So, that's it. Better Call Saul, and thus the Breaking Bad universe as a whole, has finally come to an end. I don't think I need to tell you that, as with every other season of the show, Season 6 of Better Call Saul was great. But it also helped me firmly solidify my thoughts on the show: I much prefer the legal stuff to the cartel stuff.
Just like many dramas out there, Better Call Saul's final season is split up into two halves divided by a hiatus (albeit unintentionally this time), and just like most of those shows, the first half is the weaker one. Season 6A has two major storylines, one involving Saul and Kim plotting against Howard and the other involving Gus's war with Lalo along with Nacho being on the run. Saul's storyline was a serious slow burn, six straight episodes of him and Kim setting up their plan before executing it in the halfway point. While a bit drawn out, I mostly enjoyed this storyline since it was terrifying to watch their plan knowing that it would lead to someone suffering the consequences. My only other gripes are really just with the presentation. First, the cold opens just drag this season, and for no discernable reason. They go on for about three minutes each but nothing ever really happens during them, and feel uncharacteristically self-indulgent in a franchise that has never felt self-indulgent. In addition, Better Call Saul's visuals just don't look as sharp as they used to. The cinematography is as great as always, but the crew seems to have put a dark filter on everything that just makes each shot look a bit flat. Like, I get that this season is meant to be darker than the rest of Better Call Saul and the crew wanted the cinematography to emulate that, but Breaking Bad is also incredibly dark and still manages to have colors that pop all the way to the bitter end.
As for the cartel, I wasn't nearly as big of a fan of his storyline in 6A. It definitely had its moments, but Nacho being on the run hogged the bulk of the screentime in the first three episodes of the season to the point where Saul himself felt like an afterthought. I don't think the season really "got good" until Hit And Run, the first episode after he died, but even then we still have that weird Casper scene with Lalo. Gus's part fares a little bit better since, similarly to Jimmy and Kim, he spends much of 6A plotting to take out Lalo, with a fantastic payoff at the start of 6B. However, unlike with Jimmy and Kim, you don't know what he's planning until that episode, so it just looks like he's brooding and staring off into the distance. Just like with the rest of the show, I only really started to love the cartel stuff this season at the end of Plan And Execution (the final episode in 6A), when it intersected with Jimmy and Saul. Looking back, I feel like that's how I've always felt about this show. I always enjoyed the legal stuff more than the cartel stuff, I've complained several times about how disjointed the two storylines were, and to this day, I still have more fond memories of the more consistent tone of Seasons 1-3, even despite the high points that the later seasons would reach. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Season 6A is bad, even the worst thing Vince Gilligan has made is still pretty good, but I found it to be probably the weakest part of Better Call Saul.
Season 6B, on the other hand, is really good. Once we get past all the ground-laying and set-up we get a very impressive streak of three episodes (7-9) that pay everything off and resolve most of the series' main storylines in very satisfying fashion. It feels like everyone's actions are starting to have drastic consequences on them, in true dramatic fashion. It also helps that the cartel and legal storylines have converged once again, which helps make the final confrontation with Lalo more engaging since Jimmy and Kim are now caught in the mix. Even when the storyline isn't as focused on him, Jimmy still gets the bulk of the screentime and, despite how much plot these three episodes have to resolve, they feel surprisingly less disjointed than the first six. I will say that Jimmy "breaking bad" is a lot different that Walt's transformation, but I'm also aware that this is absolutely intended. Where Walt is Heisenberg, Saul Goodman is just a mask, and with Kim gone by Episode 9, Jimmy has no reason to take it off. I think it works great, unpredictable but still earned, and it could've been the perfect point to end the series... but it's not. By the time everything's resolved, we still have four episodes left, and this is where Better Call Saul's final season becomes especially interesting.
The last four episodes of Better Call Saul focus on the future, those Gene scenes we used to see at the start of every season. There are flashbacks to Breaking-Bad-era Saul Goodman, and those are in color, but most of the end of this season is in black-and-white and serves as more of an epilogue to Jimmy's story and the Breaking Bad saga as a whole. It's an ambitious story decision to say the least, and it's hard not to feel like this "epilogue" section is its own season, further making the show more disjointed. It also doesn't help that the show starts to flesh out a bunch of entirely new characters within Gene's circle, which is never a good move so close to a finale. But, once again, as unconventional as these episodes are, I think they work. Jimmy/Gene's character arc here is complex and unpredictable, as he grapples with falling back into old habits and his past coming back to haunt him, and since it's not a prequel anymore, I was genuinely scared of what would happen to him. It was also great to see what ended up happening to characters like Kim and Francesca, which led to some of these episodes' most emotional moments. Once again, the show totally could have ended a few episodes ago, but I think the place this epilogue ends off on is even better. It feels way more cathartic knowing where Jimmy ultimately ends up.
Highlights:
Plan And Execution: While the first six episodes of Season 6 were pretty meh by the show's standards, Plan And Execution was the point where the season really grabbed me again. Seeing the payoff to all of Jimmy and Kim's planning was very rewarding after all this build-up, only for Lalo to show up and ruin everything in perfectly subversive fashion (that candle shot was gold, by the way). As mentioned above, I actually liked the cartel stuff in this episode because Jimmy was involved, and between Bad Choice Road and this episode, Lalo showing up at Jimmy's place always makes for a good scene.
Point And Shoot: So... remember that episode of Breaking Bad where Walt forces Jesse to kill Gale? This one was like that, but even more crushing. That whole first third with Jimmy backing out and forcing Kim to try to assassinate Gus was so tense and hard to watch, really making the whole episode for me. The actual confrontation between Gus and Lalo didn't quite live up to that opening, particularly because it was too dark to see anything, but it still felt like a satisfying way to end off the Lalo plotline.
Fun And Games: As mentioned above, this could've been the series finale and I would be perfectly fine. While I once again preferred the Jimmy and Kim parts (there's way too much time spent with Gus at the bar), pretty much everyone gets a pretty satisfying though unhappy sendoff here. Mike gets chewed out by Nacho's father, Gus walks away from potential happiness, and biggest of all, Jimmy and Kim break up in an incredibly crushing scene. The acting from Odenkirk and Seahorn is phenomenal for the entire final act and that jump cut is a perfect punch to the gut.
Waterworks: This might be one of the most depressing episodes of television I have ever seen. Like seriously, there is no levity here whatsoever, just anguish and sadness and things going wrong. The highlight here was getting to see Kim and Jimmy's phone call from the previous episode, and how it sparked Kim to reveal the con. But in case things couldn't get worse for Jimmy, Marion learns who he is and calls the cops after him. There are a lot of little moments that made this episode for me, like Kim's utterly gut-wrenching crying scene, the surprisingly natural scene with Kim and Jesse, the lack of musical cues, and the fact that Jimmy is outed by the now memetic "did you know you have rights" ad. Gilligan had to have known what he was doing there.
Saul Gone: As much as I love Breaking Bad, I never loved its finale. It felt like Walt got too heroic a sendoff for everything he did, but Jimmy got the perfectly bittersweet ending he deserved. Jimmy does have one minor moment of atonement where he sheds the Saul persona once and for all, but he still ends up in prison for life. I think it also brings the season full circle. Jimmy became Saul because of Kim, and now he's going back to being Jimmy because of her as well. I also really liked the flashbacks here, surprisingly. The "time machine" talks are such a brilliantly subtle way to give each of the Breaking Bad universe's biggest figures a final scene that perfectly epitomizes their characters.
Overall, Season 6 of Better Call Saul is a great final season of the show, especially in its latter half. It's experimental and complex, but ultimately very satisfying, with payoffs that are worth the investment. I like that the season's structure isn't the same thing as Breaking Bad's final season, it's something entirely new and it fits this show perfectly. However, Season 6 also has a lot of the same pacing and cartel-related issues as the rest of the show, and if anything, is the series at its most disjointed and disconnected. I still think Better Call Saul is a fantastic series, and Saul Gone is definitely the better finale, but I've never been more confident in thinking that Breaking Bad was the better show.
4/5 Stars
My ranking of the Better Call Saul seasons is:
3 > 5 > 1 > 6 > 2 > 4
My ranking of the Better Call Saul finales is:
6 > 3 > 4 > 2 > 5 > 1
Favorite Episode: Chicanery
And now that I'm done with the Breaking Bad universe, let's rank all of their seasons:
- Breaking Bad: Season 4
- Breaking Bad: Season 5
- Better Call Saul: Season 3
- Better Call Saul: Season 5
- Breaking Bad: Season 2
- Better Call Saul: Season 1
- Better Call Saul: Season 6
- Breaking Bad: Season 3
- Better Call Saul: Season 2
- Better Call Saul: Season 4
- Breaking Bad: Season 1
- Face Off
- Lantern
- Plan And Execution
- Saul Gone
- ABQ
- Gliding Over All
- Winner
- Felina
- Klick
- Something Unforgivable
- Full Measure
- Marco
- A No Rough Stuff Type Deal
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