Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 12 Review: Point Of No Return! One Step Away From The End
One step away from the end, the penultimate episode of Better Call Saul is an hour of television masterfully written and directed by Vince Gilligan.
Stars: Bob Odenkirk, Jonathan Banks, Rhea Seehorn
Director: Vince Gilligan
Streaming Platform: AMC and Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4.5/5 (four and half stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Better Call Saul’s ride into the sunset continues inexorably on Netflix in this week’s episode, after the parallels between Walt and Saul from the last episode, are all legitimate and spot on, although the return of the protagonists of Breaking Bad has not proved memorable at all or strictly necessary for the narrative (we talked about it in the review of Better Call Saul 6X11). And if the last chapters of the drama by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould represent a sort of exegesis of the undeniable nature of human nature and the extremes to which it can lead, this week’s episode closes the circle in some ways, exasperating the boundaries to give us an intense and dramatic hour signed in the script and the direction by Gilligan himself, marking the fate of Gene Takavic in one way or another and forcing us in today’s analysis to a necessary dose of spoilers.
Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 12 Review: The Story
The black and white parenthesis that in this episode of Better Call Saul embraces not only Omaha, Nebraska, but also touches Florida and Albuquerque, brings the Breaking Bad spin-off ever closer to a work by the Coen brothers in painting existences colorless of its protagonists who nourish in their intertwining the flashes of a destiny that would otherwise brown them in the ordinary indeterminacy of a daily ordinariness. A striking example of this is the generous minutes dedicated to Kim’s fate after leaving Jimmy and moving to the southeastern state of the USA. To break the staid equilibrium intervenes the call of Gene that we did not have the opportunity to hear in the previous episode and that it will exasperate Wexler to such an extent that it instills in her the need to permanently close the Howard affair, years after the events that led to his demise.
While things haven’t always gone this way, Kim is the only BCS character who has managed to draw a line beyond which not to go (anymore). His farewell to Jimmy, one of the peaks reached by the show, started from the point of no return represented by Howard’s death and the inexistence of the love relationship with Jimmy himself now in which the lymph that fed the relationship between the two, that complicity in the scam that could not even be replaced by mutual love.
A hubris realized but fully recognized and elaborated by Kim, who initially finds in the banality of a routine surrounded by futility a Faraday cage against the recklessness and criminality inherent in his nature, only to reach catharsis in admitting his sins. All this is described by Gilligan’s direction through skillful use of close-ups that emphasize the performance of an extraordinary Rhea Seahorn, a real revelation of this series also at a dramaturgical level.
Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 12 Review and Analysis
Their path, Kim, is completely different from that of Jimmy, who already in the phase of mourning for the beloved woman hides behind the mask of Saul Goodman showing off indifference and teasing her with digs, emblematic in this sense of the parenthesis set at the time of Breaking Bad which allows us, moreover, to witness a much more sensible and constructive dialogue with an old glory of the show, compared to the fan service of the last episode.
Gilligan brushes tense atmospheres playing with the camera and with music, creating moments of tension during the episode that risk leading to the unthinkable at any moment. After all, it has always been Jimmy McGill’s metamorphosis that has prevented the latter, a good-natured if fraudulent person, from recognizing the boundary drawn by Kim for both. Saul Goodman was born for several reasons (we analyzed the transition from Jimmy McGill to Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul in our special) but, a bit like Walter White, it is the exasperation of his conduct that turns him into the villain and finally showing it to us revived and threatening with a telephone cable twisted in his hands as a garrote towards the epilogue, perhaps for the first time on the verge of irremediably slipping into the abyss.
And it is with pleasant ease that shortly before Bob Odenkirk allows his character to betray himself by completely identifying himself in the part of the consummate legal defender, showing off a sparkling self-confidence and a gab as colorful as the shirts once worn. The cracks in Gene Takavic’s life have expanded from episode to episode, but the warning signs that have dotted Jimmy’s Nebraska journey have never been as dazzling and colorful as Saul Goodman’s mesmerizing commercials reflected in his glasses in this episode.
Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 12 Review: The Last Words
The point of no return for Gene Takavic comes one step away from the end of Better Call Saul. And Kim’s too. Once again, we can only remain disarmed in the face of writing that transcends the characters and reinvents them, confident that we can count on the splendid interpretations of Rhea Seahorn and Bob Odenkirk, emblems of two different but inextricably linked parables, for better or for worse. To crown the picture, the direction of Vince Gilligan goes without fail and outlines through skillful use of the camera a drawing that takes on its final contours.
