And suddenly it was over. Someone turned the corner and the camera hung on a bare wall for a moment. credits. Abruptly, in the style of the series. And abruptly, because we’ve been around since 2008, when the first episode of Breaking Bad aired, are in the world of this series. Better Call Saul ends in style with an episode (the thirteenth of the sixth season) that takes us back in time in some striking flashbacks, followed by a brilliant twist that left Bob Odenkirk’s masterly played lawyer-cum-conman just in the right place. To quote gymnastics commentator Hans van Zetten about a legendary gold medal: ‘He’s standing and I’m standing, it’s unprecedented!’
Of course, it had always been a question of whether the creators (Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould) overplayed their hand when they Breaking Bad (one of the top series from the golden series after all) announced a prequel around a colorful minor character from the adventures of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, newcomers to the crystal meth market of Albuquerque, New Mexico. But right in the first scene of Better Call Saul Turns out the creators were planning a timeline game that went way beyond a prequel.
We found ourselves in a black and white future, in the years after the dramatic conclusion of Breaking Bad, when our favorite shady lawyer has gone into hiding as the manager of a Cinnabon, the well-known cinnamon roll giant. This elderly shy man went through life as Gene, to whom we would not return until the final episodes of the sixth season.
Like Breaking Bad went Better Call Saul about the choices you have to make in life; about the moral direction you can choose. Former chemistry teacher Walter White started his drug empire thinking he had to provide for his family, but that soon turned out to be a flimsy excuse. He finally had to admit that his criminal alter ego (under the name Heisenberg) fit him perfectly.
We learned Saul Goodman halfway through Breaking Bad know as a bad business lawyer who could talk from every corner. In Better Call Saul (originally the slogan with which he promoted his business on local television) we get to know three versions of the same man. After the flash forward to the Gene of Cinnabon, we return to the time when Saul was just the young lawyer Jimmy McGill, weighed down by the fact that his older brother was a star lawyer who looked down on his fling. This certainly played a part in how he, with his partner in crime and later husband Kim (the wonderful Rhea Seehorn), slowly started to wander, until there seemed to be no turning back.
In that final episode, everything comes together and our hero is faced with the choice of becoming Gene, Saul, or Jimmy again. Over the past few weeks, a pointless online debate has started or Better Call Saul was not ultimately the superior series, the prequel that does better than the original, the Godfather Part II under the series. But especially the last episode, in which all timelines come together in the most unexpected way, indicated that creator Vince Gilligan saw both series mainly as two variants on the same theme.
A statue of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman has just been unveiled in Albuquerque; maybe now it’s time for a statue of Saul Goodman too.
Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 13
Drama
★★★★
A series by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould.
With Bob Odenkirk, Rhea Seehorn, Jonathan Banks.
To be seen on Netflix.