Better Call Saul Season 6 Review: The Beginning of the End Is As Exquisitely Stressful As Ever
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The post Better Call Saul Season 6 Review: The Beginning of the End Is As Exquisitely Stressful As Ever appeared first on Consequence.
The Pitch: “Meticulous.” “Chilling.” “Engrossing.” There are so many words that come to mind when sitting down with a new installment of Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad spin-off which has somehow soared to a whole new tier of quality over the years.
No spoilers (for fear of the Salamancas knocking at the door), but it can be said that the first two episodes of Season 6 keep this proud tradition going. As the show gears up for its last hurrah (the first seven episodes of the final season debut starting Monday, April 18th, with the second half of the season returning in July), every element of one of TV’s best-made shows is working hard to invest us in so many of the show’s biggest questions, including the most important one of all: How’s it going to end?
Where Were We? Season 5 of Saul ended with Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and Kim (Rhea Seehorn) kicking around schemes to take down their old pal Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian), while that Jaws shark of a human being Lalo (Tony Dalton) evaded an assassination attempt enabled by Nacho (Michael Mando).
It was a quasi-abrupt ending, as finales go (the kind of ending best executed when a show knows for sure it’s coming back for more episodes), but that simply means the first episode, “Wine and Roses,” snaps us right back into the action, picking up immediately after those events. However, while the story continues as if there wasn’t a two-year gap between seasons, there is a new energy lurking in the background of these scenes.
The Long Game: What stands out the most about the first two episodes of Season 6 is how very conscious they are that this is the real beginning of the end. Again, no spoilers, but from the very first sequence (another classic mystery cold open) you can feel creators Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan carefully laying the tracks for our path to the end.
After five seasons of excellence, Better Call Saul has earned enough of our trust to allow some patience for how some of the elements introduced so far are going to play out. Because the tracks they’re laying aren’t for a train — they’re for a roller coaster.
Better Call Saul (AMC)
This does mean that there are a fair number of scenes that play out so quietly, with so little explanation, that it might be easy to forget they ever happened — until, of course, the show finally reveals the true reason why it showed you those moments. To hearken back to a past classic Better Call Saul sequence, sometimes when a guy drills holes in a garden hose, it’s for more reason than soaking his rhododendrons. As random as those moments might seem on the surface, they’re united by the fact that they’re always worth our patience.
That being said, while much of Better Call Saul‘s endgame feels very, very hard to predict (quite an achievement for a show that’s technically a prequel), there is a sense of increased momentum, as its self-determined deadline for wrapping things up looms. And the closer we get to the Breaking Bad era, the more the show ramps up the violence to Breaking Bad levels.
(Remember, the first two seasons of Saul in particular were not at all bloody ones, with maybe four people total dying on screen over the course of 20 episodes. Things have… changed since then.)
Love Stories Don’t Always Have Happy Endings One of television’s best slow-burn romances, watching Jimmy and Kim slide towards each other as a couple has been one of the most rewarding — and terrifying — things about this show. Mostly because as authentically true as their journey towards each other has felt, there’s the ever-lurking reality of both “Saul” and “Gene” waiting in a future that doesn’t seem to have Kim in it.
As indicated by the Season 5 finale, Kim is primed for a descent into darkness, and however Jimmy might feel about committing his own scams and flimflams, Odenkirk as an actor has been very very good at communicating the character’s conflicted feelings about Kim’s own heel turn. Kim’s current motivation for trying to take down Howard Hamlin has some altruistic motivations, but it’s the thrill of the game which clearly tempts her the most (the same thrill-seeking tendencies which feel like one of the elements pushing her towards Jimmy.
To be completely honest, at this point, all a Kim/Jimmy shipper can do is pray that the relationship doesn’t get her killed. Of all the many questions Better Call Saul will hopefully answer this season, Kim’s fate might not be the most significant one, but it’s up there on the list, and it’s the one that is most primed for heartbreak on the part of the audience. (Then again, isn’t that why we’re watching?)
Better Call Saul (AMC)
The Verdict: When it comes to judging a show’s legacy in the annals of TV history, final seasons have a way of being a make-or-break factor in that determination, in part because they are pretty damn hard to execute on a level that pleases the toughest critics and the most loyal fans (who, in some situations, are the exact same thing).
But if there’s a show that’s capable of not just tackling that challenge, but conquering it, it’s Better Call Saul, telling its humble little story better than any other show on television, thanks to its confident and unflinching understanding that sometimes in life people are genuinely good — and then sometimes, they’re the absolute worst.
A defining quality of Better Call Saul is how it plays with focus, both in its cinematography and its storytelling — a tradition going back to Breaking Bad, of course, but one that Season 6 continues to push further. After all, so much of this show has always been about zooming in on a person’s life, the details that make up a day, and then pulling back out to reveal their place in a far bigger, messier, and more tragic picture than they could ever truly realize.
It’s an approach that nurtures the show’s incredible gift for specificity, for telling a story about crooks and lawyers and good people and all the grey areas that exist between them. For telling a story unlike literally anything else on television.
Where to Watch: The two-hour Better Call Saul Season 6 premiere comes Monday, April 18th at 9 p.m. ET. (Oh, and put Monday, August 15th on your calendar — that’s when the series finale is currently set to air.)
Trailer:
Better Call Saul Season 6 Review: The Beginning of the End Is As Exquisitely Stressful As Ever
Liz Shannon Miller
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