Breaking Bad (TV Program)

Kim and Gus make some difficult decisions of the heart. Mike goes on a mission of mercy.Season 6, Episode 9: ‘Fun and Games’Let’s break with tradition and start at the end of this whipsawing episode, which delivers two quick jolts in its closing minutes.The first is Kim’s decision to quit both the law and her marriage. Her rationale? That together she and Jimmy are a hazard, both to themselves and to others. A newlywed who is not as rash might have considered less drastic solutions — maybe a week in Bali, a bit of therapy. But Kim is nothing if not unpredictable, and there have been many moments in this show when you are certain she’s going to break up with Jimmy only to then see her give him a smooch. What we saw here was the same thing in reverse.If Kim were presenting a legal argument, we would say it started logically enough — hey, these two do produce some toxic chemistry — but got wacky by the end. She says that she withheld the news from Jimmy that Lalo was alive because she knew what would happen — that Jimmy would protect her, hide with her and end the plot against Howard. And were that to happen, “We’d break up,” as she puts it.Why? “Because I was having too much fun!” she shouts.Whoa. The implication here is that the scam was so unnervingly delightful, and harmful to others, that she must quit her co-conspirator, like an alcoholic who keeps crashing the car and swears off booze. That’s a guess. It’s difficult to fathom the inner life of someone who says, “I love you, too, but so what?”Let’s leave aside, for a moment, Jimmy’s reaction and focus on a connected question: What will Mike think? Kim has been given instructions to deliver an Academy Award-worthy performance in a real-life documentary called “Nothing to See Here” in the aftermath of Howard’s murder. And now she has left her job and Jimmy. That will raise exactly the sort of questions Mike didn’t want. This is a problem.The Return of ‘Better Call Saul’The “Breaking Bad” prequel is ending this year.A Refresher: Need to catch up? Here’s where things left off after the first seven episodes of the show’s final season, which aired this spring.Bob Odenkirk: After receiving a fifth Emmy nomination in July, the star discussed bringing some measure of self-awareness to the character of Saul for his final bow.Stealing the Show: Kim Wexler’s long slide toward perdition has become arguably the narrative keystone of the series, thanks to Rhea Seehorn’s performance.Writing the Perfect Con: We asked the show’s writers to break down a pivotal scene in the ​​transformation of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman.On to the second jolt. Right after the breakup argument, the episode jumps forward in time to Saul Goodman’s louche and extravagant life, which is filled with Xanax, prostitutes and Roman-influenced, self-mythologizing décor and art, all of it in the comically opulent house that we saw in the opening episode of this season.Is the sudden end of this relationship with Kim supposed to explain this transformation? Lots of people have their hearts broken. Some evolve. Very few emerge with entirely different personalities. Perhaps we’re to believe that Saul was hiding inside Jimmy and emerged courtesy of the trauma of Kim’s departure. Granted, Kim’s farewell is quite a trauma. It’s just hard to believe that it steered a slightly crooked, often endearing and largehearted man into total depravity.That said, we know that in the future, Saul will hastily exit Albuquerque when he gains infamy in “Breaking Bad” and emerge with as a nebbish named Gene Takavic, managing a Cinnabon in Omaha. The writers have already signaled that this character can shift in shape.The less confounding part of this episode comes near the beginning. Gus has been summoned to the south-of-the-border home of Don Eladio, where Don Hector accuses him of killing Lalo and plotting to usurp the cartel. Unruffled, Gus answers this potentially fatal allegation by declaring it too preposterous to dignify with words. Then Eladio and his underling Bolsa make Gus’s case on his behalf, and in doing so demonstrate how well Fring has covered his tracks, with an assist from Lalo, who left behind a burned corpse with matching teeth.Hector is left to ring his bell in frantic, fruitless protest. Point to Gus, who seems to derive much of the meaning in his life by tormenting his foe. The scene ends with a moment that explains why. Fring stares at the pool, the same place where years ago, Hector shot and killed Max Arciniega, the love of Gus’s life. At that moment, Gus was lying next to Max, close enough to watch blood gush into the pool.Gus is haunted by that memory, and when he returns to his home in Albuquerque, we watch him regain his life, his happiness and his routine. But there are limits. When he visits what appears to be his favorite restaurant, he has a long conversation with a waiter and oenophile named David (Reed Diamond), who dazzles Gus with his good looks and tales of vineyard hopping through Europe as a young man. Nobody has ever spoken to Gus for so long, and through David’s entire monologue, Gus seems pleasantly rapt. This is smitten Gus, a side of the man we’ve never seen.Instead of asking for a date, which is what happens in the rom-com version of this interlude, Gus quickly leaves while the waiter is retrieving an even rarer bottle of wine. Fring has either decided he can’t get hurt again or concluded that love isn’t for a man in his position. It’s a weakness he can’t afford because to enemies, loved ones are easy targets. They end up dead, or sent on suicide missions to kill other people, like Kim in the previous episode.The finest part of this strangely long scene — six minutes! — comes at the end, when there’s a lingering tight shot of Gus’s face and we see him segue from relaxed and joyful to tense and withdrawn. Without a word of dialogue, you can see him come to a firm decision. He must keep his monastic, loveless life.Mike uses some of his post-clean-up downtime to visit Manuel Varga (Juan Carlos Cantu) and explain that his son, Nacho, is dead. (He does this because he has been taught about the agony of not knowing the fate of a loved one by Anita, his grief counseling buddy from Season 3, whose husband vanished in the New Mexico wilderness years earlier, a source of wrenching sorrow for her.) On the plus side, he says, Nacho’s killers will soon come to justice. Mr. Varga corrects Mike. It won’t be justice. It will be revenge, he says.In a cast of characters who are corrupt and wicked in various shades of gray, this humble upholsterer is here to remind viewers what uncompromising goodness actually looks like. To him, even a guy like Mike, who has an acute sense of fairness, is just another hoodlum.Odds and EndsSaul Goodman has finally turned up in the flesh, albeit for just a few minutes. Kind of nervy — naming a show for character who debuts in the ninth episode of the sixth season.What’s with the tip that Gus left at that restaurant? Obviously, $201 is generous for a glass of wine. But why the added $1? Did he think $200 just isn’t quite enough?Jimmy’s line, “What’s done can be undone,” is a nod to Macbeth, and a famous utterance by a Lady Macbeth — the original female gangster — who rues her role in murdering King Duncan of Scotland. “What’s done,” she says, “cannot be undone.”Lady Macbeth is an apt and interesting model for Kim. She sort of pushes her husband into the plot against the king, much as Kim pushes Jimmy to trap Howard. And Lady Macbeth has seriously strong scheming chops, just like Kim. Consider her psychological assault on Howard’s widow, Cheryl (Sandrine Holt) at Howard’s wake. First, she conjures a memory of seeing Howard “snorting something” off his desk at the office. When Cheryl begins to believe that her husband just might have had a drug problem, Kim comforts Cheryl and implies that everyone else might be wrong.“You were his wife,” she says. “You knew him better than anyone.”Well played, madam. Keep in mind that there’s often a price for such wicked manipulations. Lady Macbeth goes insane and then commits suicide. Kim has an easier time of it, at least so far. She leaves the work and the man she loves.Four episodes left, and a lot of story to tell. The future of Gene Takavic. The fate of Kim. There are engineers and a crew to hire, a super lab to build. Walter White and Jesse Pinkman are due any minute.Please leave thoughts — and any theories about Gus’s tipping habits — in the comments section. More

Lalo goes underground, Gus gets gloomy, and Howard presents his closing argument.As the producers of “Better Call Saul” have wondered publicly about how to end the show, they have been guided, they say, by one question: What does Saul Goodman deserve?“Plan and Execution,” as this episode is called, complicates the answer. Through the first six episodes of this season, and throughout “Breaking Bad,” Saul — and his progenitor, Jimmy McGill — seemed like a relatively benign weasel, a colorful grifter who often put his talent for chicanery to constructive use. None of his professional life was purely altruistic, but when he behaved like a crook it was often in the name of fairness.Now though, the scheming of Jimmy and his wife and accomplice, Kim Wexler, have ended in the murder of a civilian, as noncombatants are called in mob movies. Howard did not “land on his feet,” as both he and Jimmy predicted during Howard’s final minutes of life. He landed on his head, with a bullet lodged in it from Lalo’s gun.If one were defending Jimmy/Saul in court over the question of his culpability in Howard’s death, there are arguments to marshal. Lalo pulled the trigger. Kim pushed the plan. The former deserves life in prison. The latter needs therapy. But given the way that this show’s sequel hems in so much of the plot, the chief matter of suspense is what becomes of Gene Takavic, the third identity of Jimmy McGill, who runs a Cinnabon in an Omaha mall in the post-“Breaking Bad” timeline.And what happens to Kim? If she survives, does she wind up with Jimmy?It was easier to root for an Omaha reunion before Operation Frame Howard ended with the words “There’s really no need to … ” and a corpse on the floor. But that might be the ultimate point of this suddenly grim chapter of “Better Call Saul.” It gave Kim a chance to demonstrate moral complexity. She’s come a long way from the strait-laced attorney we met early in this show. Nor is she any match for the guy who’s about to interrogate her and Jimmy in their home. Like many of the best characters to emerge from the mind of the creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, she’s a mix of compassion and malignancy, sympathy and cunning.The Return of ‘Better Call Saul’The “Breaking Bad” prequel returned April 18 for its final season.A Refresher: After the show’s two-year, Covid-induced hiatus, here’s where things left off.Serious Success: Bob Odenkirk was a comedian’s comedian — until “Better Call Saul” revealed him as a peerless portrayer of broken souls.Writing the Perfect Con: We asked the show’s writers to break down a pivotal scene in the ​​transformation of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman.Cast Interviews: Rhea Seehorn and Tony Dalton told us how they created the complex Kim Wexler and the murderous Lalo Salamanca.If her destiny is tied to Jimmy’s, it’s safe to assume that it will be determined by how the couple handle the realization that their larky stratagems have ended in blood. Which doesn’t mean that Jimmy and Kim will cope with whatever comes next the same way. The first episode of this season is called “Wine and Roses,” a reference to the 1962 film, “Days of Wine and Roses,” about a couple, played by Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon, who are alcoholics. Lemmon’s character gets sober. Remick’s character remains in love with Lemmon’s but refuses to stop drinking, and they part. This is either foreshadowing or a fake out, but it raises the possibility that Kim will continue trending toward the wicked and Jimmy will not.Although, who knows? The reverse could be true.Regardless, R.I.P. Howard. You were much derided, mostly because of your smooth manners, good looks and old-timey shirt collars. They made you seem haughty and foppish. You were far more thoughtful than your enemies realized. If it’s any comfort, Patrick Fabian played you with an impeccable mix of confidence and vulnerability.The plot against you will not be missed. It was a ridiculous endeavor and never more so than in the middle of this episode, when Jimmy and Lenny, the aspiring actor/shopping cart wrangler, played by John Ennis, are photographed in a park, pantomiming a bribe. The point is that Lenny looks a lot like the Sandpiper mediator, Rand Casimiro (John Posey).The effort to settle the Sandpiper case and humiliate Howard had a few twists for viewers, like the realization that Howard’s private detective was a mole. But it was ultimately a Rube Goldberg contraption, fanciful to the point of absurdity and somehow effective nonetheless. About the best that can be said for this scheme is that it’s over. Plus, it seemed to have a profoundly aphrodisiacal effect on its perpetrators.By the time Lalo has secured the silencer on his gun, the amorous celebration has given way to terror. The question of what to do with Howard’s body is now Kim and Jimmy’s problem, but the more immediate issue is that Lalo wants some information. He will want to know the truth about Jimmy’s benighted $7 million trek through the desert, made possible by Mike’s sniper work and survival techniques last season. He will likely learn that it was Mike who engineered Lalo’s bail jump.What Jimmy can’t offer is details about Gus Fring, whom he presumably knows nothing about. (In “Breaking Bad,” he connects Walter White to Gus without knowing the man’s identity.) He can’t illuminate much about the superlab.And superlab is Lalo’s focus. He has returned from Germany with information tortured from Casper, who, to Your Faithful Recapper’s surprise, apparently knew the location and purpose of the excavation site where he worked. Lalo is surveilling the laundry above it from an underground lair in the city’s sewer system. Realizing that his phone call to Hector is bugged, he suggests, for the ears of Fring’s underlings, that his next move is an assault on Fring’s home. In fact, he plans to infiltrate the superlab and send images of it to Don Eladio, the head of the Mexican cartel.“Tonight, I go in, I kill all the guards and show you proof,” he says in a video message to Eladio. “Then you decide.”The possibility raised here is that the proof eventually offered will not be compelling enough to persuade Eladio to against Fring. As Lalo puts it, Fring will have his own story and defenders because he’s an “earner.” In fact, we know from “Breaking Bad” that Fring will finish his “mother of all meth labs,” as Lalo calls it. The question is whether Lalo can delay the inevitable without getting killed.Odds and EndsNothing in “Better Call Saul” is haphazard, so let’s note that the movie Jimmy and Kim are watching before Howard shows up is “Born Yesterday,” a 1950 film directed by George Cukor, about a woman, played by Judy Holliday, who falls in love with a journalist, played by William Holden, who’s been hired by her millionaire husband to educate her. We overhear a snippet of dialogue in which Holliday’s character is discussing Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Man,” a poem published early in the 18th century. One of Pope’s themes is the limits of science to grasp the true nature of humanity.Howard’s exit monologue is remarkably insightful. His guesses about what motivated the plot against him are as good as any out there, and unlike viewers, he wasn’t privy to the hotel room conversation last season when the idea was giddily conceived. “You did it for fun.” True. “You’re perfect for each other.” Yup. And so on.Fun fact: The guy playing the shopping cart wrangler and mediator look-alike is the father of Jessie Ennis, who plays Erin Brill, the law firm associate at Davis & Main. In this episode, she’s in charge of the group phone call during the mediation.The show now goes on hiatus until July 11, when the final six episodes will air. Your Faithful Recapper expects that a good portion of the remaining action will occur in the post-“Breaking Bad” era. But your recapper is faithful, which is very different from clairvoyant. So feel free to speculate about what comes next in the comments section, or about anything else you would like to share with the group.Until then, namaste. More

Jimmy and Kim prepare for “D-Day,” Howard tries to make peace, and Lalo has some questions.Season 6, Episode 6: ‘Axe and Grind’We’ve been snookered.At the end of last season, Kim and Jimmy talked about a plot to discredit and shame Howard, and for the last five episodes we’ve been led to believe that framing Howard as a hooker-exploiting drug addict was the point of the plan. It wasn’t. The point was to induce Howard to hire a private investigator who would photograph Jimmy conferring with a guy who looks like the mediator of the class-action suit against Sandpiper Crossing.The particulars of the coming end game are unclear, but we know enough to ask a few skeptical questions. Like: Were all of Kim and Jimmy’s slanderous antics really necessary? If you want to cajole your enemy into hiring a P.I., is the surest approach to plant a bag of drugs in his country club locker room, then steal his car for a joyride with a prostitute, whom you kick out of the vehicle in view of an esteemed colleague?Seems like a lot of effort, and risky, too. It was far from inevitable that Howard would think, “I need to hire a private detective and photograph Jimmy,” once he realized he was the target of a reputation-soiling scheme.The improbability of Kim and Jimmy’s takedown operation is just one problem. The bigger issue is that viewers are not invested in this scheme. (OK, this viewer, at least.) As Your Faithful Recapper has noted before, Howard has his flaws, but he doesn’t deserve whatever the Bonnie and Clyde of the Southwest are cooking up for him. And in this week’s episode, the writers complicate the morality of this entire matter by introducing us to Howard’s wife, offering a close-up of their marital struggles. They are sleeping separately and socializing separately. Howard seems eager to make peace with the missus — he even froths a peace sign into her latte — and she seems utterly detached.In short, Howard is decent to his somewhat aloof wife, which only adds to the sense that he isn’t a worthy target for an underhanded assault. And yet, the last scene of this episode is Kim’s highway U-turn from her drive to Santa Fe, away from a career-making meeting and back to Albuquerque.The Return of ‘Better Call Saul’The “Breaking Bad” prequel returned April 18 for its final season.A Refresher: After the show’s two-year, Covid-induced hiatus, here’s where things left off.Serious Success: Bob Odenkirk was a comedian’s comedian — until “Better Call Saul” revealed him as a peerless portrayer of broken souls.Writing the Perfect Con: We asked the show’s writers to break down a pivotal scene in the ​​transformation of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman.Cast Interviews: Rhea Seehorn and Tony Dalton told us how they created the complex Kim Wexler and the murderous Lalo Salamanca.Will Kim save “D-Day,” as she and Jimmy call this moment?It’s hard to care, at least not in a deep, emotional way. “Better Call Saul” has always been two very different planets — the drug world and the lawyering world — with orbits that only occasionally line up. (Think of when Kim meets Mike in Episode 5, or Jimmy’s work for Tuco and Lalo.) Otherwise, they spin on their own, with atmospheres that are dramatically different. Now that the cartel plot is on a boil, the legal plot seems slapstick-y at moments, dull at others and padded at times. Can anyone explain the dramatic reason for the encounter between Kim and Francesca in Jimmy/Saul’s office? If it had been deleted, what exactly would be missing?The episode heaves to life when the drugs-and-money part of the show finally gets some oxygen. Lalo has determined the identity of at least one of Werner Ziegler’s “boys” by reading the underside of the Lucite-encased slide rule that was a gift from the lads, and which Lalo handled during his brief visit to Frau Ziegler’s home. The piece was manufactured by a company called Voelker’s, the sticker said, and somehow Lalo finagled the identity of at least one of the boys from the company.Specifically, he got the name and address of Casper (Stefan Kapicic) who appears to live in the country and chop a lot of wood. When Lalo approaches, Casper flees into a darkened barn. The last thing a sane person would do is enter that barn with a drawn gun, but Lalo can be impetuous, and it isn’t a huge surprise when Casper blindsides him with the axe. This advantage lasts a matter of seconds because Lalo has a razor blade behind the Volker’s sticker (or business card?) that he’s brought along, and almost immediately he is in control and ready to begin an inquisition.This won’t be pretty, and it’s unclear what Caspar knows. He was surely in the dark about nearly everything related to the super lab construction, with a few exceptions. He knows that dynamite was involved, which wouldn’t have been necessary to build the “chiller” that Gus showed to Lalo in that staged, Potemkin-village version of the project at the chicken farm. Casper will remember that little show, and he’ll probably know that it was entirely for the benefit of the guy about to torture information out of him. (The two men were in the same cavernous room that day; hence Lalo’s “I don’t think we’ve officially met” right before he starts chasing Casper.)It’s worth remembering what the stakes are here. Lalo wants information on Fring’s construction project, which he will eventually discover is a super lab that will produce vast amounts of high-quality meth. Fring has no plans to share profits from the lab with the cartel, and we know from Jesse in “Breaking Bad” that it will eventually produce $96 million worth of the stuff every three months. It is the money-making machine of Gus’s dreams.Were Lalo to learn about this operation, Gus would either be murdered for his perfidy or forced to share the bounty. Given Don Eladio’s sensitivity to slights, the former seems more likely.Odds and EndsFor those who’ve wondered about the roots of Kim’s con artistry, or her attraction to Jimmy, the opening of this episode helps. We’re in Nebraska, where a very young Kim is helping her mother run a shoplifting scam on a store owner. Perhaps this experience, and others like it, have left Kim with the impression that love and fraud go together.Zafiro Añejo gets yet another cameo in this episode. It’s the pricey tequila brand that Gus will later use to poison and kill Don Eladio in “Breaking Bad” and that Kim and Jimmy order while hustling a mark at an Albuquerque bar in Season 2. Here, Jimmy buys a bottle at a liquor store and gets a warning about the sharpness of the crown-shaped top.That top is prominently featured in the season-opening montage of Saul’s emptied house. Either that thing will play a key role in this story or the writers are providing an elaborate feint.The little black book belonging to the veterinarian-cum-underworld fixer is also in the opening season montage, and now we know why it’s impossible to read without a decoder. Clearly, Saul somehow acquires it before the vet leaves town.A quick salute to Tina Parker, the actress who plays Francesca. She is flawless at conveying both exasperation (at Saul) and graciousness (toward Kim). Every gesture, every facial expression is impeccably authentic.Question of the week: What medicine does Jimmy take from the vet, and what role will it play in the plan to undermine Howard and win the Sandpiper case? We know only that the drug, if that’s what it is, will not show up in a blood test and that it will make Jimmy feel as if he had consumed two Red Bulls on an empty stomach. And we know that when Jimmy stares into the mirror, his pupils are wildly dilated.Huh? More

Kim loses sleep. Howard and Jimmy mix it up. Lalo resurfaces abroad.Season 6, Episode 5: ‘Black and Blue’Lalo Salamanca is playing the long game. In previous seasons of “Better Call Saul,” he seemed impetuous (i.e. murdering that TravelWire clerk) and a big fan of improvisation (i.e. the impulsive volte-face near the Mexican border to look for Jimmy’s car). That Lalo is gone, or maybe he has learned to fight smarter after appreciating the guile of his enemy.The new Lalo isn’t looking for “proof” in Mexico, as Your Faithful Recapper incorrectly surmised, nor is the proof he seeks related to the attempt on his life. He wants to know about what Gus Fring is surreptitiously building — a topic that riveted him starting in Season 3 — and his search has taken him to Germany.Specifically, to a bar where Margarethe Ziegler (Andrea Sooch), the widow of superlab engineer Werner Ziegler, is acing trivia questions and drinking alone. Repackaged as a debonair international business traveler named Ben, Lalo drops the name of the town where Werner had beckoned his wife to join him during his prohibited, and ultimately fatal, attempt at a brief conjugal reunion in Season 4. Soon, Lalo is frisking Margarethe for the few facts she knew about her husband’s work in New Mexico.Which isn’t much. Nor, it seems, is there a hefty archive in the Ziegler home; Gus Fring’s minions hauled away anything relevant to the superlab, and maybe a lot more. Lalo’s brief haus invasion apparently produces little of immediate value, other than a good look at the carefully encased slide rule given to Werner, a gift “with love” from “his boys.”What Lalo knows is that none of those boys showed up at the funeral and their identities are unknown to Margarethe. Surely there was a no-go order given to the crew when it came to Werner’s final send off, a safety precaution imposed by Gus, who halted superlab construction because of Lalo’s snooping.The Return of ‘Better Call Saul’The “Breaking Bad” prequel returned April 18 for its final season.A Refresher: After the show’s two-year, Covid-induced hiatus, here’s where things left off.Serious Success: Bob Odenkirk was a comedian’s comedian — until “Better Call Saul” revealed him as a peerless portrayer of broken souls.Writing the Perfect Con: We asked the show’s writers to break down a pivotal scene in the ​​transformation of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman.Cast Interviews: Rhea Seehorn and Tony Dalton told us how they created the complex Kim Wexler and the murderous Lalo Salamanca.Perhaps Lalo’s next move is to find the occasionally rowdy and very industrious young crew that Werner brought with him from Germany to blast the superlab into existence. How exactly he is going to determine their names is not clear. The handwritten cards he finds in Werner’s house are condolences from friends. And even if he finds those men, what will they know? Presumably, they were never told what they were creating, nor did they know where, geographically, they were working.Lalo already had a hunch that Gus was building something more ambitious than “the chiller” he told Lalo was under construction in Season 4. Beyond that, Lalo is in the dark but apparently heading toward illumination. At least, that is the hunch of Gus, who appears in this episode to be suffering from symptoms of pre-traumatic stress disorder, if there is such a thing. He is panicked enough about an imminent Lalo assault that he is scrubbing bathtub grout with a toothbrush. He takes Mike and his men to the superlab, reflecting a premonition that Lalo is going to show up there, rather than his house.“I can put more guys on the place,” Mike tells him, shining a flashlight around the empty space, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”Privately, Gus secrets a handgun in a superlab nook. The “Better Call Saul” writers are either throwing a feint or signaling that a showdown between Gus and Lalo will happen in the structure that will eventually become the largest and most profitable meth lab in the world. Leaving a weapon there seems to provide Gus with some modest measure of peace.Howard Hamlin, the other human quarry in this two-pronged tale, has called out his pursuer and summoned him to a boxing ring, in the apparent hope that a few rounds with gloves on will put an end to their feud. As Jimmy later nurses his wounds with Kim, he is baffled as to why he took the bait. Your Faithful Recapper is confounded by the fisticuffs themselves. A boxing match? It seems a goofy contrivance even in the context of Jimmy and Kim’s credulity-strangling plot to frame Howard as a drug addict.Thankfully, Howard has more in mind than resolving his differences with Jimmy using the Marquess of Queensberry rules. He’s hired a private detective to follow Jimmy. This is good news for anyone who wanted this strand of the show to acquire more intrigue.That said, Jimmy and Kim seem so utterly nonplused that Howard has discovered their plot that we have to assume it was part of their plan. (Howard suggests as much when he says Jimmy failed to hide his tracks and wanted to get caught.) Perhaps tipping off Howard, compelling him to hire a pro to tail Jimmy, was in the blueprint. Certainly, Kim and Jimmy never speak about tweaking their scheme. On the contrary, Kim implies that everything is on track.“Because you know,” she says, when Jimmy wonders aloud about why he indulged Howard and strapped on those gloves. “You know what’s coming next.”Very mysterious.Odds and EndsThere is a parallel worth noting between Gus and Kim. Neither can sleep and for the same reason. They think Lalo is about to appear. So Gus has hired bodyguards and a surveillance team. Kim has wedged a chair against her apartment door.The Most Entertaining Appearance of the Week award goes to Francesca Liddy (Tina Parker), who turns up at Saul Goodman’s grim, unfurnished office and can hardly process what she’s seeing. Jimmy is using a new name and has pivoted away from elder law to serve unseemly clients who have lined up outside the door like it’s Wal-Mart on Black Friday. She agrees to join this new enterprise — a decision she will rue by the end of “Breaking Bad” — under two conditions. A raise, plus “I get a say in the decorating.”Francesca, if you’re responsible for the U.S. Constitution theme of Saul’s office and those Roman columns, we need to talk.Mrs. Ryman is a Toto fan!It’s not just existential dread that is driving Gus a little nuts. Even before Lalo showed up, construction of the superlab was behind schedule. The delays are expensive, of course, and risky as well, given that Gus’s secret German partner and equipment supplier, Peter Schuler, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown when we last saw him. The delays also add plausibility to a key plot point of “Breaking Bad.” Walter White exploited Gus’s fear of falling behind on the lab’s meth production schedule to save his own life. We have a better sense than ever of why that ploy worked.And our question of the week for the comments section: What do Jimmy and Kim have in store for the man who is going to mediate the Sandpiper Crossing lawsuit? Kim has wheedled the name of the gent from an unsuspecting, somewhat fawning former associate at Schweikart & Cokely. Jimmy and Kim then get a look at the man in a copy of a bar journal and take note of his handlebar mustache.“That’s a lot less face to worry about,” Jimmy says.Looming plot twist alert! This is arguably the most baffling line of the season so far and clearly an important one.What does it mean? More

Gus sweats life in red-alert mode while Jimmy goes on a joyride.Season 6, Episode 4: ‘Hit and Run’Gus Fring is getting nervous.We get a de facto tour of his psyche in this week’s episode, by way of the elaborate surveillance system designed to spot Lalo Salamanca, the man Gus tried to kill, before Lalo can kill him. It’s a no-expense-spared operation. Seven cameras are pointed at Gus’s house; someone keeps an eye on nearby cars when he drives; a hired gun is working the fryolator at the Los Pollos Hermanos where Gus has an office; and two guys are trailing Kim, in case Lalo goes looking for her first.Also, he’s wearing a bullet proof vest and has a firearm strapped to his ankle. This guy is expecting the worst.“Two weeks and we haven’t had a tickle,” says Mike, toward the episode’s end.Nonsense, says Gus, in so many words. He’s in a game where your instincts get to fail you only once, and he will not be swayed from his conviction that Lalo is alive. As viewers, we know that he’s right, but we’re in the dark about everything else Lalo-related. He hasn’t been seen for the last two episodes, and spotting Tony Dalton’s name in the opening credits doesn’t count. The effect is to put the audience in the same mind space as Gus. We, too, know that Lao is on his way. Exactly when is a total mystery.If he arrives. When last seen, the suavest member of the Salamanca clan — not a competitive category, true — was on the hunt for proof that Gus was behind the failed, very bloody home invasion of Casa Lalo. He isn’t going to show that proof to Gus, of course. He’s going to show it to the cartel. Which may mean Gus will face a whole organization with many reasonably capable assailants in its employ.Thing is, we know that Gus is going to live, and that frames a conundrum for “Better Call Saul” writers this season. Given that Gus is a lead character in “Breaking Bad” and Lalo is not — OK, he’s mentioned once by Saul in that series, which does leave some narrative wiggle room — Gus’s survival, at least through the end of this series, is assured. Which is to say that the degree of difficulty faced by Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould and every other writer on this show is very high. They are betting that when a tale is told well enough, it is suspenseful even if the ultimate outcome appears to be known.The Return of ‘Better Call Saul’The “Breaking Bad” prequel returned April 18 for its final season.A Refresher: After the show’s two-year, Covid-induced hiatus, here’s where things left off.Serious Success: Bob Odenkirk was a comedian’s comedian — until “Better Call Saul” revealed him as a peerless portrayer of broken souls.Writing the Perfect Con: We asked the show’s writers to break down a pivotal scene in the ​​transformation of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman.Cast Interviews: Rhea Seehorn and Tony Dalton told us how they created the complex Kim Wexler and the murderous Lalo Salamanca.The success of this season thus resides not so much in what is going to happen, but how. And already there is plenty of intrigue. Your Faithful Recapper is riveted by Mr. and Mrs. Ryman, as they are identified in the credits, Gus’s bicycle-happy, hand-signal proficient next-door neighbors, played by real-life couple Kirk and Joni Bovill. There is a hidden tunnel between their homes, and the Ryman’s kitchen and living rooms are occupied by Gus’s underlings, some armed, others manning a video-screen installation. The Rymans appear to live in their basement, where they do jigsaw puzzles when not getting out for a ride.Who are these people? Until now, the number of noncombatants aware of Gus’s double life is, let’s see … uh, zero? At least at this point in the story. So, we have to assume the Rymans are on the payroll. But one of Gus’s video watchers refers to Mrs. Ryman as “ma’am” when he asks for some iced tea, suggesting he doesn’t know her well. And the Rymans seem intimately familiar with the local homeowners association, implying that they are longtime and authentic members of the community.What’s certain is that when Gus moved into 1213 Jefferson St., he purchased the house beside him, presumably a just-in-case measure that is now coming in handy.While Gus frets, Jimmy and Kim continue Operation Cockamamie, which in this episode involves briefly absconding with Howard’s Jaguar while he’s seeing his shrink. (The man has marital problems, we learn.) The plan involves a pantomime with the ever-amenable Wendy S. (Julia Minesci), whom “Breaking Bad” fans will remember as the meth head and prostitute who helped Jesse with a nutty scheme of his own. (She was supposed to deliver poisoned burgers to some especially wicked street-level dealers Jesse wanted dead in Season 3.)This time, Wendy pretends to get bounced out of Howard’s car, making it appear to a slack-jawed Clifford Main, who is the sole audience for this spectacle, that Howard is consorting with, and mistreating, a hooker.Like previous parts of this campaign to frame Howard, this one works without flaw, thus clearly foreshadowing that the entire plan will ultimately fail. There’s a jarring tonal shift in these scenes, as though “Better Call Saul” decided it can’t all be tense violins and deadly tangos and must switch occasionally to tubas and the cancan. This is certainly lighter fare than the anxieties of a man who fears imminent demise. But when Jimmy gets a spray tan, whitened teeth and a wig to pull off his Howard impersonation, the show seems a little goofy.In the courthouse, Jimmy is a pariah because of his success in springing Lalo. As reviled as he has become by security guards, clerks and prosecutors is exactly how sought after has become by criminals. So, welcome back Spooge! (David Ury) Looking far healthier and more lucid than he will be as a meth addict and stickup man in episodes of “Breaking Bad,” Spooge is blissfully unaware that in the not-too-distant future his drug-addled partner is going to crush his head with an A.T.M. For now, he has legal problems with an unidentified buddy, and Jimmy has become so popular that he is soon thrown out of his office at the nail salon.This leads to the episode’s last scene, in which Jimmy shows his new work space to Kim. It has a toilet in the middle of the room and not much else. As viewers know, this modest, odorous corner of an unpopular strip mall is about to get a spectacularly garish, patriotically themed renovation.Odds and EndsFor Your Faithful Recapper, the scene between Mike and Kim was the highlight of this episode, which was directed very deftly by Rhea Seehorn, her first time directing an episode. Mike is surely flattering Kim with his “made of sterner stuff” line. More likely, he is speaking to her instead of Jimmy because Kim noticed that she is being tailed and had the nerve to confront her tailers. It’s entirely possible — actually, it seems pretty likely — that Jimmy is being followed, too, and simply hasn’t noticed. Perhaps Mike decided to have a quiet word with Kim so that he could continue to keep two men hovering close by.Vintage Gus Fring perfectionism: He wants the bodyguard assigned to the kitchen at Los Pollos Hermanos fired because he is “not up to Pollos standards.”The opening song, “Best Things in Life” by the Dreamliners, is the perfect background music for that bike ride.And some questions for the hive mind, to be answered in the comments section:What’s with the tomato-red house? It seems unlikely that we linger on that peculiar building for no reason.Jimmy seems positively eager to admit to new clients that he helped Lalo, who in court went by the name Jorge de Guzman, something Jimmy refused to acknowledge to prosecutors. In this episode, when Deputy District Attorney Bill Oakley (Peter Diseth) accuses Jimmy of moral turpitude — “You scammed the judge. And for what? To get a murdering cartel psychopath back out on the street” — Saul says simply, “Prove it.” Well, isn’t proof unnecessary once you confess to half the criminals in Albuquerque?Oh, and one more: Who. Moves. Cones? More

Gus and the cartel chase Nacho, Kim and Jimmy pursue Howard — and everyone is conning someone.This recap is for Episode 2 of the back-to-back season opener; click here for the recap of Episode 1.Season 6, Episode 2: ‘Carrot and Stick’For a guy known for his punctilious approach to both business and personal grooming, Gus Fring sure has made a mess.Much of this superb and stressful episode, “Carrot and Stick,” is a study in damage control, overseen by a man who seems uncharacteristically ruffled and uncertain about what to do. Gus has always been a study in composure, but in one scene he does something that seems almost unimaginable, at least for him. He accidentally breaks a drinking glass.It’s an ideal symbol for the mayhem he has loosed with his ill-considered and disastrously executed plan to murder Lalo Salamanca. In hindsight, he must realize the whole idea was a fiasco — and would have been a failure even if Lalo had been killed. Many of the terrible outcomes that have unspooled in the season’s first two episodes are precisely what would have happened if the assassins sent by Gus had succeeded.Now he has two problems. Lalo is alive, which Gus realizes the moment Don Hector extends a hand in reconciliation during the peace summit organized by Juan Bolsa (Javier Grajeda). Either Hector can’t keep a poker face — if he really wanted Lalo’s continued existence to remain a secret, he would have feigned rage and ignored Gus — or he wants his sworn enemy to know the truth.The second problem is Nacho. He’s the one guy accessible to the cartel who knows about Gus’s plot, and the race is on to find him in his bleak and desiccated Mexican hide-out, the Motel Ocotillo. (Suggested motto: “But … we do offer room service.) Gus has to grab or kill Nacho before the cartel reaches him. The cartel wants Nacho taken alive — well, the Salamancas certainly do — so that he can be tortured into a confession.The Return of ‘Better Call Saul’The “Breaking Bad” prequel returned April 18 for its final season.Season 6 ​​Premiere: The new season began with back-to-back episodes. Read our recaps of “Wine and Roses” and “Carrot and Stick.”A Refresher: After the show’s two-year, Covid-induced hiatus, here’s where things left off.Serious Success: Bob Odenkirk was a comedian’s comedian — until “Better Call Saul” revealed him as a peerless portrayer of broken souls.Writing the Perfect Con: We asked the show’s writers to break down a pivotal scene in the ​​transformation of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman.Cast Interviews: Rhea Seehorn and Tony Dalton told us how they created the complex Kim Wexler and the murderous Lalo Salamanca.As ever, Fring Inc. has a jump on the competition. In the opening scene, we see Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) show up at Nacho’s home and switch a personal safe for an identical one, minus any evidence that Nacho had ever worked for Gus, presumably. Mike ruefully adds a brown envelope to the switched-in safe, and it’s unclear, at least to Your Faithful Recapper, whether he knows that the documents include a bank statement with the phone number to Motel Ocotillo. When Don Bolsa later opens this envelope, Nacho appears to have only a few minutes left to live.In fact, he manages to exit the motel premises with a beating heart, following an escape scene that is expertly staged by show co-creator Vince Gilligan, who directed the episode and demonstrates some serious action-movie chops. The sequence begins when Nacho realizes that a man across the courtyard has been hired by Gus’s underlings to keep an eye on him — time to flee. It ends with a shootout between Nacho and the terrifying Leonel and Marco Salamanca (Daniel and Luis Moncada), a.k.a. the Twins, who arrive in a silver SUV ready to kill whomever they have to in order to take Nacho alive.Now that he is roaming somewhere in Mexico, he might actually have some leverage with Gus, at least. At minimum, he knows that he could wreck Gus’s super lab dreams in under 10 seconds of candid chat with a cartel employee. This doesn’t mean that Gus and his minions will be eager to provide him with safe haven. But he knows that he poses a threat to Gus, and maybe there’s a way to set up a blackmail contraption that would keep a sword over Gus’s head. (For pointers, perhaps Nacho could watch the way Tom Cruise’s character keeps the mafia at bay at the end of 1993 film “The Firm.”)This complicated dynamic is no doubt why, at the end of this episode, in a scene set in an office at the Los Pollos Hermanos chicken farm, Gus appears ready to talk to Nacho when Mike hands him that mobile phone. For as long as Gus can’t kill Nacho, Nacho poses an all but existential threat to Gus.Before that call, Gus wants Nacho’s father brought to him, which he must envision as a kind of check mate that will force Nacho’s surrender. Mike, however, will not countenance that idea and says so, bluntly and firmly, in his first act of overt insubordination. This gets a gun pointed at his head by the ever stylish Tyrus Kitt (Ray Campbell), the only henchman in Gus’s crew you could imagine in line at a Manhattan nightclub.“Whatever happens next, it’s not going to go down the way you think it is,” Mike says.Precisely what that means is a mystery, at least to Your Faithful Recapper. He might be referring to the sniper set up outside of the office, with whom Mike is in radio contact. But that guy appears to be looking for signs that Lalo or his colleagues are readying an attack. It’s at least possible that the same sniper has been instructed by Mike to kill Gus and Tyrus in the event that Mike is killed. Or that Mike has an entirely different plan. Or that he’s bluffing.Speaking of bluffing, on to the Jimmy McGill and Kim Wexler frame-up show, where “Operation Ruin Howard Hamlin’s Life” is entering Phase 2. This involves revisiting the series’s answer to Bonnie and Clyde, namely Craig and Betsy Kettleman (Jeremy Shamos and Julie Ann Emery), who in the Season 1 timeline were represented by Howard in an unsuccessful attempt to defend Craig against charges that as a county treasurer he embezzled $1.6 million. Having served his sentence, Craig is a free man in highly diminished circumstances, running a bargain basement, and corrupt, tax prep company out of a roadside mobile home.Jimmy shows up with a proposition: Hire me, and I’ll get you exonerated by arguing that your lawyer was a coke head. This is a bluff. But Jimmy and Kim apparently intuit that the Kettlemans will double cross Jimmy, then head straight to the office of Clifford Main and attempt to enlist him as their attorney. They further know that Main, who saw that planted bag of fake cocaine tumble out of Howard’s locker, will toss the Kettlemans from the office, then wonder whether their story actually has some truth to it.What’s best about the latest iteration of Jimmy and Kim’s improbable little scheme is the opportunity it provides Kim to demonstrate an almost thuggish toughness. She threatens the Kettlemans with jail time, courtesy of an aborted call to an I.R.S. enforcement office, a power play of pure sang-froid. There’s a Robin Hood quality to her maneuverings — the Kettlemans were scamming their financially struggling clients — but one can envision the day when she flexes even harder against less worthy targets. Or when she’s mixing it up with the show’s true baddies.Odds and EndsWell, now we know where Jimmy got that inflatable Lady Liberty that sat atop his office in “Breaking Bad.”Why would Mike risk his life for Nacho, a man he has kept at a coolly professional distance since they met? One assumes it’s all about Mike’s relationship with his son, a Philadelphia cop who was shot by corrupt colleagues because he wouldn’t accept bribes. It’s a crime Mike feels implicated in because he was on the take when he was on the same force. (See “Five-O” in Season 1.) His defense of Nacho feels, perhaps, like a do over.Who was tailing Jimmy and Kim as they drove from the Kettlemans’ office? Your Faithful Recapper wanted to run the number on the license plates of the car, then remembered that the show is fictional. And that he doesn’t know how to “run the number” on anything. So, please, speculate in the comments section, along with any other thoughts about this stellar pair of episodes. More

The “Breaking Bad” prequel is back for its final season. Here’s what to remember about where we left off, as Jimmy’s transformation into Saul nears completion.It’s been two years since anyone watched a new episode of “Better Call Saul,” but the characters presumably haven’t aged a minute.So before the Season 6 opener, which debuts on Monday, let’s take a moment to remember exactly what was happening to this menagerie of sociopathic drug kingpins and morally compromised lawyers as the closing credits rolled on Season 5. And let’s take it one burning question at a time.Where was Lalo Salamanca headed in that last scene of the finale?Toward revenge. Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) just survived the world’s most incompetent home invasion-cum-assassination attempt, having outmaneuvered a handful of heavily armed men using little more than a frying pan of boiling oil, borrowed weapons and the artful use of his own underground escape tunnel. He knows who sent these guys — the rival meth wholesaler and fried chicken entrepreneur Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito).Gus has been a few steps ahead of Lalo ever since this newest Salamanca showed up in Season 4. It was Gus who engineered Lalo’s arrest and imprisonment for murder — a crime Lalo did, in fact, commit — then promptly got him sprung when the mustachioed villano proved he could wreak plenty of havoc from behind bars.Having lost his beloved cook, and apparently everyone else on his staff, Lalo will now be looking for maximum retribution. We know this will not involve killing Fring — he is alive and well in “Breaking Bad,” this show’s sequel — but he can presumably cause chaos and damage. At minimum, he can forestall the opening of the meth super lab, which is arguably the cause dearest to Gus’s heart and most important to his bottom line.Don Eladio and Nacho Varga (Steven Bauer, left, and Michael Mando) had what may prove to have been a very meaningful tête-à-tête in the Season 5 finale.Greg Lewis/AMC, via Sony Pictures TelevisionIs Nacho Varga doomed?Seems like it! Nacho (Michael Mando) let those Mexican assassins into Lalo’s fortress, then split as the mayhem began. Now that Lalo has survived the carnage, it will be pretty obvious to him that Nacho played a role in it.The Return of ‘Better Call Saul’The “Breaking Bad” prequel returned April 18 for its final season.Season 6 ​​Premiere: The new season began with back-to-back episodes. Read our recaps of “Wine and Roses” and “Carrot and Stick.”A Refresher: After the show’s two-year, Covid-induced hiatus, here’s where things left off.Serious Success: Bob Odenkirk was a comedian’s comedian — until “Better Call Saul” revealed him as a peerless portrayer of broken souls.Writing the Perfect Con: We asked the show’s writers to break down a pivotal scene in the ​​transformation of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman.Cast Interviews: Rhea Seehorn and Tony Dalton told us how they created the complex Kim Wexler and the murderous Lalo Salamanca.But consider this. In the last episode, Nacho had a lengthy discussion with the cartel leader Don Eladio (Steven Bauer) about how he would manage the business in New Mexico now that there isn’t a Salamanca around to replace Lalo. Was that a waste of viewers’ time? It is if Nacho never runs operations in Albuquerque.However this pans out, it’s safe to assume that Nacho will retain his title as the Most Tormented Character in this series. Pound for pound, no one has endured more physical and psychological abuse.How bad is Kim Wexler breaking?Very bad. At the end of the last season, Kim (Rhea Seehorn) was persuading Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) to help frame her former mentor and boss, Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian), in some kind of career-ending act of fraud or malfeasance. The contours of this plot are unclear, but Kim is adamant that Howard deserves the worst that she and Jimmy can conjure.One obvious motive here is money. With Howard sidelined in a scandal, she and Jimmy will collect about $2 million from a long-percolating class action lawsuit against a retirement home. It’s more than that, though. Kim loathes the guy in a way that even Jimmy — no fan either — finds excessive.The hatred is complicated and worth an essay of its own. Suffice to say, Howard has a history of patronizing and demeaning Kim — he once made her toil in a poorly lit room with first-year associates back when she was an up-and-comer at Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill, essentially punishing her for Jimmy’s sins. But Kim and Howard had good years, too, and he forgave her student loan debt when she quit the firm.Kim (Rhea Seehorn) turned out to be a better liar under pressure than her shifty husband.Greg Lewis/AMC, via Sony Pictures TelevisionNot to mention the other side of their ledger. Kim gut-punched Howard, figuratively speaking, when she and Jimmy found a very underhanded way to steal a blue-chip client from H.H.M. So they have issues, and it brings to mind the truism that you can deeply hate only the people you once liked.Kim is shaping up as one of the most intellectually rich characters on this show. (Gus is her only rival.) In her exit scene from Season 5, she was dreaming of opening a law firm to help the poor, which is about as altruistic a career move as an attorney can imagine. She was also conniving to destroy a man because, as she put it, he needed to be taken a peg.Watch your back, Howard. Watch your front, too.What’s next for Jimmy?Therapy, one hopes. When last seen, Jimmy had endured the roughest 48 hours of his life, starting with a horrifically botched effort to transport $7 million in cartel money from Mexico to Albuquerque — bail for his client, Lalo. Instead of a simple handoff, Jimmy came within a millisecond of an execution-style death, then watched his would-be killer get shot, the start of a deadly spree orchestrated by Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), who turned in his finest sniper performance to date.That was the easy part. Jimmy and Mike then hoofed it through the desert overnight, dragging heavy sacks of $100 bills and barely escaping death by dehydration. Then Lalo decided that Jimmy’s version of his bagman travails — that he simply had car trouble and then walked all night — had holes in it. Specifically, bullet holes, which he discovered on Jimmy’s car when he examined it during his bail-skipping drive to the Mexican border. Lalo visited Jimmy and Kim at their apartment to confront Jimmy and was saved only by Kim’s gift for improvised lying.Whither Gus and Mike?Expect some rage from the usually even-tempered Mr. Fring over the Lalo fiasco. Expect also some countermeasures to thwart whatever vengeance Lalo has in mind, especially if it means delaying the already delayed super lab.Things were a little tense between Gus and Mike (Giancarlo Esposito, left, and Jonathan Banks) when we last saw them. But it could have been worse. Greg Lewis/AMCMike, his favorite in-house heavy, will surely provide the muscle and close combat skills needed in the coming battle. Mike and Gus have been through a rough patch. Mike took a few orders he despised, most notably shooting the heartsick super-lab engineer, Werner Ziegler (Rainer Bock), for the German’s verboten efforts to briefly reunite with his wife.Maybe this is why Mike came close to an act of disobedience that verged on career suicide. He had a rifle scope trained through a window on Lalo during that confrontation in Jimmy and Kim’s apartment. If he had actually shot the guy, he would have wrecked Gus’s plans and been forced to run for his life.Better call Gene?Let’s talk about the story set after “Breaking Bad,” in which Jimmy lives in Nebraska under the assumed name Gene Takavic.The previous five seasons of “Better Call Saul” have started with a brief visit to Omaha, where a post-Saul Jimmy lives and works at a Cinnabon in a mall, having fled Albuquerque as a fugitive. (In a clever inversion of the norm, scenes set in the show’s future are shot in black and white.) In the Season 5 opener, Jimmy is confronted by a guy who seems to recognize him, suggesting that his cover has been blown.In flash-forwards to the time after “Breaking Bad,” Jimmy is hiding out as Gene Takavic, a Cinnabon employee in Nebraska.Warrick Page/AMCIt’s worth noting that the promotional poster for this new season shows Jimmy as the milquetoast Takavic — mustache, close-cropped hair, glasses. It’s possible that far more than a few minutes of the coming season will happen in Nebraska. There could be whole episodes. We may see him blackmailed. Or pursued by the feds. Or running, again.And, given that nobody knows Kim’s future, it’s at least possible that the two will meet in this time period, assuming she survives the machinations of the show’s present tense. Which is not a safe assumption.Which actor’s name should viewers be most stoked to see in the opening credits?Norbert Weisser. He plays Peter Schuler, the hyper-anxious executive — who in the future commits suicide — running a division of Madrigal Electromotive, a German conglomerate, and helping Gus build the meth super lab. He has been in exactly one episode of “Breaking Bad” and one of “Better Call Saul,” and both were exceptional.Anything else?The show is gradually docking with the starting moments of “Breaking Bad.” So Jimmy will soon fully embrace his alter ego, Saul Goodman, who has made only fleeting cameos thus far. We might get reacquainted with some old friends, too. Like the libertarian and obscure music aficionado Gale Boetticher (David Costabile), who helps set up the super lab. And producers have hinted that Walter White and Jesse Pinkman (Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul) could turn up.If we meet Mr. White in his pre-“Breaking Bad” incarnation, he’ll be a nebbishy chemistry teacher with plenty of unrealized ambition — and the world’s most famous pair of Wallabees. More