Lalo Salamanca, one of the best and most charismatic villains of Better Call Saul, dies while laughing with a mouth of blood after Gus shoots him. The drug cartel half of the show is now mostly resolved. This leaves five episodes left to resolve the other huge question of this series: What happened to Kim Wexler?
That was a thriller, with Lalo and Gus battling it out to see who can be more clever. Lalo sets up Jimmy and Kim, ostensibly to kill Gus, but really to leave the laundry/superlab unprotected. Gus sees this and goes to the superlab, but he makes a mistake, getting his underlings killed. Cornered, Gus then unloads on the Salamanca family and calls Don Eladio a “greasy, bloated pimp.” Then Gus pulls a move very much like Walter White, distracting Lalo with some kind of sparking device, grabbing a gun and shooting him.
Take a bow, Tony Dalton. I hope the Emmys remember you.
It was a well-done scene, even though there could only be so much tension in watching Gus held at gunpoint, when we know how he dies, years from then, at the vengeful hands of Hector Salamanca. However, it was so dark I could barely see the shooting (I hate when TV shows are too dark). Afterwards, Gus recovers from his gunshot wound, blunted only by body armor, but still has the presence of mind to call Los Pollos Hermanos and tell the manager he’ll have to open and close in the owner’s absence. This is one more confirmation of the fastidious lengths Gus has gone to so he can begin his meth empire, and how Walt will someday barge in and wreck it all.
There are still some questions to be answered about the cartel side of the show, such as how the relationship among Mike, Gus, and Jimmy evolves by the time of Breaking Bad. In his introduction, Jimmy/Saul will ask if Lalo was involved in his kidnapping, even though Mike already told him Lalo was never coming back. I love the idea that Jimmy is so rattled by Lalo killing Howard in his home that Lalo will always be the boogeyman, out there to menace Jimmy, with Jimmy never quite believing he’s dead.
With the physical danger passing, the McGill/Wexler marriage is still very much in danger. I assume the last few episodes will answer the question of how they can still live together after Kim hides her knowledge of Lalo being alive from Jimmy, how their lies led to Howard’s death, and the general trauma of Kim nearly having to kill Gus to keep Jimmy alive. This was an acting clinic by Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn. Jimmy knows he has to get Kim out of the house to keep her alive. The two know this is a death sentence for Jimmy. He is unnaturally calm while she is rattled to her core (the Emmys yesterday finally nominated Seehorn for what is my favorite performance on TV).
I wonder if this all breaks Kim and she leaves, or if Jimmy leaves because she didn’t tell him Lalo was still alive. I’m sure we’re in for something strange and unpredictable in these last few episodes. Maybe they’ll jump forward to the Breaking Bad timeline and we’ll see Kim was behind the scenes the whole time, or maybe they’ll show us Saul’s post-Albuquerque life.
Better Call Saul has often been bifurcated into the legal side and the drug cartel side. This week, these two finally met, with the bodies of Lalo and Howard buried together under the superlab. The entire time Walt and Jesse were cooking meth for Gus, they were literally doing it atop the remains of the men who died to get them there.
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