BETTER CALL SAUL: SEASON 6
★★★★★
(NETFLIX)
9 OF 13
Peter Gould
Bob Odenkirk, Rhea Seehorn, Jonathan Banks, Giancarlo Esposito, Patrick Fabian, Michael Mando, Tony Dalton
PLOT As public defender Jimmy (Odenkirk) completes his transformation into dodgy lawyerfor-hire Saul, his wife Kim (Seehorn) hatches a plan to ruin former colleague Howard (Fabian). Meanwhile, poor Nacho (Mando) takes the blame for the raid on Lalo (Dalton), who pretends to be dead so he can plot his revenge on Gus (Esposito).
BETTER CALL SAUL loves a disorienting cold open. A couple of elderly cyclists in shell-suits riding round their neighbourhood complaining about the gaudy red colour of a newly painted house. A steady pan across a scrubby wilderness alighting on a seemingly random bit of weed, and a bloody sliver of broken glass. The meticulous creation of a sculpture made of lucite. Throughout all these beautiful vignettes, we’re thinking, “What the hell does any of this have to do with Jimmy and Kim and Nacho and Lalo and Mike and Gus?” Eventually the details are pieced together and by the end of each episode, their wider significance becomes clear.
This narrative trickery works brilliantly because the whole show is built around puzzles: Why does Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) become Saul? What happens to Kim (Rhea Seehorn) that she’s never mentioned in the parent show? How does Jimmy/saul extricate himself from… everything? And why will Jimmy/saul turn into Gene who works in a Cinnabon in Omaha, Nebraska?
This final season also underlines how the show has melded genres so effectively. It’s part legal/relationship drama following Jimmy/saul and wife Kim’s careers and life together, and part crime thriller tracing Jimmy’s tragic involvement with “connected” types Lalo (Tony Dalton), Gus (Giancarlo Esposito) and Mike (Jonathan Banks). The mid-season finale weaves those strands together spectacularly, ending with a stunning act of violence committed by the psychopathic Lalo in Jimmy and Kim’s home. The ramifications of that moment become spectacularly clear in the next two episodes, the first of which is a masterpiece of sustained tension told almost in real time; while the second slows down to delve as deep as it ever has into the core characters.
This episode’s opening montage of Saul and Kim trying to get on with their lives, set to Harry Nilsson’s song ‘Perfect Day’, is a work of art. Witness the cut from Jimmy mopping up his red marinara sauce at lunch to Mike wiping rivulets of blood from their floorboards. The ensuing confrontation between Kim and Jimmy, brutally exposing the raw truth at the heart of their relationship, is as scary as the gruesome fight between Gus and Lalo. But the stakes here are even higher, because they’re soulmates, and we’re rooting for them to the bitter end.
For a show set in a world so steeped in crime and violence, it’s startling just how calamitous an impact these plot developments are having. Because it was all fun and games until someone got hurt. And now Kim’s guilt is corroding everything for her. Jimmy is desperately trying to convince himself, as much as Kim, that they can get over it. But Kim knows the truth. “Together we’re poison,” she says. Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk are in a league of their own in that scene — as is this whole stupendous series.
VERDICT
As it nears its climax, and we ponder not if but how they’ll stick the landing, Better Call Saul’s steady rise to the giddy heights of alltime classic television drama feels inexorable.