The sixth and final season of Better Call Saul has gotten off to a fantastic start. Two years since season 5 ended on a shocking cliffhanger, Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s Breaking Bad spin-off is back in top form. Season 5 was expected to get Lalo Salamanca out of the way with an assassination plot so that the final season could focus on connecting Saul’s storylines to Breaking Bad. But when that assassination plot unexpectedly unfolded as an embarrassing failure, the writers turned Lalo into a bigger threat to the heroes than ever, out for blood after the attempt on his life.
By the time the series finale airs, Gilligan, Gould, and co. will have tied up all the loose ends – Jimmy in Albuquerque, Gene in Nebraska, and everything in between – and AMC has confirmed that Walt and Jesse will make their long-awaited return in the last run of the prequel series. But in the meantime, before Saul goes all Breaking Bad, the writers have taken the time to reintroduce their own beloved protagonists in a pair of gripping standalone storylines. Kim has broken bad and teamed up with the unscrupulous Saul Goodman persona to destroy Howard Hamlin’s career, and Nacho is desperately fighting for his life after reluctantly taking part in the failed assassination attempt on Lalo.
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With universal praise from critics, it’s safe to say that the opening episodes of Better Call Saul’s final season have stuck the landing so far. Season 6 is every bit as engaging, subversive, and beautifully shot and acted as the five critically acclaimed seasons that came before it. And, with the much-anticipated return of Walt and Jesse and the resolution of Gene’s mundane Cinnabon experience in black-and-white Nebraska still on the way, this season is just getting started.
The first couple of episodes of Better Call Saul’s final season have filtered most of the main characters into two core storylines: Jimmy and Kim’s elaborate plot to bring down Howard, and Nacho’s fight for survival after the cartel puts out a hit on him. Both of these storylines feel like a direct homage to a classic movie. Jimmy and Kim’s one-sided prank war calls back to Paul Newman and Robert Redford’s meticulous scams from The Sting, while Nacho’s cat-and-mouse pursuit with cartel assassins along the border captures the spirit and intensity of No Country for Old Men.
The various pranks used by Jimmy and Kim to sabotage Howard’s career, like planting cocaine in his locker at the country club, hark back to the schemes used by Jimmy’s first shady underworld persona: Slippin’ Jimmy. Back in Chicago, Slippin’ Jimmy and his partner-in-crime Marco used to stage intricate scenarios to trick strangers into handing over their wallets or parting ways with an expensive wristwatch. Throughout Saul’s run, Jimmy has occasionally slipped back into this persona to pull increasingly complex cons on his enemies. In the final season, Slippin’ Jimmy has joined forces with the genius of Kim Wexler and his cons are smarter and more complicated than ever.
Since his introduction in season 1, the Slippin’ Jimmy persona has been framed as an overt homage to the iconic grifters played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford in George Roy Hill’s seminal crime caper The Sting. In the final season, Better Call Saul’s cons adhere to the same principle as The Sting: the longer the con, the more satisfying the payoff. The cocaine-in-locker gambit began with Jimmy applying for membership at Howard’s country club. Jimmy McGill and Kim Wexler are Henry Gondorff and Johnny Hooker for a new generation.
The bleak neo-western thrills of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul have always been compared to the Coen brothers’ Oscar-winning masterpiece No Country for Old Men, but the writers have been leaning into this influence more than ever in the early episodes of Saul’s final season. Adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, No Country stars Josh Brolin as a Vietnam War veteran who finds a briefcase full of cash in the desert and Javier Bardem as the ruthless hitman sent to retrieve it. Saul has replicated the nail-biting tension of this cat-and-mouse chase in Nacho’s season 6 storyline.
In the final run of Better Call Saul, the writers are paying off five seasons’ worth of tension. Like all the best prequels, this show uses the inevitability of fate as a dramatic tool. Since the beginning, Kim and Nacho have had the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads because they never appeared in Breaking Bad, so they’re not safe. The Salamancas that are combing the desert to find Nacho are protected by plot armor because many of them are scheduled to appear in Breaking Bad later in the story timeline. Not only are “The Cousins” a pair of merciless, terrifying killers; there’s no way Nacho can kill them, because they’re guaranteed to survive to the end of the series.
Nacho, on the other hand, has no such plot armor – and, on top of that, he’s likable and sympathetic, which usually marks characters for death in the cruel, relentless Heisen-verse. Like Brolin’s protagonist in No Country for Old Men, Nacho could be killed at any moment, which keeps the audience on the edge of their seat. And this is just the beginning. Over the next few months, the tragic saga of Saul Goodman will come to an end, bringing the entire Breaking Bad universe full circle.
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