As Howard was reading Jimmy and Kim the riot act, I was thinking, “Where is Howard in Breaking Bad? He’s one of the few major characters whose fate is unknown in that show.” After his big blowup, I didn’t think it would be plausible to enter the Breaking Bad timeline and show Jimmy with no relationship with Howard; their fates were just too intertwined by Jimmy and Kim’s betrayal scheme. There would have to be some kind of acknowledgment of what happened in Better Call Saul.
Then I got my answer: Howard doesn’t survive until Breaking Bad because Lalo Salamanca blows his brains all over the Wexler/McGill kitchen floor. It’s chillingly casual—Lalo doesn’t even know who Howard is but shoots him because he couldn’t be allowed to live to witness Lalo speaking to his lawyers.
My God, the way they shot that—with the flickering candle and Lalo entering the frame out of focus and Jimmy’s dawning horror—was just breathtaking. It was the best kind of shock when you know the character is doomed (like Nina in The Americans) and their death is still hair-raising. There was plenty of foreshadowing in this episode, with Howard speaking wistfully before the portrait of his dead former partner, Chuck—another person whose life, if not directly ruined by Jimmy, was certainly not helped by Jimmy.
Like Nacho, before he goes, Howard unloads on Jim and Kimmy. He calls them “sociopaths,” “soulless,” that they “have a piece missing.” Maybe the harshest words were for Kim: “One of the smartest and most promising human beings I’ve ever known and this is the life you choose.” And what could Kim really say to that? Howard’s dead right, and that’s the tragedy of her character.
“What do you tell yourselves?” he asks the lawyers who screwed him. “What justification makes it okay? Howard’s such an asshole that he deserves it? So, what is it? I sided with Chuck too often? I took you away from your office, put you in doc review? Howard’s daddy helped him get to the top, but you both had to struggle. Howie has so much, but we have so little. Let’s take him down a peg or two. What allows you to do this to me?”
Before it ended in blood, it was all fun and games for Jimmy and Kim setting up Howard. In the Breaking Bad tradition, the actual caper of reshooting the fake bribery of the judge was fun and exhilarating. (I think it would have been even funnier if they didn’t explain why the woman was dressed in a Dark Crystal costume and just let the viewers infer it.)
Their scheme was kind of brilliant, allowing their obvious ruse with Wendy to fall apart. Howard then let his guard down and let himself fall for the transparently fake bribery photos. His rant in the Sandpiper mediation about the photos being switched reminded me of Seinfeld when George Costanza insisted he saw a woman on a horse in Central Park and everybody thought he was crazy. But he was right! Ruthie Cohen really was riding a horse! Howard is also right about switching the photos but after everyone sees his dilated pupils and sweaty face, his reputation is now destroyed, and he can’t get it back from the grave.
There will be a half-season’s worth of fallout from Howard’s death. Even though Lalo used a silencer, the neighbors must have heard Jimmy and Kim screaming. (It was very effective seeing them flip out this hard, considering these are people who would be capable of compartmentalizing a nuclear blast.) How do they explain this murder and who cleans up the body? Would those people trailing Kim contact Mike and have him arrange it? Funny how Howard’s murder is indirectly the fault of Mike and Gus—if Lalo hadn’t heard the bugged line at the nursing home, he wouldn’t have fed Hector fake information that he was at the laundry and wouldn’t have been clear to go to Jimmy and Kim’s in the first place.
There will also be huge emotional fallout in the McGill–Wexler marriage. Will Kim tell the truth that she knew Lalo was alive? If Jimmy had known, he might not have left the door open for Lalo to just walk in.
I don’t think Kim will die at the end of Better Call Saul. The best character endings are sometimes those where the person doesn’t die but ends up in some sort of purgatory of her own making. I think Kim will just end up in one of these, after ruining her own promising career for, as Howard said, the life of petty vengeance she chose.
At least we only have to wait six weeks for the resolution to that brutal murder.
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