{"id":48217,"date":"2022-08-17T17:07:11","date_gmt":"2022-08-17T17:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/at-their-best-breaking-down-the-final-moments-of-better-call-saul\/"},"modified":"2022-08-17T17:07:11","modified_gmt":"2022-08-17T17:07:11","slug":"at-their-best-breaking-down-the-final-moments-of-better-call-saul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/at-their-best-breaking-down-the-final-moments-of-better-call-saul\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAt Their Best\u201d: Breaking Down the Final Moments of ‘Better Call Saul’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Late in Monday’s emotional series finale, Jimmy McGill and Kim Wexler reunite in a visitation room in the supermax prison where the world’s best criminal<\/em> lawyer is serving what amounts to a life sentence. There isn’t enough time for them to rehash the trauma that they faced\u2014and inflicted\u2014as a couple. So instead, they just share a cigarette. <\/p>\n

It’s Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn’s last scene together, and it’s the easiest one they ever shot.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could just let go of all the manipulation or wanting something to be different or arguments that they might need to be making. They can just exist next to each other,\u201d Odenkirk says. \u201cSomething that they very much like to do.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cWe understood that this is them at their best,\u201d Seehorn adds. \u201c[In a] horrible place, but they are without artifice and without armor. And sort of maskless to each other, which is the best part of their relationship.\u201d <\/p>\n

When Kim pulls a cigarette out of her bag and holds it out, a slightly wary Jimmy grabs it. Then she flicks the lighter as he gently steadies her shaking hands. \u201cThe way Bob was playing his side was very caretaking,\u201d Seehorn says. <\/p>\n

\u201cSaul Gone\u201d was filmed in black and white, except for the lighter’s flame and the cigarette’s burning ash. \u201cThis is the one bit of color in his world, the relationship with Kim,\u201d says series cocreator Peter Gould, who cowrote and directed the episode. \u201cShe She’s the one person who sees him as he is and as he was.\u201d <\/p>\n

Jimmy takes a drag of the cigarette, and he and Kim lean against the cracking back wall, looking into each other’s eyes. \u201cYou had ’em down to seven years,\u201d she says, reminding her ex-husband and former partner in crime that he’d negotiated a much lighter sentence before he confessed. Then she raises her eyebrows and takes a puff herself. \u201cYeah, I did,\u201d he replies, tilting his head toward her. \u201cEighty-six <\/em>years,\u201d she says. At that point, he snatches the cigarette back from Kim’s mouth. \u201cEighty-six years,\u201d he confirms. \u201cBut, with good behavior, who knows?\u201d <\/p>\n

The joke makes Kim smile. Looking back on it, Seehorn smiles, too. \u201cIt’s such a perfectly written scene in that he tries to make her laugh a little bit,\u201d she says. \u201cSomehow letting her know that it’s OK. He can see that she’s scared for him.\u201d <\/p>\n

Despite the fact that their reunion happens in a jail, it’s the first time in a long while that neither feels trapped by their circumstances or misdeeds. The scene mirrors Kim and Jimmy’s first meeting on the show, a cigarette break in the pilot, but it’s more hopeful than that. They’ve both finally come clean. And though they’ve hurt too many people to fully redeem themselves, their connection remains. After what they’ve done, it’s all that they could’ve hoped for.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were versions of that scene that I had written where there was a lot more said,\u201d Gould says. \u201cIt just kept getting leaner and leaner as I worked on it because in a weird way they don’t have to say that much to each other. They’ve come to a conclusion.\u201d <\/p>\n

years ago Better Call Saul <\/em>wrapped, <\/em>Gould knew that the titular character had to wind up behind bars. \u201cI felt so strongly that the right ending for Saul was to be in the system,\u201d he says. \u201cThe system that he’s made light of and he’s twisted around for his own purposes.\u201d <\/p>\n

It was a far different fate than the Breaking Bad <\/em>universe’s other two main characters, Walter White and his tortured sidekick Jesse Pinkman. \u201cIt feels very elegant to me that Walt dies, which he was always going to do,\u201d Gould says. \u201cThat was set from the beginning. He dies really on his own twisted terms. Jesse suffers greatly. He is in a prison of his own for quite a while and then he gets away. And he starts healing. Of the three of them, Jimmy gets his soul back. But he’s going to be incarcerated for some amount of time. And that just felt right.\u201d <\/p>\n

What the minds behind Better Call Saul <\/em>didn’t know when they came up with the spinoff, which premiered in 2015, was that the new drama would actually be about two people. \u201cKim Wexler is just so important to us,\u201d Gould says. \u201cAt this point in the show, she’s kind of co-protagonist. And she has a very hopeful ending in my book.\u201d <\/p>\n

Arriving at an ending that was remotely hopeful for Kim required that Jimmy make the kind of changes that his real-life alter ego always believed he could, but never would. \u201cI did think he was capable of being a better person,\u201d Odenkirk says. \u201cI felt he had a good heart. The guy we got to know, Jimmy McGill, was a really sweet guy. And he understood what was right and wrong. And he had a great drive to be a good person. But there were other things that complicated that pursuit.\u201d <\/p>\n

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