**SPOILERS AHEAD for the Better Call Saul series finale**
There are several definitive statements one can make in the wake of Better Call Saul’s series finale.
For starters, Kim Wexler is among the greatest television characters to grace our television sets.
Indeed, in a universe that gave us Walter White, Jesse Pinkman, Gustavo Fring, Jimmy McGill, Mike Ehrmantraut, and so many others, Rhea Seehorn’s Kim emerges as the ultimate star of the show. Every subtle contortion of her face, every restrained release of pent-up pain, reveals Kim as a surprising lynchpin in an operatic narrative spanning just under a decade. Death abound in the Breaking Bad-verse and yet it is Kim’s survival that is perhaps most shocking, most comforting, most indicative of the moral code imparted upon us by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s criminal underworld.
For there are other truths made so after the Gould-directed “Saul Gone.”
Here is another: you can’t outrun your past. Gene Takovic certainly tries, before reverting back to Saul Goodman, arguably his most natural form. Over the course of the finale, Saul becomes Jimmy and then Saul again, endlessly trapped between his various states of being, never once in control of his own identity or fate. Even as he supposedly reclaims his status as Jimmy McGill in the midst of an oddly triumphant admission of guilt, our protagonist cannot avoid being recognized moments later by the prisoners at ADX Montrose, nor can he avoid the satisfaction of hearing “Better call Saul! Better call Saul!” chanted by a bus full of convicts. You can’t outrun your past, but maybe you don’t want to.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gould likened this final episode of Better Call Saul to A Christmas Carol. Saul is our Scrooge, haunted by several ghosts of his past as he comes to terms with who he really wants to be. He may not have much say in the matter, but he maintains control over how he responds to the whirlwind of trouble in which he has found himself. Both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul dealt with that eternal infliction best known as “toxic masculinity.” But Gilligan and Gould’s is not of a “boys will be boys” variety but rather something more deeply embedded in the psyche of the American man.
In fact, here is another harsh truth confirmed by the closure brought to a story nearly 15 years in the making: we are all living a lie.
Of course, we are all engaged with varying degrees of deceit, and the accusation may sound unfounded or unfair. But Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul both confront us with this notion of dishonesty by saddling their characters with the biggest secrets of all. We may all struggle to reveal parts of ourselves to a certain extent, but what if that other part of our self was a meth cook? A drug kingpin? A criminal on the run? A murderer?
Even these labels are ultimately superficial. Jimmy may be many of these things throughout both shows, but he is also heartbroken. He is also mourning. He is also nursing a damaged ego and recovering from a childhood of emotional abuse.
And he suffers alone.
Presented with the opportunity to confide in Mike or Chuck or Walt at various points in his life, Jimmy falls back on the limited set of values he has afforded himself under his defined set of personas. Indeed, even “Jimmy McGill” becomes a costume of sorts when he declines the rare invitation of emotional intimacy from Chuck. Inspired by H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, Jimmy is endlessly fascinated with the concept of time travel. He imagines himself traveling back and making get-rich investments, or preventing minor injuries to himself. And while these offerings may be truths, they are not the truths. Staring death in the face, having already heard Mike’s wish to have never broken bad during his time as a Philly cop, Jimmy still cannot conjure up even a smidge of vulnerability.
In his final moment of freedom, Jimmy reaches this conclusion himself, surrendering the whole truth to a courtroom of his enemies, victims, and perhaps the only person left who gives a damn about him: Kim. He may never identify for us the actual moment he’d return to via time machine — Walt seems to briefly ponder reversing his impact on Jesse’s young life, before settling on his unresolved resentment towards Gretchen and Elliott Schwartz — but he (like Walt does in his exchange with Skylar in Breaking Bad’s “Felina”) arrives at a moment of self-awareness that may allow us to guess the “real” answer to his favorite prompt.
Perhaps he would go back and take Chuck up on that night of chit-chat after all. Or perhaps he would never walk into J.P. Wynne High School in search of the chemistry teacher who would one day become Heisenberg. No matter the definitive moment that set Jimmy on the collision course towards self-destruction, his recognition of his own ego and regret is enough to earn him one final cigarette with the love of his life. The paths ahead of both parties remain murky — Jimmy is staring down an 86-year-sentence, while Kim has her own legal hammer looming over her head — but they find peace in the knowledge that they have arrived at their most honest selves.
For Jimmy, that “true” self might be a strange amalgamation of Goodman and McGill (Gene Takovic never seemed too comfortable in his own cinnamon-dusted shoes), but it’s ultimately the resurfacing of the long-dormant Jimmy McGill that makes this quiet reunion with Kim possible.
But that this final scene in the show’s run mirrors the very first interaction between Jimmy and Kim in “Uno” is more than just a bit of clever circularity.
It actually functions as a celebration of the show itself.
Composer Dave Porter’s “Shared Smoke” returns to score the scene, this time renamed “Shared Sentence.” The show’s film noir trappings are made especially evident by the black-and-white cinematography that closes out the show, but the genre’s special brand of existentialism has always informed Better Call Saul, just as the Neo-Western’s take on consequentialism once colored Breaking Bad. The cigarette is a not-so-subtle mainstay in film noir’s collection of recurring motifs, and Better Call Saul’s central duo earns a final set of puffs as they bask in the glory of their seven-year run.
After redefining televisual storytelling over and over again for nearly a decade and a half (will a show ever look as gorgeous as Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul once did?), Gilligan and Gould certainly deserve to toot their own horns. Just prior to this smoky exchange between Jimmy and Kim, we find Jimmy on a bus en route to ADX Montrose, where he is showered with the aforementioned chants of “Better call Saul! Better call Saul!” In a way, the show itself is chanting its own name, basking in the glory of its last hurrah.
Because for all the definitive takeaways one could make in the wake of Better Call Saul’s finale, some things remain anything but certain.
Perhaps of most immediate concern is the future of television itself. Indeed, Better Call Saul was already a rare breed in 2022, a remnant of the television landscape of old, sparingly grandfathered in to our contemporary age of streaming and digital consumption. When its final shot cut to black, I couldn’t help but consider whether or not this was the last time I would experience a TV show in this way. Sitting down in front of my television set every Monday night at 9pm EST has been one of the great pleasures of my life over the last several weeks, the anticipation between episodes of Better Call Saul one of the great tortures of my every Tuesday through Sunday.
With hits like Mad Men, The Walking Dead, and Halt & Catch Fire also under its belt, the AMC Network has long been a kind of “final frontier” for the weekly prestige drama. Even other networks known for putting out TV of a similar quality have succumbed to the complex corporate hierarchies of Hollywood.
FX shows now call Hulu home — the convoluted “FX on Hulu” distinction already a thing of the past — while USA Network’s momentum in the wake of Mr. Robot and The Sinner has already folded for the sake of something called Peacock (supposedly it’s a streaming service. And people actually watch things on it. I’m as shocked as you are.)
I am aware that Netflix is the international home for Better Call Saul, its weekly release model likely a curse upon the company’s binge-dependent name, and that many Americans wait to consume the show in large chunks once it’s been made available on Netflix domestically. Of course, I consider the latter group to be criminally insane. As of this writing, there is no set date for when Better Call Saul’s final season might arrive on Netflix in the U.S. and Canada. I don’t care if you have cut the cord or not; waiting until an undisclosed time in 2023 to finish this masterpiece of a show is an ill-advised fate.
It’s not just that Better Call Saul is best experienced in measured doses. I understand the allure of binging, even if I think almost all episodic storytelling is best served by a bit of patience and self-control. Part of what made Better Call Saul such an enthralling experience was the communal discourse surrounding it. Each week, an entire audience was collectively experiencing the next chapter in this story for the very first time. That shouldn’t sound so novel; it’s how TV has been experienced for so many decades prior. And yet, it’s an increasing rarity amongst audiences today.
The shared experience of a moment was once the distinguishing factor of television — it’s partly why I still cherish live television events like award shows and NFL games — but it has been largely lost in the age of streaming. Even as we all commiserated over our love for Stranger Things or our discovery of Squid Game, we did so from our distant echo chambers. Some fans of those shows watched entire seasons in a single day. Others only uncovered a season’s big twist months after its initial release. This kind of unprecedented control over one’s viewing habits has proven popular (and profitable), effectively replacing release models like that of Better Call Saul.
Some streaming services have experimented with midpoints between these two approaches. Amazon Prime releases some of its shows in stages, feeding us only 2-3 episodes at a time. Hulu has made similar efforts with shows like The Old Man and Only Murders in the Building, as has Disney+.
I suppose premium networks like HBO and Showtime will continue to offer us appointment viewing with shows like Succession, Yellowjackets, and the forthcoming House of the Dragon. But even those companies are prioritizing their in-house streaming services in a way that casts doubt on the future of communal television viewing. HBO’s future seems especially dire as its corporate restructuring slowly erodes its scripted storytelling altogether, not to mention its workforce. The difference between HBO and HBO Max programming has never been clear, but the company’s content remains some of the best on television. Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal — an HBO show, for what it’s worth — is perhaps the only other show I am eagerly anticipating each week, and its final episode airs tomorrow night, a potential second season notwithstanding.
Shows do tend to necessitate more appointment viewing in their final seasons, but I have a hard time imagining the viewers of tomorrow blocking off every Sunday night at 9pm EST for House of Dragon the way they once did for Game of Thrones. The latter show might have struggled down the stretch, but it demanded our weekly commitment like few shows ever have.
In the throes of its own existential crisis, AMC peppered the live airing of “Saul Gone” with several ads for its upcoming lineup of shows. It’s not a new or even unique tactic, of course, but it felt particularly noticeable on a night in which the company was waving goodbye to one of its biggest cash cows. AMC+, the network’s own streaming platform, ironically suffered some connectivity issues that night while simultaneously reassuring viewers that its library of content extends far beyond Better Call Saul. Of particular note was an advertisement announcing two new shows — Straight Man and Parish — which star Bob Odenkirk and Giancarlo Esposito, respectively.
Such announcements are obviously exciting, so long as AMC continues to recognize what has made it and its stable of shows so great over the years. Nobody in the entertainment industry could blame the company for putting its eggs in AMC+’s basket, but I pray that Better Call Saul’s finale does not mark the end of prestige television as we once knew it.
Besides, the transformation of television has extended its poisonous tentacles into the realm of cinema as well. You’d be forgiven if you had no idea that several brand new indie darlings are wasting away on AMC+ at this very moment. I remember Dual — Riley Stearns’ deadpan follow-up to 2019’s The Art of Self Defense — making waves along the festival circuit earlier this year, but I was surprised to find that the film was released onto AMC+ back in May. Surely a satirical thriller starring Karen Gillen and Aaron Paul deserves much better.
Meanwhile, Jeff Baena’s Spin Me Round — another festival darling — releases onto the service today. Its star-studded cast includes Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, Tim Heidecker, Molly Shannon, and Fred Armisen. Such a film might have generated a cool $69 million at the domestic box office just four years ago, but now it gets to fade away into obscurity before most of us ever knew it was there.
None of this is a knock against AMC+, which offers a surprisingly great collection of shows and films, but rather an indictment of an entertainment landscape which encourages the panicked padding of a platform’s library without any consideration as to how the individual works might be best positioned or experienced. I hesitate to use the word “consumed” as it seems to imply a kind of passivity, in which all the little piggies gather around and slurp down whatever slop is slid into our trough that day. And yet, the fracturing of our media environment has miraculously convinced us that the inverse is true, that we have unprecedented access to a diverse range of stories.
And with great power comes great responsibility! Our obsession with assigning some grand moral significance to our every interaction with a piece of art is a direct result of the belief that we all have singular control over what we read and watch.
If only we could read or watch these things together. If only we could discuss them and, in doing so, challenge one another. Learn from one another.
With so many massive libraries at our disposal, we are somehow individually responsible for combing through them all in search of the most “unproblematic” works we can find, never mind the fact that we are largely at the mercy of algorithms anyway. Our relationship with art may be mediated through corporate finance and computer engineering, but these corporations have somehow managed to abdicate themselves of any responsibility. The onus instead falls on us to find the “good” art, even as most of it hides within the crevices of a streamer’s crumbling home.
Quite frankly, I’m counting down the years (months? days?) until we decide to revisit Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad and “cancel” them for their depiction of “bad people.” But those of us who were there at the time will remember the debates we once had.
What is justice? What is love? How desperate is too desperate in a capitalist society where even healthcare is not a right?
Can we ever truly be redeemed? When does the pain go away? Who are we really?
These were not just difficult conversations. These were difficult conversations we had together.
You. Me. Kim. Saul. Walt and Jesse and Skylar and Mike.
This is a eulogy for one of the greatest shows in the history of television. I just hope that is the only loss those of us who love the medium must suffer.