Better Call Saul is back: Here's what you need to remember for the sixth and final season

The end is near for the Breaking Bad prequel, so get refreshed on what Jimmy, Kim, Mike, Gus, and the Salamancas are up to

By Kimberly Potts | April 13, 2022 | 4:45pm

TV News Better Call Saul

Better Call Saul is back: Here's what you need to remember for the sixth and final season

Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler, Dennis Boutsikaris as Rich Schweikart Photo: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

Better Call Saul, like Breaking Bad, the Emmy-winning classic that spawned it, has only gotten better with each season. What began with the irrepressible public defender Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) squabbling about courthouse-parking-lot stickers led to Jimmy, in the penultimate season, becoming nearly full-on Saul, collaborating with fixer Mike (Jonathan Banks), drug lord Gus (Giancarlo Esposito), and cartel family member Lalo (Tony Dalton).

Slow burning and packed with the nuanced characters, heart, heartbreak, humor, and that Hamlindigo blue of the the Vince Gilligan Universe, Saul has taken us right up to the brink of Bad. And there are more varieties of tragedy to come before it’s all is done. In anticipation of the April 18 premiere of the first half of season six on AMC, here’s a look back the most important details from season five. (We’ll recap the new season’s episodes on the nights they air, so watch out for those, too.)

Gene probably won’t have a happy ending

At least we know Saul, Mike, Gus, and Tio Salamanca (Mark Margolis) live to see another series. But one of Jimmy McGill’s many aliases may not be so fortunate. The third version of Jimmy (not including that one time he convinced a waitress he was Kevin Costner), the post-Breaking Bad, on-the-lam Omaha Cinnabon manager known as Gene Takovic, has been the season-opening teaser throughout Saul. And we’ve been shown us that, as much fun as Jimmy and Saul had, Gene paid the price for it, one crappy apartment, PB&J brown bag lunch, and visor-topped outfit at a time. Gene is as sad and meek as Jimmy and Saul are jaunty and boisterous, and the only thing that might break Gene out of his mall-dwelling doldrums is the fact that he’s been busted by cab driver Jeff, who recognized him from those glorious “Better Call Saul!” promos from back in the ABQ. Being hoisted by one’s own petard is a trademark of Gilligan and Peter Gould’s storytelling, and though the always resourceful Jimmy/Saul/Gene opted not to have “Ed the Vacuum Cleaner Repairman” get him out of this scrape, it still seems like a long-shot to think Gene might make it to another series (by which I mean the Gene spin-off I dream of).

“Bagman” changed the game (and proved Gilligan & Co. still know how to wring a masterpiece out of this story)

From the beginning of Breaking Bad to the fourth season of Better Call Saul, Team Gilligan and Gould had done 102 shows set in this world, and it’s quicker to count the number of installments that aren’t amazing than the ones that are. And then there are those episodes that go another level, gems like Bad’s “One Minute” (season 3, episode 7) and “Ozymandias” (season 6, episode 14), and Saul’s “Bagman” (season 5, episode 8). not to mention the opening minutes of the follow-up, “Bad Choice Road” (season 5, episode 9). “Bagman” sets up moments big and small that will take us all the way to the Saul finale and beyond.

Jailed Lalo offers Jimmy $10,000 to drive off into the desert and pick up $7 million in bail money his cartel cousins (the cousins, Leonel and Marco Salamanca) are going to drop off for him. Despite objections from Kim (Rhea Seehorn), Jimmy sees none of the danger, only the whiff of easy money he’ll make. But a convoy full of gun-totin’ men who want those duffle bags full of cash are about to kill Jimmy when a hidden sniper—Mike, of course—saves him. Vehicles are damaged in the process (R.I.P. Suzuki Esteem), and Mike and Jimmy spend a harrowing night walking across the blazing desert, with the meager supplies Mike thought he’d need (urine is ingested, via a Davis & Main bottle).

Gilligan directed the tense, funny, and beautifully shot story, which pays off in so many ways: Kim sobs in relief upon finally hearing Jimmy is alive when he gets a cell signal, but only after she goes to Lalo and reveals Jimmy’s vulnerability as she demands his whereabouts. Lalo gets his bail and is free to wreak havoc into the beginning of season six. And Jimmy and Mike open “Bad Choice Road” with one of the most memorable moments of the series. The duo finish their scorching trek to a truck stop, where Victor (Jeremiah Bitsui) and Tyrus (Ray Campbell) find them, in shorts, generic travel tees, and flip flops, mentally and physically fried, holding giant fountain drink cups.

Walter White and Jimmy McGill aren’t the only ones who’ve broken bad

Jimmy spends season five urging Kim to trick everyone from her pro-bono clients to Kevin Wachtell, the Mesa Verse honcho who she’d worked so hard to woo. Despite her refusal to adopt Jimmy’s ways, he forged ahead and did it his way, nearly costing her work, relationships, and her reputation with his blackmailing and shortcutting. Her old boss Howard (Patrick Fabian), her new one Rich (Dennis Boutsikaris), and even Kevin warned her of the consequences of Jimmy’s influence. And if it hadn’t become clear before, this did it: Kim’s reaction to all of Jimmy’s lies and shenanigans was to suggest to him that they break up—or get married?!

“Either we end this now and enjoy the time we had and go our separate ways…or maybe we get married,” she tells him in “Wexler v. Goodman” (season 5, episode 6), proving beyond a doubt that our beloved Kim Wexler—kind, moral, generous, pro-bono devotee Kim Wexler—is happy to employ the “S’all good, man” philosophy, too. Be it making sure their conversations and actions have spousal privilege attached, as they now do, or plotting the ruin of Howard’s reputation so Jimmy can get his hands on the Sandpiper settlement more quickly, allowing her to focus on pro bono work, Kim Wexler has broken bad.

And like the fellas who earned them before, no one on the series, or in all of TV land, deserves an Emmy nomination for this transformation more than Kim portrayer Rhea Seehorn. One more shot, Emmy voters.

And now for the biggest Kim-related question remaining: She was never a part of Breaking Bad, which has a lot of fans worried about her fate. To all the Saul watchers who’ve already declared it the superior series to Breaking Bad, we’ll argue that it’s too soon to tell. No one is more likely to stick the landing than Gilligan and Gould. But a lot of that depends on that ending with Kim.