Americans nearly went into cardiac arrest when, in July 2021, Bob Odenkirk suffered a heart attack on the set of Better Call Saul. Thankfully, the 59-year-old star made a swift and full recovery, and now his superb Breaking Bad prequel spin-off returns for its sixth and final season—which, à la Ozark, is being jumbo-sized (13 episodes) and released in two batches on AMC. Its April 18 premiere is the beginning of the end for Jimmy McGill, who’s destined to turn to the dark side and permanently become the shady legal huckster Saul Goodman. Yet as the series resumes, the real question is whether Jimmy’s wife and partner in legal malfeasance Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) will break bad first—and if that will spell her doom.
Since Kim doesn’t factor into Breaking Bad, her destiny has long been a potential tragedy hanging over these proceedings, and that doesn’t change as Better Call Saul picks up with her and Jimmy. Believing they’re out from under the Juarez cartel’s thumb due to the news that menacing Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) is supposedly dead, Kim continues to press Jimmy on a scheme to ruin their former employer Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian) and, in doing so, to finally profit from the Sandpiper lawsuit. No matter his own antipathy toward the man, Jimmy is still reluctant to totally destroy Howard. Kim, however, informs him that she’s now come up with a means of achieving their ends with relatively minimal damage to Howard’s reputation, and her reconfigured strategy—to which we’re not made privy, Michael Morris’ camera exiting a restaurant at the moment she lays out her plans—is enough to get Jimmy to come on board.
Per Better Call Saul tradition, the nature of Jimmy and Kim’s ruse becomes clear only once it’s been set in motion, with Morris and creators/writers/directors Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould favoring exposition-free storytelling that’s propelled by imagery and action. The couple start off by having Jimmy infiltrate Howard’s golf club in order to plant a packet of white powder in his locker that will be seen, conspicuously, by Howard’s old friend—and Jimmy’s one-time boss—Clifford Main (Ed Begley Jr.). Before he pulls off that sneaky feat, though, Jimmy must first gain entry into the men’s locker room, which he attempts to do by taking a tour of the facilities. That visit is cut short when he’s spied by Kevin Wachtell (Rex Linn), who has less-than-warm feelings about Jimmy, and not-so-subtly demands that the establishment give Jimmy the boot—a turn of events that Jimmy, always quick on his feet, warps into an opportunity, declaring to everyone in earshot that he’s suffering antisemitic discrimination, causing a scene that lets him get the job done.
Jimmy hasn’t lost a step, but that’s not to say he’s the same old con man. Better Call Saul’s protagonist is unsettled at the outset of Season 6, his conniving skills intact but his confidence and conviction rattled by his prior harrowing experiences with the cartels. While Jimmy appears unsure of himself and the trouble he’s potentially getting Kim into, she seems emboldened by their recent past, a look of steely resolve on her face, mixed with concern that maybe Jimmy isn’t as all-in as he claims to be. That tension comes to a head in the premiere’s second hour, when Jimmy and Kim decide to be the carrot and the stick, respectively, in their manipulation of Season 1 embezzlers Craig (Jeremy Shamos) and Betsy (Julie Ann Emery), who now run a tax preparation service and are tricked into smearing Howard’s good name. With a determination that’s downright chilling, the phenomenal Seehorn casts Kim as someone now willing to go to any lengths to realize her goals, and her fraught dynamic with Jimmy consequently proves the early going’s most electric element.
Not that there isn’t additional suspense in Better Call Saul, given that Nacho (Michael Mando) is on the run from the cartel for helping Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) set Lalo up for assassination. Nacho is holed up in a motel, unsure of who to trust, and with good reason, since Gus wants Nacho eliminated—much to Mike’s (Jonathan Banks) chagrin—and Lalo is miraculously alive and out for revenge. The deceptive games played by the cartel’s bigwigs—to cover their tracks and to take out their enemies—is a source of thrilling anxiety, no matter that we know (courtesy of Breaking Bad) that Gus will survive long enough to eventually kill rival Hector Salamanca (Mark Margolis). As before, everyone here is in stellar shape, with Esposito stone-faced and sinister as Gus, Dalton charmingly lethal as Lalo, and Mando harried and resourceful as Nacho, whose fate—like Kim’s—remains nerve-rattlingly up in the air.
Better Call Saul has arguably the finest cast on television, as well as the sharpest writing and direction. Gilligan and company are experts at orchestrating exhilarating centerpieces (such as a second-episode shootout), but their real brilliance is evident in extended sequences that communicate plot developments and twists through dramatic staging and visual framing. Whether it’s isolated Nacho crossing a nighttime parking lot in a shot that foregrounds an abandoned tricycle (thereby evocatively situating him in a recognizable real world), or a later composition that parallels Jimmy and an inflatable, mutant-looking Statue of Liberty (suggesting his own perverse embodiment of American ideals like liberty and justice for all), Gilligan and his team of directors are the best in the business, conveying theme, character and narrative details with a formal artistry that’s unparalleled on television.
On the basis of its first two chapters, Better Call Saul’s home stretch could head down any number of different paths, and the fact that it opens with the sight of movers packing up and cleaning out a luxurious mansion owned by Saul Goodman only heightens that mystery. What is certain, however, is that Gilligan—having already concluded Breaking Bad on an ideal note—knows what he’s doing, and that he’ll find a way to wring humor, terror and heartbreak from Jimmy’s ultimate transformation into the New Mexico grifter who gives the show its name.
