This article is by Trevor Sides:
For the first five seasons of Better Call Saul, show creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould took their time revealing the dark metamorphosis of James McGill (Bob Odenkirk) into Saul Goodman, Jimmy’s attorney-at-law alias. The pacing and depth contrasted starkly to Breaking Bad’s frantic race to the bottom of an underground meth lab.
“Because the show is named Better Call Saul, we thought that we had to get to this guy quick or else people will accuse us of false advertising — a bait and switch,” Gilligan told Rolling Stone in 2018. “Then lo and behold, season after season went by and it dawned on us, we don’t want to get to Saul Goodman … and that’s the tragedy.”
In the show’s sixth and final season, the tragedy kicks into a different gear. Saul begins to converge with Breaking Bad not just in timeline but in tone. Stephen King once described Saul’s source-material predecessor as part No Country for Old Men, part Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
The latter comparison doesn’t fit Saul, but the former definitely does. No Country for Old Men is a novel by Cormac McCarthy, who is best known for bleak and brutal neo-Westerns. (No Country’s film adaptation won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2008.) McCarthy is often identified with the likes of Flannery O’Connor as a key figure in the literary genre known as “Southern Gothic.” John Piper once tweeted that McCarthy “is to the American literary canon what Judges is to [the] biblical canon.” In McCarthy’s tales, the land does not abide heroes or men seeking redemption. Doom and desolation lurk around every arroyo.
Same with Saul. Given that the show takes place primarily in New Mexico, let’s call it Southwestern Gothic. Throughout Season 6, it did not appear that things would end well, for, well, anyone. (Even Carol Burnett!) The doom was heavy; the Southwestern Gothic logic too inscrutable. Fans held their collective breath as they awaited the fate of Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) and Jimmy.
And then the strangest thing happened. The Breaking Bad prequel ended not with doom and tragedy, but with confession and redemption.
Let’s be clear. The ending to Saul is not a happy one. But considering that Saul takes place within the Breaking Bad universe, it’s practically a fairy tale ending. “There’s a bit of Dickens’s Christmas Carol in it — there’s redemption, of a sort,” Gilligan told the New Yorker after the finale aired.
After fleeing the chaos in Albuquerque he helped set in motion during Breaking Bad, Jimmy runs away to Omaha under yet another alias, Gene Takovic. He pines away as the manager of a Cinnabon. In Saul‘s series finale, “Saul Gone,” Odenkirk’s character is arrested in a dumpster in an Omaha alleyway. This is the entire show in a nutshell — er, dumpster. It was Lalo Salamanca, the mustachioed member of the Eladio cartel, who referred to Jimmy as a cockroach. Well, here ya go.
As Jimmy / Saul / Gene emerges from the dumpster with hands raised, surrounded by the law, he is entering biblical territory. Up from the garbage he arose — part Jonah, part prodigal son, a man who has come to the end of himself.
Almost. As he’s proved over the narrative arc of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, Jimmy learns his lessons slowly. He’s grifted and conned his way through life and he’s not about to stop now.
“Where do you see this ending?” asks Bill Oakley, his co-council and former Albuquerque legal colleague.
“With me on top, like always,” Saul replies.
His prophecy nearly comes true. He is in the middle of negotiating a substantially reduced sentence when his plan gets upended by something rarely, if ever, seen in these parts. A confession.
In the series’ penultimate episode, “Waterworks,” Kim — Jimmy’s ex-wife and ex-co-conspirator — confesses to her role in the murder of Howard Hamlin several years prior. Not only does she deliver an affidavit to the Albuquerque district attorney, she also confesses to Howard’s widow, opening herself to a civil suit. Afterward, in an airport shuttle, we see Kim sobbing uncontrollably. It is not “ugly crying”; it is pure lament — and release. These are tears of regret, yes, but also tears of cleansing.
Jimmy learns of Kim’s confession as he’s negotiating with federal prosecutors. It’s the last thing he expected. Everything he thinks he knows about human nature and self-preservation is now in doubt.
He is flown back to Albuquerque for sentencing. He enters the courtroom in his gaudiest get-up yet, oddly resplendent in the post-Breaking Bad black-and-white color treatment. He is representing himself. It is literally United States of America v. Saul Goodman. Kim is present for the hearing. But instead of the usual half-truths and deceptions, Saul tells the truth. He confesses. To everything. To his centrality in empowering Walter White’s meth empire. To the fraud he committed against his brother and fellow attorney, Chuck. About the murder of Howard Hamlin, he says, “Kim had the guts to start over. But I was the one who ran away.”
The judge tells Mr. Goodman to sit down. He points a finger at his chest and says, “The name’s McGill. I’m James McGill.”
The only characters that made it out of Saul’s timeline and to the other side of Breaking Bad‘s were the ones who confessed. Telling the truth may have condemned Jimmy to a life in prison, but it set his soul free. He found his life by losing it. At last, Jimmy laments the destruction and violence of his bad-choice road and let’s justice be done, though the heavens fall.
Speaking to the New York Times while Breaking Bad was still on the air, Gilligan opened up about the moral of the show, “that actions have consequences.” He went on to say that he feels a “sort of need for biblical atonement, or justice, or something … My girlfriend says this great thing that’s become my philosophy as well. ‘I want to believe there’s a heaven. But I can’t not believe there’s a hell.’”
It’s true that Jimmy pays for his crimes, and it could be argued that a life sentence is a metaphor for hell. It’s less certain that the punishment is as just as it is fitting or poetic: the scam-artist lawyer is doomed to live the rest of his days behind bars! Yes, but what about the body count he left behind? What about Howard? What about Marie Schrader?
If Cormac McCarthy is the equivalent to the Book of Judges in the American literary canon, then Better Call Saul is the epistle to the Romans. Through the bulk of the first five seasons, Jimmy wrestled, Romans 7-style, with his flesh and his identity and his desires. “What the heart loves, the will chooses and the mind justifies,” wrote Ashley Null, paraphrasing the anthropology of the English Reformer Thomas Cranmer. For Jimmy, every compromise was justified. Every immoral decision was asterisked with dollar signs. Jimmy became Saul and was given over, in the words of St. Paul in Romans 1, to his lesser loves. Suffering and death followed.
“You can’t hide who you really are forever,” Howard told Kim and Jimmy seconds before their lives fell apart (S6E7, “Plan and Execution”).
Howard was right. Thankfully, “Saul Gone” is a reminder that Romans 8 follows Romans 7. The power of confession frees the penitent from the hell of hiding in dumpsters from the sins of the past. Confession does not change the past, but it does spare the penitent from the condemnation that’s due them. It relieves the brokenhearted from ever trying to atone for their sins on their own.
That’s all good news, man.
COMMENTS
5 responses to “No Country for Saul Goodman”
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This was great, Trevor! Great thoughts about one of my favorite shows and what turned out to be an ending that was bittersweet but “just right” somehow. You’ve brought that out here.
Thanks for the article. I just finished season six this week and have been craving some good commentary. Such a great show! After so much time spent under the weight of “Romans 7”, the possibility of a “Romans 8” made for a beautiful ending.
I am once again grateful and moved to read Trevor Sides’ connections with hope, reality characters, and story! Love it.
I am not caught up in BCS, from seasons 1 through 3, I think, I feared for her. Her caring attitude, loyalty, and integrity was beautiful. I was tense knowing that would break. Truly moving to consider how this character is now even more beautiful in her brokenness. How much more for real people such as us?
Sorry if this is nonsense to you Gilligan-verse scholars. It’s just how I remember it.
PS, losing on mobile here is a little hard, FYI. I bet you know that already! I was trying to write a thoughtful reply about Kim from the show. Oh well! Ha.
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