After its intense and fast-paced third season, Season 4 is a much needed breather for Better Call Saul. While this does make for a much slower-paced and at times uneventful, it packs an emotional punch and ends on a really strong note.
This season of Better Call Saul is almost entirely about the fallout of Chuck's death, at least on the Jimmy side of things. It's interesting to see how the death affects everyone, from Howard completing falling into depression to Jimmy struggling to be truly sad about it. In addition to the death, though, Jimmy also has his law license suspended early on in the season resulting in his career being at its absolute worst. This really is a rock bottom season for the character, which makes him getting out of his rut by lying about Chuck's death to renew his license and officially changing his name to "Saul Goodman" a perfectly earned ending to the season. But even more interesting than Jimmy was Kim, who spends the season getting more and more alienated from Jimmy and his more questionable acts. It's not too unlike Skylar learning about Walt's drug dealing, but I'd say it's even more compelling due to Kim's realization being a much more gradual build. Meanwhile, Gus begins construction of his iconic meth superlab from Breaking Bad, which ultimately runs into a bit of a snag when Lalo Salamanca arrives to take over for Hector, becoming one of the show's biggest and scariest antagonists.
Season 4 strikes a much different tone than the first three seasons, being generally a more somber affair between the fallout of Chuck's death, Jimmy's career issues being the worst they've ever been, and a certain character's unfortunate death in the season finale. Changing tone so drastically is always a tough thing to pull off, but this season does a good job of maintaining the characters and general vibe of Better Call Saul while still making things a lot darker. In addition, all of the drama manages to land, and the impact of Chuck's death really does ripple throughout the season. However, Season 4 also brings my biggest issue with Better Call Saul to light. Naturally, the entire season is one of the most slow-paced yet, and that's perfectly fine. However, I feel like it's made even worse by the fact that the storylines for the two main protagonists (Jimmy and Mike) are completely separate. With the exception of Season 1, this was an issue that I had started to notice throughout the series, but I think it became the most apparent here. Most of the time, it feels like I'm watching two entirely different shows at the same time which can feel a bit jarring at times. Hopefully, Season 5 will start to blur the storylines together a bit.
While Season 4's highest point is easily its ending, there are some pretty great episodes here:
Quite A Ride: Probably the rock bottom for Jimmy, this episode has him resort to selling prepaid phones only to get himself mugged by some kids. We also get the introduction to Werner, who has some of the best material this season, and we get the first flashfoward that takes place pre-Granite State showing us Saul clearing out his office before he gets his new identity.
Something Stupid: Similarly to Inflatable, this episode has one of my favorite montages in the sequence: a long time-jump sequence that shows Jimmy and Kim drifitng apart as their careers take them in different directions. Jimmy is really bordering on the line of becoming Saul in this episode. I also think it's worth noting that Deborah Chow's direction this episode (she also did some of the best episodes for Mr Robot and Mandalorian) was excellent even by this series's standards.
Winner: By far the best episode of the season, Winner is a fantastic season finale that feels both low-key and incredibly shocking. Werner's death felt pretty inevitable at this point, but it was still devastating to watch. Lalo learning about the superlab is a dark omen for the future. And biggest of all, Jimmy faking sadness about Chuck's death to get reinstatement and immediately boasts about it and his plans to Kim is a big ending to the season, with fascinating parallels to Breaking Bad's own Season 4 finale.
Overall, Better Call Saul's fourth season was a bit slow and its two major storylines were even more disjointed than usual, but the character work was characteristically strong, the dark tone led to some compelling emotional punches, and the finale was a fantastic and rewarding ending to the season.
4/5 Stars
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