Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 10

The first Season 6 trip to Omaha is a reminder that the one of the only things changing about Jimmy is his name. [Spoilers]

Within seconds of Jeff vanishing out of sight of the security cameras, Gene is the ghost he just prophesied himself to be, bolting out of Frank’s office to have a deep, bittersweet exhale. It shows what Gene is willing to sacrifice, how far he’s willing to distance himself from the act itself, and how much he’s prepared to set the ground rules so that no one really gets hurt (aside from a giant department store’s bottom line and Frank’s cholesterol levels). There’s something rich about the former Saul Goodman preaching to someone about overreaching, but he’s at the point where he’d know better than anyone. Whether or not this is the last “Better Call Saul” chance at regaining some of the fun that left multiple people buried underneath an in-progress meth lab, it’s an efficient reminder that this show never needed life-and-death stakes to be mesmerizing. It doesn’t take much, but showing that tiny bit of shoe leather of Gene brushing up on his Nebraska history only underlines the fact that his schemes are all-consuming. At long last, “Better Call Saul” gives a resolution of sorts to the cabbie mystery that’s been lurking around the edges for a season-plus. Right off the bat, this episode is a casting coup, introducing the promised Carol Burnett as Marion, the latest of Gene’s ulterior motive friendships.

Carol Burnett makes her series debut as Marion, a cantankerous Nebraskan whose son falls in with a mustachioed Cinnabon manager named Gene Takovic.

This is the end of the operation. To accomplish that, Gene begins by bribing the guards with dessert buns and then spends a long time—weeks, at least—building rapport with Frank the night watchman. This is the guy Gene has to deal with to protect his cover. Frank likes to talk about college football, so Gene becomes an expert in the lore and travails of the Nebraska Cornhuskers. What we can’t do is recognize his face, because … the actor who played the cab driver who spots Saul in the mall had to be recast. It’s an identity that was set up, in exchange for a very large sum of cash, by the vacuum repairman Ed Galbraith (whose card Jimmy and Kim came across earlier this season in the crooked vet’s little black book). Gene manages a Cinnabon at the Cottonwood Mall in Omaha, Nebraska. His life appears to be incredibly dreary, but at least he’s safe—that is, until his lunch break is interrupted by a cab driver and former Albuquerque resident who recognizes him as Saul Goodman. The discovery prompts Gene to call Ed Galbraith and ask to be re-disappeared, but then he thinks better of it: “I’ve changed my mind. Jimmy/Saul/Gene is as charming as ever, and before long Marion is sitting with him at her kitchen table, yukking it up over a bottle of peach schnapps. (“Nothing to see here, officer!”) There’s an elaborate ruse involving a wooden shipping crate, and strict rules around portion control to avoid detection by the inventory managers. (Here’s a video recapping the whole Gene Takovic timeline, in case your memory is as spotty as mine.) But the episode also has its own beginning, middle, and end, in a way that prompts us to ask: Why are we watching this? The phrase that kept running through my mind as I watched tonight’s episode of Better Call Saul is “bottle episode.” When I looked up the term, however, I discovered that it means something a little different than what I had in mind. Suffice it to say, it’s every bit as elaborate and fanatically planned-out as any Jimmy/Saul scam we’ve seen before. But it is sort of self-contained in a way that feels bottle-episode-y.

Better Call Saul returns to Omaha, Nebraska as "Gene" falls into some old patterns. Read our spoiler-filled review!

He uses real fears to manipulate the security guard and give Jeff more time to get out of there, almost appearing as though he shocked himself by the real nature of his emotions. To hammer that home, we watch Gene return to the department store, and he’s immediately drawn to the sort of loud, garish shirt that Saul Goodman would have purchased without a second thought. Gene is forced to audible and keeps the security guard transfixed by discussing his loneliness, lack of family, and his feelings of impermanence. What’s more likely is that Gene is the one who wants to get back in the game, and if he’s able to deal with the threat of Jeff at the same time, then it’s a bonus. Finally, he recreates a model of the department store floor so Jeff and his buddy can practice their heist. Gene helps Jeff concoct a plan to rob a department store in the mall, using nothing more than a predictably hungry, chatty security guard played by Parks and Recreation’s Jim O’Heir ( of course Jerry would be a mark!).

A stand-alone episode focused on Gene in Nebraska offers a welcome reprieve from the Albuquerque pressure cooker. A recap of 'Nippy,' episode ten of the ...

One year later, he’s got a pile of cash as big as a Volkswagen. That’s crazy.” Not only is this a fine Walter White reference, but it’s notable for omitting all the tragedy that went along with the craziness. Her feisty exchanges with the deli clerk about her pastrami order (“You overshot last time”) and the extra-sharp Wisconsin-cheddar samples (“Oooh … you can keep it, Wisconsin”) are a fun introduction, but seeing her side by side with Bob Odenkirk is a dream. But it’s worth seeking out the handful of independent movies in which he has gotten meatier roles, including two for director Craig Zobel, Great World of Sound and Compliance; Ti West’s retro, haunted hotel movie, The Innkeepers; and the clever horror-comedy Cheap Thrills. (He also directed 2017’s Take Me, which happens to feature O’Heir in a supporting role. It may be hazardous for his safety and his soul, but in wriggling out of his problem with Jeffy, he finds an essential piece of himself again. And so Jimmy steps up with a plan of action, ingratiating himself to Marion as a way to get some leverage over Jeffy and his partner and eliminate the threat. From there, Jimmy sets up a path through the most lucrative items at a department store so Jeffy can bag a sampling of Armani suits and Air Jordan shoes and cashmere sweaters large enough to make a good haul but not so large that anyone will notice before taking inventory. Gene Takovic is a nobody by design, an inconspicuous person living in an inconspicuous city in the most inconspicuous state in the Union. Walter White could not accept this fate when he was shipped out to a cabin in Vermont, but Jimmy is having to endure it. He’s excited about the high-wire act to come because it takes him away from the workaday dreariness of managing a Cinnabon at a mall in Omaha, Nebraska. He doesn’t have to be Gene Takovic. He gets to be Saul Goodman again. Whenever Roy Scheider’s pill-popping, womanizing, ceaselessly bedraggled choreographer gets ready to do his job in Bob Fosse’s semi-autobiographical classic All That Jazz, he looks at himself in the mirror, opens up his hands to a wave, and says, “It’s showtime, folks!” The expression is oftentimes ironic and facetious, befitting an entertainer who is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. When a young man at the grocery store asks if she needs help grabbing a can of condensed milk from the top shelf, she snippily replies, “If I needed a hand, I’d ask for it.” It may be his job to choreograph a dazzling show — and Fosse was unquestionably a legend in that regard — but the physical and psychological toll of his lifestyle has become unsustainable. At the same time, though, Jimmy likes being Saul, and the entire arc of Better Call Saul has been about how playing that role gives him power and helps insulate him from the sad turns that his life has taken.

Gene, Gene, the scamming machine. Our mustachioed, Dockers-wearin', sweets-bakin' version of Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman has, at last, made an appearance in ...

- Marion appears to be a nice lady who can be a little salty when she wants to be, like when she rudely responds to a fellow shopper’s offer to help her get something off a high shelf and when she chastises the deli guy for giving her a quarter of a pound too much pastrami on a previous grocery trip. Don Harvey played the cabbie in seasons four and five.EWnotes that Harvey was tied up with his role in HBO’s We Own This Cityand was unavailable to return for Saul, so actor Pat Healy is now playing the role. The Gene who used to sit alone on a mall bench, eating a brown-bag lunch and hoping not to be noticed, is born again as the Saul of old, frosting buns with panache and running up escalator steps to get to his new con, which might ultimately be his one true love. Jimmy loved Kim, and the end of that relationship will remain one of the great heartbreaks of the Bad/Saul universe. - Gene is at the top of his Saul game when he’s thrown into emergency action to keep Frank the security guard (guest star Jim O’Heir) from seeing Jeff wipe out during his shoplifting run around the department store. The menacing cabbie confronted Gene, forcing him to admit he had been Saul back in the ABQ. And though Gene’s initial reaction was to make a 911 call to Ed for another disappearing act, he changed his mind, telling the vacuum-cleaner repairman he’d take care of matters himself.

We jump forward to post-'Breaking Bad' times in 'Better Call Saul' season 6 episode 10. It's time for one last con with Gene Takavic...

He allows himself the indulgence of taking them off the rack and holding them up to his body but an indulgence is all he allows. Better Call Saul has always had brief flashes backwards and forwards across the life of Jimmy McGill but nothing to the extent of these last three episodes, which have seen the birth of Saul and the most fully realised depiction of Gene Takavic yet. Gene soon crosses paths with Jeff the cab driver – last seen in season five premiere ‘Magic Man’ – who recognises him as Saul Goodman. To get the cabbie off his back, Gene brings him in on a scheme to rob the mall where he works and as a result has to embrace the man he thought he left behind in Breaking Bad. He’s back to being a con man, a liar, and master manipulator – but it’s a relatively low-stakes heist. Will we ever go back to Albuquerque? Will we ever see Kim again? With the heist successfully executed, Gene has one last trick to get Jeff off his back. With the first two episodes of Better Call Saul‘s final season killing off Lalo Salamanca and potentially our beloved Kim Wexler, the third instalment (‘Nippy’) slows everything down a bit.

When Jimmy heads outside to take out the trash, it turns out Jeffie and Jimmy know each other. Jeffie threatens to give him up to the police as “Saul Goodman,” ...

He tells both men that they are not friends and forces them to say, “we’re done” — this is a “one-time thing.” But then, Marion asks Jimmy for more of his company, and he cannot get out of it. The box that Jeffie was in is now full of clothes, which is picked up. Jimmy offers to help get rid of the cargo in “four hours.” Getting impatient, the store manager offers to hold the box overnight. As Frank is about to turn around and look at the CCTV footage, Jimmy pretends to have an emotional breakdown, stating he has no one and that if he died, not a single person would care. Jeffie is nervous about the plans to steal from the mall. He texts Jeffie, asking him to start the robbery. The next day, as part of Jimmy’s plans, cargo is delivered to one of the retail stores, but the store manager is not happy with the delivery — it’s a spray system, and she makes it clear that they do not sell them kind of items and asks for it to be returned. There’s only a 3-minute window — the window where Frank eats his Cinnabon dessert and doesn’t look at the footage. Jeffie threatens to give him up to the police as “Saul Goodman,” but Jimmy tells him he can place him in “the game” for a better life. After the timelines join up in the last episode, chapter 10 sees Jimmy enjoying his miserable new life working at Cinnabon at the mall. Jimmy heads inside Marion’s home for a drink and meets Marion’s son Jeffie, who seems nervous and apprehensive. She makes her way home in her mobility scooter but gets stuck on the ice.

With only three episodes before Better Call Saul reaches its end, we still don't know where the series is leading us. We recap "Nippy."

The next day, Gene meets with Jeff and his friend and threatens to expose the robbery if they ever get in contact with him again. After turning his gaze to a department store in the mall, Gene decides to charm the two security officers who work the night shift with Cinnabons from his store. When the day of the con arrives, a friend of Jeff pretends to make a delivery to the department store late at night. Gene also uses the department store model to train Jeff, guiding him through the optimal path he must take to make a profit in three minutes. The next episodes could keep telling Gene's story in the future, go back to Saul's past, or even be placed simultaneously next to Breaking Bad, presenting beloved moments from a fresh perspective. The guard tries to comfort Gene, and fortunately for everybody, Jeff soon wakes up, shoves the remaining clothing pieces inside the wooden crate, and hides in the bathroom until morning. With his regular visits, Gene figures out when one of the guards leaves the security room to check out the mall and how long his partner takes to finish eating. With this detailed information in hand, Gene recreates the blueprint of the department store in real size, using nothing more than wood stakes and ribbons. Gene strikes a deal with Jeff, promising to show him how to get into the criminal game. As soon as he returns home after meeting Jeff, Gene takes his precious pinky ring out of a box in the closet and puts it on his finger. Once he gets near the wheelchair, Gene also cuts a wire to make sure he would take the elderly woman all the way back home. However, at the last moment, Gene hangs up the phone and decides to take care of the issue alone.