[ad_1]
Better Call Saul Season Four has come to an end. A review of "Winner," the final season, coming up just as soon as I get by with one nipple …
"You made a mistake, and they are never forgetting it. As far as they are concerned, your mistake, that's who you are. "-Jimmy
And here he is: Saul Goodman.
Goal is not good, man.
"Winner" takes us to a moment we would never have expected. Back then, the audience, the writers and Kim Wexler had not all fallen in love with Jimmy McGill. Saul Goodman was fun, and inevitable. Who, we might have wondered back then, could we have gone to Saul where was Saul? Even Peter Gould (who co-wrote the finale with Thomas Schnauz) and Vince Gilligan, who is scheduled to go to Goodman by the end of Season One, if not sooner. But then Jimmy charmed the pants Better Call Saul became not a breaking Bad bonus feature, but a kind of parallel tragedy to the original show. Walter White was a man of the world believed to be good, only for circumstance, arrogance and sheer force of will to reveal the truth that it was always hiding underneath that beige wardrobe. Jimmy McGill, on the other hand, was a man of the world believed to be bad, despite his tremendous capacity for decency and self-sacrifice. And that continued skepticism combined with his own abundant flaws to become a self-fulfilling prophecy: he opted to live down to everyone's lowest expectations of him. Like Walt's transformation into Heisenberg, Jimmy becoming more of a hit, and we are all very fortunate that the creative team has made this happen.
The final concludes with Jimmy becoming Saul officially, following through on his last week's observation that it's the name of the customer. But he seems to be Saul Goodman in spirit by that point. He has been, really, ever since the bar association rejected his first time, with the worst possible insult you could be a dishonest dishonest man who's really hard to be honest: "insincere."
The hour (85 minutes with commercials) is one more Viktor and Giselle con. (Jimmy's continued grievance on the subject of Jimmy's grievances) Chuck. Jimmy became an attorney in the first place, with Chuck convincingly feigning enthusiasm about the whole affair. The brothers wind up on a karaoke rendition of ABBA's "Winner Takes It All." It's a funny scene, especially when the reluctant Chuck seizes the mic of his little brother to show off his vocals (*).
(*) Michael McKean, you have heard, was in a band ounce.
But it's so profoundly sad, but because the duet shows how close they are Could have been. If Chuck could have accepted Jimmy's wind up working at HHM, he helps Chuck through to the other side of his Jimmy often dreamed about. Chuck did, as he often insisted, love his brother – just not in the pure, completely unforgiving that Jimmy may have required. Chuck does not want to stay for karaoke, but he does, and he has a great time. He does not want to spend the night at Jimmy's little apartment, but he does because he knows his brother needs – and, more importantly, deserves – a big breakfast tomorrow. For that matter, he is aghast at the idea of Slippin 'Jimmy with a law degree, but he stands up and acts proud at the bar ceremony. It's a great day and night between the brothers, in a lifetime when they were at odds more often than not. ABBA song, and you wish, Jimmy often did it, but it could be that all time.
Things went in different directions for both of them, tragically. So the Jimmy who cries against Chuck's enormous headstone, or who hides out of the reading room, or who takes that long pause while reading The part of him capable of grievance or guilt over Chuck died in Kim's living room in the season premiere. Jimmy is counting to himself and muttering "watermelon pickles" at the cemetery, and both there and at the reception, he checks in with Kim on the process of fooling these saps into believing that he's sad. As a contrast, we see Jimmy fulfilling his role on the board for Chuck's new scholarship and arguing vigorously on behalf of a candidate, Kristy, whom the other board members dismissed as to "the shoplifter." Jimmy's speeches on behalf of someone who made mistakes made to move them to the world. of his sincerity and goodness.
But we also know how much this issue has been resolved. Howard, who has always had a soft spot for Jimmy, is not enough of the board, and Kristy is voted down. Jimmy then makes a point of tracking down the world: "Screw them. Remember: the winner takes it all. "(Jimmy has taken this perfect moment with his brother and turned it into a part of his justification for becoming everything Chuck would despise.) It's unclear whether the message fully sinks in, or if she looks back at Jimmy on her way to the bus just because she's confused by him. But after she leaves, he goes to his head and cries for real – ugly tears, muffled "no" s, and everything else Bob Odenkirk can beautifully do to distinguish this from Jimmy the hustler – not over the loss of his brother, but his understanding that the world will always look at the problem, no matter what he does.
It's that understanding that leads to the masterful performance he gives to the appeals board in the season's climax. Jimmy came home from the hospital. Jimmy came home from the hospital. It seemed as if it was just a matter of time for the first time to be in the mood for feeling, and how to lose it. (*), Delivering the eulogy he could not bring himself to the funeral, visibly moving not only the board, but Kim, who cared for both McGills and is deeply touched Jimmy has made peace with death, if not in life. (It's Odenkirk's big moment of oratory, but it's Rhea Seehorn's response that really sells it to the audience.)
(*) If there 's a flaw in the scene, it' s not until it 's time to go back to Jimmy improvises at fake tug at the heartstrings. In an ideal world, there might have been at least one episode between the two scenes so they would not have felt repetitive.
In the hallway after, while Kim is still floating around, she believes, Jimmy casually and cruelly reveals that he has played a lot of things. Kim's face falls (*), as much as how to be oblivious Jimmy is to her disappointment at the realization of the lie itself. Chuck at the initial bar hearing, the thought that Kim could have believed this new speech never enters his mind. Jimmy wants Kim to be exactly like him, but she's not. She gets turned on by the cons, but is not consumed by them. She does not have a heart on her back. She has taken shortcuts or outright cheated the system, but these things are a last resort to her, where for Jimmy, they are more likely to be able to resist.
(*) This is your periodic reminder to the TV Academy that Seehorn's continued lack of an Emmy nomination is simply unacceptable.
One of the key passages of Jimmy's speech finds him promising that he's reinstated, "I'll do everything in my power to be worthy of the name McGill." When he gets confirmation that he's won, one of the first things he does is to announce his plan to work under a different name entirely breaking Bad. To Jimmy, this is no big deal: just an expeditious way to attract customers who puts it when it's selling them burner phones. But it's only going to be a part of his brother's legacy. He leaves Kim in the hallway, looking very small and very confused about who is in front of her. Slippin 'Jimmy is a slippin' Jimmy – or, as it is known professionally, now, by Saul Goodman.
Peter Gould told me, "I think we're closer to the end than to the beginning," he still does not know how much he's gone. In lot of ways, "Winner" would have been a great final series. It would be more important in the past in his life (and his ethical standards, and he could advise Walt and Jesse to just murder Badger), not to mention closure on the Cinnabon Gene timeline and, most importantly, a resolution to Kim's story. But it essentially concludes the transformations of our two other characters. Jimmy becomes Saul in name as well as deed, while Mike fully entering the criminal world by killing Werner we Gus'Orders.
The construction of the Super Lab proves to be a red herring. Kai and the other workers are left unfinished, with Gus scowling mightily when Scabies suggests he might be able to do this in a primitive Batcave-like structure. We are at the start of the flashback breaking Bad Season Four, years away from the Lab being completed and operational. So the story – which still is not enough – it's really about Mike's own transformation from anti-hero to pure villain.
Mike has been a criminal for some time now, but the man we met would not have shot Werner in cold blood. Mike did security jobs, and he stole drug money, but there was a time when he went out of his way to avoid murdering even unapologetic criminals like Tuco, or the cartel truck driver he hijacked. Here, he is still favoring non-violent (and simpler) solutions whenever possible, like the delightful, quintessentially Ehrman's moment when he takes the gum, not the gun, out of the glove compartment to trap Lalo inside the parking lot. He seems to be on the verge of convincing Gus to let Werner live, and it's only the tenacity of Lalo that dooms his friend. (Salamanca is the name of his Labs engineer is too big a risk for Chicken Man to take.)
If the Super Lab is at times felt like a filler, the payoff is more than worth it for when Mike has to accept the fact that his friend has to die, and Mike has to be one to kill him. (The look in Jonathan Banks' eyes after the phone call to Gus is his most powerful moment on the show since he cried over his way back in "Five-O.") A half-measure will not do, not anymore, and when Mike takes Werner out into the desert, it's a mirror of the conversation Jimmy and Kim will have a few scenes after the appeal hearing. Werner, like Kim, is having a conversation – where he believes that he is the only thing he has to do. It's a brutal sequence, Werner to yell at his wife in their final phone call. Yet despite that, he respects Mike enough, and is a gentle enough soul, that he lets his homicidal pal off the hook by pretending to walk away and look at the stars – sparing trigger.
Mike ends this particular phase of the story with an important, if painful, lesson about the things he's chosen. And he ends it clearly owing Gus, after his own indulgences of Werner ruined this expensive, important project. Mike was joining the organization permanently, or just to supervise this one job and then return to retirement. But it's because it's going to make you feel better.
With both Mike and Jimmy, we started the series knowing that they would be within a few years. Jimmy had a lot more to go emotionally to become Saul than Mike required to become Gus's henchman. But among the things Better Call Saul has done so powerfully is to make their firstbreaking Bad incarnations so appealing, and so much more vulnerable than men who worked with Walt and Jesse, that the inevitable instead became painful. Once we've been rooted for karaoke with Kim – their full powers unleashed. Now, it's happened. It's where we all knew the story was heading, and the way it's played out has been incredible. But forgive me for feeling like Kim standing in that hallway, wondering exactly how we got here and wishing there was some way to undo what just happened. It would not be better for the show, but it was going to be another one, but it makes me sad to think of Jimmy going, going, gone.
Some other thoughts:
* I spoke with Gould not only about the future, but really Saul Goodman yet, where things stand with Kim, why he wanted to be the Super Lab's origin story, whether the Saul / Francesca flashforward means we're going to see more scenes set in the breaking Bad era, and a lot more. Check it out.
If you are a viewer of a certain age, it's hard to watch the scene where Mike gives his guesses to the subject.
So much for Nacho's arc this season, eh? The show is playing something of a long game with him, since he and Saul are tied together somehow circa breaking Bad, but he also seems to be the easiest victim whenever the Jimmy or Mike stories are going on. That Nacho is under Gus' thumb might have proved one complication too many in Lalo's pursuit of Mike and Werner. But he is absent so often (including the entirety of this episode) that his disappearances can be distracting as he re-emerges.
* Howard also mostly got left behind this year, though Patrick Fabian got a handful of great scenes to play as Howard coped with his own Chuck Guilt. During the dedication, he tells Jimmy's film crew that HHM has turned things around of late, though it's unclear if he's telling the truth or just doing PR.
Ernie, who strangles "Total Eclipse of the Heart" within an inch of its life at karaoke. A subtler callback: when Jimmy goes to get his way to the shoplifter, he can not get enough of it (like the paper towel dispenser Walt ounce attacked) is still there, and still visibly dented.
* Two potential loose threads from the Mike story: Mike gives his own phone to Werner to make the final call to his wife, and Lalo murders poor Fred from TravelWire. That Werner's death will be presented as an accident, with a big payout to his wife, could make the phone call a non-issue. But did Lalo take the TravelWire security camera footage – and any other evidence of his or her presence Mike's – with him?
* One last nifty bit of editing this season (this week shorty of Chris McCaleb): all of the scholarship interviews cut away right Howard's questions, sparing us from the world.
What did everybody else think?
Previously: Insincerely Yours
Source link
