Better Call SaulThe entire series ended last night with a fantastic episode that brought everyone together. Breaking Bad universe to a satisfying end. We recapped the final and spoke with Saul co-creator Peter Gould, but we’re not ready to say goodbye to the classic AMC drama just yet. So here are 10 moments from across the series’ run that remind us why a spinoff no one — including Gould and co-creator Vince Gilligan — seemed to think was a good idea at the start turned out to be as beloved in its own way as the adventures of Walt and Jesse.
“I broke my boy!”(From Season One Episode Six: “Five-O”)
Saul Season One is full of trial and error. It’s always watchable because of the sheer craft level of Gould, Gilligan, and company, but with more of a meandering air to it than the deliberate-but-focused quality that would typify later seasons (and Breaking Bad, for that matter), as the creative team gradually realized that they liked Bob Odenkirk’s Jimmy McGill and were in no rush to make him into Saul Goodman. As a result, the season’s highlight comes in an episode that barely features Jimmy, instead focusing on Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), the ruthless fixer on Breaking Bad. “Five-O” deals with Mike’s reason for coming to Albuquerque after killing the two crooked cops who had murdered his son Matty. In an absolute This scene is heartbreaking, Mike tells Matty’s widow Stacey (Kerry Condon) that he blames himself for putting Matty into harm’s way, and for corrupting his son’s soul by telling him to accept the dirty cops’ bribe. Mike was a character on both the shows that was characterized by his coolness and sometimes by his fearful temper. So to see him this vulnerable — in a breakdown played this well by Banks — was startlingly powerful.
Ken Wins at Viktor and Giselle (From Season Two, Episode 1) “Switch”)
What seems like a harmless bit of fun — Jimmy convinces once and future love interest Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) to run a short conKen Wins (Kyle Bornheimer) is a Bluetooth-wearing douchebag who reprises a role from Breaking Bad Season One) — is in many ways the Rosetta Stone for the whole series. Kim without Jimmy, a grinder who adheres to all rules; Kim with Jimmy, is helpless in the face of the grifter lifestyle. These two are responsible for every terrible thing they do in the future seasons. It all started with a long drunken night. “Viktor with a K”St. Clair and Giselle travelled to Mexico with their sister Giselle, in order to taste expensive tequila but not pay for it.
“Squat cobbler.”(From Season Two, Episode Two) “Cobbler”)
To introduce a character Breaking Bad Jimmy, who was originally there to add humor, only occasionally took part in the same explosively funny scenes as Bob Odenkirk. While he was quite good at the dramatic stuff (more examples are below), it was still amazing to watch those moments when he was completely ridiculous. Jimmy spinning a line of BS claiming that one of his clients has starred as in a series “squat cobbler”Fetish videos that include sitting in a pie, wiggling about and other sexy activities. Odenkirk’s halting, embarrassed deliveryMakes a hilarious monologue even more funny on the page
Kim saves her self (from Season Two, Episode Five) “Rebecca”)
The subplot that cemented the audience’s near-pathological love of Kim Wexler. Kim is demoted to work for Jimmy’s actions. She tells him to stop trying to intervene for her. “You don’t save me. I save me.”Then we watch her do it. A stunning montage(scored to a “A Mi Manera”) where she tirelessly works the phones on her lunch break, day after day, week after week, trying to land a client big enough to get her out of the dungeon. She finally bags a whale — expanding local bank chain Mesa Verde — and allows herself the tiniest celebration in the bowels of the HHM building.
Jimmy meets Chuck (from Season Three, Episode Five) “Chicanery”)
Since Jimmy learned that Chuck had plotted to prevent Jimmy from getting a job as a HHM lawyer, the war between the McGill siblings had been in full swing. This is the clever and agonizing culmination of it all. “Chicanery,” where a bar association hearing about Jimmy breaking into Chuck’s house to destroy evidence instead becomes a chance for Jimmy and Kim to humiliate Chuck in front of the New Mexico legal elite. Chuck assumes he is much too smart to fall for one of Slippin’ Jimmy’s tricks, which is exactly how Jimmy — with nimble-fingered help from future best friend Huell (Lavell Crawford) — is able to Get over your brother. This is Jimmy and Kim, at their absolute best as well as their worst as lawyers and con artists.
Jimmy scams the New Mexico Bar — and Kim (From Season Four, Episode 10) “Winner”)
Jimmy spends most of Season Four repressing his grief over Chuck’s suicide and trying to keep busy during his one-year bar association suspension. (The last of which leads to another stunning montage: this one featuring Jimmy Selling burner phones to Saul’s future legal clients.) In the finale of the season, he gets the suspension lifted. Acting really broken up about Chuck’s death. He’s so convincing that even Kim — who always wants to see the good man in Jimmy, even though she’s so often attracted to the bad one — is fooled by it, then thunderstruck when he reveals the truth, along with his plan to begin practicing law under a more infamous name. It’s not exactly the moment Jimmy truly becomes Saul Goodman, but it’s closer than anyone — Kim most of all — is comfortable seeing.
“Lightning bolts shoot from my fingertips!”(From Season Five, Episode Seven) “JMM”)
Season Five’s home stretch began by “JMM”All the good stuff is here “Wait, is Better Call Saul better than Breaking Bad?!?!”The conversation really heated up. “JMM” offers our first unnerving glimpses of the real Saul Goodman in the series’ present-day, rather than Jimmy just using that name professionally. The most disturbing is when Jimmy (Patrick Fabian) confronts Howard Hamlin with his misdeeds. self-mythologizing monologueHe is so much more powerful than his boss.
Jimmy must swallow something unfavorable (from Season Five, Episode Eight) “Bagman”)
His new plan is to be a therapist. “friend to the cartel,”Jimmy agrees that he will pay $7 million to bail out Lalo Salamanca. (Tony Dalton). Mike saves him by saving him from being robbed by mercenaries. The two of them are then forced to walk through the desert terrain to get back to civilization, and are followed by the last hired gun. All of it “Bagman”It is an intense endurance test for the occasional allies. You can also see more of Saul Goodman being formed under that unyielding sunlight. By the end, our severely dehydrated protagonist has become so battle-hardened — and/or mad at himself for letting Lalo talk him into the idea — that he takes a long, disgusted pull on a bottle filled with his own urine.
Lalo calls (Starting Season Five, Episode Nine) “Bad Choice Road”)
Lalo, who possessed the strengths of many of the classics, became a popular character on both series in just one season and a quarter. Breaking Bad His unique abilities make him a formidable opponent to villains. For example, he could jump from heights exceedingly high. As much as it was fun to watch him race roughshod over Gus, the other cartel characters it was even more thrilling to witness him verbally dismantled in rare crossover between the lawyer and cartel worlds. Lalo shows up at Kim and Jimmy’s apartment, armed and looking for answers about what really happened during Jimmy’s desert odyssey Just when it seems like the Wexler/McGills might be in serious danger, Kim steps up, asks Lalo if he’s kidding her, and makes the big cartel man seem very small. Lalo would ultimately come back to haunt both Jimmy and Kim, and trigger the series’ endgame, but man was it satisfying to see Kim get knock him down, even temporarily.
Gus has a glass of wine (from Season Six, Episode Nine) “Fun and Games”)
Through no fault of the great Giancarlo Esposito, Gus was the prequel’s one significant disappointment. Jimmy and Mike were quite different from the characters they knew. Breaking BadThis slightly younger Gus was basically the same cold, calculating figure that sat alongside Walter White at Los Pollos Hermanos. So Saul The glimpses of Gus’s past before he began to plot a multiyear revenge on the cartel were very rare. But the last one we got — the last scene of the series to feature Gus, in fact — was extraordinary. Gus, fresh off killing Lalo and setting a course for the Heisenberg-style scheme, indulges in a night out at a bar. David to flirt(Reed Diamond), the handsome and sommelier. It is obvious how much Gus likes this man, and just as obvious that he cannot allow himself to do more than flirt, lest David be put in harm’s way like Gus’ murdered partner Max was — or, perhaps just as bad, to avoid an assignation with David interfering with his larger plans. For a brief moment, we are finally given a look into everything that the revenge business has cost the Chicken Man, and Esposito played it for all it’s worth.
Exit Kim, enter Saul. (From Season Six Episode Nine) “Fun and Games”)
This list could be populated with clips from the final six episodes. Kim sobbingRent a car shuttle to In “Waterworks,”Jimmy in the finale throws his future away in return for Kim’s subtlest of approving nods. But it’s hard to top The brutal argument Kim and Jimmy have in the aftermath of Howard’s memorial. She patiently and clearly explains why their relationship is dangerous for everyone. He insists that this shouldn’t matter, because he loves her. “I love you, too,”She says that her composure is finally breaking down in the way Seehorn can play so well. “but so what?” She can no longer stomach the kind of fun they’ve had going back to their evening with Ken Wins, so she walks out of Jimmy’s life, and he responds — in a harsh and unexpected time jump — by embracing all that is wicked about being Saul Goodman. This is the dramatic climax of the story. Better Call Saul was telling for six seasons, and it’s worth all the time and effort it took us to get there.