'Better Call Saul' Shocking Midseason Finale Explained
by EG
The midseaon finale of Better Call Saul ended on a horrific note, leaving fans aghast. The episode's shocking twist, though, is all part of the producers' plans to ramp up the tension as the Breaking Bad prequel series heads to the end of its final season. Read on for details, and beware of spoilers.
Although it was never intended as a midseason finale, Monday’s Better Call Saul absolutely ended with a jaw-dropping conclusion that will keep fans on edge until the AMC show returns with the remainder of its final episodes on July 11.
As the cheeky title indicates, the episode features the conclusion of Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and Kim’s (Rhea Seehorn) plan to bring down Patrick Fabian’s Howard Hamlin and then, in its closing moments, it contains a cold-blooded execution.
RIP to Howard, who definitely began the series as an adversary to Jimmy and Kim, but didn’t do anything to deserve such an ill-fated encounter with Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton).
The episode was written and directed by veteran executive producer Tom Schnauz, who also helmed the last condo encounter between Jimmy, Kim and Lalo back in season five’s “Bad Choice Road.”
A regular writer and director on both Saul and Breaking Bad, Schnauz spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about staging the episode’s big exit, several big pop culture references in the episode and more.
This episode’s biggest challenge is that we have to spend 30 minutes at least somewhat rooting for Jimmy and Kim’s scheme to succeed and for Howard to go down in flames, but then … we have to be crushed, just like Jimmy and Kim are. What are the challenges of generating that whiplash, that balance?
Jimmy and Kim are very smart cookies, and we needed their plan to go off pretty perfectly. They needed to succeed. But just like in Breaking Bad, when Walt and Jesse did the great train robbery, something bad had to happen. In that episode, the kid on the motorbike paid the price. In this one, we struggled a lot. We knew at the end of this that their plan was going to succeed, but somehow something bad was going to happen. We thought maybe Kim gets disbarred or gets caught or something slips up with the plan, but every time we talked about that, it felt wrong.
The more we talked about it, it just felt like the two worlds coming together at this moment — Howard coming to confront them and then Lalo coming to use Jimmy and Kim for his next step to get to Gus and the SuperLab — was right. How that balance works out, there’s no magic formula. We just break the story, plot it out and those two separate storylines came together when they did.
In that hypothetical Kim-gets-disbarred scenario, what’s happening to Howard? Was there a part of the thought process that had Howard skating by and making it to the end of the series?
Oh, there were all different scenarios. We go down every different road. In the early stages, when we started breaking the season, we had discussions about the skate rats from season one coming back and somehow being part of the plan and tricking Howard so that he somehow thinks he accidentally kills one of them. There were all of these crazy different plots.
Get the rest of the interview at The Hollywood Reporter.