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He left the funky Saul Goodman shirt and tie on the department store shelf, but make no mistake: Last week’s caper with Jeff and the mall security team led Gene Takovic right back into the world of Saul Goodman. And a mysterious, controversial phone call in “Breaking Bad” got him doubling down and filling up Saul.
We don’t know — yet — where this sudden but dedicated devotion to the life that sent him underground will end, but people from his old life as Albuquerque’s most notorious attorney still reel from their association with him. To Bill Oakley, the beleaguered Assistant District Attorney who envied Jimmy his cozy opportunity at Davis & Main, since he ate lunch out of the court machine every day, Jimmy/Saul’s shenanigans in helping free Lalo Salamanca proved so disillusioning that Bill turned to the defense attorney himself: he has gone into private practice and advertises his services on a bus stop bench. Does he now serve the clientele that Saul left behind?
For Francesca, Saul’s loyal but overworked and stressed assistant, her career prospects are potentially less lucrative. Her life with Saul was certainly never glamorous, but now she’s a landlady, spending her days washing down a sink clogged with grass stalks and seeds in the apartment of two grumpy tenants whose house reeks of “a skunk’s asshole.”
She is also being followed, her mail opened and her phone tapped while law enforcement continues to search for Saul. Still, she agrees to drive out of town (to the former Big Chief gas station where Jesse paid for the RV to be filled with meth in season 3 of Meth breaking Bad) for a paid call to Gene. He wants the hot gossip about what’s happening at home and Francesca wants the hidden stash of money he promised her if he showed up. She tells him the rest of his money (the nail salons, the vending machines, the laser tag center, the offshore account) are all gone, but he’s most interested in a call she received after the message broke up from his relationship with Walter White: Kim calling to check on her. Kim also asked about Saul, Francesca shares. She wanted to know if he was still alive.
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Gene, who was driving outside of Omaha to call Francesca, is on his way back to Omaha when he stops to make another call. Kim is apparently in Titusville, Fla. and works at a company called Palm Coast Sprinklers. Gene calls and asks for her, and although the noise of trucks driving by on the freeway drowns out his conversation, it’s an angry one that we can tell from his gesturing. When he hangs up, he bangs the phone repeatedly. As he goes outside, he kicks the glass of the phone booth so hard that it shatters.
What could have happened on that call that would make him so angry? If Kim simply hadn’t been in the shop or had stopped working there, he might have been disappointed or upset, but not violently angry. What was being told to genes that would elicit this response? Was he told that Kim refused to speak to him? Has she spoken to him and shared her feelings about his? breaking Bad-era actions? Did she share any news about her new life that upset him?
Whatever happened during that conversation set in motion a return to Omaha, followed by Gene visiting Marion and Jeff’s home and slipping back into Saul Goodman’s ways.
The surprise of this Gene and Saul reunion is the enthusiasm, then the ruthlessness with which Gene approaches his new venture with Jeff and Buddy. It’s a typically complicated and clever game from McGill/Goodman’s mind that amounts to identity theft which is then sold for cash. The trio are taking it easy and have amassed a lot of money when they hit a problem: one of their Marks is seriously ill and when Buddy finds out the guy has pancreatic cancer, just like his father, he refuses to go on stealing his ID . Gene had previously discovered during the investigation phase of the scam at the bar where they were drinking that the man had cancer and appeared very concerned for him. He even asked him if he should mix alcohol with the pills he was taking for the cancer.
But when Buddy tells Gene and Jeff that he’s not going to take care of the cancer patient anymore, that they should go to the next guy, Gene freaks out. He berates Buddy and insists that he return to the man’s house and resume photographing all the personal documents that will earn them another payday. When Buddy still refuses, Gene calls him an amateur and fires him from the job, with a final warning to keep his mouth shut about their conspiracy.
Then Gene’s anger and recklessness turn to desperation. He gets Jeff to drive him to the cancer patient’s home, who he assumes will still be unconscious three hours after Jeff put drugs in a water bottle for him. With no evidence, Gene is dropped off with the man anyway and breaks in, having no real idea what will happen if he enters the house.
The burglary scene is preceded by a flashback to Saul approaching JP Wynne High School in “Better call Saul,” the Season-two episodes of breaking Bad that introduced Bob Odenkirks Character. Saul will surprise Walter White with his chemistry classroom. It’s still early in walt and jesses Meth companies and Saul thinks he can help them grow it and keep a significant reduction in profits for themselves.
And methere’s a scene that precedes it one more flashback a new one from a breaking Bad-Era Meeting with Mike in Saul’s office. Mike tells Saul how he found Walt and Jesse, telling him they are amateur, “little potatoes” that “He Who Must Not Be Named” (Gus, of course) has no interest in. Mike advises Saul in no uncertain terms that Walt and Jesse are unsuitable business partners. Saul obviously ignores this advice and we now know that the connection of all these characters and everything that brought them together was all life changing and the many who finished it were relieved by Saul Goodman. From all breaking Bad Callbacks and cameos that have been sprinkled all over the place Better call Saul, Writer-Director Thomas Schnauz best saved and most importantly one for Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, their long-awaited appearance like Walt and Jesse were more than worth the wait.
Now, with only two episodes left in the series, we turn to Gene’s desperate entry into this cancer patient’s home in a decision that feels like it could make for his post-Walt and Jesse- Life as was its initial appearance to hers.
Crazy observations
- Francesca’s call to Gene also provides a crucial update on Skyler White: pHe made a deal with the authorities, so apparently Walt’s lottery ticket, the one he promised would lead to the location of Hank and Gomey’s bodies, worked.
- Shoutout to Tina Parker for her outstanding performance as Francesca, who definitely ended up at the wrong end of Saul’s business. We’re hoping there was a decent amount of cash in the package she pulled out of the water Pipe.
- there is nThat’s not how we find out the contents of Gene’s call to Kim’s work place in Florida, right? Could this even mean another appearance by Rhea Seehorn before the series ends?
- Super clever casting: Alfred Hawthorne, the obnoxious first character in Gene’s identity theft bar scam, was brilliantly portrayed by Devin Ratray, who played Kevin McAllister’s obnoxious older brother Buzz Home alone.
- Two more great callbacks from Gene: He skips Saul’s fads, but he does drink (or not drink as it is Part of the scam) Moscow mules with one of the ID theft signs and also procures a Chi Machine, the foot massager Saul uses in his breaking Bad days. Was that just because it was a safe way to privately embrace his Saul past? Or was the machine a physical necessity to deal with the stress of returning to an active life of crime?
