Lalo surfaces (literally), Joey reshoots, Mike miscalculates, Cliff folds, Jimmy and Kim gasp, and Howard … well, read on.
Wow. That was … intense!
Tonight’s episode of Better Call Saul was the midseason finale (forget what you might have heard from some idiot on the Internet last week!), and the writers did not disappoint. We experienced D-Day; we witnessed the destruction of Howard Hamlin (though it didn’t play out the way we expected, did it?); and we beheld the return to Albuquerque of the ultimate baddie, Lalo Salamanca. Let’s break it all down.
Starting with the cold open. It can’t be a coincidence that Lalo is hiding in the sewer like Pennywise from IT, can it? Stephen King’s grinning clown is one of the most terrifying villains of all time, but smiling, sociopathic Lalo is giving him a run for his money. This is a guy capable of sleeping like a baby in his car while an egg timer ticks because there is not a single cloud darkening his conscience. He is a killing machine, in every sense of the word.
Not that he isn’t capable of frustration, anger, or other human emotions. In fact, every move he’s made this season has been driven by his rage at Gus and his desire for revenge. We see him momentarily lose his cool when he realizes his call to Hector is being tapped, but it doesn’t take long for him to regroup and change the plan. Knowing that he’s being overheard, he tells Hector he’s planning on attacking Gus that night—correctly betting that this will draw resources away from lesser targets. It’s a little surprising that the ever-calculating Mike and Gus don’t even consider the possibility that Lalo is setting them up when they have their little confab at the charity event, but that’s one of the tradeoffs we all make here in the Breaking Bad Cinematic Universe. You sacrifice realism to enjoy a real-looking fantasy world where the protagonists’ predictions about their opponents’ future actions are almost always accurate.
In fact, it’s the same dynamic that enables Jimmy and Kim to pull off their demolition job on Howard’s reputation and sanity. So many of the big set pieces in Better Call Saul resemble those crazy domino chain reactions where you topple one block and 18,000 more fall exactly as they should. It’s preposterous if you think about it too deeply, but it’s immensely satisfying to watch unfold—so much so that, in this case, it’s possible to lose sight of just how messed up what Jimmy and Kim have done to Howard actually is.
Before we get into that, though, we get one last (?) round of laughs with Jimmy and Kim’s film crew. Getting everyone to drop what they’re doing for this urgent reshoot isn’t cheap, but Jimmy has plenty of cash on hand—enough to lure Lenny the frustrated thespian (played by John Ennis of Mr. Show fame) from his job collecting shopping carts in the parking lot; Joey Dixon from his primary occupation of being smug to undergrads about camera equipment; and Drama Girl from her performance of The Dark Crystal. After Kim fixes the blocking, she, Jimmy, and Joey rush to the darkroom where they make their selects, slather them with the mystery drug they scored from Dr. Caldera, and then … hand them off to Howard’s P.I., who turns out to have been working for Jimmy all along!
Next we see Howard proudly overseeing last-minute preparations for the Sandpiper conference call—and taking a moment to pass a morsel of Chuck’s deathless wisdom to a young associate. No, it’s nothing about the law; instead he teaches the kid a clever hack, worthy of a certain local chemistry teacher, that enables you to open a shaken-up soda without having it explode on you. (Does anyone know if this works? I would try it myself, but don’t want to risk blowing a perfectly good beverage.) The point here, I think, is to further humanize Howard by reminding us of his long friendship with Jimmy’s dead older brother.
Just then, Howard’s secretary arrives to let him know that his private eye has arrived with some fresh intel. When I spoke to Patrick Fabian about this episode (you can read the whole thing here), he said he thinks Howard’s fatal mistake was trying to beat Jimmy at his own game. “Howard hiring a P.I. and the whole boxing thing: those are outside of his realms,” Fabian said. “Those are Howard going to a playbook that he hasn’t opened before. And I think that's what leads him to where he’s at.”
For now, Howard has no idea of the trouble he’s in. He falls for the line about how the photos are “fresh outta the bath,” and gets the drug all over his hands while inspecting the images of Jimmy handing a wad of cash to a mystery man with a statement mustache and a giant cast on his arm. Minutes later, the trap springs when Judge Casamiro shows up—a living embodiment of the character Howard just saw. Already amped up and hot under the collar following his pep talk with Irene the Sandpiper plaintiffs’ rep, Howard immediately cries foul—then sends his secretary to collect his evidence. I don’t know how this show manipulates me so effectively, but no sooner had she left the room than it hit me: “The photos won’t be there.” Instead, she returns with some entirely non-suspicious action shots of Jimmy handing a frisbee to someone who is decidedly not Judge Casamiro.
What happens next is horrifying in a very specific way. Who doesn’t have a deep-seated fear of not being believed by anyone when you’re 100% right about something? We’ve all been there, and we all know how miserable it is. Ironically, every single crazy thing Howard says is 100% accurate. But Clifford Main is also 100% correct when he says that it just doesn’t matter. The judge is gone. The clients are spooked. Schweikart smells blood and is promising to cut a million bucks per day off the settlement offer. It’s over. Not just the case but, in all likelihood, Howard’s career as a superstar litigator.
After that tour de force, we return to Lalo and Gus and Mike for a breather, before joining Jimmy and Kim at home, where they’re celebrating their annihilation of Howard by candlelight. When there’s a knock at the door, of course we’re thinking it’s Lalo. Why isn’t Kim more alarmed? Has she been that lulled by the afterglow of victory?
But no, it’s not Lalo. It’s Howard. Looking terribly disheveled. He’s come to say that he knows exactly what they did, and he wants to know why. “What’s it all about? What do you tell yourselves? What justification makes it okay?...Why go through that elaborate plot just to burn me to the ground?”
When I interviewed him, Patrick Fabian said he thinks this speech was written in part to give the audience a chance to say these things to Jimmy and Kim. I’m grateful for that, but also, given what is about to happen to Howard, I’m glad he had this opportunity to say his piece. Howard started out as a “heavy,” as Fabian puts it, and he’s always been fairly ridiculous. But this season, we’ve also grown to care about him. Arguably, the entire Breaking Bad Cinematic Universe hinges on these transitions from hero to villain and back again, and Howard’s journey has been a fascinating one.
Without ever acknowledging the truth of Howard’s accusations, Kim and Jimmy basically let it be known that they don’t feel that bad for them and they really want him to buzz off already.
Then, the candle flickers.
Maybe the most disturbing thing about this scene—hell, about this whole episode—is the fear on Kim and Jimmy’s faces as Lalo strolls in. These two are pretty seriously unflappable, but here they are reduced to abject horror. In Jimmy’s case, we know he believed Lalo was dead. “How?” he gasps. In Kim’s case, she has to be seriously regretting her decision to keep the news she got from Mike to herself.
As for Howard, it takes a minute for him to realize what’s going on. By the time he does—“I think I’m in the middle of something”—it’s too late. Lalo is brandishing his trusty silencer. He lifts the gun to Howard’s temple and pulls the trigger. Jimmy and Kim both scream, but Lalo shushes them. “Let’s talk,” he says.
In my notes, I have the word “WHY???” written just like that. Fabian told me he thinks Lalo killed Howard simply because he was in the way. “I’m a fly,” he said. I guess that’s right. Still, it feels unfair. And unjust. Because if Jimmy and Kim hadn’t played this cruel trick on Howard—and if Kim hadn’t made that U-turn and prioritized her taste for vengeance over her dream of helping the less fortunate—then he wouldn’t have been in the way, and he wouldn’t be dead on the floor. He’d still be buzzing away!
Better Call Saul is on hiatus until July. There are, if my math is correct, six more episodes. I can’t imagine Lalo killing Kim here, now, with that many more hours to go. And of course we know that Jimmy will make it through and become, once and for all, Saul Goodman.
Clearly, Lalo thinks Jimmy and Kim can get him to Gus—or at least Mike. Whether he uses them to set up a meeting or simply takes them hostage (or both), they do appear to be more valuable to him alive than dead for the time being. And speaking of villains becoming heroes and vice versa, right now I for one am feeling extremely protective of Mike and even somewhat solicitous of Gus’s well being. But we know those two make it out of the prequel alive, whereas Lalo’s days are presumably numbered. Is it possible there’s one last mega-twist awaiting us that will reverse our sympathies and make Lalo seem like the good guy, at least in comparison to Gus?
We’ll know in a couple of months!