Better Call Saul

The thrilling immediacy of the mid-season premiere cleans the slate for the season's closing stretch. A recap of “Point and Shoot,” episode eight of season ...

“Why did Lalo send you?” he asks Kim, who replies that Lalo originally wanted to send Jimmy, but Jimmy “talked him out of it.” Gus knows that Lalo isn’t the type of guy who could get talked out of anything, which signals to him that it genuinely didn’t matter to Lalo who was dispatched on this mission that was 100 percent certain to fail. The scheming around Howard and the Sandpiper Case is over. The idea of running and pushing substandard product into the market — in the meth business, not exactly a drug associated with quality control — makes them bristle. For Gus, the underground lab is an entrepreneurial masterstroke that takes the kind of investment and planning that’s anathema to “jackals” like the Salamancas, who are content to gobble up territory, steamroll the competition, and unleash great spasms of violence whenever necessary — or whenever the mood strikes them. What neither of them realizes is that this assassination attempt is not something Lalo actually expects to succeed; like Jimmy and Kim’s three transparent efforts to link Howard to cocaine, it’s just part of a greater ruse. This piece of monologue could be a Better Call Saul sub-tweet of other shows of its ilk, the ones that cut corners in pursuit of cheap thrills — thin, crude, artless time-wasters. That’s what the title Breaking Bad means, after all, or a nickname like “Slippin’ Jimmy.” The cost for Jimmy and Kim’s transgressions may be unreasonably high — there’s a sound argument that Howard had it coming, in fact, and that justice was done on behalf of his elderly clients — but they still have to pay it. It’s a simple job that Jimmy persuades Lalo to let Kim do instead, because it seems to him like her survival is at least within the realm of possibility. Although Lalo may not expect Gus to confront him in this place, it seems right that they would have to settle their conflict personally. When Kim inevitably fails and gets dragged into Gus’s house by Mike and his security goons, Gus doesn’t need to hear much from her to pick up on what Lalo is doing. They’re told that traces of cocaine will be discovered on the upholstery, because “that’s the story you were setting up for this guy.” Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are keyed into inflection points like this when their characters make choices that set their lives on a dark trajectory. They’re told that Howard’s Jaguar will be found on a beach a few states over and that his death will eventually be considered a suicide, which will seem plausible given his personal and professional setbacks.

The body count won't stop climbing as 'Better Call Saul' returns for its final six episodes — read our recap of Season 6, Episode 8.

He lets out a final laugh before he dies, and Gus pulls the bullet out of his body armor and tosses it at him. He also stares down at the bodies in the hole, his face twisted with conflict and regret, as the crane covers them up with dirt again. While he goes off on a long rant insulting Don Eladio and the Salamancas, we see a gun hidden nearby — and suddenly, Gus triggers a blackout and grabs the gun while Lalo shoots wildly into the darkness. She gets to Gus’ and pulls the gun out of the glove compartment, walking up to the door and ringing the bell… Gus wants to talk to Kim, and she tells him Lalo tried to send Jimmy, but Jimmy talked him out of it. After a cryptic opening that features a shoe washing up on a beach with footprints leading to Howard’s car parked in the sand, Monday’s premiere picks up right where we left off, with a shocked and terrified Jimmy and Kim standing over Howard’s dead body as Lalo points a gun at them.

"Point And Shoot” is a thrilling lead-up to the beloved series' finale.

- And the man most frustratingly denied an Emmy for his Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul work, Jonathan Banks (who has been nominated five times for those shows), gave a typically outstanding performance as Mike ran the three-ring circus of trying to protect Gus while also dealing with some guilt about Jimmy and Kim (and Howard). Mike had pulled the Lalo watch detail off Kim and Jimmy’s apartment, something she screamed at him about when she was at Gus’ compound. Then he got to the McGills’ apartment, saw Howard, and quickly pieced together what must have happened to him. Let’s end with a shoutout that brings us back to the beginning: Gordon Smith, the former Vince Gilligan assistant who created the Lalo character and wrote classic Saul eps like “Five-O,” “Chicanery,” and “Bagman,” as well as this one, does a fine job of driving home the tragedy and randomness of Howard’s death. When he looks at her and begs her to be the one to make the kill, he really just wants her to leave their home, to get away from Lalo and the gun he’s holding on them. Maybe he thinks that to save him, she’ll make it to the house and commit that unforgivable assignment. Gus felt free to spit his tirade at the camera (he addressed Eladio as “you greasy, bloated pimp”), sure he was going to kill Lalo or die himself if he didn’t. Lalo, meanwhile, was just as certain he would emerge victorious from the lab, video in hand. But the look in his eyes when he peers into hers, desperately asking her to go, says that he thinks there’s a good chance he’s saying goodbye to her forever—and that he’s at peace with that decision. And he had, in true Lalo style, a simple, cleverly crafted plan to get it: He would hold Kim hostage, while Jimmy was sent off in his car, with a gun and a camera in the glove box. Home, and the recent events it hosted, is never going to feel like home again. He pleads for Lalo’s sign-off to send Kim on the task and for Kim’s agreement to go and save her life—or at least have the chance to. Jimmy was to knock on Gus’ door, and when he answered it, Jimmy was to unload the gun at Gus and take a photo of his dead body. Jimmy flips the deal around, though, and convinces Lalo to hold him in the apartment with Howard’s dead body, while Kim is given the assignment to go murder a stranger and make it back with photographic evidence within 60 minutes.

The midseason premiere of 'Better Call Saul' season 6 sees the death of one of the series' biggest bads. Read EW's recap.

And while Mike says only one word — a cautionary "easy" — as Howard goes in the ground, the look on his face is almost as good as a eulogy. Can Lalo Salamanca, this series' most terrifying monster, really die down here in the dark, a victim as much of his own hubris as of Gus' relentless quest for revenge?! As we know (and Lalo undoubtedly does, too), there's no way Gus Fring would answer his own door to a would-be assassin in the middle of the night. Blood is still flowing from the bullet hole in Howard's head, and Lalo is telling Jimmy and Kim ( Rhea Seehorn) that they have to focus — which they do, but it's worth noting that Jimmy rises to this occasion in a way that Kim does not. He underestimated Lalo. And every death tonight, beginning (but by no means ending) with Howard, is a death that might have been avoided. "It never happened," Kim echoes back, but her voice is hollow, and I have a feeling that this is the end. And this is exactly what happens, but not before Kim absolutely lights up Mike Ehrmentraut ( Jonathan Banks) for his (admittedly atypical) lapse in vigilance. Her job, her real job, is not to kill Gus Fring. It's to get caught trying, so that Gus realizes — too late — that he's left the laundry and its secret underground meth lab-in-progress undefended. Jimmy will get in Lalo's car, drive to Gus Fring's ( Giancarlo Esposito) house, and use the gun in the glovebox to shoot whomever answers the door. Pro tip, guys: If Lalo Salamanca agrees to a change of plans, then that plan was never really the plan. Lalo explains what will happen next: Kim will stay with Lalo at the condo. And now, this: A shoe, abandoned on the beach, gently rolling around in the surf beneath a golden, hazy California sky.

Jimmy and Kim get a new refrigerator. Gus and Lalo get some quality face time.

Even in the end, when it appeared that he had outsmarted and outplayed Gus, when all of his plans came together and he actually got the long-sought tour of the superlab, he lost. He was competent and smart enough to provoke deep anxiety in the preternaturally implacable Mr. Fring. This might be his most impressive accomplishment, and it hinted at both his strengths and limitations. “Be nice,” he told the men driving immigrants over the Mexican border in the first episode of this season. The same goes for Kim. She is never mentioned in “Breaking Bad.” But the names “Lalo” and “Ignacio” are, and both of those guys are dead. “Drive nice,” he instructed Jimmy and Kim as he outlined his plans in this episode. Where his kinsman were unhinged sadists, Lalo exits the show with a body count that is low for his cohort. When Lalo enters the laundromat that hides the superlab, he manages to evade the surveillance system designed to prevent the very incursion he is pulling off. Then Gus delays his own execution with a monologue about the venality and stupidity of the Salamancas, a tactic that gives him time to kick a lighting cable, plunge the lab into near total darkness and retrieve the handgun he secreted during an earlier visit. More than that, they can turn their attention to Gene Takavic, the joyless schlub Saul becomes after “Breaking Bad,” who was last seen working as a manager of a Cinnabon in Omaha, convinced that his cover had been blown. That said, he does appear mildly startled to learn that he was her target. He will send an unwilling assassin across town to fire at Gus Fring, thus ensuring that the cavalry is dispatched to Jimmy and Kim’s condo. We soon learn that the silkiest Salamanca, a highly charismatic sociopath, has arrived with an elaborate scheme, one that he presumably has fine tuned during many days hiding in Albuquerque’s sewage system.

Better Call Saul kicks off the second half of its final season with a tense, memorable installment.

“Point and Shoot” concludes with Mike burying Howard Hamlin next to his killer, beneath the super lab. Well, it’s now morning and the clock is ticking. Back at Jimmy’s apartment, Kim returns home with Mike who sternly lectures them to continue telling the lie that they started about Howard Hamlin and to keep calm. Plus, the man has catlike agility, but not so much so that he can avoid a hail of gunfire. We saw the great lengths Gus went to to ensure that he would not be a sitting duck in his home should Lalo return. We saw Gus hide a strategically placed gun in the lab. Mike once told Kim that she’s made of sterner stuff than Jimmy, but she hasn’t been thrown into the deep end like this. Jimmy wants to ensure that Kim gets as far away from Lalo as possible, no matter the outcome. Thankfully, the rest of “Point and Shoot” immediately made these fears unwarranted. Fittingly, Lalo refers to her as “Mrs. Goodman” as she’s walking out the door. It’s a small thing, but it helps illustrate how torturous this all is for Kim. This is not her world; these are not the sort of compromises she makes. Better Call Saul, amid its sixth and final season, took a month-long hiatus after “ Plan and Execution,” a barnburner of an episode that ended with perhaps the most excruciating cliffhanger of the series.

"Better Call Saul" star Tony Dalton explains that major scene with Lalo and Gus.

After Lalo dies, that cements Gus into the person that he becomes in “Breaking Bad.” It was kind of just like I start dying and then I threw a smile and Vince was like, “That was good, now more like a cynic. He sits down and he’s like, “That was the closest I’ve ever been to dying. They put the episode on at Tribeca and just seeing me and Howard dead in the pit, it was like “Damn, man. I think it was like, “You got lucky, man. When we all met up, Bob said, “Do you think they’re gonna think I was just throwing her under the bus?” I said I didn’t think so. More power to the writers and creators because it’s like, “You motherfucker, did you just send your wife to kill somebody?” Bob and I, when we were talking at dinner, he figured if she left the room, she’d have more of a chance at being alive — period. When I watched it I thought the latter, but Kim mentions later that Saul was looking out for her. While delivering a scathing monologue to the drug bosses down in the high-tech meth lab that Walt and Jesse will eventually use in “Breaking Bad,” Gus turns out the lights, grabs a gun and fires the clip at Lalo. When the lights turn back on, we see Lalo choking on his own blood from a fatal neck wound. I got a Zoom call from [creators] Vince [Gilligan] and Peter [Gould]. It was more about how excited they were about what happens than they were about me dying. And in a twisted cherry on top of “Better Call Saul’s” suspenseful Season 6 Part 2 return, it’s revealed that Lalo is buried beneath Gus’ meth super-lab. Before Kim can pull the trigger at Gus’ secure safe house, Mike (Jonathan Banks) intervenes and stops the attempted hit — which was really all a distraction for Lalo to get video evidence of Gus’ secret meth lab.

'Better Call Saul' co-creatorPeter Gould discusses the midseason premiere of the final season, which features another big shocker.

Is it possible these characters have a part of their relationship that we haven’t seen.” Sometimes the answer’s “No” and sometimes the answer is “Yes.” The fly seems playful and a little bit demonic, which makes me think of Lalo. But the fly’s also very athletic and buoyant, which makes me think maybe it’s Howard! I think it could be either one of them. I think it was at the end of season five when we realized that there was going to be this attack on Lalo’s home in Mexico. That seemed like what it could be. Gus is thinking to himself, “Why is Lalo listening to these people?” I think that’s when Gus realizes that maybe there’s a chance that this whole thing is a feint to get the whole thing away from the laundry. There’s actually a scene that was in one of my episodes, one that Adam Bernstein directed, there’s a scene where Saul tells Walt a lot of things about himself and brings up a few juicy details that maybe were better off being deleted. It’s not something that we necessarily plotted out on a board and said, “This is the episode to do this” and “This is the episode to do that,” but our main focus is really on the development and the psychology of the characters, so it sort of organically fell here that this is where these things would happen. We always thought this would be a member of the Salamanca family, and you’re always looking for a new note to hit and we thought, “Well maybe this guy just enjoys himself. As you say, I think he knows very well that either one of these lawyers walking up to Gustavo Fring’s front door is not going to successfully assassinate him, but he’s hoping to sow enough chaos and move Mike’s guys around enough to give him an opening to get into this laundry and get into the SuperLab construction site. And Patrick Fabian is somebody who took a role that, on the surface it seemed like it was about as deep as a puddle of mercury, and he found that there’s a whole lot more to that guy. And obviously, Gus could have eaten a bullet, but Gus knows exactly how to play Lalo in that moment and Gus outsmarts him. He’s got such a head of steam and he’s so bent on revenge, and we couldn’t picture what would stop him and have him retire to a tropical island. As you arced out the final season, when did it become clear both that Howard and Lalo wouldn’t survive the series and then where in the final season those deaths needed to go, specifically “not at the very end”?

Jimmy gets selfless, Kim gets questioned, Mike gets mobilized, Lalo gets proof, and Gus gets even.

Anything? If Kim is Billie, is Jimmy Paul or is he Devery? Is Harry Lalo? Or is he Gus? One thing we know for sure is that Kim and Jimmy are not headed for a classic Hollywood ending. From there, we warp ahead from 1950s cinematic references to the pop-cultural landscape of the 1980s, as Kim races to Gus’s house to the sound of a pulsing beat worthy of the original Miami Vice series. Could it be that Jimmy is Harry, and Kim will use her legal and economic powers as his spouse to get clear of him once he finally breaks bad for good? (Gus, later in the episode, will be smart enough to know that Lalo can’t be persuaded, and conclude correctly that this was all part of the sociopathic Salamanca cousin’s plan.) He ties Jimmy to the chair, gags him, tells him he blames Nacho for slaughtering his household in Mexico, and says he’ll be back for answers. When she stands up to Harry, he reacts violently, striking her and forcing her to sign the contracts related to his crooked deal. And we can deduce that the person who did was not Lalo Salamanca. Lalo’s planning powers are second to none, but he’s not big on cleaning up after himself. Well, it’s a 1950 film called Born Yesterday, and the blond actress whose face was frozen on the screen during all the commotion is none other than Judy Holliday. Here’s the first paragraph of Wikipedia’s plot summary: Before he goes, he cranks up the volume on the old movie Jimmy and Kim had been watching to drown out his captive’s screams. We can deduce that someone set this up to look like a suicide. A shoe is floating in the ocean. NAMAST3. And here, on the dashboard, a wallet and a wedding ring.

On "Better Call Saul," what happens with Jimmy and Kim, and Lalo and Gus Fring in episode "Point and Shoot"

Lalo killed Howard, and the saddest part is, that's inconsequential next to the knowledge that Gus killed Lalo by his own hand. Even the blocking of certain scenes has subtle purpose to it, as when Jimmy, gagged and bound to a chair, ends up falling over right by Howard's body, his head to Howard's feet. When the shooting stops, Gus walks over to where Lalo lays and stands regally over him as he takes his last breath. Gus showed up with a couple of men who Lalo easily dispenses with before he forces Gus to reveal the underground meth lab to him, filming everything to show to Don Eladio. Gus' martial preparedness for Lalo's ruse to take down the meth fortress is foretold in the brief credits sequence which, this week, shows a tarantula crawling out from beneath a tie. Some, as we've noted before, have been answered by the fact of a character's existence in "Breaking Bad." When he asks Kim how she came to be at his door, Kim tells him that it was supposed to be Jimmy, her husband, but he talked Lalo out of that, allowing her to go in his stead. He orders Jimmy to knock on the door and gun down Gus when he answers, then take a photo to bring back as evidence. But the audience knows Howard was murdered, who did it, and whose fault it is that Howard is dead instead of alive and reputationally battered, as Kim and Jimmy intended. If we didn't intimately know Gus Fring, his preparedness for Lalo might have come off as a bit too elegant and convenient to be plausible. Instead, as if to ease us back into this increasingly cruel examination of fate and consequences, he opens with a languid sweep across the sand. If we didn't know what happened to Howard, we might assume this to be evidence of a suicide, enacted in a picturesque setting.

[Editor's note: This interview contains spoilers from last night's episode of Better Call Saul, “Point And Shoot.” Please watch the episode before reading ...

We were excited that she knew who we were and that she liked the show. I just have to say that one thing I skipped over was just how incredible Bob and Rhea are in this episode. It was a very sad thing to say goodbye to Tony and say goodbye to Lalo. But we have to play by the rules that we’ve set out. And in fact, if Lalo didn’t have more that he wanted to know from Jimmy, I think Jimmy would be lying dead on the floor right next to Howard Hamlin. And there’s a moment where he’s looking into her eyes, and it feels like he’s not just relieved that she’s agreed to go, but is he almost assuming that this is goodbye? AVC: Going forward to the final episodes, Kim had this very important piece of information about Lalo still being alive, but she didn’t trust Jimmy enough to share it with him. The truth is that these two guys are now bound together, the way they will be on Breaking Bad. I mean, Mike has made his choice. And we know that Gus Fring is alive and well and doing business a few years later when we meet him on Breaking Bad. None of us saw how that could be possible if Lalo is still out there, with designs on getting revenge on Gus. And also, we had that line in Breaking Bad where Gus tells Hector that he’s the last surviving Salamanca. You have to dance with the one that brung you. This is one of the things that is such a struggle because we have a lot of characters on the show who are very smart. But we wanted desperately to find a way to have these two guys go face to face, which of course meant, and Lalo feels the same way, taking Mike out of the equation, at least for long enough for Lalo to get a look at the super lab. How did you come to the decision that the midseason premiere would conclude this chapter of Lalo vs. The A.V. Club: “Plan and Execution” ended with the shocker of Howard’s brutal, unexpected death, and Kim and Jimmy living out that horror show with Lalo’s appearance.

I wouldn't have it any other way,” the 'Better Call Saul' star says of Monday's midseason premiere.

So it was a night shoot, like one in the morning, and I grabbed a little chair and put it on the side of the rest stop next to the highway and just sat down. But great stories have great villains, and you want to kill your villain, you know? The cold-blooded, charismatic killer is bleeding out from a gunshot to the neck, and just before the lights go out on him forever, he manages one last classic Lalo smile.

It's all been leading to this moment for Lalo Salamanca. His big confrontation with Gus plays out in 'Better Call Saul' season 6 episode 8.

While this episode is relatively light on Jimmy and Kim after the opening sequence, it is ultimately an hour detailing their moral decay and the consequences of their dealings with New Mexico’s foulest gangsters. It’s been Better Call Saul’s biggest question for a while now but with Lalo out the way, her future looks murkier. Lalo is pleased with his scheme while Gus retorts with a flowery putdown of the Cartel – and in particular the Salamanca family. At the end of ‘Point and Shoot’, Jimmy’s dodgy associate Mike tells them to go about their lives as normal. It’s here where you think we might finally see the end of Kim, who never appears or is mentioned in Breaking Bad. Surprisingly, she lives to see at least one more episode when it becomes clear that the assassination attempt is just a ruse by Lalo to infiltrate the laundromat and get Gus on his own. After dispatching his bodyguards, Lalo corners Gus in the tomb-like superlab.

This article contains predictions for Better Call Saul season 6, episode 9. After a midseason break, the series returns to air the last ever six episodes.

Gus turns on a light and walks up to a Lalo who is severely bleeding from the neck down. Mike then tells them both to have a “normal day” and clarifies that “none of this ever happened.” - Lalo gets out a camcorder to record the presumed demise of Gus. He asks for a tour of the laundrette, but when Gus does not respond, Lalo shoots him in the chest, knowing he has a bulletproof vest on. A winded Gus starts the tour and shows Lalo where the meth lab is. - Gus calls Kim and wants to know why Lalo sent her. And that’s when Lalo walks in, shooting all of Gus’s men to the floor. - Gus rings the manager Lyle at one of his chicken shops. Lalo agrees with Jimmy and sends her to do the assassination. - Gus then provides a distraction, runs off, picks up a gun, and shoots Lalo multiple times. - Kim leaves, thus leaving Jimmy with Lalo — he’s tied to a chair. On the car dashboard, there’s a wallet and a wedding ring. This is where we are up to after a tension-filled episode 8:

Naturally, Saul was already terrified of Lalo because he witnessed him murder Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian) without batting an eyelash, but he also blamed ...

Everybody was so kind, and I was like, “I want to work like this all the time. Absolutely. On Hawkeye, I had a long mustache, but then I’d show up to [Better Call Saul’s] set and be like, “I can’t cut it that much because I have to go back to the other set.” So we’d still cut it, but then again, it probably would’ve been okay because Lalo was in a sewer. There’s so much blood!” I was covered in it, and the dirt on the ground of the lab was completely a puddle of mud. So after three weeks, the mustache would grow and it ended up working perfectly [for when I’d go back to Hawkeye]. On Hawkeye, they were ready to add more mustache just in case, but it would always be two or three weeks in between the two. I was like, “I thought I was going to go all the way till the end,” and they were like, “Nope! Still 608.” And I was like, “608? That’s it? Patrick is a wonderful human being, and I never had the chance to work with him until the end. I’ll see you in hell.’” Then Vince said, “The lights were off, you guys shot it out and he got you in the neck. If Gus beat Lalo at an arm-wrestling thing, I would’ve been like, “Damnit!” But the lights were off and we just shot guns. And now you’re just smiling because [Gus] got lucky.” And I said, “Alright!” So that’s what we did, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger. They called and said, “Hey listen, this is what happens, but first of all, you’re going to shit your pants over what happens before,” which ended up being Lalo killing Howard. They were really excited about it, and I was like, “Oh OK!” They were like, “Oh my god, you won’t believe what’s going to happen, and then you’re going to die.” (Laughs.) But I wanted to know how I was going to die, and they were like, “We can’t tell you.” And I was like, “C’mon, Vince! Tell me something. So what do you think was on Lalo’s mind as he smiled and laughed for the last time? Anything.” And he was like, “Alright, you take a lot of motherfuckers down before you die.” And I was like, “Alright, I’ll take it!

"Better Call Saul" often moves slowly, but the first of the show's final six episodes kicked off with a literal bang, pointing toward perhaps a greater ...

Gus also told him, as he stalled for time, about his intentions to kill those close to Lalo's uncle Hector Salamanca (Mark Margolis), whose long history with Gus paid off explosively in "Breaking Bad," adding yet another layer to that story line. "Point and Shoot" was a key step in laying that groundwork, including what's buried under the ground. Despite seemingly outsmarting Gus and his security team, Lalo made the common super-villain mistake of monologuing himself to death, giving Gus the opportunity to dim the lights, grab a gun and put an end to him.