If I had a time machine, I would probably go back and trim maybe 15 percent of the time machine references that apparently were littered through the season and then were troweled into the finale. This is a show that always had the ability to be very, very subtle — my gracious, the emotions that played out across Odenkirk and Seehorn’s faces wordlessly in the finale — and then sometimes not the least bit subtle. Like that Walter White cameo — accentuating once again the most annoying and imperious aspects of the character from his Breaking Bad days, he twists the knife by mocking Saul’s time machine hypothetical and then he LITERALLY twists the [butter] knife as part of the amateur repair work he was doing. And even if I felt a beat like that was maybe too on-the-nose, I absolutely adored the trademark Better Call Saul oddball POV shot through the courtroom guardrail that put poor Kim in literal and metaphorical crosshairs. Turns out that I’m completely fine with obviousness when it’s done with panache and sincerity, something Better Call Saul always had in spades.
And I adore that the finale is exactly as sincere as you want it to be. Better Call Saul truly found its heart and soul in the second season when it became less of a thriller-comedy and more of a romance-thriller-comedy. The finale had some funny bits, like Jimmy negotiating for ice cream, but it was much more about the idea of the redemptive power of truth and love and how those things bloom if you believe in them and wither under the glare of cynicism.
Has Jimmy turned a permanent corner, won the battle with his inner demons and embraced his better nature? Has Kim found a way to be satisfied with using her legal skills for altruism, and will the erotic charge she got from scamming people become a thing of the past? Will she periodically visit Jimmy in prison and, when he gets released in five years on some technicality, will she be waiting for him with a single, shared cigarette? Sure!
Or will prison push Jimmy into a corner and will Saul come out as a defense mechanism, helping him build a business/protection empire in the hoosegow while at the same time sticking a shiv in his better nature? We’ve seen him reform before and we’ve seen him backslide. He was able to be unassuming, anonymous Gene for a matter of months, and what drew Saul back out wasn’t really the money. It was self-defense and compulsion. Same with Kim! Will Kim realize that legal aid is only satisfying part of her, and will she seek out fellow con artists and low-level scoundrels, piddly reprobates who are in no short supply in Florida? Who can say?
So is that “perfect”? Nah. But it’s appropriate to the show.
Verdict
The end of the show was flat compared to the run up, it really lacked oomph and was quite frankly bordering on boring.
Also did we really need the felicitations at the end of the show, when I watch a show I don’t want to be disillusioned from the World I have come to see as real life. Those felicitations were an unnecessary reminder that “oh this was just for fun, it’s not real, we are not real” who wants to be reminded of that!
Source Hollywood reporter
The end of the show was flat compared to the run up, it really lacked oomph and was quite frankly bordering on boring.
