Series finale “Better Call Saul”
Quiet ending for the “Breaking Bad” offshoot
Saying goodbye to Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) – ‘Better Call Saul’ has come to an end after 63 episodes.
©Ursula Coyote/Netflix
The “Breaking Bad” offshoot “Better Call Saul” has come to an end. Saul Goodman’s latest coup is quiet, but knows how to surprise.
A spin-off of the stellar series Breaking Bad, which follows the backstory of sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk, 59)? When the news broke shortly after the parent series’ 2013 finale, skepticism itself – or perhaps precisely – among die-hard Walter White supporters was pervasive.
But, just as he has been the advocate for everything from petty criminals to Albuquerque’s drug lords, good old Saul proved he’s at his best when the odds are against him – and so he scuttled himself as the “hero” of his own show for more than one season the cancer-stricken chemistry teacher Walter (Bryan Cranston, 66). On August 16th it came: not only the end of season six, but the finale of the entire series. Is Jimmy “Saul” McGill tripping over his ego so close to the finish line? Or is it “Saul Goodman!” for both him and the spin-off at the end? – “everything good, man!”?
Warning, there are spoilers for the end of “Better Call Saul”
The transformation from the righteous but unsuccessful Jimmy McGill into the opportunistic bird of paradise we came to know and love from “Breaking Bad” had wrapped up a few episodes earlier. That’s why the almost 70-minute series finale is mostly in black and white again – the visual indicator that the events don’t happen before, but after “Breaking Bad”.
It picks up right at the moment in the previous episode when, of all people, a frail woman found out about Saul who had gone into hiding – by entering the two terms “swindler” and “Albuquerque” into Google. Saul’s escape from the police didn’t last long, after a few meters he was fished out of a dumpster by the officers. “That’s how they got you!?” He doesn’t want to believe his impending doom himself while shuffling up and down in the prison cell. Life imprisonment plus 190 years, the public prosecutors happily calculate his prison sentence. But Saul still has an ace up his sleeve…
He did not flee from the police, but from the henchmen of the notorious Walter Hartwell White. Saul skilfully reviews Walt’s crimes from five seasons of “Breaking Bad” – with himself as a victim, not an accomplice, of course. A maneuver that initially seems to be bearing fruit and that Saul’s prison sentence seems to be reduced to a ridiculous seven years.
United States versus Saul Goodman
“Better Call Saul” doesn’t end with a spectacular shootout, but with a court hearing. “How do you think this will end?” Saul’s lawyer, the always hapless Bill (Peter Diseth), wants to know from his client. “With me at the top – just like usual,” he replies. Ultimately, however, one sentence comes true, as Jimmy/Saul heard enough: “Actually, you want to be caught.”
Apparently to pamper his gigantic ego, Saul reports under oath that Walter White was nothing without him. On the contrary, it was only through his mastermind that “Heisenberg” made it to the top of the drug scene. In truth, however, behind the self-praise in question is a final noble act to confess his sins and at the same time to take his ex Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn, 50) from the investigators’ closing line. Saul Goodman became Jimmy McGill again at the very end. And at the end of “Better Call Saul” he’s behind bars for the rest of his life, 86 years to be precise.
One last star line-up
For the series finale, series creators Vince Gilligan (55) and Co. once again pulled out all the stops. In the black-and-white present, Betsy Brandt (49) returns as Marie Schrader, widow of the murdered police officer Hank (Dean Norris, 59). In one of the (colored) flashbacks, Jimmy fights again with his big brother Chuck McGill (Michael McKean, 74). And the fan favorite of both series, Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks, 75), can speak to his conscience one last time.
A quiet climax of the finale is a chamber drama-like conversation that Saul Goodman has with Walter White. The two men discuss regret while hiding in a better hole in the ground – a scene that must have happened just before the finale of Breaking Bad. Neither of them think about the crimes that got them into this predicament in the first place.
The remorse of the main protagonists of their respective series came later. With Walter in 2013 with a loud bang, with Saul now wordy but quiet – and even with a literal spark of hope: A cigarette that Jimmy is given in jail by his one-time love Kim and which they smoke together smolders in contrast to everything else back to color in the black and white scene. As she would have done in their past together.