Better Call Saul: Series Finale
And so it ends (with a pun in the title). I'm happy to declare above spoiler cut that it's a worthy finale.
Firstly, about the cameos - OMG Marie! Had not expected this one. Of course, Marie and Hank, like Saul himself, started out as simple comic relief characters in Breaking Bad and then aquired more and more dramatic gravitas until in the last season of BB, one's heart broke for them.
The flashbacks - Jimmy and Mike in the desert, Saul and Walt in the few days together on the run (aka in the last but one BB episode), Chuck and Jimmy shortly pre Better Call Saul pilot - were this time all on point and not just fanservice, with the time machine/regret question as the red thread connecting them. Mike changing his answer from his son's death to the first time he himself accepted a bribe is characteristic for his level of insight; what went wrong in his life started long before he got his son killed, and by acknowledging it, he accepts responsibility in a way that's characteristic for the way both shows do have a moral code. Walt first ranting about the scientific impossibility of time travel and then when finally answering what Saul really wants to know with his ongoing Gretchen-and-Elliot-grudge is just the most Walter White thing ever. And of course, our antihero himself refusing to answer (other than through hypothetical money schemes) until the big climax of the episode is very in character as well.
The Jimmy and Chuck flashback (complete with lantern and book "The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells) was perfect, not least because it came after the Saul-to-Jimmy speech/confession. What went wrong between them was Chuck's fault as much as Jimmy's, if not more so, but the moment Chuck died and Jimmy refused to deal with it, his Saulification kicked off in earnest, and so it makes sense that when Saul wants to return to being Jimmy again, he lists Chuck among his sins along with aiding and abetting Walt, and his part in Howard Hamlin's fate.
But much as Breaking Bad as a series would not have worked without the Walt and Jesse relationship at its core, and without Jesse as the second lead (as opposed to getting killed off early on like in the original plan), Better Call Saul at its heart had the Jimmy and Kim relationship, with Kim becoming the surprise and unplanned for second lead. As Better Call Saul, as opposed to Breaking Bad, was a story about lawyers (Jimmy, Kim, Chuck, Howard) before and above it was about gangsters, I did have an inkling the finale would quickly do away with the escape attempt and would not go for an action showdown. Instead, you have Gene one more time proving that if he wants to be, he's really the world's (second) best lawyer by negotiating the forces of government down from various life sentences to seven years. (Remember when Jimmy in the pilot negotiates his life and that of the two guys captured with him from being shot in the desert to only being wounded in the case of the two stooges.) But if it had ended there, the triumph would have been a hollow one, and it would have missed out the element that made the audience care about Jimmy McGill in a way it hadn't about Saul Goodman (or Gene Tarkovic). And so he learns that Kim had indeed done what he angrily (and not seriously) challenged her to do a month earlier, had made a full confession. And that changes everything for him one last time.
Incidentally, that's another thing why Gene-Saul-Jimmy bringing up Chuck in what is the show's last courtroom scene is important. Because otherwise, the question as to whether he decides to confess in earnest solely for Kim's sake would have been an open one. But, as the scene points out, what happened with Chuck wasn't a legal crime on Jimmy's part. It was, however, something that has burdened him (precisely because he refused to deal with it) ever since, and so his talking about it as well as about Walt and Howard shows he really does want to confront and confess all of it, to become Jimmy again. (It also answers what he refused to answer in the earlier flashbacks, about his regret(s) and what he'd change.) I don't think he'd been able to do it if Kim hadn't done it first. He'd have stuck to his triumph in lawyerly skills, those seven years, and felt smug and victorious and empty. But because she did it, he could do it, and finally stopped running. And thus he ends up in prison for real, but Kim returns to him, and their last scene together, echoing their first scene - that shared cigarette, leaning against the wall - proves a perfect wrap up for the way this series so unexpectedly became a bittersweet love story. (I had expected color to return to the series at this point, and while it didn't in a big way, it did in a small way - the flame from the lighter Kim lits for Jimmy and the glimming cigarette passing between them are in color. Which in retrospect feels like the right aesthetic choice. One big confession doesn't undo years of wrong doing (and human damage, which is why it's a good thing Marie showed up). But it does provide something of a heart regained, and some hope.
Now, Kim was never "solely" Jimmy's love interest. I can't make up my mind about whether her decison to moonlight in the Florida legal phone centre was simply about needing to find out whether or not she'd get prosecuted after her confession, or whether she wanted to end her self imposed moratorium on working in any way in the legal profession she once had loved and been so good at, or both. Kim, too, can't undo what she did, but because her own recognition of her responsibilities and consequences came unprompted by anyone else and earlier, I think the show not letting her go to prison and leaving it ambigous whether or not Cheryl Hamlin will indeed sue her (though given Cheryl is already "lawyer shopping", as a miffed Bill Oakley reports, the omens don't look good there) was the right narrative choice, too. Again, there's the Jesse parallel - she ends the show free, but emotionally scarred, and with the possibility of a worse future there just as the possibility of a better one is. And she's alive, contrary to all fears a great many viewers had from the beginning. The way it looks like, we won't return to the BB/BCS universe again, though then again... I hadn't expected El Camino, either. If Gould & Gilligan want to do a Kim Wexler movie at any point, this reviewer will certainly watch it! If not, though, I am at peace with leaving Kim who became my favourite character in this show rather early on the way the series does - and looking forward to fanfiction telling me what happens to her next.
Firstly, about the cameos - OMG Marie! Had not expected this one. Of course, Marie and Hank, like Saul himself, started out as simple comic relief characters in Breaking Bad and then aquired more and more dramatic gravitas until in the last season of BB, one's heart broke for them.
The flashbacks - Jimmy and Mike in the desert, Saul and Walt in the few days together on the run (aka in the last but one BB episode), Chuck and Jimmy shortly pre Better Call Saul pilot - were this time all on point and not just fanservice, with the time machine/regret question as the red thread connecting them. Mike changing his answer from his son's death to the first time he himself accepted a bribe is characteristic for his level of insight; what went wrong in his life started long before he got his son killed, and by acknowledging it, he accepts responsibility in a way that's characteristic for the way both shows do have a moral code. Walt first ranting about the scientific impossibility of time travel and then when finally answering what Saul really wants to know with his ongoing Gretchen-and-Elliot-grudge is just the most Walter White thing ever. And of course, our antihero himself refusing to answer (other than through hypothetical money schemes) until the big climax of the episode is very in character as well.
The Jimmy and Chuck flashback (complete with lantern and book "The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells) was perfect, not least because it came after the Saul-to-Jimmy speech/confession. What went wrong between them was Chuck's fault as much as Jimmy's, if not more so, but the moment Chuck died and Jimmy refused to deal with it, his Saulification kicked off in earnest, and so it makes sense that when Saul wants to return to being Jimmy again, he lists Chuck among his sins along with aiding and abetting Walt, and his part in Howard Hamlin's fate.
But much as Breaking Bad as a series would not have worked without the Walt and Jesse relationship at its core, and without Jesse as the second lead (as opposed to getting killed off early on like in the original plan), Better Call Saul at its heart had the Jimmy and Kim relationship, with Kim becoming the surprise and unplanned for second lead. As Better Call Saul, as opposed to Breaking Bad, was a story about lawyers (Jimmy, Kim, Chuck, Howard) before and above it was about gangsters, I did have an inkling the finale would quickly do away with the escape attempt and would not go for an action showdown. Instead, you have Gene one more time proving that if he wants to be, he's really the world's (second) best lawyer by negotiating the forces of government down from various life sentences to seven years. (Remember when Jimmy in the pilot negotiates his life and that of the two guys captured with him from being shot in the desert to only being wounded in the case of the two stooges.) But if it had ended there, the triumph would have been a hollow one, and it would have missed out the element that made the audience care about Jimmy McGill in a way it hadn't about Saul Goodman (or Gene Tarkovic). And so he learns that Kim had indeed done what he angrily (and not seriously) challenged her to do a month earlier, had made a full confession. And that changes everything for him one last time.
Incidentally, that's another thing why Gene-Saul-Jimmy bringing up Chuck in what is the show's last courtroom scene is important. Because otherwise, the question as to whether he decides to confess in earnest solely for Kim's sake would have been an open one. But, as the scene points out, what happened with Chuck wasn't a legal crime on Jimmy's part. It was, however, something that has burdened him (precisely because he refused to deal with it) ever since, and so his talking about it as well as about Walt and Howard shows he really does want to confront and confess all of it, to become Jimmy again. (It also answers what he refused to answer in the earlier flashbacks, about his regret(s) and what he'd change.) I don't think he'd been able to do it if Kim hadn't done it first. He'd have stuck to his triumph in lawyerly skills, those seven years, and felt smug and victorious and empty. But because she did it, he could do it, and finally stopped running. And thus he ends up in prison for real, but Kim returns to him, and their last scene together, echoing their first scene - that shared cigarette, leaning against the wall - proves a perfect wrap up for the way this series so unexpectedly became a bittersweet love story. (I had expected color to return to the series at this point, and while it didn't in a big way, it did in a small way - the flame from the lighter Kim lits for Jimmy and the glimming cigarette passing between them are in color. Which in retrospect feels like the right aesthetic choice. One big confession doesn't undo years of wrong doing (and human damage, which is why it's a good thing Marie showed up). But it does provide something of a heart regained, and some hope.
Now, Kim was never "solely" Jimmy's love interest. I can't make up my mind about whether her decison to moonlight in the Florida legal phone centre was simply about needing to find out whether or not she'd get prosecuted after her confession, or whether she wanted to end her self imposed moratorium on working in any way in the legal profession she once had loved and been so good at, or both. Kim, too, can't undo what she did, but because her own recognition of her responsibilities and consequences came unprompted by anyone else and earlier, I think the show not letting her go to prison and leaving it ambigous whether or not Cheryl Hamlin will indeed sue her (though given Cheryl is already "lawyer shopping", as a miffed Bill Oakley reports, the omens don't look good there) was the right narrative choice, too. Again, there's the Jesse parallel - she ends the show free, but emotionally scarred, and with the possibility of a worse future there just as the possibility of a better one is. And she's alive, contrary to all fears a great many viewers had from the beginning. The way it looks like, we won't return to the BB/BCS universe again, though then again... I hadn't expected El Camino, either. If Gould & Gilligan want to do a Kim Wexler movie at any point, this reviewer will certainly watch it! If not, though, I am at peace with leaving Kim who became my favourite character in this show rather early on the way the series does - and looking forward to fanfiction telling me what happens to her next.