In the “Better Call Saul” recap, Jimmy and Kim try to move forward after tragedy struck too close to home…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
The dominoes have been falling fast in the latest episodes of “Better Call Saul” and with only a few weeks to go until the finale, a lot of questions are being answered.
Many of the characters who never appeared in “Breaking Bad” have already been taken off the board and as expected, most of them were killed because that’s just how the life of gangsters and drug dealers often end — Nacho Varga’s father will tell you as much.
But perhaps the biggest lingering question still hanging over “Better Call Saul” heading into these last stretch of episodes was the fate of Kim Wexler.
Kim had been such an important part of the series since the very beginning and she eventually became Jimmy McGill’s wife, which further complicated how exactly she disappeared before Saul Goodman became synonymous with his strip mall law firm that eventually doubles as a business office for Walter White’s meth empire.
The latest episode offered those answers in what could possibly be the most heartbreaking 15 minutes this series has ever unraveled as Kim said her goodbyes (although it’s entirely possible we see her again before the show is over).
Meanwhile, Gustavo Fring starts to get back to normal life now that the greatest threat to his life has been eliminated, which we all know eventually leads to his own drug-dealing kingdom in Albuquerque. Of course, not everyone involved with Gus Fring gets away clean — not even his right hand Mike Ehrmantraut, who finally has to deal with some guilt of his own this week after realizing he did everything possible but just couldn’t save Nacho Varga from the fate he met earlier this season.
With that said, let’s get into our full recap for the latest episode of “Better Call Saul” titled “Fun and Games”…
Back to Reality
Under Mike’s instructions to treat the day like any other, Jimmy heads into his office where he’s putting up signage that says “Saul Goodman and Associates,” which we all know eventually gets changed to the infamous “Better Call Saul” logo that appears in “Breaking Bad.”
Kim also goes back to court to defend her clients while doing the best job possible to ignore the fact that a cartel clean-up crew is currently disposing of Howard Hamlin’s body and ensuring the apartment she shares with Jimmy looks as good as new before they return home that night. Mike is meticulous with returning the apartment to appear as it once was before Lalo Salamanca returned and Howard Hamlin was murdered.
On the surface, everything looks as normal as can be but inside both Jimmy and Kim are struggling to put to words what exactly happened over the past 24 hours.
Howard was shot and killed as collateral damage by Lalo.
Kim was ordered to kill a man later discovered to be Gus Fring.
And Jimmy was left tied to a chair in his apartment wondering what was happening to his wife while staring into the hollow, dead eyes of the man he helped set up as a drug addict in order to close out a lawsuit that would earn him a seven-figure payday.
After a hard day at work, Jimmy and Kim return home to find a pristine apartment that didn’t look anywhere close to the blood bath they left that morning. The couple quickly gather up some belongings and head to a local hotel for the night because there’s no chance they’d be sleeping in the same place after what transpired there hours earlier.
At the hotel, Jimmy does his best to assure Kim that they’ll eventually move beyond this tragedy. As each day passes, things will start to feel more and more normal and then one day they’ll wake up and forget that it ever happened.
As unlikely as it seems that’s true, Jimmy is doing his best to convince himself as much as he’s trying to do the same for Kim.
Back to normal for Gus Fring is much different than the guilt currently consuming Jimmy and Kim because burying Howard Hamlin next to Lalo Salamanca in a grave beneath an industrial laundry that will one day house his own super meth lab was cathartic for him.
He’s no longer looking over his shoulder because the biggest threat to his life and his business have been eliminated. We all know Gus’ seemingly lifelong rivalry with the Salamanca family along with the association he builds with Walter White will eventually be his undoing but for now he can finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Before he can return to business as usual, Gus first has to take a trip to Mexico where he meets with bloated pig Don Eladio — Gus’ words, not mine — to sit down over a grievance raised by Hector Salamanca in the wake of his nephew Lalo’s disappearance.
Hector insists that Lalo wasn’t killed in the raid at his home and he was gathering evidence that proved Gus Fring was behind it all. Hector says that the lies about a Peruvian rival hiring Nacho Varga to take out Lalo was nothing but an elaborate lie orchestrated by Gus and that the “Chicken Man” despises Don Eladio and would see them all dead if he has his way.
But Don Eladio knows that there’s no proof to any of this even if he might like to believe Hector’s claims about Gus.
Nobody saw Lalo alive again and the only person who spoke to him was Hector. There was a charred body left in the ruins of Lalo’s house that was later identified as his body and Nacho confessed to his involvement with the Peruvians, which was backed up by the bank statements discovered in his home safe (the ones planted there by Mike on behalf of Gus).
In other words, Don Eladio can’t just execute Gus because Hector is convinced that he apparently had Lalo killed twice. It doesn’t help matters much that Hector’s constant bell ringing is getting on Don Eladio’s last nerve so he sends the old man to bed and shares a word with Gus before sending him back to the states.
Don Eladio confesses that he saw hate in Gus’ eyes when his name was discussed — an accusation that Hector levied against his rival — but that doesn’t seem to bother him all that much. Don Eladio tells Gus that a little bit of hate is OK as long as he never forgets who’s the boss.
He retires for the evening as Gus takes a look down into the pool where he’ll eventually see Don Eladio’s dead body floating on the surface after poisoning and finally killing the cartel leader during the events in “Breaking Bad.”
Gus leaves the meeting very much alive with instructions that he’ll continue to run the north territory while the Salamancas will control the south but more than anything Don Eladio wants this fighting between them to stop. It’s just not good for business.
A Reckoning
When Gus returns home, he’s finally able to rest because he’s no longer concerned that Lalo is gunning for him. He opens up all the windows to his house and breathes a sigh of relief that the most sizable threat to him and his business has been eliminated.
Gus then meets with Mike to instruct him to find a new engineer who can get back to work on the super lab because he wants that up and running sooner rather than later. Mike agrees before heading back to his own home to put the events of the day behind him.
As he attempts to relax and watch a baseball game, Mike realizes that he’s got some unfinished business of his own that needs tending to.
So he heads out for the night to pay a visit to Manuel Varga, who is stitching together upholstery in his shop. Mike gives him a call and then meets with Manuel outside where he shares the news that his son Nacho will never be coming home again.
Mike promises that Nacho’s death was quick and painless — he even confesses that he was there to see it happen — but there was nothing he could do to stop it despite his best efforts. Mike really did seem to want Nacho free of this life but Gus just couldn’t let him go after getting a hook into him.
In an attempt to give Nacho’s father some peace of mind, Mike tells him that the Salamancas will no longer be a problem and justice is coming for them. But Manuel wants to hear none of it — justice just meets revenge and it’s a never ending cycle of blood and death.
That’s all a gangster knows and it’s why Manuel could no longer be associated with his son because he knew deep down that Nacho wasn’t a good man anymore. That’s a gut punch to Mike because in this moment he remembered all those days as a cop when he had to tell family members that their loved one had been killed but he would personally seek justice for them.
Mike obviously intended to do the same for Nacho but his father wants no part of it.
As for Gus, he spends his evening returning to a restaurant where he’s been a regular customer in the past as he sits to have a glass of wine by himself at the bar.
The real reason for his visit is revealed later when a restaurant manager named David comes out to pay him a visit and share with him a funny story about an expensive bottle of wine opened earlier that evening by a customer desperately trying to impress his date. The man was clearly not a connoisseur of fine wine because he couldn’t stand the taste and instead ordered a rum and Diet Coke.
David then offers Gus some of that expensive wine while telling him stories about the time he visited Europe and ended up near a village where this particular vintage was made. Gus hangs on every word, enthralled by the story that David is telling him.
At one point, Gus even mentions that he sought out a particular bottle of wine based on another of David’s stories and he was waiting to share it with somebody on a special occasion. David tells him he hopes to hear that story one day but it’s clear Gus was hinting that they should share it together.
When David is pulled away by work for a moment, Gus’ smile fades away into a more familiar grimace as he pays his bill and tells the bartender to inform David that he’s been called away.
In “Breaking Bad,” it was insinuated that Gus was gay and his former partner was the love of his life until Hector Salamanca discovered what they were to each other and had him killed. That’s the origin behind Gus’ hatred for the Salamanca clan not to mention Don Eladio for essentially ordering it all to happen.
It’s never explicitly stated that Gus is actually gay but the scene with David at the restaurant all but confirms it even as his resolve is tested yet again when he walks away from the encounter because the life of a drug kingpin is an awfully lonely one. It seems that Gus is resigned to solitude, especially after what happened to his partner and he doesn’t appear willing to invite anybody else to share a life with him.
For all the power he amasses until his eventual demise, Gus Fring is very much alone in this world.
As for Jimmy and Kim, they return to normal life for them can’t happen until they say their final goodbyes to Howard Hamlin at a wake being held at his lawfirm. Jimmy and Kim already talked to the cops and confessed that Howard came to see them but he left enraged and that’s the last they saw of him until his car was discovered near a beach where a body was never found.
The police are convinced — much like Mike intended — that Howard went on a coke fueled binge before killing himself by walking into the ocean.
At his wake, Jimmy and Kim run into plenty of familiar faces including Rich Schweikart, who shares the news that Howard’s lawfirm is being downsized and moving. It seems following his death, the remaining attorneys decided to get rid of the current building, relocated into smaller offices and change the name of the firm.
Considering all of the Hamlin’s and Chuck McGill are dead, there’s no reason to continue moving forward with a practice called Hamlin, Hamlin and McGill.
Upstairs, Jimmy and Kim approach Howard’s wife Cheryl to pay their respects but she’s not interested in playing a grieving widow but rather getting the bottom of her husband’s death. She doesn’t buy that he suddenly became a drug addict and Cheryl knows Howard was at odds with Jimmy in the weeks leading up to his disappearance.
Jimmy does his best to deflect while attempting to be kind to Cheryl but Kim isn’t pulling any punches because this is the only way to put this entire horrible ordeal to bed.
She tells Cheryl a story about a night she visited the lawfirm and saw Howard snorting something off his desk. The next day when they ran into each other at court, neither of them said a word about it as if it never happened and Kim says she never told anyone about it until now.
Kim then sticks the dagger into the heart when she says it’s impossible to believe because if anybody would have known about Howard’s drug problem it would have been Cheryl. Her jab comes thanks to knowledge that Howard and Cheryl were estranged in the months before his death, which is just a way to twist the knife because truthfully his wife probably wasn’t paying all that much attention to his behavior because she essentially didn’t care at the time.
Remember a few episodes back when Howard did his best to extend an olive branch and Cheryl just brushed him away.
Now Cheryl is facing the painful reality that maybe she didn’t know Howard all that well, especially after his friend Cliff Main refuses to call Kim a liar for the accusations about drug abuse. Cliff personally saw what he believed was Howard unraveling, although it was actually an elaborate ruse orchestrated by Jimmy and Kim to cause his downfall.
After dropkicking Ms. Hamlin to the curb, Jimmy and Kim leave the wake and share a moment in the garage where they used to sneak away for a cigarette when she was still working at HHM. Before leaving, Kim plants a passionate kiss on Jimmy before jumping in her own car to drive away.
Like Poison
The next day at court, Kim files a motion with the judge to be recused from the case she had been vehemently arguing. When the judge pushes back and attempts to discover why Kim can’t try the case, she balks and says it’s personal.
That’s not good enough for the judge, who insists he needs a better reason that “just because” to hand over Kim’s client to a new attorney.
Forced to reveal her hand, Kim drops a bombshell that she’s no longer an attorney.
It seems Kim spoke to the Bar Association in New Mexico and withdrew her license to practice law in the state so she can’t legally represent her client any longer.
That night, Kim smokes out on the balcony when she sees Jimmy tear into the parking lot before staring back up at her as he rushes to the apartment. Inside, Jimmy is shocked to discover the news he heard at the courthouse was real — Kim is done being a lawyer but he still can’t quite believe it.
Jimmy feels like this is just an overreaction to what happened with Howard and Kim needs to take a beat to think about what she’s doing before it can’t be undone. Jimmy knows that Kim can take this back because being a lawyer was something she loved but it seems that’s no longer enough in any facet in her life.
When Jimmy suggests packing their bags and getting a fresh start in a new place, he storms into the bedroom to discover Kim is already one step ahead of him. She’s already got boxes taped up and suitcases filled except she’s not helping them move to a new home — Kim is leaving Jimmy.
“We are bad for everyone around us. Other people suffer because of us. Apart we’re OK but together we’re poison.”
~ Kim Wexler
Kim finally realized that it wasn’t that being around Jimmy brought out the worst in her — it’s that they brought out the worst in each other. Even when it looked like she was going to finally get what she always wanted with a job that would allow her to represent indigent clients, Kim threw it all away because she so badly wanted to finish the scheme she put together to bring down Howard Hamlin.
Being with Jimmy was more fun than she could even imagine but Kim is finally done being consumed by her own enjoyment, especially after that insatiable thirst led to someone’s death.
Jimmy does his best to talk Kim out of the decision but she’s already made up her mind. She’s leaving law and her marriage to Jimmy McGill behind as Kim attempts to resurrect herself in a different life far away from the one she built with him.
It all comes crumbling down as the woman he loves leaves him for good and Kim’s exit also tears down whatever remaining wall of morality he had left between Jimmy McGill and the corrupt lawyer he would soon become known as Saul Goodman.
Fast forward to that garish mansion we saw earlier in the season except now it’s prime time for Saul Goodman, who is far removed from the man we’ve known as Jimmy McGill for the better part of six seasons.
Saul wakes up with a strange woman sharing his bed as he heads off to shower while preparing for his day while speaking to his receptionist Francesca over the phone. He picks out his loud suit and fixes arguably the most laughably bad combover in the history of hair.
Saul sends his date off with a breakfast bar before heading into his office, which has now been completely remade with the giant “Better Call Saul” sign, the cold waiting room with a plexiglass window that Francesca sits behind and the gaudy wallpaper decorating his office where he meets with clients from a wide variety of professions.
This is the moment when Jimmy McGill is dead and buried. Long live, Saul Goodman.
Of course, the transformation was inevitable but the tragic way it all happened made this particular episode one of the saddest installments of “Better Call Saul” to date. For all the slick fast-talking ways that Saul navigated in and out of trouble of “Breaking Bad” was all accelerated from this moment in time.
Kim’s exit ushered in Saul Goodman’s arrival.
Only four episodes remain in “Better Call Saul” and there’s still ground to cover including what happened with Gene in Omaha after his true identity was finally revealed not to mention the eventual return of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman for at least a small visit before this series says goodbye for good.
“Better Call Saul” returns next Monday night at 9 p.m. for a new episode on AMC.
