Darkness Falls on ‘Better Call Saul’

You could feel it coming all along, couldn’t you? The sense that the somewhat jaunty tone of Better Call Saul was slowly heading toward a genre meld with its predecessor, Breaking Bad. Based on the first two episodes of the upcoming final season of the Breaking Bad prequel, we have now reached that point of transformation: the progeny has become one with the show that gave it birth.

Season six leans heavily into its noirish origins. Interior scenes are often shot in heavy shadow, and in some sequences the characters are shown primarily in silhouette. Even the brightly lit exterior scenes shot in the golden-hued deserts of Albuquerque are surrounded by rusted vehicles, sand, and dead plant life, as if all is shrouded in darkness and decay.

Between Breaking Bad and the five previous seasons of Better Call Saul, we know these characters so well that glances and stares are perfect stand-ins for words. Giancarlo Esposito as Gustavo continues to make an art of petrifying stillness and the perfectly flinty Jonathan Banks is as fearsome as ever as Mike. The two performances are well matched in their minimalism, as they both play men of few words while remaining formidable and terrifying. Their tone and expressions (or lack thereof in the case of the dead-eyed Mike) speak volumes, and those volumes are grim.

Even Bob Odenkirk’s Jimmy McNulty is slightly tamped down. The colorful, motor-mouthed character of Saul Goodman that Jimmy has worked to create seems almost exhausted with his endless series of ruses. Dancing as fast as you can will catch up with you, and while Jimmy always has his tap shoes on, the soles are wearing thin.

Despite being overlooked relentlessly by Emmy voters, perhaps no character has captured the curiosity of the sizable Breaking Bad / Better Call Saul cult as much as Rhea Seehorn’s Kim Wexler, whose fate is the final season’s biggest question. We know that Kim does not move into the Breaking Bad future. So what becomes of our black pants-suited legal eagle with a ponytail so tight you can practically hear her follicles screaming? Caught between a guilty conscience and her desire to grift, does Kim disappear, move on, or does she meet a violent end? For those of us—and we are legion—who have fallen for Seehorn’s extraordinary characterization, the outcome of Kim’s story is the mystery that grips our collective imagination the most.

As of episode two, Kim and Jimmy are looking to take down their former boss, Howard Hamlin, through means that involve running a game involving both the upper crust and those on the fringe. In earlier seasons, this caper to ruin Howard would play out with a bit of zip and a sense of playfulness. But as the collision of Lalo Salamanca (the terrifyingly charismatic Tony Dalton) and Gustavo Fring moves inexorably forward, the setup Jimmy and Kim are running on their old boss seems petty, if not inconsequential. The wheels Jimmy and Kim have set in motion are so much more perilous than their plot against a well-heeled, new-agey head of a legal firm. Their double-dealings with Gustavo, Lalo, and the cartel loom over every move they make. 

Better Call Saul has been around long enough now that it stands its own ground—apart from Breaking Bad. At the same time, as a practical matter, the show must naturally lead into Walter White’s meth-dealing, cancer-ridden school teacher arc. The fact that we know where the show is heading brings to mind a notion that more typically exists in films or series based upon well known novels or historical events. We may know (more or less) how the story ends, but the thrill will be found in how we get there.

Show creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould have created a universe that includes five seasons and one movie built around Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, and now we come to the last stretch run of that universe in Better Call Saul.

“It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there,” Bob Dylan once sang, and as this two-part final season gets started, it’s already plenty dark. And we’ve got a ways to go before we get “there.”

My recommendation? 

Buckle up for safety.

Part one of Better Call Saul season six debuted on 4/18 and returns for part two on 7/11.