Season 6, episode 11, “Breaking Bad”

He left that funky Saul Goodman shirt and tie on the department store shelf, but make no mistake: Last week’s prank with Jeff and the mall security team returned Gene Takovic to the world of Saul Goodman. And a mysterious and contentious phone call in “Breaking Bad” sent him doubling down and becoming completely bored Saul.

We don’t know, yet, where this sudden but committed embrace of life that sent him into hiding will end up, but people from his former life as Albuquerque’s most infamous lawyer are still reeling from their associations with him. For Bill Oakley, the embattled deputy district attorney who envied Jimmy’s comfortable opportunity at Davis & Main while eating lunch from the courthouse vending machine every day, Jimmy/Saul’s antics to help free Lalo Salamanca proved so disappointing that Bill turned to the defense attorney. himself: he has gone into private practice, advertising his services on a bus stop bench. Is he now serving the clientele that Saul left behind?

For Francesca, Saul’s loyal but also overworked and stressed-out assistant, her career prospects are potentially less lucrative. Her life with Saul was certainly never glamorous, but she now owns it and spends her days submerging a sink clogged with grass stalks and seeds in the apartment of a couple of sullen tenants whose house she stinks like “a man’s anus.” skunk”.

They also follow her, opening her mail and tapping her phone, while legal authorities continue to search for Saul. However, he agrees to drive out of town (to the old Big Chief gas station where Jesse paid to fill the RV with meth in season three of breaking bad) for a pay phone call with Gene. He wants the hot gossip about happenings at home, and Francesca wants the hidden stash of cash she promised him for showing up. She tells him that the rest of her funds (the nail salons, the vending machines, the laser tag center, the offshore account) are all gone, but he’s more interested in a call he received after she left. broke the news of her connection to Walter White: Kim, who called to check on her. Kim also asked about Saul, shares Francesca. She wanted to know if he was alive.

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Gene, who had driven outside of Omaha to call Francesca, is back on the road to Omaha when he pulls over to make another call. Kim, apparently, is in Titusville, Florida, working at a business called Palm Coast Sprinklers. Gene calls and asks for her and though the noise of trucks passing on the highway drown out his conversation, it’s an angry one we can tell from the gesticulating he does. When he hangs up, he slams the receiver down repeatedly. When he walks outside, he kicks the glass of the phone booth so hard it shatters.

What could have transpired on that call that would make him so angry? If Kim had simply not been at the business or if she no longer worked there, he might have been disappointed, or annoyed, but not violently angry. What was conveyed to Gene that would elicit that reaction? Was he told Kim refused to speak to him? Did she speak to him and relay her feelings about his Breaking Bad-era actions? Did she share news about her new life that ticked him off?

Whatever happened during that conversation set into motion a return to Omaha that was followed by Gene visiting the home of Marion and Jeff and sliding back into the ways of Saul Goodman.

The surprise of this reunion of Gene and Saul is the gusto then the recklessness with which Gene approaches his new venture with Jeff and Buddy. It’s a typically intricate and clever play from the mind of McGill/Goodman that boils down to identity theft that is then sold for cash. The trio make an easy go of it and have amassed a good amount of money when they hit a snag: One of their marks is seriously ill and when Buddy finds out the guy has pancreatic cancer, just like his dad suffered, he refuses to continue swiping his identity documents. Gene had earlier discovered the man had cancer during the recon phase of the con at the bar they were drinking at and seemed very concerned about him. He even asked him if he should be mixing alcohol with the pills he was taking for the cancer.

But when Buddy tells Gene and Jeff he will not continue their grift of the cancer patient, that they should move along to the next guy, Gene flips out. He berates Buddy, insisting that he return to the man’s house and resume photographing all of the personal documents that will earn them another payday. When Buddy still refuses to do so, Gene calls him an amateur and fires him from the job, with a parting warning that he should keep his mouth shut about their plot.

Then Gene’s anger and recklessness turn to desperation. He gets Jeff to drive him to the home of the cancer patient, who he assumes will still be unconscious three hours after he was slipped drugs in a water bottle by Jeff. Without any proof that is the case, Gene nonetheless is dropped off at the man’s home and breaks in, with no real idea what will happen when he steps inside.

The break-in scene is preceded by a flashback to Saul approaching J.P. Wynne High School in “Better Call Saul,” the season-two episode of Breaking Bad that introduced Bob Odenkirk’s character. Saul’s going to surprise Walter White in his chemistry classroom. It’s still early days in Walt and Jesse’s meth enterprise, and Saul thinks he can help them grow it and keep a significant cut of the profits for himself.

And in a scene that precedes that, there’s another flashback, a new one from a Breaking Bad-era meeting with Mike in Saul’s office. Mike reports to Saul about scoping out Walt and Jesse, telling him they are amateurs, “small potatoes” who “He Who Shall Not Be Named” (Gus, of course) has no interest in. Mike, in no uncertain terms, advises Saul that Walt and Jesse are not suitable business partners. Saul, obviously, ignores this advice, and we now know that the connection of all these characters and everything they brought together, all the lives it changed and the many that it ended, was facilitated by Saul Goodman. Of all the Breaking Bad callbacks and guest appearances that have been sprinkled throughout Better call Saul, writer-Director Thomas Schnauz kept the best and most fundamental a for Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, whose highly anticipated appearance as were Walt and Jesse more than worth the wait.

Now, with only two episodes left in the series, we cut to Gene’s desperate entry into the home of that cancer patient. in a decision that seems like it could be so pivotal to their post-Walt and Jesse- life as its initial appearance was for theirs.

missed observations

• Francesca’s call with Gene also provides a crucial update on Skyler White: SHe made a deal with the authorities, so apparently Walt’s lottery ticket, the one he promised would lead to the location of Hank and Gomey’s bodies, worked.
• Thanks to Tina Parker, for her outstanding performance on the series as Francesca, who definitely ended up on the wrong side of Saul’s dealings. Here’s hoping there was a good sum of cash in that bundle she pulled out of the water. tube.
• There’s nSomehow we didn’t find out the contents of Gene’s call to Kim’s workplace in Florida, did we? Could that mean one more Rhea Seehorn appearance before the series ends?
• Super Smart Cast: Alfred Hawthorne, the obnoxious first target in Gene’s identity theft bar scam, was played brilliantly by Devin Ratray, who played Kevin McAllister’s obnoxious older brother Buzz in Home alone.
• Two more great callbacks from Gene: he skips Saul’s fashion, but he does drink (or not drink, as it is part of the scam) moscow mules with one of the marks of identity theft Y he also acquires a chi machine, that foot massage device Saul used in his breaking bad days. Was it just because it was a safe way to privately embrace his Saul past? Or was the machine a physical necessity to deal with the stress of returning to an active life of crime?