‘Better Call Saul’ Recap: ‘Saul Gone’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Caution: This article contains spoilers for the series finale of ‘Better Call Saul’. To revisit the previous episode, click here.
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We are taught from a supremely early age, to live life to the fullest. To experience everything, we want to and do whatever it takes to go to our final days without a single regret in our hearts. Because to do so means we threw caution to the wind and embraced the chaos of life and the wonder of it at the same time and well… it doesn’t take long when we reach adulthood to come to understand that such advice, is in fact… flawed. Because life is far more chaotic than we know, and we are going to make a bevy of mistakes as we chug along. The kind that will hurt people, hurt ourselves for that matter as well and the pain we create and the stupid decisions we make… will indeed haunt us and stay with us. Simply because, some things we cannot reconcile, and some things we cannot heal from and that… begs an important question. 

In that, what do we do then to find peace with our lives and the actions we’ve taken when we’ve reached our final days and discover regret is all we know? Or for that matter… how do we square that same problem when we have an epiphany regarding that at a far younger age? Well, those are questions that are supremely important to our discussion today, because it just so happened to be the focus of the series finale of Better Call Saul on AMC. For ‘Saul Gone’ was quite the introspective story for one Jimmy McGill and he had to face those questions… simply because his attempts to escape in this story from the police… didn’t quite go as planned. In fact, it is safe to say that Jimmy’s push to run was nothing short of a complete and utter disaster. 

For he wasn’t quick enough to evade the cops at his home thanks to the fact that Marion was able to catch his license plate and his attempts to slide away on foot were just as much of a failure. Because once the cops knew just who they were chasing… they pulled out all of the stops. Such as helicopters, heavier patrols, roadblocks and search points within the city of Omaha, and despite Jimmy’s best efforts to evade them by jumping in a gooey dumpster… the noise he made in an attempt to call for extraction, finally brought the cops to him and just like that, James ‘Saul Goodman’ McGill was no longer on the run. He was under arrest, and it wasn’t long before he was behind bars and awaiting extradition to New Mexico to face a bevy of charges for what he did with Walter White. 

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But of course, Jimmy wasn’t going down without one hell of a fight. Which prompted him to call up Bill Oakley and have him join on as advisory council. To throw a bone to an old friend and of course… to have someone present in the room to bounce around ideas. For Jimmy was eager to put together his own special deal with Federal Prosecutors and he made it clear that if he didn’t get his exact terms he would push for a magnificent mistrial and he would likely get it. Which brought forth the sweetest deal that a criminal in this country has ever received. Wherein Saul Goodman would only do seven years in a cozy penitentiary and despite the misgivings of so many and even the disdain of one Marie Schrader, that deal was basically set in stone. 
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However, a moment in that conversation, one where Jimmy tried to use the Howard Hamlin mess to add one more sweetener to his sentence… took him off guard. Mainly because he came to discover that Kim already told that truth and well, at first… it appeared as though Jimmy was going to use Kim and her knowledge of his actions as another bargaining chip. In fact, he had so much to say about that… Kim was alerted to the reality that she might be exposed in court and well… that brought her back to New Mexico to be there for Saul’s big trial. A moment where it seemed that Saul Goodman was going to get away with everything and come out on top once again and be the hero in his mind that he always believed himself to be and well… that’s when the story’s big questions came back into play.

Because in that moment, James McGill made a powerful decision. Wherein he decided… to no longer lie, to no longer run and own up to everything he’d done over the past few years. A move that shocked the court and Kim no less. But something inside Jimmy straight up changed and he understood that coming out on top and beating everyone down to get there… no longer served him well in the slightest. So instead, he just embraced the truth and his mistakes and that brought him to an eighty-six-year prison sentence in a Supermax facility. Where he would ironically spend the rest of his days baking bread as he did in Omaha and where he would enjoy one last memory with Kim, since she visited him and properly said a goodbye and that… is how the saga of James McGill and Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul comes to a close… complete with one powerful lesson.

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In that, when we finally come to the point where we realize our life is full of regret and full of mistakes that will haunt us straight to our final days or on our way to the grave… we have a choice to make. One where we can either resolve ourselves to the path, we mistakenly put ourselves upon or how we've lived… or we can shift. We can forgive ourselves; we can forgive others and we can do our best to square up with those we’ve hurt, by being honest and authentic. We simply own up to everything, and our foolish mistakes and when we do that… we can feel those regrets disappear and we can find peace at last and while Jimmy might not be in the most ideal situation because of that, the peace he made he with Kim and Chuck and everyone else that pushed him to be angry and to thumb his nose at the system… gave him everything he finally needed to feel whole. Which means that his finale, not only serves as the anthesis to Walter White’s journey but it really is in a weird way… a happy ending for Jimmy McGill.
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One where he finally reached his potential and finally took ownership and found peace at last and you can’t ask for more than that from a character study and a grand tragedy. Where the tragedy isn’t negated in the slightest by Jimmy’s actions, since the tragedy remains that he didn’t do this sooner and well, this was in the end, the perfect finale. For this one truly wrapped up every thread in Jimmy’s story and every thread in the Breaking Bad Universe and it was so flawless and so utterly perfect, that there is nothing left to say about this story. We can only offer our thanks. To Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould for gifting us with this incredible series and all the powerful moments it had to offer.

To Michael Mando and Tony Dalton for doing a phenomenal job of filling in two important blanks in this rich tapestry of a story. To Giancarlo Esposito for adding depth to an already well-written and dynamic character. To Jonathan Banks for doing such a wonderful job of showing us what brought Mike to the darkness he embraced in Breaking Bad. To Patrick Fabian for giving us the ultimate frenemy in Howard Hamlin. To Michael McKean for being the genesis of Jimmy’s pain. To Rhea Seehorn for turning in a tour de force series of performances, the kind that gave Kim incredible depth, and moved us every step of the way, and of course… to Bob Odenkirk. For giving us a career defining performance, one that will be fawned over for ages and well, that’s it, nerds and geeks. We’ve reached the end of a powerful journey; one we will revisit over and over again to soak up its wonder and one that will forever be remembered as one of the finest television shows to ever grace the airwaves.

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