In the “Better Call Saul” recap, Jimmy and Kim deal with the fallout from Lalo’s return as he seeks vengeance on Gus Fring…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Considering how cold and calculating Gustavo Fring has been throughout “Better Call Saul,” it’s almost impossible to imagine he would let Walter White and eventually Hector Salamanca get under his skin so badly in “Breaking Bad.”
That being said, Gus Fring is always thinking in four-dimensional chess terms, looking to out maneuver his opponents long before they even realize what game is being played. Walter White eventually becomes his equal but prior to their first encounter, it was Lalo Salamanca who desperately tried to put Gus into checkmate as they battled for supremacy in the Mexican drug cartel run by Don Eladio.
Of course, Don Eladio never seemed like the smartest guy in the room — just the one with the most power and an organization filled with people too afraid to oppose him — but Lalo really did appear to be the person best suited to match wits with Gus Fring. Sadly because Lalo never appears in “Breaking Bad” and Gus doesn’t meet his demise until sometime later, it was already evident who was going to walk out of this rivalry alive.
Still the masterful way “Better Call Saul” creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould put the pieces on the board leading to this final showdown between Gus and Lalo was nothing short of genius. The only sad part is Lalo was doomed to fail but it didn’t make the ride getting there any less glorious.
When “Better Call Saul” ended with a mid-season finale, Lalo had returned to the United States and realized getting to Gus Fring but more importantly proving that he was building a drug lab against cartel wishes was going to be far harder than expected. So rather than continue to toil away in an underground bunker keeping an eye on the laundry where Gus has been quietly building a lab that Walter White will run one day, Lalo decided to strike at him in a completely different way.
The first move was Lalo showing up unexpectedly as Jimmy and Kim’s apartment and putting a bullet in Howard Hamlin’s brain only because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Howard is nothing more than collateral damage because Lalo didn’t go see his lawyer because he learned that Jimmy betrayed him — but rather it was just another setup as he sought to reveal the truth about Gus Fring once and for all.
The new episode picks up just seconds after Howard’s lifeless body hit the floor so with that said let’s recap the latest installment of “Better Call Saul” titled “Point and Shoot”…
This Never Happened
The shock of watching Lalo Salamanca execute Howard Hamlin for no other reason than standing in the wrong place at the wrong time is still washed all over Jimmy and Kim’s faces when the episode begins.
All season long, Kim had decided that Howard Hamlin needed to be taken down several notches and she planned to ruin his reputation while also hoping to force a settlement in the Sandpiper Crossing lawsuit, which would then fund her pro-bono law practice helping those who couldn’t afford a $500 per hour attorney. This time it was Jimmy who went along for the ride despite his initial objections but the payoff was still pretty sweet, especially considering the millions he stood to earn from the settlement.
Sadly a plan to tear down Howard ended with him confronting his former employees only for Jimmy to discover in the worst way possible that his former client Lalo Salamanca was still very much alive and well. Kim already knew that Lalo was still a threat because Mike Ehrmantraut told her as much but she declined to share that information with her husband.
Now with Howard’s lifeless body lying on the floor with blood pouring out of the moon roof that Lalo just put into his head, Jimmy and Kim are horrified by what might come next.
Jimmy pleads that he never betrayed Lalo but none of this has anything to do with what unfolded in the desert when the man who becomes Saul Goodman went to retrieve his bail money. Instead, Lalo is just using Jimmy and Kim as a means to an end — and because they are the most convenient people who obviously fear him yet he doesn’t expect them to have any real ties to his true enemy, Gustavo Fring.
While that’s not exactly true, Lalo’s confirmed return to the United States put Mike on high alert, which meant pulling his security team away from watching Jimmy and Kim to instead keep full focus on Gus.
That plan backfires spectacularly with Lalo showing up at Jimmy and Kim’s apartment, shooting Howard dead and now demanding the husband and wife duo to help him carry out the next part of his plan.
Lalo tells Jimmy that he’s going to take his car, drive to a local neighborhood, arrive at a house at the end of a cul-de-sac, pull out a gun hidden in the glove compartment, walk up to the door and knock. When the person answers the door — Lalo describing Gus Fring as somebody who looks like “a librarian” — Jimmy will unload every bullet until his rival is dead and then the lawyer will use a camera to document that his job was really completed.
If Jimmy finishes in time, he’ll return home and find Kim completely unharmed.
Immediately, Jimmy begins arguing that Kim should be the one to do the job because no stranger is going to answer a door to some random guy this late at night without his suspicions being raised. Instead, Jimmy believes sending Kim to that front door won’t arouse nearly as many issues, which means the person inside will open the door and get shot dead.
Perhaps out of pure frustration of listening to Jimmy talk so much, Lalo concedes to let Kim go in his place but he instructs Mrs. Saul Goodman that she has one hour to finish the job or he’ll turn her into a widow.
Kim scurries out of the apartment, jumps in Lalo’s car and prepares for the drive that will inevitably take her to Gus Fring’s front door.
As for Jimmy, he gets zip-tied to a chair with a gag in his mouth as Lalo turns up the TV to max volume to ensure the neighbors don’t hear his muffled cries for help. He then snatches Jimmy’s car keys and leaves the apartment to embark on the next part of his real mission.
When Kim finally arrives at Gus’ house, she’s understandably terrified but with Jimmy’s life on the line, she pulls the gun from the glove compartment and heads to the front door. She rings the bell and steps back with the intention of shooting whoever opens the door.
Before she can pull the trigger, Mike rushes into the scene and stops Kim from shooting anybody before bringing her inside the house.
Kim soon realizes the house was under surveillance for this very reason just in case somebody showed up to shoot the occupant but more importantly she’s enraged that Lalo Salamanca returned and Mike’s promise that she and Jimmy would be in no danger has been broken. With little time to spare, Mike arms up his troops and heads out to Jimmy’s apartment where he expects to find Lalo while Gus stays behind with a small garrison of men to keep watch on him.
As the cars tear out of the cul-de-sac even more security forces leave the industrial laundromat to join Mike on his hunt for Lalo. Parked in Jimmy’s car across the street from the laundry where Gus has been secretly building his super lab is none other than Lalo, who was only using the alleged assassination attempt as a distraction so he could finally find his way inside.
Back at Gus’ house, he keep staring at a terrified Kim waiting for news across the street when he places a call to his security forces inside. He asks to speak to Kim so he can get a few more details on her interaction with Lalo.
When Kim reveals that Jimmy talked Lalo into sending her instead of him, which she believes was an act of protection from a husband for a wife, Gus realizes something much different.
Gus knows that Lalo is determined and unyielding in his thirst for vengeance and that means he wouldn’t let anybody talk him into or out of anything unless he already had an ulterior motive. A second later, Gus hangs up the phone, grabs the remaining security guards and heads towards the laundromat where he expects to find Lalo waiting for him.
Like clockwork, Gus arrives at the site of his future super lab and he notices an exhaust fan that isn’t running, which he immediately assumes was Lalo’s point of entry. Before he can say anything, Lalo guns down his security team and then puts the gun on Gus and it appears his minutes are numbered — but obviously we know he’ll survive.
It seems Lalo’s plan isn’t as simple as just executing Gus Fring — as much as he might want to pull that trigger. Instead, Lalo needs to prove Gus has betrayed the cartel, which is the only way he’ll get the green light to kill his rival without having the cartel turn on him as well.
So Lalo orders Gus to give him a tour of the super lab as he’s filming a video that will then be sent to Don Eladio as proof of his betrayal. When Gus balks for a second at revealing the location of his lab, Lalo puts a bullet into his chest and even with body armor, that still stings a whole lot.
Gus finally leads Lalo into the super lab, which is even more impressive than he imagined as he rattles off all the facts about how it was build following his encounter with Werner Ziegler’s former employee in Germany.
Once downstairs, Gus prepares to put a bullet into Gus for his betrayal but not before the “Chicken Man” has one last word. He asks for a moment to say something to Don Eladio and Lalo allows him the time as Gus viciously insults the cartel leader but really he’s just stalling for time.
Gus is putting himself into position to kick out an electrical wire that will turn out the lights and give him just enough time to grab a gun he planted down in the super lab earlier in the season. This moment happened a few episodes back when Gus did a tour of the super lab while being convinced that this is where Lalo would finally strike at him so he left a gun on a bulldozer wheel just in case a situation like this ever happened.
Being paranoid and cautious definitely paid off as Gus grabs the gun and exchanges fire with Lalo in the pitch black dark. When Gus arises to turn the lights back on again, he’s been shot in the side but Lalo took a bullet in the neck and he’s bleeding out.
Gus stands over the man who came closest to killing him (up to this point anyways) as he watches Lalo spurt out blood with his final breath while still maintaining a maniacal smile on his face until death finally greets him.
Back at Jimmy’s apartment, Mike arrives to free him and that’s where he learns about Lalo leaving just after Kim went on her mission to kill Gus. He figures out rather quickly that this was all a diversion, which takes him to the laundromat where he scalds Gus for acting on his instincts without at least informing him first about the plan.
Either way, Lalo has been eliminated but Gus still took a bullet in the process and Mike’s elaborate scheme to keep his boss safe ultimately failed.
Mike then returns to the apartment with Kim in tow as she embraces Jimmy after they realize this nightmare is almost at an end. Before they can breathe a sigh of relief, Mike sits them down to explain what’s going to happen next.
Mike is going to stuff Howard’s body into their refrigerator — he brought them a nice stainless steel replacement — and then he’s going to have one of his guys drive Howard’s car a few states away where authorities will eventually find it parked near the ocean. Mike will plant cocaine in the front seat, which further implicates that Howard was on drugs — just as Kim and Jimmy had always intended.
The idea is that police will assume that Howard took his own life and the body will never be found because he dove into the ocean to kill himself. When police finally contact Jimmy and Kim because somebody surely saw Howard’s Jaguar parked outside for several hours, they’re meant to say that their former boss came to visit them and left but that’s the last they ever saw him.
Howard’s body will never be retrieved or found because he ends up sharing a shallow grave alongside the man who murdered him with Lalo Salamanca also being buried in a hole deep inside the super lab.
Mike instructs Jimmy and Kim to go about their normal business to prevent suspicious being raised and from this moment forward they are to pretend that this entire ordeal never happened. It’s the only way to guarantee they both stay safe, alive and out of harm’s way.
They agree but just before getting ready for work that day, Jimmy spots Howard’s lifeless body being loaded into the refrigerator, which will serve as one last stop before his final resting place. Jimmy and Kim are understandably shocked and horrified at everything that’s just happened to them and with five episodes remaining in the series, the repercussions from this event will likely shape where these characters end up.
We already know Jimmy’s moral compass gets buried because he ends up working hand in hand with Walter White as he builds a meth empire but Kim Wexler never appears in “Breaking Bad” so her future remains a mystery. It seems highly unlikely that she’s going to die, especially considering the body count that’s already racked up Nacho Varga and Lalo Salamanca this season but anything is possible.
Plus we still have to learn what happens to Gene Takovic — the Cinnabon manager from Nebraska, who was suddenly recognized as former attorney Saul Goodman — during a lunch break at the mall.
“Better Call Saul” will return for a new episode next Monday night at 9 p.m. ET on AMC.
