul receive their justice at the end of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul respectively, and each man’s punishment reflects how they lived their lives: violently and as a legend for Walterm and as a fast-talking lawyer who deep down has a sense of regret for Jimmy.

Did Better Call Saul Or Breaking Bad Have A Better Ending?

Which show did it better.

Breaking Bad was a hugely successful crime drama series. It followed a man who believed he was doing something good for his family by becoming a criminal. However, as the series wore on, Walter White became pure evil himself , and the only way for that show to end was for him to get his comeuppance and there could be no happily-ever-after for him. Luckily, the show had a second major character in Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), and since he wasn't as far gone as Walter, he got the happy ending fans needed.

As for Better Call Saul , this is a prequel that would lead into Breaking Bad , so the ending is tougher here. The show needed to reveal what led Saul Goodman to this place in his life, but there was little that it could do to surprise people. Despite that, Better Call Saul still had plenty of surprises, and it needed to have a different sort of ending where Saul got what was coming to him, but not with the finality of what happened to Walter White. Much like Breaking Bad , this prequel series also stuck the landing in the finale.

What pushes things in Better Call Saul's favor is how the characters face their endings. Walter White has a small moment of self-awareness but is too gone to turn back. Walt saves Jesse, but then he sets out to destroy Jack's meth operation as a way to protect his own legacy, which is not heroic or brave, as he doesn't seem to care about evening Jesse or Hank. Jimmy, on the other hand, knows he has done wrong and he confesses to everything in court, accepting a plea bargain. It was his chance to do the right thing.

Jimmy realized in the end that all he ever wanted to be was a good guy and do something heroic.

Throughout all of Breaking Bad , Walter White acted like he was doing the right thing for his family, but he was only in it for himself. That made him a tragic character who could become a hero. However, Jimmy realized in the end that all he ever wanted to be was a good guy and do something heroic, and in his last moments, he got the chance and ran with it. Both endings served their purpose, but with Breaking Bad , it was about killing a monster while in Better Call Saul , it was about creating a hero.

Better Call Saul

Set in times before, during, and after Breaking Bad, the AMC crime drama spinoff follows the trials and tribulations of criminal lawyer Saul Goodman (Odenkirk) as he looks to make a name for himself at his firm located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The show digs deeper into the events that crafted Saul and the repercussions of his actions.