Better Call Saul

The 'Better Call Saul' stars and EP speculate on Jimmy and Kim's future after the series finale, reveal an alternate ending and more.

Brandt surprised fans by reprising her Breaking Bad role as Hank Schrader’s widow Marie in the Saul finale, and Gould says she was a late addition to the script, but “I think we wanted very much someone to be the voice of the victims… Gould agreed that “it was a really important scene,” so he went back and “simplified the dialogue a little bit” for the third day of shooting. Years ago, when Saul co-creator Vince Gilligan was working on the Breaking Bad sequel movie El Camino, he pitched a number of possible endings for the movie to the Saul writing staff, and “one of the endings was very similar to this, except for Jesse,” Gould remembers. “This is the one bit of color in his world,” Gould notes, “the relationship with Kim, such as it is… I think ultimately, we all felt like ending with the two of them felt like the strongest way to go.” Also in the original version, Jimmy “was fearful about what was going to happen to him in prison, and it was a lot about the fear. Odenkirk made that connection when speaking about Bryan Cranston’s cameo as Walt in the finale: “Jimmy finds himself in a f–king room with a guy who’s just like his brother Chuck, and he realizes he’s done it yet again. “It was scheduled for two days of shooting,” but they had to come back for a third day, and the actor told Gould, “‘If it’s OK with you, I want to reshoot the whole monologue.’ And everybody who overheard that little conversation wanted to kill me.” But Odenkirk wasn’t satisfied with the version they had: “It got very emotional, and I’d become more and more skeptical of gushing emotion on screen. Then ultimately, having watched them both, I felt like it was right, and it felt more honest to end with the two of them apart rather than the two of them together.” The climactic scene where Jimmy confesses to his crimes in a soul-baring courtroom monologue was “very hard” to shoot, Odenkirk recalls. Gould, who wrote and directed the finale, said he had actually written several different versions of that scene where “there was a lot more said, and a lot more catching up.” But “it 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. Odenkirk called it “the easiest scene we ever shot,” adding that “it’s one of the few times that one of them isn’t trying to manipulate the moment [or] push some argument in some direction… When the writers were first working on the finale, Gould revealed, they originally had Jimmy and Kim “meeting in Albuquerque before he went to prison, and the last scene was him in prison by himself, thinking.

The series finale of 'Better Call Saul' drew the show's biggest same-day audience since the end of season three.

Elsewhere Monday, The Bachelorette led primetime on the broadcast networks with 3.29 million viewers and a 0.76 in the 18-49 demo. The episode, “Saul Gone,” also had more viewers than any episode in season five, or season four — or any Saul installment since the third-season finale back in June 2017 drew 1.85 million people on its first night. Those numbers will only grow, of course, with delayed viewing and streaming. [series finale](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/better-call-saul-series-finale-explained-interview-1235199278/) for the Breaking Bad spinoff averaged 1.8 million viewers for AMC, a same-day season high by almost 400,000 viewers (the season premiere in April had 1.42 million viewers). Fox News’ The Five was the most watched cable program with 3.6 million viewers, and WWE Monday Night Raw on USA led the 18-49 chart on cable with a 0.53 rating. The Better Call Saul finale also averaged a 0.47 rating among adults 18-49, its best mark in the key ad demographic since the season five premiere in 2020. Better Call Saul has been adding about a million viewers with three days of DVR playback this season, according to Nielsen, and AMC says the show has performed well on its AMC+ streaming platform (though as is often the case with streaming services, there’s no public data to back up the claim). [Better Call Saul](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/t/better-call-saul/) drew the show’s biggest audience in three seasons — a span of more than five years. [Subscribe Sign Up](https://pages.email.hollywoodreporter.com/signup/) [Share this article on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/&title=TV%20Ratings:%20‘Better%20Call%20Saul’%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High&sdk=joey&display=popup&ref=plugin&src=share_button&app_id=352999048212581) [Share this article on Twitter](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/&text=TV%20Ratings%3A%20%E2%80%98Better%20Call%20Saul%E2%80%99%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High&via=thr) [Share this article on Email](mailto:?subject=thr%20:%20TV%20Ratings:%20‘Better%20Call%20Saul’%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High&body=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/%20-%20TV%20Ratings:%20‘Better%20Call%20Saul’%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High) [Show additional share options](#) [Share this article on Print]() [Share this article on Comment](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/#respond) [Share this article on Whatsapp](whatsapp://send?text=TV%20Ratings:%20‘Better%20Call%20Saul’%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High%20-%20https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/) [Share this article on Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=1&url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/&title=TV%20Ratings:%20‘Better%20Call%20Saul’%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High&summary&source=thr) [Share this article on Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/submit?url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/&title=TV%20Ratings:%20‘Better%20Call%20Saul’%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High) [Share this article on Pinit](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/link/?url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/&description=TV%20Ratings:%20‘Better%20Call%20Saul’%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High) [Share this article on Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/widgets/share/tool/preview?shareSource=legacy&canonicalUrl&url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/&posttype=link&title=TV%20Ratings:%20‘Better%20Call%20Saul’%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High) The final episode of

Note: This article contains spoilers for the series finale of “Better Call Saul.” Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman and Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler in “Better ...

In its latter half, Season 6 had focused on the minuscule — petty crimes by “Gene” and Jeff, who ripped off a department store and some drunks — in a reflection of the myopic denial that Saul had probably decided to see his past actions through. But in the case of the finale, the drama’s moralizing tendencies worked to its advantage. [Better Call Saul](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/amcs-better-call-saul-every-sleazeball-has-a-story-to-tell/2015/02/03/680b5fb2-a643-11e4-a2b2-776095f393b2_story.html?itid=lk_inline_manual_9)” began in part as a fraternal melodrama between Jimmy and his older brother Chuck (Michael McKean), with Jimmy constantly trying to swindle his way into the halls of power and respectability symbolized by Chuck’s white-shoe firm. But the person who loved Jimmy for who he was — and occasionally shared his willingness to thumb his nose at the rules, as long as he didn’t go too far — was Kim, who, like him, had clawed her way toward a law degree after a stint in the mailroom of Chuck’s firm. But over the AMC drama’s six seasons, creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould have exemplified the creative freedoms that might be more readily available to a prequel than a sequel, spinning an endlessly tense, funny and existential yarn that hardly needed “Breaking Bad” to justify its existence, while using the events of the parent series to rivetingly draw its protagonist to a Greek tragedy that he was helpless to avoid. Between them were two chain-link fences, one keeping Saul in prison, where he’ll most likely die after receiving an 86-year sentence for his various crimes, including his role in the murders of DEA agents Hank Schrader (Dean Norris) and Steve Gomez (Steven Michael Quezada).

After 61 immaculate episodes, this cinematic, immersive drama ends today. It was visually beautiful, detail-oriented TV that became so much more than Vince ...

From the get go, all that said, this wasn’t a promising premise. Sometimes, all plot development suspended for a few hypnotic moments, the camera would linger on a worn-out dollar bill caught on a cactus thorn, or on some abstract composition of a piece of metal foil blown about the desert. When Jesse Pinkman drove off into the desert, leaving Walter White murdered by cartel goons at the end of Breaking Bad’s final episode nine years ago, the safe money would not have bet on Bob Odenkirk starring as the reptilian “Slipping” Jimmy McGill in a prequel that traced his mutation from small-time schlemiel into still more slimy attorney Saul Goodman.

Kim and Marie could (perhaps still?) have a buddy-cop spinoff. Gould referred to Betsy Brandt, who reprised her role as the widow Marie Schrader in the finale, ...

While Odenkirk described the scene as “the easiest scene we ever shot” because of the actors’ comfort with each other, the cigarettes they had to smoke posed some difficulty — Odenkirk and Seehorn were coughing, and Gould said he had cigarette smoke down his throat for days afterward. “I just felt so strongly that the right ending for Saul was to be in the system, the system that he’s made light of and that he’s twisted around for his own purposes,” Gould said. The writers’ room decided around season four or five that the series would be returning to the post–Breaking Bad world of Gene Takavic, Saul’s alias when he went into hiding and became manager of a Cinnabon in Omaha. And the last scene is the judge in jail crying.” While it may not have been in the cards for Better Call Saul, it’s one that would’ve worked just fine for a “Hopefully Vince won’t be mad, but I think some of us, I especially, said, ‘What about another ending for Jesse?’ And I think the ending he came up with for Jesse was exactly the right one.” One ending for Jesse was very similar to the ending Gould and the writers had in mind for Saul.

6. Howard Hamlin. There has perhaps never been a more shocking and undeserving death in modern television than when Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian) fell victim ...

Nacho will forever be a legend to all of us, and one of the most likable antiheroes in Breaking Bad lore. The death is deserved, both from the perspective that Lalo is a horrible person who didn’t deserve to live, and that his arch-nemesis throughout the series was the one who got him. As we got to see Nacho’s relationship with his father, his unique code of ethics in the cartel game, and his friendship with Mike Ehrmantraut ( Jonathan Banks) blossomed, he became a fan favorite on par with Jesse Pinkman. [kicking a lantern over in his house](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/better-call-saul-season-3-episode-10-review-lantern/), it is clear that Chuck’s pure contempt left nothing left to live for. He’s a man doing his job, and he becomes a cog in the cat and mouse game between Mike (Jonathan Banks) and Lalo. His scathing monologue that laid waste to the Salamanca name, along with calling out Gus on his cowardly act before shooting himself in the head was the high point of the beginning of season six. He’s a man who is doing something criminal, but he doesn’t really understand the entirety of his situation or the misdeeds he’s performing. The friendship that developed between Mike and Werner also served a great purpose in Mike’s character arc. He could be a mean person in his life outside of his job. He also treated Kim (Rhea Seehorn) and Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) with some disdain that seemed a little petty at times, but he paid a price that was completely unnecessary. Now that the show has wrapped its run, we thought it would be a great time to recap which departed characters got the most and least deserving fates. Did their death signify a turning point in the story, or could Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould give these people more of a dramatic farewell?

The last episode of Better Call Saul, a spinoff of the highly-acclaimed show Breaking Bad, concluded on Tuesday after six seasons.

More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Users can now stream all the episodes of Better Call Saul on [Netflix](/topic/netflix). Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance. Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Better Call Saul is a prequel and sequel to Breaking Bad.

Jimmy and Kim in Better Call Saul. (Image credit: AMC). When it comes to some of those most legendary shows you can imagine ...

I wasn’t there when Breaking Bad originally aired back in 2008, but I was there for the second half of the series (starting in 2011), and for Better Call Saul when it premiered. I have had a journey watching these characters from beginning to end, seeing the acting evolutions of Bob Odenkirk, Rhea Seehorn, heck, even Giancarlo Esposito as Gus, [one of my favorite villains ever on TV.](https://www.cinemablend.com/television/better-call-saul-5-reasons-why-gus-fring-is-one-of-the-best-tv-villains-ever) Admittedly, [like Bob Odenkirk](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2022-08-15/better-call-saul-season-6-finale-bob-odenkirk-breaking-bad), I’m shattered to see this series end, but happy I got to watch it. Big nerd and lover of Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire. It shocked me but in that moment, I didn’t see Saul Goodman only, I saw Jimmy using the acting and manipulation skills of Saul, before letting that all go and becoming Jimmy once again in the end. And that shot of her walking out of the prison, with Jimmy staying behind bars, sent a shockwave of relief through me. Imagine my utter relief when I found out at the end of the series finale that she walks away without a damn crime to her name. But I have to admit I was feeling quite content when I found out that his ridiculous seven year plea deal was revoked after his confessions and he was given eighty-six years. Was anyone else smacking their heads in confusion when Saul kept trying to push his deal that he made with the prosecutors during this finale? Like I said, seeing Jonathan Banks again was always a pleasure, but what really had me on my feet and pointing at the TV like that Leonardo DiCaprio meme was Betsy Brandt coming back as Marie. She ran away, built a life for herself, and in the end, reconciled in a way with Jimmy after he confesses, showing that amazing parallel between the first scene of them together and their last. Now that was a twist I didn’t see coming. And here are feelings that I’m sure you felt as well.

The original “Better Call Saul” episode aired 13 years ago, and as much as we'd all like Cranston and Paul to discover the secret to eternal youth, it's not ...

The advantages of not de-aging also extend to a large number of scenes in the post-Breaking Bad timeline (the bulk of the final four episodes), aiding the show in a way that Gould and Gilligan may not have intended. They’re two different scenes in two different shows, each intended to be glimpsed with a different perspective that furthers the development of their lead character(s) in their own specific way, and to spend millions of dollars fixing a problem that many people won’t even realize exists would not only have been a colossal waste of resources, but would only have served to undermine the franchise’s return to one of its most iconic moments. It’s a contender for the best prequel ever made, with its most recent seasons making the case that it has even surpassed its predecessor as the most nuanced character study in modern television. In fact, the story may prove so engrossing that they only notice said issues in hindsight, which is a sure sign that the show is in good hands. As long as the story is engaging, and the performances are believable, audiences are willing to overlook niggles that would otherwise prove troublesome. Paul’s performance is more than enough, capturing the essence of Breaking Bad-era Jesse which is all that is required, allowing viewers to focus on the content of the scene rather than being distracted by digital trickery. The actors may not always look the age that they should, but thanks to how effortlessly they are able to play these characters (along with some clever framing and lighting), what could have been a calamitous issue is ultimately never felt. The energy with which he delivers his lines is astonishing, and watching him ramble on about the time his friend ended up in court after stealing a fake baby Jesus from a church nativity play, oblivious to the fact that Kim isn’t paying a lick of attention to him, conjures images of his egotistical younger self before his partnership with Walter White left him wise beyond his years. In these instances the problem is only exacerbated, with the younger versions of these characters looking older than the future versions that Walter and Jesse will later meet. Putting aside the budgetary requirements needed to de-age such a large percentage of its cast, it would have also sacrificed one of the most essential parts of Better Call Saul’s success: Its authenticity. And that’s not even mentioning the disconnect between the de-aged face and the au naturale body, creating situations where different parts of the anatomy appear to be operating in different decades. Appropriately enough the episode was titled "Breaking Bad," a nod to its predecessor's second season episode "Better Call Saul," which introduced the world to Bob Odenkirk’s con-artist turned criminal lawyer Saul Goodman.

For faithful viewers the finale was one treat after another. There were unexpected returns from old characters and breathtaking surprises. Up until the end, ...

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In Better Call Saul season 6 episode 12 — and the series finale, episode 13 — Jimmy McGill finally has to stop running. It's not all fun and games, ...

The latest McGill mutation — the one that brings Kim Wexler back into his life, the one that’s willing to do hard time to pay for his mistakes — isn’t a step backward into the Jimmy McGill we first met working his way up the ranks of his brother’s law firm. We saw Gene transform into Saul from the second he was thrown in jail; we saw Saul transform into Jimmy when he heard news about Kim while being extradited back to New Mexico. That scene is cushioned by a flashback to a conversation with his brother Chuck, seemingly early in the course of the mental illness that would eventually erode their relationship and lead to his tragic death. After confessing in court, somewhat dubiously, to being the brains behind the Walter White operation, Jimmy ends up on a bus to prison for the next 80-something years (first he had to prove he could get off, next he had to prove he could do hard time). He was just as flawed and almost as misguided, but where Walter White wanted to show the world at large exactly what he was capable of, Jimmy McGill, at his core, just wanted someone specific to be proud of him. Denying his identity only draws more attention to him, and the other prisoners start rhythmically chanting the slogan that made him famous to the kind of person who would end up on a prisoner transport. Saul is motivated by spite in a way Jimmy wasn’t; he takes Jimmy’s “watch me” attitude and his desire to do things just because he can to a whole new, dangerous level. It’s also incredibly satisfying to see the craftsman, in his hubris, taken down a peg. In a way, it was silly to go into this finale believing Jimmy McGill was irredeemable, that he’d crossed moral lines that could never be uncrossed in the same way Walter White did on They were both motivated by greed and hubris, but Jimmy never quite had the bloodlust of Walter White. But Better Call Saul often felt so satisfying because of the investment we as viewers made into keeping tabs on the behavior of these super-intelligent and competent characters, which often seemed nonsensical up until the very moment it didn’t. There is art in the skill it takes these people to pull off the schemes they pull off.

The sixth-and-final season of Netflix's Breaking Bad spin-off came to an end on Tuesday.

"Saul Gone [the finale] is dense with them, invoking a multitude of images from past episodes to absolutely devastating effect. "Sometimes, letting things just calmly play out can be the most affecting, satisfying end there is," he added. "With a series as flawless as Better Call Saul, there is the nagging worry it will come unstuck at the very end. "Is it better or worse than the conclusion to Breaking Bad? "So a superlative series comes to an end and, like many I imagine, I hope we never get another instalment," he wrote. This all plays out in beautifully in the last episode via one "masterful courtroom scene", he added, and another scene in jail that adds up to "surely as ingenious and satisfying a resolution to this story as humanly possible". [For the Telegraph's Ed Power,](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/better-call-sauls-finale-slower-sadder-just-momentous-breaking/) the spin-off's finale, with its black-and-white treatment, proved to be "slower and sadder - but just as momentous" as that of its predecessor. "The precision of the plotting, of the character development, has been spot on over the course of six seasons and the satisfaction of watching has been such that I wouldn't ever want anything else to undo it. Saul's story, the critic concluded, will be remembered as "an achievement from an era of television that seemed to have ended before the show itself did: It had a willingness to putter around the edges of its story and a faith in its audience." [Variety's Daniel D'Addario described it](https://variety.com/2022/tv/reviews/better-call-saul-finale-review-1235341967/) as a "striking and elegant finale to one of TV's most consistently strong dramas of the past decade". "The show's willingness, especially in its last stretch of episodes, to alternate major and striking moments with quotidian sequences of characters' ordinary existences - a conversation with a bartender, a day at the office - that seemed to run just a little too long was a striking choice. The finale of Better Call Saul has been praised as "masterful" by critics, as Netflix's Breaking Bad spin-off drew to a close after six seasons.

The title would seem to give us the answer. The series reintroduces us to Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), whom we met in Season 2 of “Breaking Bad” as the sleazy ...

Maybe he is finally less comparable to Walter White than to Don Draper of “Mad Men,” another fast-talking slick in a suit whose words save him until they don’t, who is taken with the idea of time machines, who has a history of changing his name and running from trouble. At last he can be himself, and, in its closing run, so could “Better Call Saul.” I don’t want to make too much of the much-heralded End of the Antihero — “Barry” is still around, for starters. As Saul says to Walter White in one of their first “Breaking Bad” meetings, “Conscience gets expensive, doesn’t it?” The final run of “Saul” keeps finding little pockets of story to revisit within it, restaging Saul’s first run-in with Walter and having Kim meet Jesse during the “Breaking Bad” timeline, at a crucial moment in both their lives. The climax of “Saul” seems at first to be going a similar way. Despite the reappearance in flashbacks of Bryan Cranston as Walter White and Aaron Paul as his sidekick, Jesse Pinkman, the last half-season is less an attempt to reprise “Breaking Bad” and more a productive conversation with it — maybe even a friendly argument. Instead, the protagonist utters something you would never expect to hear from Saul Goodman in a courtroom — the truth — and blows up his plea deal. As Saul says of Walter, in a late-season flashback, “Guy with that mustache probably doesn’t make a lot of good life choices.” Now he seems to be proving his own point. In “Better Call Saul,” crime is mostly just sad, the more so the closer the series gets to its end. In its closing run, “Better Call Saul” has jumped about in time, shuffling these identities like the moving targets in a shell game. The series reintroduces us to Saul Goodman ( Bob Odenkirk), whom we met in Season 2 of “Breaking Bad” as the sleazy lawyer to the chemistry teacher turned drug lord, Walter White. Each has a little of the others in him.

Our TV critic, David Bianculli, wondered whether "Better Call Saul" co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould would end this long TV saga properly and stick ...

Better call Saul. Saul, Saul, you better call Saul. You better call Saul. In a new article in The New York Times, he says the extreme views of the new wave of Republican candidates in this swing state are unlike anything he's seen in his two decades of covering conservative politics. BIANCULLI: That puts Jimmy - or Saul or Gene - on the run again in the finale episode. He's a wanted man, and his name is Saul Goodman. This is Valerie (ph) with Life Alert. The AMC series "Better Call Saul" televised its series finale Monday night, putting an end to 14 years of storytelling that had begun with AMC's "Breaking Bad" and continued with the Netflix movie "El Camino." UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As Valerie) Marion? Our TV critic, David Bianculli, wondered whether "Better Call Saul" co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould would end this long TV saga properly and stick the landing. The finale made room for unexpected returns by five different characters, including stars from both "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" covering several timelines. And the actors who came back for one last lap around the track got great things to do and to say.