Better Call Saul

The Breaking Bad spin-off has been excellent since it debuted in 2015. As the series wraps up, the final episodes will determine just how great a show ...

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The thrilling immediacy of the mid-season premiere cleans the slate for the season's closing stretch. A recap of “Point and Shoot,” episode eight of season ...

“Why did Lalo send you?” he asks Kim, who replies that Lalo originally wanted to send Jimmy, but Jimmy “talked him out of it.” Gus knows that Lalo isn’t the type of guy who could get talked out of anything, which signals to him that it genuinely didn’t matter to Lalo who was dispatched on this mission that was 100 percent certain to fail. The scheming around Howard and the Sandpiper Case is over. The idea of running and pushing substandard product into the market — in the meth business, not exactly a drug associated with quality control — makes them bristle. For Gus, the underground lab is an entrepreneurial masterstroke that takes the kind of investment and planning that’s anathema to “jackals” like the Salamancas, who are content to gobble up territory, steamroll the competition, and unleash great spasms of violence whenever necessary — or whenever the mood strikes them. What neither of them realizes is that this assassination attempt is not something Lalo actually expects to succeed; like Jimmy and Kim’s three transparent efforts to link Howard to cocaine, it’s just part of a greater ruse. This piece of monologue could be a Better Call Saul sub-tweet of other shows of its ilk, the ones that cut corners in pursuit of cheap thrills — thin, crude, artless time-wasters. That’s what the title Breaking Bad means, after all, or a nickname like “Slippin’ Jimmy.” The cost for Jimmy and Kim’s transgressions may be unreasonably high — there’s a sound argument that Howard had it coming, in fact, and that justice was done on behalf of his elderly clients — but they still have to pay it. It’s a simple job that Jimmy persuades Lalo to let Kim do instead, because it seems to him like her survival is at least within the realm of possibility. Although Lalo may not expect Gus to confront him in this place, it seems right that they would have to settle their conflict personally. When Kim inevitably fails and gets dragged into Gus’s house by Mike and his security goons, Gus doesn’t need to hear much from her to pick up on what Lalo is doing. They’re told that traces of cocaine will be discovered on the upholstery, because “that’s the story you were setting up for this guy.” Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are keyed into inflection points like this when their characters make choices that set their lives on a dark trajectory. They’re told that Howard’s Jaguar will be found on a beach a few states over and that his death will eventually be considered a suicide, which will seem plausible given his personal and professional setbacks.

The body count won't stop climbing as 'Better Call Saul' returns for its final six episodes — read our recap of Season 6, Episode 8.

He lets out a final laugh before he dies, and Gus pulls the bullet out of his body armor and tosses it at him. He also stares down at the bodies in the hole, his face twisted with conflict and regret, as the crane covers them up with dirt again. While he goes off on a long rant insulting Don Eladio and the Salamancas, we see a gun hidden nearby — and suddenly, Gus triggers a blackout and grabs the gun while Lalo shoots wildly into the darkness. She gets to Gus’ and pulls the gun out of the glove compartment, walking up to the door and ringing the bell… Gus wants to talk to Kim, and she tells him Lalo tried to send Jimmy, but Jimmy talked him out of it. After a cryptic opening that features a shoe washing up on a beach with footprints leading to Howard’s car parked in the sand, Monday’s premiere picks up right where we left off, with a shocked and terrified Jimmy and Kim standing over Howard’s dead body as Lalo points a gun at them.

"Point And Shoot” is a thrilling lead-up to the beloved series' finale.

- And the man most frustratingly denied an Emmy for his Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul work, Jonathan Banks (who has been nominated five times for those shows), gave a typically outstanding performance as Mike ran the three-ring circus of trying to protect Gus while also dealing with some guilt about Jimmy and Kim (and Howard). Mike had pulled the Lalo watch detail off Kim and Jimmy’s apartment, something she screamed at him about when she was at Gus’ compound. Then he got to the McGills’ apartment, saw Howard, and quickly pieced together what must have happened to him. Let’s end with a shoutout that brings us back to the beginning: Gordon Smith, the former Vince Gilligan assistant who created the Lalo character and wrote classic Saul eps like “Five-O,” “Chicanery,” and “Bagman,” as well as this one, does a fine job of driving home the tragedy and randomness of Howard’s death. When he looks at her and begs her to be the one to make the kill, he really just wants her to leave their home, to get away from Lalo and the gun he’s holding on them. Maybe he thinks that to save him, she’ll make it to the house and commit that unforgivable assignment. Gus felt free to spit his tirade at the camera (he addressed Eladio as “you greasy, bloated pimp”), sure he was going to kill Lalo or die himself if he didn’t. Lalo, meanwhile, was just as certain he would emerge victorious from the lab, video in hand. But the look in his eyes when he peers into hers, desperately asking her to go, says that he thinks there’s a good chance he’s saying goodbye to her forever—and that he’s at peace with that decision. And he had, in true Lalo style, a simple, cleverly crafted plan to get it: He would hold Kim hostage, while Jimmy was sent off in his car, with a gun and a camera in the glove box. Home, and the recent events it hosted, is never going to feel like home again. He pleads for Lalo’s sign-off to send Kim on the task and for Kim’s agreement to go and save her life—or at least have the chance to. Jimmy was to knock on Gus’ door, and when he answered it, Jimmy was to unload the gun at Gus and take a photo of his dead body. Jimmy flips the deal around, though, and convinces Lalo to hold him in the apartment with Howard’s dead body, while Kim is given the assignment to go murder a stranger and make it back with photographic evidence within 60 minutes.

An already grim ending gets a Vince Gilligan-directed reminder that this is a world where victories are small and the pain lasts longer.

One of the things helping “Point and Shoot” is that Mike is fully activated. In a wave of no-win outcomes likely yet to come, it’s hard to imagine there’ll be many more easy chances to find humanity in the carnage. This one closes with the people brought in to clean up the mess. After how many times her character has referenced guns over the series to date (not to mention wielding ones of the finger variety), there’s a gravity in that realization that’s almost as impactful as her seeing a body fall to the floor on the rug next to her sofa. The guy who tried to kill his boss gets summarily tossed in, while the guy who had no idea what he was involved in gets a gentler toss. As Howard and Lalo get loaded into a dual grave underneath the floor of what will one day be an operational meth lab (Gus’ four bodyguards that Lalo shot in the back presumably get a less-dignified resting place), Mike makes the only distinction he can. Those extra beats to consider a weapon or a zip tie or a madman thirsting for payback are part of the magic of “Better Call Saul,” and it’s unsurprising to see director Vince Gilligan take full advantage of them here. Without knowing what Kim is capable of in other circumstances, Gus recognizes that it would have taken a leverage-less Jimmy a lot more than a simple argument to convince someone that strong-willed to change his plan. On the other hand, Gus adjusting his shirt and jacket, so as to face his own potential execution with dignity, may have been what helped buy himself enough time to distract Lalo and his camcorder. Of course, Kim’s assignment to hunt down Gus (or whoever else opens the door to the Fortress of Fringitude) is a textbook Lalo (and by extension “Better Call Saul”) misdirect, designed to draw The Chicken Man out of hiding. Take the late Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian), who’s only represented by a few of his personal items in the (unsurprisingly poetic) cold open. They look at marked men going rogue from a strictly outlined plan in order to have the freedom to go out on their own terms.

In a screw-turning season 6 part B opening, we've returned to Saul and Kim's (Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn) apartment following Lalo's murder of Howard ( ...

In regards to whether Dalton knew Lalo’s fate was imminent, he told the crowd at Manhattan’s BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, “Pete, and Vince (Gilligan) called me and they told me before we even started (filming) – they said this episode is going to be the last one that you do. Mike and a set of guys head to Saul’s apartment to rescue him, while Gus and another group of guys head to the laundry warehouse which is the front for his meth lab bunker. He chose this life and I don’t think he feels terrible about it. Essentially, Kim and Saul need to “keep telling the lie you’ve been telling.” “You’re the last people to see him alive,” Mike reminds them. And I was like, you guys are killing me in eight? “That is the story you were setting him up for?” Mike wisely asks the couple. He reaches for a gun he has hiding and ‘points and shoots’ till the gun is empty. Gus is confronted there by Lalo who shoots all of his guys, and fires into Gus’ chest (he has a bulletproof vest). Lalo then has Gus take him below. Kim tells Mike what she was instructed to do; however she points to a guy who looks a lot like Gus’ double. There’s a cell phone and a gun Lalo has left for him. Saul has to go and murder someone for him.

"Better Call Saul" star Tony Dalton explains that major scene with Lalo and Gus.

After Lalo dies, that cements Gus into the person that he becomes in “Breaking Bad.” It was kind of just like I start dying and then I threw a smile and Vince was like, “That was good, now more like a cynic. He sits down and he’s like, “That was the closest I’ve ever been to dying. They put the episode on at Tribeca and just seeing me and Howard dead in the pit, it was like “Damn, man. I think it was like, “You got lucky, man. When we all met up, Bob said, “Do you think they’re gonna think I was just throwing her under the bus?” I said I didn’t think so. More power to the writers and creators because it’s like, “You motherfucker, did you just send your wife to kill somebody?” Bob and I, when we were talking at dinner, he figured if she left the room, she’d have more of a chance at being alive — period. When I watched it I thought the latter, but Kim mentions later that Saul was looking out for her. While delivering a scathing monologue to the drug bosses down in the high-tech meth lab that Walt and Jesse will eventually use in “Breaking Bad,” Gus turns out the lights, grabs a gun and fires the clip at Lalo. When the lights turn back on, we see Lalo choking on his own blood from a fatal neck wound. I got a Zoom call from [creators] Vince [Gilligan] and Peter [Gould]. It was more about how excited they were about what happens than they were about me dying. And in a twisted cherry on top of “Better Call Saul’s” suspenseful Season 6 Part 2 return, it’s revealed that Lalo is buried beneath Gus’ meth super-lab. Before Kim can pull the trigger at Gus’ secure safe house, Mike (Jonathan Banks) intervenes and stops the attempted hit — which was really all a distraction for Lalo to get video evidence of Gus’ secret meth lab.

The final six episodes before the "Better Call Saul" series finale begin Monday night, with Episode 8, "Point and Shoot."

As “Better Call Saul” has gone on, it’s reached the crisis point that Season 6 has given us. If you haven’t yet seen it, I won’t spoil what happened, but it definitely throws Jimmy closer to his Saul identity and seems to close off more options for Kim to redeem herself. During its run, the “Breaking Bad” spinoff has told the story of how two-bit lawyer Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) came to be the crook-friendly attorney Saul Goodman who worked with Walter White (Bryan Cranston) when the former teacher-turned-meth mogul needed legal help.

'Better Call Saul' Season 6 episode 8 reveals just how Tony Dalton's Lalo Salamanca character ends up in 'Breaking Bad.'

Tony Dalton's name never appears in the credits of any Breaking Bad episode and his poisonous mustached grin never appears in any scene in the series. Before the end of Lalo's final episode, Mike decides to kill two birds with one forklift by burying both Lalo and Howard in the same grave dug out at the construction site. As much as Lalo wanted to kill the man who sent mercenaries into his home to assassinate him, he returned to Albuquerque to get proof of Gus's treachery first, revenge after. That sets the stage for Lalo to finally begin putting his pawns in motion for a climatic end to his cerebral chess match with a justifiably paranoid Gus. The end result may have been predictable, but the Breaking Bad twist was one no one could've predicted. Outside of Saul's wife and smarter better half Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), no other Better Call Saul character has generated as much fanfare as the Mexican mustached menace Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton). And after last night's episode, we finally find out how he makes it into the Breaking Bad timeline in the most unexpected manner. Better Call Saul's time is coming to an end, and that means its timeline inches closer to the Breaking Bad timeline we all know and love.

The midseason premiere of 'Better Call Saul' season 6 sees the death of one of the series' biggest bads. Read EW's recap.

And while Mike says only one word — a cautionary "easy" — as Howard goes in the ground, the look on his face is almost as good as a eulogy. Can Lalo Salamanca, this series' most terrifying monster, really die down here in the dark, a victim as much of his own hubris as of Gus' relentless quest for revenge?! As we know (and Lalo undoubtedly does, too), there's no way Gus Fring would answer his own door to a would-be assassin in the middle of the night. Blood is still flowing from the bullet hole in Howard's head, and Lalo is telling Jimmy and Kim ( Rhea Seehorn) that they have to focus — which they do, but it's worth noting that Jimmy rises to this occasion in a way that Kim does not. He underestimated Lalo. And every death tonight, beginning (but by no means ending) with Howard, is a death that might have been avoided. "It never happened," Kim echoes back, but her voice is hollow, and I have a feeling that this is the end. And this is exactly what happens, but not before Kim absolutely lights up Mike Ehrmentraut ( Jonathan Banks) for his (admittedly atypical) lapse in vigilance. Her job, her real job, is not to kill Gus Fring. It's to get caught trying, so that Gus realizes — too late — that he's left the laundry and its secret underground meth lab-in-progress undefended. Jimmy will get in Lalo's car, drive to Gus Fring's ( Giancarlo Esposito) house, and use the gun in the glovebox to shoot whomever answers the door. Pro tip, guys: If Lalo Salamanca agrees to a change of plans, then that plan was never really the plan. Lalo explains what will happen next: Kim will stay with Lalo at the condo. And now, this: A shoe, abandoned on the beach, gently rolling around in the surf beneath a golden, hazy California sky.

Jimmy and Kim get a new refrigerator. Gus and Lalo get some quality face time.

Even in the end, when it appeared that he had outsmarted and outplayed Gus, when all of his plans came together and he actually got the long-sought tour of the superlab, he lost. He was competent and smart enough to provoke deep anxiety in the preternaturally implacable Mr. Fring. This might be his most impressive accomplishment, and it hinted at both his strengths and limitations. “Be nice,” he told the men driving immigrants over the Mexican border in the first episode of this season. The same goes for Kim. She is never mentioned in “Breaking Bad.” But the names “Lalo” and “Ignacio” are, and both of those guys are dead. “Drive nice,” he instructed Jimmy and Kim as he outlined his plans in this episode. Where his kinsman were unhinged sadists, Lalo exits the show with a body count that is low for his cohort. When Lalo enters the laundromat that hides the superlab, he manages to evade the surveillance system designed to prevent the very incursion he is pulling off. Then Gus delays his own execution with a monologue about the venality and stupidity of the Salamancas, a tactic that gives him time to kick a lighting cable, plunge the lab into near total darkness and retrieve the handgun he secreted during an earlier visit. More than that, they can turn their attention to Gene Takavic, the joyless schlub Saul becomes after “Breaking Bad,” who was last seen working as a manager of a Cinnabon in Omaha, convinced that his cover had been blown. That said, he does appear mildly startled to learn that he was her target. He will send an unwilling assassin across town to fire at Gus Fring, thus ensuring that the cavalry is dispatched to Jimmy and Kim’s condo. We soon learn that the silkiest Salamanca, a highly charismatic sociopath, has arrived with an elaborate scheme, one that he presumably has fine tuned during many days hiding in Albuquerque’s sewage system.

Jimmy gets selfless, Kim gets questioned, Mike gets mobilized, Lalo gets proof, and Gus gets even.

Anything? If Kim is Billie, is Jimmy Paul or is he Devery? Is Harry Lalo? Or is he Gus? One thing we know for sure is that Kim and Jimmy are not headed for a classic Hollywood ending. From there, we warp ahead from 1950s cinematic references to the pop-cultural landscape of the 1980s, as Kim races to Gus’s house to the sound of a pulsing beat worthy of the original Miami Vice series. Could it be that Jimmy is Harry, and Kim will use her legal and economic powers as his spouse to get clear of him once he finally breaks bad for good? (Gus, later in the episode, will be smart enough to know that Lalo can’t be persuaded, and conclude correctly that this was all part of the sociopathic Salamanca cousin’s plan.) He ties Jimmy to the chair, gags him, tells him he blames Nacho for slaughtering his household in Mexico, and says he’ll be back for answers. When she stands up to Harry, he reacts violently, striking her and forcing her to sign the contracts related to his crooked deal. And we can deduce that the person who did was not Lalo Salamanca. Lalo’s planning powers are second to none, but he’s not big on cleaning up after himself. Well, it’s a 1950 film called Born Yesterday, and the blond actress whose face was frozen on the screen during all the commotion is none other than Judy Holliday. Here’s the first paragraph of Wikipedia’s plot summary: Before he goes, he cranks up the volume on the old movie Jimmy and Kim had been watching to drown out his captive’s screams. We can deduce that someone set this up to look like a suicide. A shoe is floating in the ocean. NAMAST3. And here, on the dashboard, a wallet and a wedding ring.

Tuco Salamanca, who seemed like he would be the main villain of Breaking Bad Season Two, instead died in that season's second episode(*). Nacho Varga killed ...

But the more likely path at this point seems to be either Kim and Jimmy going their separate ways — whether she understandably leaves him or he understandably pushes her away to protect her from the man he is becoming — or else her learning to compartmentalize, too, and simply hiding in the wings during the events of Breaking Bad. The Gus who sits down with Walt in BB Season Two is the exact man — in both personality and reputation within the cartel — who is being stitched up at the end of this episode. The good news — if such a thing is possible this late in the game for a show from this franchise — is that the odds of Kim dying before the series ends just plummeted. The show has struggled to make the Gus of this period feel as vital and surprising a character as the slightly younger Jimmy and Mike have turned out to be, and his scenes sometimes have the feel of the writers checking items off a list to appease the continuity nerds. In general, Gilligan and the series’ other directors have used Saul as a masterclass of how to film scenes in darkness — say, any of Jimmy’s visits to Chuck’s candlelit home, or Mike killing Werner out in the desert at night — that are nonetheless easy to see and understand. When Gus is dumbstruck to hear that Jimmy talked Lalo out of his original plan, it could briefly play as if he is impressed that anyone has the ability to change Lalo’s mind about anything, and that he perhaps wishes to enlist Jimmy’s help in defeating his rival. But the tension throughout is agonizing and exquisite, as are the performances by a group of actors who have to say much more with their expressions and body language than they do with dialogue. Funny as he was, scary as he was, entertaining as hell as he was, he was unfortunately a character who could not survive the events of this series, because the things Gus does on Breaking Bad would be impossible with Lalo still in any way in the picture. They know enough to know that Lalo could kill either or both of them at any moment, even as he converses with them like he barely has a care in the world. “Point and Shoot” presents the immediate aftermath of Lalo coldly murdering Howard Hamlin in front of Jimmy and Kim, but only after a flash-forward shows how Mike and his guys have staged things to make it look like Howard drowned in the Pacific Ocean while high, his body never to be recovered. But I suspect at least some of those guesses are right — if nothing else, there is a lot to untangle in the nature of the Saul/Mike/Gus relationship at the time Saul first became Walt’s advisor — and for Better Call Saul to deal with at least some of that material meant that Lalo Salamanca simply ran out of road. We know Cranston and Paul will be reprising Walt and Jesse, and it seems much more likely that we’ll be seeing those characters in some kind of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead-style approach to the Breaking Bad era than that they’ll appear as nightmare visions to poor Gene from Cinnabon. So assume one episode, if not two, will be devoted to showing us what Saul was really up to in those years, since this show, and this episode, have made clear that he knew a lot more about Gus and Mike’s business than he ever let on to Walt. (More on that in a bit.) And the show absolutely needs at least one episode, if not more, for Jimmy and Kim to deal with the emotional aftermath of their role in Howard’s death, with their own future as a couple, with the state of Jimmy/Saul’s soul, etc.

[Editor's note: This interview contains spoilers from last night's episode of Better Call Saul, “Point And Shoot.” Please watch the episode before reading ...

We were excited that she knew who we were and that she liked the show. I just have to say that one thing I skipped over was just how incredible Bob and Rhea are in this episode. It was a very sad thing to say goodbye to Tony and say goodbye to Lalo. But we have to play by the rules that we’ve set out. And in fact, if Lalo didn’t have more that he wanted to know from Jimmy, I think Jimmy would be lying dead on the floor right next to Howard Hamlin. And there’s a moment where he’s looking into her eyes, and it feels like he’s not just relieved that she’s agreed to go, but is he almost assuming that this is goodbye? AVC: Going forward to the final episodes, Kim had this very important piece of information about Lalo still being alive, but she didn’t trust Jimmy enough to share it with him. The truth is that these two guys are now bound together, the way they will be on Breaking Bad. I mean, Mike has made his choice. And we know that Gus Fring is alive and well and doing business a few years later when we meet him on Breaking Bad. None of us saw how that could be possible if Lalo is still out there, with designs on getting revenge on Gus. And also, we had that line in Breaking Bad where Gus tells Hector that he’s the last surviving Salamanca. You have to dance with the one that brung you. This is one of the things that is such a struggle because we have a lot of characters on the show who are very smart. But we wanted desperately to find a way to have these two guys go face to face, which of course meant, and Lalo feels the same way, taking Mike out of the equation, at least for long enough for Lalo to get a look at the super lab. How did you come to the decision that the midseason premiere would conclude this chapter of Lalo vs. The A.V. Club: “Plan and Execution” ended with the shocker of Howard’s brutal, unexpected death, and Kim and Jimmy living out that horror show with Lalo’s appearance.

On "Better Call Saul," what happens with Jimmy and Kim, and Lalo and Gus Fring in episode "Point and Shoot"

Lalo killed Howard, and the saddest part is, that's inconsequential next to the knowledge that Gus killed Lalo by his own hand. Even the blocking of certain scenes has subtle purpose to it, as when Jimmy, gagged and bound to a chair, ends up falling over right by Howard's body, his head to Howard's feet. When the shooting stops, Gus walks over to where Lalo lays and stands regally over him as he takes his last breath. Gus showed up with a couple of men who Lalo easily dispenses with before he forces Gus to reveal the underground meth lab to him, filming everything to show to Don Eladio. Gus' martial preparedness for Lalo's ruse to take down the meth fortress is foretold in the brief credits sequence which, this week, shows a tarantula crawling out from beneath a tie. Some, as we've noted before, have been answered by the fact of a character's existence in "Breaking Bad." When he asks Kim how she came to be at his door, Kim tells him that it was supposed to be Jimmy, her husband, but he talked Lalo out of that, allowing her to go in his stead. He orders Jimmy to knock on the door and gun down Gus when he answers, then take a photo to bring back as evidence. But the audience knows Howard was murdered, who did it, and whose fault it is that Howard is dead instead of alive and reputationally battered, as Kim and Jimmy intended. If we didn't intimately know Gus Fring, his preparedness for Lalo might have come off as a bit too elegant and convenient to be plausible. Instead, as if to ease us back into this increasingly cruel examination of fate and consequences, he opens with a languid sweep across the sand. If we didn't know what happened to Howard, we might assume this to be evidence of a suicide, enacted in a picturesque setting.

Lalo Salamanca quickly became one of the greatest villains in "Better Call Saul" and he met a surprising fate in the opening episode of Season 6 Part 2.

This guy has to really believe that Lalo is coming back!' Also, Giancarlo is one of the greatest guys, and I love him," Dalton said. In the aftermath, Lalo forces Kim to go to Gus' home and kill him on his doorstep. I wrote it wrong.'" It's an honor to do this with you!'" But great stories have great villains, and you want to kill your villain, you know?

It's all been leading to this moment for Lalo Salamanca. His big confrontation with Gus plays out in 'Better Call Saul' season 6 episode 8.

While this episode is relatively light on Jimmy and Kim after the opening sequence, it is ultimately an hour detailing their moral decay and the consequences of their dealings with New Mexico’s foulest gangsters. It’s been Better Call Saul’s biggest question for a while now but with Lalo out the way, her future looks murkier. Lalo is pleased with his scheme while Gus retorts with a flowery putdown of the Cartel – and in particular the Salamanca family. At the end of ‘Point and Shoot’, Jimmy’s dodgy associate Mike tells them to go about their lives as normal. It’s here where you think we might finally see the end of Kim, who never appears or is mentioned in Breaking Bad. Surprisingly, she lives to see at least one more episode when it becomes clear that the assassination attempt is just a ruse by Lalo to infiltrate the laundromat and get Gus on his own. After dispatching his bodyguards, Lalo corners Gus in the tomb-like superlab.

Naturally, Saul was already terrified of Lalo because he witnessed him murder Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian) without batting an eyelash, but he also blamed ...

Everybody was so kind, and I was like, “I want to work like this all the time. Absolutely. On Hawkeye, I had a long mustache, but then I’d show up to [Better Call Saul’s] set and be like, “I can’t cut it that much because I have to go back to the other set.” So we’d still cut it, but then again, it probably would’ve been okay because Lalo was in a sewer. There’s so much blood!” I was covered in it, and the dirt on the ground of the lab was completely a puddle of mud. So after three weeks, the mustache would grow and it ended up working perfectly [for when I’d go back to Hawkeye]. On Hawkeye, they were ready to add more mustache just in case, but it would always be two or three weeks in between the two. I was like, “I thought I was going to go all the way till the end,” and they were like, “Nope! Still 608.” And I was like, “608? That’s it? Patrick is a wonderful human being, and I never had the chance to work with him until the end. I’ll see you in hell.’” Then Vince said, “The lights were off, you guys shot it out and he got you in the neck. If Gus beat Lalo at an arm-wrestling thing, I would’ve been like, “Damnit!” But the lights were off and we just shot guns. And now you’re just smiling because [Gus] got lucky.” And I said, “Alright!” So that’s what we did, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger. They called and said, “Hey listen, this is what happens, but first of all, you’re going to shit your pants over what happens before,” which ended up being Lalo killing Howard. They were really excited about it, and I was like, “Oh OK!” They were like, “Oh my god, you won’t believe what’s going to happen, and then you’re going to die.” (Laughs.) But I wanted to know how I was going to die, and they were like, “We can’t tell you.” And I was like, “C’mon, Vince! Tell me something. So what do you think was on Lalo’s mind as he smiled and laughed for the last time? Anything.” And he was like, “Alright, you take a lot of motherfuckers down before you die.” And I was like, “Alright, I’ll take it!

"Better Call Saul" often moves slowly, but the first of the show's final six episodes kicked off with a literal bang, pointing toward perhaps a greater ...

Gus also told him, as he stalled for time, about his intentions to kill those close to Lalo's uncle Hector Salamanca (Mark Margolis), whose long history with Gus paid off explosively in "Breaking Bad," adding yet another layer to that story line. "Point and Shoot" was a key step in laying that groundwork, including what's buried under the ground. Despite seemingly outsmarting Gus and his security team, Lalo made the common super-villain mistake of monologuing himself to death, giving Gus the opportunity to dim the lights, grab a gun and put an end to him.

Better Call Saul's mid-season finale came with a huge cliffhanger, which this week's Episode 8, “Point and Shoot,” finally solves.

After hearing Kim’s testimonial, Mike is convinced Lalo is holding Saul hostage at the apartment and decides to strike with all his strength. Gus distracts Lalo, asking to record a final message to Don Eladio and the Salamancas. Lalo knows Gus' admission would improve his video and lets Gus do his speech. Saul pledges to Lalo and asks the Salamanca leader to send Kim in his place. In order to punish Saul, Lalo orders the lawyer to kill Gus. He gives Saul the keys to his car and written instructions about how to get to Gus’ home. After tying Saul to a chair and gagging him, Lalo also leaves the apartment, promising to return and have a long talk about the betrayal he suffered in Mexico. The moment shows just how far down Kim has fallen, and that there might not be a road back to regular life for the lawyer. Kim follows Lalo’s instructions and is ready to pull the trigger when Gus’ door opens. Once the couple gets silent enough for Lalo to explain his plan, we soon realize that the Salamanca leader is determined to punish Saul for what he thinks is treason. Saul convinces Lalo that Kim would look less threatening when ringing Gus’ doorbell, which leads the Salamanca to change his plans. At the end of Episode 7, Lalo dragged Saul and Kim into his war against Gus. After shooting Howard in cold blood, Lalo says he got to talk with the couple. We knew, right at that moment, Lalo’s journey in Better Call Saul was getting close to its bloody end. The two stories came together in a gut-wrenching mid-season finale, in which we said our farewells to one of the best recurring Better Call Saul characters.

It's weird seeing Jimmy, aka Saul Goodman, as a ruthless lawyer who casually suggests killing anyone who becomes a hindrance — he also shamelessly flirts with ...

She dives deeper and deeper, resulting in my previous theory that Kim is the one Jimmy is attempting to evade in the future. Back at the Laundromat, Mike instructs Lalo and Howard’s corpses to be tossed in a hole dug in the giant laboratory. Lalo tosses Jimmy car keys and instructs he and Kim to drive to a quiet neighborhood with “plenty of options.” In the car there’s apparently a camera and gun, “and you’ll need both,” Lalo says calmly. Other shows like The Boys and even Game of Thrones rely on shock and awe to hold our attention. Lalo ties Jimmy to a chair and recounts how a bunch of men came into his house in the middle of the night and killed people he cared for – his housekeeper, his cook, etc. Mike tells Jimmy and Kim to sit. Gus calls one of his guards and instructs him to give Kim the phone. Or is this what convinces Mike that Gus is Jesse James? At any rate, this event brought the whole band together, but it’s fair to wonder if this is also what causes Kim to become more of a “silent partner” going forward. “I need you to act as store manager while I’m gone,” he says, and when we cut to our favorite chicken man, he’s getting medical attention in his home. My my, how the turn tables, Gus says to a dying Lalo. Our creepy antagonist dies laughing in a pool of his own blood as Gus stares him down remorselessly. She takes a slow stroll to the front door, rings the bell, points the gun, and is quickly attacked from behind. Unless it’s all for show — and, really, all of his talk of massages and murder could just be a staple to his public persona whilst the real Jimmy laughs with Kim from behind the curtains.

Vince Gilligan directs a playful, shocking episode that richly reconsiders a key setting from 'Breaking Bad.'

But the end of "Point and Shoot" is the real flourish. But burying Howard next to Lalo in the yet-unfinished Superlab is a perfect-on-every-level moment of nasty-funny artistic expression. It felt to me like the lowest form of fan service, the adult-prestige equivalent of a whole miniseries about almost finishing the Death Star. In 2018 I was still a bit of a Saul skeptic: I loved the show's legal explorations, but I was always worrying the Mike-Gus quadrant of the show was a little bit of Bad leg shown to fans who loved the Cousins and hated Mesa Verde. But I was wrong. "Point and Shoot" enriches the Superlab into a mythic space and makes it a potent symbol for the show itself. To this dexterous weaving of catastrophes, don't forget that the towering firm of Hamlin Hamlin & McGill is pretty well liquidated now, with both remaining name partners dead partially because of Jimmy's actions. Lalo (Tony Dalton) complains in "Point and Shoot," when Jimmy and Kim blather on trying to convince him that the other is the better assassin. He may have to live in fear of the Salamancas… and that's before he identity-swaps himself into the Midwest, living in fear of literally anyone recognizing him. Mike follows Lalo's decoy game, bringing a full contingent of Fring men to the Goodman apartment. In "Point and Shoot," Jimmy's ultimate plea is his complete lack of knowledge: "I don't know him!" This is all more or less news to Jimmy, who still has only a vague sense of the larger criminal forces swirling around him. Well, this whole season is clearly building to a Gus-Lalo climax is a thought I definitely had in mid-May. And the whole Superlab will go down in flames.

After receiving a Better Call Saul Emmy nomination, Bob Odenkirk reflects on near-death experience ahead of the final season episode airing.

“The strangest thing about it is that I really have no memory of that day,” says the actor, who has shared some details about the on-set incident in the lead-up to the final episodes. And probably about three quarters of the scene was shot before I had the heart attack, the day of the heart attack, and then the other quarter scene was after.” I gotta tell you, it’s a weird thing to have lost basically about a week and a half. And so they took care of me and I was able to do it, and hopefully you can’t tell when I had the heart attack and when I didn’t. Next week is the scene where I have the heart attack. “I’m really watching something that I don’t have any memory of acting in, which is a rare thing. Last July, Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk suffered a heart attack while filming an episode for the sixth and final season of the AMC show.

Ep 161: Creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould Reflect on the Terror, Process, and Lessons (from Breaking Bad) of Concluding a Series.

It’s something you wanna be cautious about because I don’t believe in establishing incredibly firm rules, because part of the goal is to have the look or the feel evolve, the show evolve, and to have each of the directors and each of the DPS and each of the camera operators and production designers make a contribution rather than feeling that they’re being confined by a set of rules. And that’s something we didn’t do a lot of on “Breaking Bad.” And part of the reason is something that we referred to earlier, which is “Breaking Bad” was primarily handheld and this show is primarily, the camera is moving smoothly if it’s moving. It’s a little bit like what we do on the story is to look back at what we’ve done before and try to learn from it. There are a lot of things that I felt that I needed in a script that once I actually see it on screen – I wish I could see this more ahead of time because we could make things much more simple, but sometimes you just have to see it and put it together to know that there’s one extra element that you don’t need. But, Peter had come in with, as I recall, kind of a lookbook for the show. Gilligan: As you’re running outta runway, as you’re trying to stick the landing – we had this feeling with “Breaking Bad” as well, where you say to yourself, “What are we missing? It’s a great moment for experimenting because, also, at that point, the episode is kind of birthed and you’ve seen it and the goal is to make it more of what it is already instead of trying to turn it into something else. “As you’re running outta runway, as you’re trying to stick the landing – we had this feeling with ‘Breaking Bad’ as well, where you say to yourself, ‘What are we missing? With the writers’ room long since closed, and the remaining five episodes in can, the two longtime collaborators reflected on the evolution of creation. You’d see what happened with Chuck or what happened with Lalo surviving the hail of bullets in Season 5. One key was to reverse engineer the dramatic collisions and consequences the series had been exploring for five seasons – an exercise rooted in the understanding of their characters, rather than plot. While on the Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast, co-creators Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan reflected what a different exercise it was for their writers’ room to map out the series’ final act.