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***Official "Space Blanket" for Better Call Saul*** (7 Viewers)


2) I find it hard to believe that (based on what we know about the characters) they would have the capacity to fundamentally change like that. Maybe Kim. But not Saul. At every turn for the last 11 years, he makes the wrong, self-destructive move. And now, when faced with the biggest decision of his life, he's going to all of a sudden be good? I just wasn't buying it.

In fairness, I have a negative view of human beings. So I just don't believe he would make such a complete change at that time.
But Jimmy sideways straddled the line of good guy/bad guy. At his core he's a hustler/con man but he's no psychopath.

Because of his respect for Chuck, he endeavors to become a legit lawyer. But when Chuck sabotages that he breaks bad.

Realizing that Kim has come clean makes him Break Good.

And there's a difference between redemption and atonement. Jimmy achieves the first but only through his punishment will he gain the latter.
What's satisfying about the latter is that Jimmy's atonement is mainly on his own terms rather than whatever punishment the justice system meted out for him.
 
Haven't had a chance to post in here since I watched the finale on Monday. Read through all the comments so I didn't repeat anything that had already been said.

Overall, I thought this was a great finale. Wasn't as enjoyable in the moment as the BB finale, but I thought it delivered on Gilligan/Gould's promise that BCS's ending would cause you to re-evaluate BB. Specifically, Walt atoned for his sins, but in a way that in retrospect feels like a bit of a cheat. Even at the time, I remember thinking that the whole thing was a little too MacGyver/Hollywood. (And I say that as someone who still believes it was one of the greatest series in the history of television).

BCS showed what it meant to truly take responsibility for one's actions. Someone made the point that, in addition to being the end of this particular series, the BCS ending also serves as the end of our anti-hero era. Walter White, Don Draper, Tony Soprano ... none of them truly faced the kind of consequences that Jimmy/Saul/Gene did. Neither did any of the characters in the Gilligan-verse, unless you consider dying to be facing consequences, which I don't, really.

The other thing I loved was the main character's repeated transformations. He starts off the episode as Gene, lamely running away from Carol Burnett and lasting all of about five minutes on the lam. Then, while sitting in his jail cell, he transforms into Saul (which Gould confirmed by sharing the script with Alan Sepinwall). As Saul, he negotiates a life sentence down to 7 years. But after learning about Kim's confession, on the flight to Albuquerque he transforms into Jimmy, and that's who confesses in the courtroom scene.

By the time he goes to jail, he has found a way to balance all of his personas. Gene is the one baking bread and being content with his boring, quotidian prison life. Saul is the one who gets along with all of the hardened criminals, who view him as a hero. And Jimmy is still in there, able to share a cigarette with Kim. He can make the "finger gun" gesture to Kim, but it doesn't mean he's slipping back into Saul-dom. He's firmly in control. He may be in prison but he's finally a free man. In fact, it was going to prison that freed him.
 
Nothing Jimmy did saves Kim from the potential civil suit though. So he didn’t save her anything. She already confessed.
"You don't save me. I save me."
Damn, I forget so much about this show. The time in between seasons hurt.
To be fair, I had forgotten that scene, too. One of the commentaries I read/listened to pointed it out. It was either Sepinwall's review or one of the The Ringer's multiple podcasts on the show. I didn't cite the source because I couldn't remember which one.
 
Haven't had a chance to post in here since I watched the finale on Monday. Read through all the comments so I didn't repeat anything that had already been said.

Overall, I thought this was a great finale. Wasn't as enjoyable in the moment as the BB finale, but I thought it delivered on Gilligan/Gould's promise that BCS's ending would cause you to re-evaluate BB. Specifically, Walt atoned for his sins, but in a way that in retrospect feels like a bit of a cheat. Even at the time, I remember thinking that the whole thing was a little too MacGyver/Hollywood. (And I say that as someone who still believes it was one of the greatest series in the history of television).

BCS showed what it meant to truly take responsibility for one's actions. Someone made the point that, in addition to being the end of this particular series, the BCS ending also serves as the end of our anti-hero era. Walter White, Don Draper, Tony Soprano ... none of them truly faced the kind of consequences that Jimmy/Saul/Gene did. Neither did any of the characters in the Gilligan-verse, unless you consider dying to be facing consequences, which I don't, really.

The other thing I loved was the main character's repeated transformations. He starts off the episode as Gene, lamely running away from Carol Burnett and lasting all of about five minutes on the lam. Then, while sitting in his jail cell, he transforms into Saul (which Gould confirmed by sharing the script with Alan Sepinwall). As Saul, he negotiates a life sentence down to 7 years. But after learning about Kim's confession, on the flight to Albuquerque he transforms into Jimmy, and that's who confesses in the courtroom scene.

By the time he goes to jail, he has found a way to balance all of his personas. Gene is the one baking bread and being content with his boring, quotidian prison life. Saul is the one who gets along with all of the hardened criminals, who view him as a hero. And Jimmy is still in there, able to share a cigarette with Kim. He can make the "finger gun" gesture to Kim, but it doesn't mean he's slipping back into Saul-dom. He's firmly in control. He may be in prison but he's finally a free man. In fact, it was going to prison that freed him.

Sepinwall, is that you? nice take
 
I think the scene with Marion being threatened by Gene showed the two sides also. Saul was walking towards her snarling and menacing with the phone line in his hands. When Marion looked him in the eyes and said "I trusted you" that brought Jimmy to the forefront. There was no way he could harm her after she said that, so he ran.
Remember too that he used to work in elder law, and ran that scam that temporarily turned all of Irene's friends against her, so I think on some level, Jimmy had a soft spot for elders, and I am sure the memory of Irene went through his head when Marion told him she trusted him.
I dunno - I don't think we were supposed to "like" the Skyler character the same way we liked Kim. Skyler was constantly in Walt's way. Different than Hank though - it was Hank's job to be in the way. Skyler was the annoying "little woman" at home. Although I think Seehorn is a better overall actress, Gunn did a fine job with her role.
On the one hand, I think Skyler did take a bit too much abuse from fans, but on the flip side, she was presented as a nag right off the bat. One of the first scenes was her giving Walt crap about using the wrong credit card for something like a $15 purchase at Office Max. Fast forward to her leaving the house and not telling Walt where she was going, which was a childish passive-aggressive payback game towards Walt (who deserved it, but that is not how an adult should act), the cheating, and then the getting her hands dirty with the business later on until things went sour, and it's easy to see why Skyler was never a favorite with many fans. Most women I know who watched BB disliked her as well, so it was not a male thing. I think Gunn did a great job overall in playing her, but Skyler simply wasn't a likable character.
 
Haven't had a chance to post in here since I watched the finale on Monday. Read through all the comments so I didn't repeat anything that had already been said.

Overall, I thought this was a great finale. Wasn't as enjoyable in the moment as the BB finale, but I thought it delivered on Gilligan/Gould's promise that BCS's ending would cause you to re-evaluate BB. Specifically, Walt atoned for his sins, but in a way that in retrospect feels like a bit of a cheat. Even at the time, I remember thinking that the whole thing was a little too MacGyver/Hollywood. (And I say that as someone who still believes it was one of the greatest series in the history of television).

BCS showed what it meant to truly take responsibility for one's actions. Someone made the point that, in addition to being the end of this particular series, the BCS ending also serves as the end of our anti-hero era. Walter White, Don Draper, Tony Soprano ... none of them truly faced the kind of consequences that Jimmy/Saul/Gene did. Neither did any of the characters in the Gilligan-verse, unless you consider dying to be facing consequences, which I don't, really.

The other thing I loved was the main character's repeated transformations. He starts off the episode as Gene, lamely running away from Carol Burnett and lasting all of about five minutes on the lam. Then, while sitting in his jail cell, he transforms into Saul (which Gould confirmed by sharing the script with Alan Sepinwall). As Saul, he negotiates a life sentence down to 7 years. But after learning about Kim's confession, on the flight to Albuquerque he transforms into Jimmy, and that's who confesses in the courtroom scene.

By the time he goes to jail, he has found a way to balance all of his personas. Gene is the one baking bread and being content with his boring, quotidian prison life. Saul is the one who gets along with all of the hardened criminals, who view him as a hero. And Jimmy is still in there, able to share a cigarette with Kim. He can make the "finger gun" gesture to Kim, but it doesn't mean he's slipping back into Saul-dom. He's firmly in control. He may be in prison but he's finally a free man. In fact, it was going to prison that freed him.

Sepinwall, is that you? nice take
I read so much of his stuff, I'm probably unintentionally plagiarizing him in multiple places. He's pretty much become my go-to source as soon as I finish a high-end TV show.

Funny story: I actually went to college with him. Never met, but I definitely knew of him through his work on the school paper's weekend magazine. One time the paper started writing reviews of campus performing arts shows, and Sepinwall was assigned to write up my dopey a cappella group's concert. Even in the moment, it felt like hiring a chef at a Michelin restaurant to make you a burger.
 
I think the scene with Marion being threatened by Gene showed the two sides also. Saul was walking towards her snarling and menacing with the phone line in his hands. When Marion looked him in the eyes and said "I trusted you" that brought Jimmy to the forefront. There was no way he could harm her after she said that, so he ran.
Remember too that he used to work in elder law, and ran that scam that temporarily turned all of Irene's friends against her, so I think on some level, Jimmy had a soft spot for elders, and I am sure the memory of Irene went through his head when Marion told him she trusted him.
I dunno - I don't think we were supposed to "like" the Skyler character the same way we liked Kim. Skyler was constantly in Walt's way. Different than Hank though - it was Hank's job to be in the way. Skyler was the annoying "little woman" at home. Although I think Seehorn is a better overall actress, Gunn did a fine job with her role.
On the one hand, I think Skyler did take a bit too much abuse from fans, but on the flip side, she was presented as a nag right off the bat. One of the first scenes was her giving Walt crap about using the wrong credit card for something like a $15 purchase at Office Max. Fast forward to her leaving the house and not telling Walt where she was going, which was a childish passive-aggressive payback game towards Walt (who deserved it, but that is not how an adult should act), the cheating, and then the getting her hands dirty with the business later on until things went sour, and it's easy to see why Skyler was never a favorite with many fans. Most women I know who watched BB disliked her as well, so it was not a male thing. I think Gunn did a great job overall in playing her, but Skyler simply wasn't a likable character.
In the words of Jessica Rabbit, "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way."

It's kind of weird (but also kind of understandable) that we blame actors for their characters' foibles. Aaron Eckhart got his start playing a horrible misogynist in "In the Company of Men". I saw an interview once where he said women would come up to him visibly angry and say they wanted to slap him in the face.

I don't think Gunn is a bad actor, though she's not on Seehorn's level. But the main problem is the role she was given in the show. Part of me wonders if the richness of Kim Wexler is a kind of apology on the part of Gilligan/Gould for failing to create a compelling female lead in BB. (Though I believe they've also said they had originally planned for a smaller role for Kim and only expanded it when they saw the chemistry between BO and RS).
 
I read so much of his stuff, I'm probably unintentionally plagiarizing him in multiple places. He's pretty much become my go-to source as soon as I finish a high-end TV show.

Funny story: I actually went to college with him. Never met, but I definitely knew of him through his work on the school paper's weekend magazine. One time the paper started writing reviews of campus performing arts shows, and Sepinwall was assigned to write up my dopey a cappella group's concert. Even in the moment, it felt like hiring a chef at a Michelin restaurant to make you a burger.

Haha, assuming you got that review framed hanging next to your diploma? It's unfortunate he moved behind the Rolling Stone paywall. I definitely miss his takes.
 
Redemption may or may not be available, but the first step is to admit you enjoyed all that bad stuff you did. Walt admitted it to Skylar; Kim admitted it to Saul; Jimmy admitted it to Kim (the courtroom was window dressing).

I'm going to give Jesse a pass. If anyone wants to argue he was redeemed by neo-Nazi slavery, I'll listen.

And sure, I'd watch a show where Kim gets her license back and moves back to ABQ to keep Badger and Skinny Pete and Mike's granddaughter out of jail.
 
Love this series, and I think it stands as one of the greatest dramas ever made.

However:

They blew the last season. Despite his myriad flaws, we've been rooting for Jimmy all this time. But I'm supposed to root for Jimmy to ruin Howard's reputation? And even if I'm to believe Jimmy would stoop this low, I'm to believe that Kim is willing to participate in this? The last few episodes were fantastic, and the series conclusion was excellent. But I hate what they did to Howard, and no part of me believes that Kim hated Howard enough to ruin him.
 
Love this series, and I think it stands as one of the greatest dramas ever made.

However:

They blew the last season. Despite his myriad flaws, we've been rooting for Jimmy all this time. But I'm supposed to root for Jimmy to ruin Howard's reputation? And even if I'm to believe Jimmy would stoop this low, I'm to believe that Kim is willing to participate in this? The last few episodes were fantastic, and the series conclusion was excellent. But I hate what they did to Howard, and no part of me believes that Kim hated Howard enough to ruin him.
I don't think it was Kim's hate for Howard that fueled her, it was her love for Jimmy. Kim blamed Howard for Jimmy morphing into Saul. She felt Howard didn't give Jimmy the respect and opportunities he deserved and mistreated him. She wanted to take the money, respect and acclaim in the legal community away from Howard, so he could walk in Jimmy's shoes for a while. She wanted Howard to feel what it was like to be Jimmy. She wanted to knock Howard off of his high horse.
 
Love this series, and I think it stands as one of the greatest dramas ever made.

However:

They blew the last season. Despite his myriad flaws, we've been rooting for Jimmy all this time. But I'm supposed to root for Jimmy to ruin Howard's reputation? And even if I'm to believe Jimmy would stoop this low, I'm to believe that Kim is willing to participate in this? The last few episodes were fantastic, and the series conclusion was excellent. But I hate what they did to Howard, and no part of me believes that Kim hated Howard enough to ruin him.
I don't think it was Kim's hate for Howard that fueled her, it was her love for Jimmy. Kim blamed Howard for Jimmy morphing into Saul. She felt Howard didn't give Jimmy the respect and opportunities he deserved and mistreated him. She wanted to take the money, respect and acclaim in the legal community away from Howard, so he could walk in Jimmy's shoes for a while. She wanted Howard to feel what it was like to be Jimmy. She wanted to knock Howard off of his high horse.

All well said, but I don't think Kim hated Howard enough to completely ruin him.
 
Love this series, and I think it stands as one of the greatest dramas ever made.

However:

They blew the last season. Despite his myriad flaws, we've been rooting for Jimmy all this time. But I'm supposed to root for Jimmy to ruin Howard's reputation? And even if I'm to believe Jimmy would stoop this low, I'm to believe that Kim is willing to participate in this? The last few episodes were fantastic, and the series conclusion was excellent. But I hate what they did to Howard, and no part of me believes that Kim hated Howard enough to ruin him.
I don't think it was Kim's hate for Howard that fueled her, it was her love for Jimmy. Kim blamed Howard for Jimmy morphing into Saul. She felt Howard didn't give Jimmy the respect and opportunities he deserved and mistreated him. She wanted to take the money, respect and acclaim in the legal community away from Howard, so he could walk in Jimmy's shoes for a while. She wanted Howard to feel what it was like to be Jimmy. She wanted to knock Howard off of his high horse.


Howard represented everything that Kim hated about being a corporate lawyer.
 
NY Times had an article about the series that I thought was quite good. I liked this synopsis and comparison (neither positive nor negative) to Breaking Bad:

“Breaking Bad” is an intensely moral show with no illusions about Walter’s depravity. But it is also intoxicated with his criminal genius. Walter, financially struggling and stricken with lung cancer, finds virility and purpose in his heinous deeds. He breaks both bad and badass.
In “Better Call Saul,” crime is mostly just sad, the more so the closer the series gets to its end. The closing episodes return to Gene in his Nebraska exile, shot in blood-draining black-and-white and looking like an off-brand Walter White, down to the soup-strainer mustache.

As Saul says of Walter, in a late-season flashback, “Guy with that mustache probably doesn’t make a lot of good life choices.” Now he seems to be proving his own point. To replenish his nest egg, and maybe his sense of self-worth, Gene enlists a dim-bulb taxi driver to rob a department store, then to help him fleece a string of rich marks, ending with a cancer patient.

It’s a sad-sack version of the final spree that left Walter with a pile of cash the size of a California king mattress. It ends ignominiously, with Gene ID’d by the elderly woman (Carol Burnett) whom he deceived to start his ruse. It wasn’t even that hard, she tells him: “I typed in ‘con man’ and ‘Albuquerque.’” The man who eluded the law and survived the cartel gets brought down by Eunice Higgins.

Over a decade and a half, the “Bad”-iverse has developed a lot of narrative real estate. The final run of “Saul” keeps finding little pockets of story to revisit within it, restaging Saul’s first run-in with Walter and having Kim meet Jesse during the “Breaking Bad” timeline, at a crucial moment in both their lives.

The finale, likewise, gets its theme and structure from three flashbacks with now-dead characters — Mike, Walter and Chuck — each of which involves the idea of going back and changing one’s life path. Mike tells him that he would go back to the day he took his first bribe as a police officer and his life went off track. Then, he says, he would go into the future: “There’s some people I’d like to check on.”

Mike is describing “Better Call Saul” itself. Both prequel and sequel, it is a time machine that moves backward to find how a man went wrong and forward to see where he ends up. And like many a sci-fi time-travel story, it explores how much of our fate is within our control.

As Saul tells Walter (in a scene that picks up from their last encounter in “Breaking Bad”), his time-machine hypothetical is a “thought experiment.” But it’s also the kind of cheater’s fantasy that has always appealed to him — a shortcut, a quick fix, a loophole to beat the system.

It’s the kind of easy way out that he seems to find halfway into the finale, when he turns on the blarney spigot one more time to talk his way into a cushy plea deal. But what Jimmy/Saul/Gene finally has to accept is that there is no one weird trick to set his life right. He can’t call a mulligan. He lives in a time machine that only goes forward.

But he doesn’t discover this by himself. Kim has long been the moral center of the show, not because she’s a paragon but because of her willingness to deal more honestly with her flaws. Learning that his ex-wife has confessed her guilt to Howard’s widow does for Jimmy what Chuck couldn’t: It convinces him to do the right thing, the hard way.
The “Breaking Bad” finale is set up as a series of wins for Walter — he defeats his enemies and secures his family’s finances — ending in a death penalty on his own terms. The climax of “Saul” seems at first to be going a similar way. Instead, the protagonist utters something you would never expect to hear from Saul Goodman in a courtroom — the truth — and blows up his plea deal.

Unlike Walter White, he doesn’t find a way to have his fate and cheat it too. He doesn’t, as when Walter clears his wife on a phone call with police listening in, instantly end Kim’s troubles. He doesn’t go out in a blaze of glory. He sentences himself to life. As Saul says to Walter White in one of their first “Breaking Bad” meetings, “Conscience gets expensive, doesn’t it?”
Maybe he is finally less comparable to Walter White than to Don Draper of “Mad Men,” another fast-talking slick in a suit whose words save him until they don’t, who is taken with the idea of time machines, who has a history of changing his name and running from trouble. His endgame is not that of a gangster facing down the law but, like Don, of a man finding integrity in his splintered identity.

At last he can be himself, and, in its closing run, so could “Better Call Saul.” I don’t want to make too much of the much-heralded End of the Antihero — “Barry” is still around, for starters. But at a nearly 15-year run, “Breaking Bad” and “Saul” make an era unto themselves.

“Saul” had the benefits of experience without the complacency of incumbency. It was one of the best-made shows on TV — confident, attentive to detail and gorgeously composed. (Check out the final sequence’s reprise of Kim and Jimmy sharing a cigarette in a slant of light.) It challenged itself to be more than a new version of a thing you used to like. And it ended true to its ideas and its protagonist.

So who is this guy in the end? The finale’s title, “Saul Gone,” tips us off. “Gene Takavic” died in the Nebraska dumpster where the police arrested him. “Saul Goodman” lives on as a legend to his fellow inmates who know him from his TV ads. But we leave knowing him by the name he finally gives the judge.

Call him James McGill. He is no longer Saul. He may yet be a good man.
 
NY Times had an article about the series that I thought was quite good. I liked this synopsis and comparison (neither positive nor negative) to Breaking Bad:

“Breaking Bad” is an intensely moral show with no illusions about Walter’s depravity. But it is also intoxicated with his criminal genius. Walter, financially struggling and stricken with lung cancer, finds virility and purpose in his heinous deeds. He breaks both bad and badass.
In “Better Call Saul,” crime is mostly just sad, the more so the closer the series gets to its end. The closing episodes return to Gene in his Nebraska exile, shot in blood-draining black-and-white and looking like an off-brand Walter White, down to the soup-strainer mustache.

As Saul says of Walter, in a late-season flashback, “Guy with that mustache probably doesn’t make a lot of good life choices.” Now he seems to be proving his own point. To replenish his nest egg, and maybe his sense of self-worth, Gene enlists a dim-bulb taxi driver to rob a department store, then to help him fleece a string of rich marks, ending with a cancer patient.

It’s a sad-sack version of the final spree that left Walter with a pile of cash the size of a California king mattress. It ends ignominiously, with Gene ID’d by the elderly woman (Carol Burnett) whom he deceived to start his ruse. It wasn’t even that hard, she tells him: “I typed in ‘con man’ and ‘Albuquerque.’” The man who eluded the law and survived the cartel gets brought down by Eunice Higgins.

Over a decade and a half, the “Bad”-iverse has developed a lot of narrative real estate. The final run of “Saul” keeps finding little pockets of story to revisit within it, restaging Saul’s first run-in with Walter and having Kim meet Jesse during the “Breaking Bad” timeline, at a crucial moment in both their lives.

The finale, likewise, gets its theme and structure from three flashbacks with now-dead characters — Mike, Walter and Chuck — each of which involves the idea of going back and changing one’s life path. Mike tells him that he would go back to the day he took his first bribe as a police officer and his life went off track. Then, he says, he would go into the future: “There’s some people I’d like to check on.”

Mike is describing “Better Call Saul” itself. Both prequel and sequel, it is a time machine that moves backward to find how a man went wrong and forward to see where he ends up. And like many a sci-fi time-travel story, it explores how much of our fate is within our control.

As Saul tells Walter (in a scene that picks up from their last encounter in “Breaking Bad”), his time-machine hypothetical is a “thought experiment.” But it’s also the kind of cheater’s fantasy that has always appealed to him — a shortcut, a quick fix, a loophole to beat the system.

It’s the kind of easy way out that he seems to find halfway into the finale, when he turns on the blarney spigot one more time to talk his way into a cushy plea deal. But what Jimmy/Saul/Gene finally has to accept is that there is no one weird trick to set his life right. He can’t call a mulligan. He lives in a time machine that only goes forward.

But he doesn’t discover this by himself. Kim has long been the moral center of the show, not because she’s a paragon but because of her willingness to deal more honestly with her flaws. Learning that his ex-wife has confessed her guilt to Howard’s widow does for Jimmy what Chuck couldn’t: It convinces him to do the right thing, the hard way.
The “Breaking Bad” finale is set up as a series of wins for Walter — he defeats his enemies and secures his family’s finances — ending in a death penalty on his own terms. The climax of “Saul” seems at first to be going a similar way. Instead, the protagonist utters something you would never expect to hear from Saul Goodman in a courtroom — the truth — and blows up his plea deal.

Unlike Walter White, he doesn’t find a way to have his fate and cheat it too. He doesn’t, as when Walter clears his wife on a phone call with police listening in, instantly end Kim’s troubles. He doesn’t go out in a blaze of glory. He sentences himself to life. As Saul says to Walter White in one of their first “Breaking Bad” meetings, “Conscience gets expensive, doesn’t it?”
Maybe he is finally less comparable to Walter White than to Don Draper of “Mad Men,” another fast-talking slick in a suit whose words save him until they don’t, who is taken with the idea of time machines, who has a history of changing his name and running from trouble. His endgame is not that of a gangster facing down the law but, like Don, of a man finding integrity in his splintered identity.

At last he can be himself, and, in its closing run, so could “Better Call Saul.” I don’t want to make too much of the much-heralded End of the Antihero — “Barry” is still around, for starters. But at a nearly 15-year run, “Breaking Bad” and “Saul” make an era unto themselves.

“Saul” had the benefits of experience without the complacency of incumbency. It was one of the best-made shows on TV — confident, attentive to detail and gorgeously composed. (Check out the final sequence’s reprise of Kim and Jimmy sharing a cigarette in a slant of light.) It challenged itself to be more than a new version of a thing you used to like. And it ended true to its ideas and its protagonist.

So who is this guy in the end? The finale’s title, “Saul Gone,” tips us off. “Gene Takavic” died in the Nebraska dumpster where the police arrested him. “Saul Goodman” lives on as a legend to his fellow inmates who know him from his TV ads. But we leave knowing him by the name he finally gives the judge.

Call him James McGill. He is no longer Saul. He may yet be a good man.
Has anyone ever read "Mother Night" by Vonnegut? (They also made a movie version in the '90s with Nick Nolte that was pretty good.) It's about an American living in Hitler's Germany who is recruited by US intelligence to infiltrate the Nazi Party. He eventually becomes a propagandist during the war, delivering pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic radio broadcasts that contain coded messages for the Allies. But the mission is top secret, and he himself doesn't even know the significance of the codes he's providing. He is eventually captured by the Israelis as a war criminal and is telling the story from an Israeli prison. At the end of the novel ...

... he receives a letter in jail from his intelligence handler, setting the record straight and completely exonerating him. At which point he hangs himself, not for crimes against humanity but for "crimes against himself".

Reading the part in the NYT article about Jimmy "sentencing himself to life" reminded me of that line.
 
Anna Gunn’s acting in Ozymandias when Walt showed up back to the house is some of the finest I’ve ever seen. She also won 2 emmys for that role. Skylar was often annoying but Gunn’s acting was unimpeachable imo. She is the reason why you disliked that character.
Agreed, It is probably frustrating for Gunn since she is a relatively unknown outside of that one role, so the one role she will be remembered for is a character that she knows was hated. It wouldn't surprise me if the writers wanted to have her back from the BCS finale and she said no because she didn't want to read any more fan hate.
 
NY Times had an article about the series that I thought was quite good. I liked this synopsis and comparison (neither positive nor negative) to Breaking Bad:

“Breaking Bad” is an intensely moral show with no illusions about Walter’s depravity. But it is also intoxicated with his criminal genius. Walter, financially struggling and stricken with lung cancer, finds virility and purpose in his heinous deeds. He breaks both bad and badass.
In “Better Call Saul,” crime is mostly just sad, the more so the closer the series gets to its end. The closing episodes return to Gene in his Nebraska exile, shot in blood-draining black-and-white and looking like an off-brand Walter White, down to the soup-strainer mustache.

As Saul says of Walter, in a late-season flashback, “Guy with that mustache probably doesn’t make a lot of good life choices.” Now he seems to be proving his own point. To replenish his nest egg, and maybe his sense of self-worth, Gene enlists a dim-bulb taxi driver to rob a department store, then to help him fleece a string of rich marks, ending with a cancer patient.

It’s a sad-sack version of the final spree that left Walter with a pile of cash the size of a California king mattress. It ends ignominiously, with Gene ID’d by the elderly woman (Carol Burnett) whom he deceived to start his ruse. It wasn’t even that hard, she tells him: “I typed in ‘con man’ and ‘Albuquerque.’” The man who eluded the law and survived the cartel gets brought down by Eunice Higgins.

Over a decade and a half, the “Bad”-iverse has developed a lot of narrative real estate. The final run of “Saul” keeps finding little pockets of story to revisit within it, restaging Saul’s first run-in with Walter and having Kim meet Jesse during the “Breaking Bad” timeline, at a crucial moment in both their lives.

The finale, likewise, gets its theme and structure from three flashbacks with now-dead characters — Mike, Walter and Chuck — each of which involves the idea of going back and changing one’s life path. Mike tells him that he would go back to the day he took his first bribe as a police officer and his life went off track. Then, he says, he would go into the future: “There’s some people I’d like to check on.”

Mike is describing “Better Call Saul” itself. Both prequel and sequel, it is a time machine that moves backward to find how a man went wrong and forward to see where he ends up. And like many a sci-fi time-travel story, it explores how much of our fate is within our control.

As Saul tells Walter (in a scene that picks up from their last encounter in “Breaking Bad”), his time-machine hypothetical is a “thought experiment.” But it’s also the kind of cheater’s fantasy that has always appealed to him — a shortcut, a quick fix, a loophole to beat the system.

It’s the kind of easy way out that he seems to find halfway into the finale, when he turns on the blarney spigot one more time to talk his way into a cushy plea deal. But what Jimmy/Saul/Gene finally has to accept is that there is no one weird trick to set his life right. He can’t call a mulligan. He lives in a time machine that only goes forward.

But he doesn’t discover this by himself. Kim has long been the moral center of the show, not because she’s a paragon but because of her willingness to deal more honestly with her flaws. Learning that his ex-wife has confessed her guilt to Howard’s widow does for Jimmy what Chuck couldn’t: It convinces him to do the right thing, the hard way.
The “Breaking Bad” finale is set up as a series of wins for Walter — he defeats his enemies and secures his family’s finances — ending in a death penalty on his own terms. The climax of “Saul” seems at first to be going a similar way. Instead, the protagonist utters something you would never expect to hear from Saul Goodman in a courtroom — the truth — and blows up his plea deal.

Unlike Walter White, he doesn’t find a way to have his fate and cheat it too. He doesn’t, as when Walter clears his wife on a phone call with police listening in, instantly end Kim’s troubles. He doesn’t go out in a blaze of glory. He sentences himself to life. As Saul says to Walter White in one of their first “Breaking Bad” meetings, “Conscience gets expensive, doesn’t it?”
Maybe he is finally less comparable to Walter White than to Don Draper of “Mad Men,” another fast-talking slick in a suit whose words save him until they don’t, who is taken with the idea of time machines, who has a history of changing his name and running from trouble. His endgame is not that of a gangster facing down the law but, like Don, of a man finding integrity in his splintered identity.

At last he can be himself, and, in its closing run, so could “Better Call Saul.” I don’t want to make too much of the much-heralded End of the Antihero — “Barry” is still around, for starters. But at a nearly 15-year run, “Breaking Bad” and “Saul” make an era unto themselves.

“Saul” had the benefits of experience without the complacency of incumbency. It was one of the best-made shows on TV — confident, attentive to detail and gorgeously composed. (Check out the final sequence’s reprise of Kim and Jimmy sharing a cigarette in a slant of light.) It challenged itself to be more than a new version of a thing you used to like. And it ended true to its ideas and its protagonist.

So who is this guy in the end? The finale’s title, “Saul Gone,” tips us off. “Gene Takavic” died in the Nebraska dumpster where the police arrested him. “Saul Goodman” lives on as a legend to his fellow inmates who know him from his TV ads. But we leave knowing him by the name he finally gives the judge.

Call him James McGill. He is no longer Saul. He may yet be a good man.
Good stuff. I also was thinking of Draper a bit with all that time machine talk when watching.
 
At the risk of sounding dumb where in the BB storyline did the scene with Saul and Walter and the water heater supposed to take place?
 
At the risk of sounding dumb where in the BB storyline did the scene with Saul and Walter and the water heater supposed to take place?
Granite State. They were both waiting to be disappeared by the vacuum cleaner guy. Key point is that they had both destroyed their lives, and yet when faced with the hypothetical regarding what they would change neither mentions not committing the crimes that led to all that destruction
 
What. A. Ride. Sad it's over.
One of the main things I loved about this show (and BB) were that there were so many things that I thought were just cinematographically BRILLIANT. As many pointed out from the next-to-last episode, Kim's crying on the bus scene was just amazing acting. The smoking in jail scene from the final episode was one of my favs. The flame when she lit his cig (as he had done for her before) and then the embers of the cigarette in color while the rest was in black and white. FLOVED that.
 
Not sure if this was mentioned anywhere, but I love Bob Odenkirk. AMC has been a lot more hit than miss, so hopefully this turns out well.


Stuff like this is why I read this thread, not to hear geeks complain about how the writers did not consider their feelings when they wrote an episode.
I don’t think same actress (maybe I’m wrong, but don’t look the same besides a dark ponytail). I just interpreted that scene as Kim seeing former self.
 
Anna Gunn’s acting in Ozymandias when Walt showed up back to the house is some of the finest I’ve ever seen. She also won 2 emmys for that role. Skylar was often annoying but Gunn’s acting was unimpeachable imo. She is the reason why you disliked that character.

Her acting was great, agreed, but her character was annoying and most of her storylines were dumb (almost all the Ted stuff and the stuff with her and Walt Jr.) - she did the best with what they gave her. During a rewatch I pretty much just skip Skylar, Walt Jr., Marie and most of the cancer stuff.
 
Not sure if this was mentioned anywhere, but I love Bob Odenkirk. AMC has been a lot more hit than miss, so hopefully this turns out well.


Stuff like this is why I read this thread, not to hear geeks complain about how the writers did not consider their feelings when they wrote an episode.

This guy was pretty thorough with all the Easter eggs in the finale. So much I missed or forgot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tveGjFXN-lw
 
Anna Gunn’s acting in Ozymandias when Walt showed up back to the house is some of the finest I’ve ever seen. She also won 2 emmys for that role. Skylar was often annoying but Gunn’s acting was unimpeachable imo. She is the reason why you disliked that character.

Her acting was great, agreed, but her character was annoying and most of her storylines were dumb (almost all the Ted stuff and the stuff with her and Walt Jr.) - she did the best with what they gave her. During a rewatch I pretty much just skip Skylar, Walt Jr., Marie and most of the cancer stuff.
You didn't enjoy Skyler telling Marie 199 times to shut up?
 
Anna Gunn’s acting in Ozymandias when Walt showed up back to the house is some of the finest I’ve ever seen. She also won 2 emmys for that role. Skylar was often annoying but Gunn’s acting was unimpeachable imo. She is the reason why you disliked that character.

Her acting was great, agreed, but her character was annoying and most of her storylines were dumb (almost all the Ted stuff and the stuff with her and Walt Jr.) - she did the best with what they gave her. During a rewatch I pretty much just skip Skylar, Walt Jr., Marie and most of the cancer stuff.
You didn't enjoy Skyler telling Marie 199 times to shut up?

Despite my post, I think Cappy is correct that she had some incredible performances during that last season. Most of s1-4 I tuned her out on a rewatch.
 
Anna Gunn’s acting in Ozymandias when Walt showed up back to the house is some of the finest I’ve ever seen. She also won 2 emmys for that role. Skylar was often annoying but Gunn’s acting was unimpeachable imo. She is the reason why you disliked that character.

Her acting was great, agreed, but her character was annoying and most of her storylines were dumb (almost all the Ted stuff and the stuff with her and Walt Jr.) - she did the best with what they gave her. During a rewatch I pretty much just skip Skylar, Walt Jr., Marie and most of the cancer stuff.
You didn't enjoy Skyler telling Marie 199 times to shut up?

Despite my post, I think Cappy is correct that she had some incredible performances during that last season. Most of s1-4 I tuned her out on a rewatch.
Her performance in the latter part of Ozymandias was pretty incredible. It's easy to not notice anyone else when Cranston is doing his thing, considering how other worldly his performance of Walter White was, but Gunn was money in those scenes as well.
 
Loved the series and the ending but I do have one question: Why didn't Saul have a Go Bag instead of a shoe box? He has time to plan an emergency escape after he was outed at the mall. It wouldn't have hindered his plans to corrupt the guy and start his new "empire." I assume its the arrogance of Saul bubbling up again but Saul had a plan to bolt. Was he out of the business for too long to plan for failure? Seems unlikely considering how tremendously things fall apart in Breaking Bad. Just felt weird to me.

Might not have really helped at all in the long run but running with the shoe box of luxuries and mementos seemed a bit off for the character.
 
Loved the series and the ending but I do have one question: Why didn't Saul have a Go Bag instead of a shoe box? He has time to plan an emergency escape after he was outed at the mall. It wouldn't have hindered his plans to corrupt the guy and start his new "empire." I assume its the arrogance of Saul bubbling up again but Saul had a plan to bolt. Was he out of the business for too long to plan for failure? Seems unlikely considering how tremendously things fall apart in Breaking Bad. Just felt weird to me.

Might not have really helped at all in the long run but running with the shoe box of luxuries and mementos seemed a bit off for the character.
We never did see what all was in there and why it was hidden behind a wall in his office. I guess the diamonds?
 
Loved the series and the ending but I do have one question: Why didn't Saul have a Go Bag instead of a shoe box? He has time to plan an emergency escape after he was outed at the mall. It wouldn't have hindered his plans to corrupt the guy and start his new "empire." I assume its the arrogance of Saul bubbling up again but Saul had a plan to bolt. Was he out of the business for too long to plan for failure? Seems unlikely considering how tremendously things fall apart in Breaking Bad. Just felt weird to me.

Might not have really helped at all in the long run but running with the shoe box of luxuries and mementos seemed a bit off for the character.
We never did see what all was in there and why it was hidden behind a wall in his office. I guess the diamonds?
Pretty sure the diamonds and I would guess the mementos might tie him to Saul/ABQ. But that's pure speculation since I don't think we ever got a good view of what was in there other than the diamonds.
 
Loved the series and the ending but I do have one question: Why didn't Saul have a Go Bag instead of a shoe box? He has time to plan an emergency escape after he was outed at the mall. It wouldn't have hindered his plans to corrupt the guy and start his new "empire." I assume its the arrogance of Saul bubbling up again but Saul had a plan to bolt. Was he out of the business for too long to plan for failure? Seems unlikely considering how tremendously things fall apart in Breaking Bad. Just felt weird to me.

Might not have really helped at all in the long run but running with the shoe box of luxuries and mementos seemed a bit off for the character.
We never did see what all was in there and why it was hidden behind a wall in his office. I guess the diamonds?
Pretty sure the diamonds and I would guess the mementos might tie him to Saul/ABQ. But that's pure speculation since I don't think we ever got a good view of what was in there other than the diamonds.

He held up a roll of paper something. I assumed it was cash.
 
That’s the kind of ending no one can quibble with, right?


IDK I waited six seasons to find out who would call Saul, and at the end, no one called Saul. What was that buildup all about? He made a couple of calls... to a lawyer and to Cinnabon. But then no one called him. What was this show even about? Totally left me hanging.
You must have missed it but it was Mr. Better that called Saul, hence the title of the show.
 
Details like these are part of what made me love this show and BB.


Some of these are obvious or have already
been pointed out in the thread here, but a few new (to me) ones. They describe each and show photos in that link (click each line to "uncover" the spoiler hiders)

  • Jimmy McGill mentions Warren Buffet who is a huge "Breaking Bad" fan, at the episode's start. --Warren was also a guest on set on a previous season
  • Jimmy's future in prison is hinted at the episode's start. --apparently a freezeframe of the episode opener of the VCR tape playing
  • The flashback with Chuck appears to take place the day before the entire show's first episode. Jimmy teases he may bring Chuck an issue of "Financial Times" on the series' finale of "Better Call Saul," the thing we see him do on the show's pilot.
  • Saul references the genius two-minute prison murder spree that happens on "Breaking Bad." He even mentions Daniel Wachsberger, the lawyer who represented some of Gustavo Fring's henchmen --I had forgotten why this sounded like a familiar story
  • When Kim leaves the prison, Jimmy pointed his fingers and silently fired shots her way, a nod to the season five finale.
 
In the words of Jessica Rabbit, "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way."

It's kind of weird (but also kind of understandable) that we blame actors for their characters' foibles. Aaron Eckhart got his start playing a horrible misogynist in "In the Company of Men". I saw an interview once where he said women would come up to him visibly angry and say they wanted to slap him in the face.

I don't think Gunn is a bad actor, though she's not on Seehorn's level. But the main problem is the role she was given in the show. Part of me wonders if the richness of Kim Wexler is a kind of apology on the part of Gilligan/Gould for failing to create a compelling female lead in BB. (Though I believe they've also said they had originally planned for a smaller role for Kim and only expanded it when they saw the chemistry between BO and RS).

Right. As an actor, Gunn is fine. But the part her character played in the story made her quite hate-able. She either kept getting in Walt's way, kept nagging him, or, her storylines kept intruding on more Walt and Jesse action. That, I think, was what made the fans really dislike her... every time she was on screen, it just took away from our time with characters we wanted to see more.
 
I've made cinnamon rolls 3 times in the last couple of months. It has been years since I've had them. Plus saw that Cinnabon "hack" where you pour heavy cream on before the oven. My house agrees it makes them awesome.

So I figure at Cinnabon HQ they're erecting a monument, soon to be the 9th Wonder of the World, in honor of whomever bought that spot?
 

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