brake alert: Don’t read if you haven’t watched the seventh episode of Season 6 of “Better Call Saul” entitled “Plan & Execution.”
This week’s episode of “Better Call Saul”, like the six that preceded it, has a double title – “Planning and Executing”. Season 6, so far, has focused largely on Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and Kim (Rhea Seehorn) plot against Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian), a powerful attorney whose reputation collapse could lead to the settlement of Sandpiper’s lawsuit and, in turn, a healthy amount of money in Jimmy’s pocket. . Fans have been waiting patiently to see their plan in action. But sadly, it was never quite that simple, and there is of course a different kind of execution in this amazing final episode of Part 1, which ends abruptly after Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) shoots Howard in the head.
Lallo and Howard’s surprise encounter inside Jimmy and Kim’s apartment brings lead actors Dalton and Fabian together on screen for the first time, and marks the rapid escalation of Jimmy’s intersecting worlds – the courtroom and the cartel. But before Lalo puts a bullet in Howard’s head, the gang leader spends almost the entire episode in the sewers, carefully observing Gus Fring’s (Giancarlo Esposito) secret laundry operation from underground. After obtaining information in Germany about the Chicken Man’s secret methamphetamine lab, Lalo plans to kill Fring and his men. That, until he realizes Gus is falling for him – at which point he must move on to Plan B.
Meanwhile, Jimmy and Kim’s plan completely unfolds – Howard is humiliated in the mediation of the Sandpiper, revealing that the private investigator he hired to spy on Jimmy is actually a double agent. Listening to the mediation on the phone, Jimmy and Kim feel hot and heavy on the sofa, but the celebration won’t last long.
Talk to Fabian and Tom Schnuz, who wrote and directed the episode diverse On Howard’s shocking death, Lalo’s unexpected pivot, and what it all means for Kim and Jimmy.
Lalo spends the entire episode observing Gus’s laundry. Why did he decide to switch to Jimmy and Kim’s apartment?
Schnauz: He gets the information he needs in Germany and returns with the knowledge that a wonderful lab is being built inside the laundromat. So his plan goes there, and he calls Hector Salamanca just to tell him, but he hears a click on the line – there’s a phone click. As soon as he hears that, he turns around and knows that his original plan has been destroyed. But he knows that if Hector’s line is bugged, he knows that Gus knows he’s alive. So he called again and told Hector that he could not find a clue and had no idea where this secret laundromat was. He needs to come up with a backup plan, but we don’t know exactly what that is yet. We’ll have to wait for the next episode to see.
How does Lalo get around so easily, traveling back and forth from Albuquerque to Germany?
Schnauz: He needs evidence to kill Gus Fring, so that it will be fine for Don Eldeo. So he goes to Germany to get that. The mechanism of his travel abroad has never been determined. We discussed his offer to take a boat or use a fake passport…but I can’t say for sure. But we have a story calendar, and the timeline makes sense that he can get to Germany and find Casper and come back. Also, his disappearance from the series for several episodes led him to believe that he was figuring out how to get from one place to another.
After two episodes, Kim learned that Lalo was still alive, but did not tell Jimmy. why is that?
Schnauz: Mike tells Kim, “The reason I’m telling you is because you’re made of tougher materials.” When he told Jimmy the plans last time, he got scared and hid with Kim in a hotel. On some level, Kim wants to keep the scam going, and if she confesses the truth to Jimmy about Lalo, they will shut down the store because Jimmy wants to hide and protect Kim. It’s better if Jimmy doesn’t know so he doesn’t panic.
Do you consider Howard an antagonist in this story?
Fabian: I don’t think Howard did anything wrong necessarily. Includes corn fields [shorthand for demoting Kim to doc review]. The only wrong thing he did was not stand up to Chuck and do Chuck’s dirty work in the previous part of the series. Other than that, I think you can prove that Howard is acting in the best interest of not only his company and himself, but also Jimmy and Kim. Online, some people have a lot of sympathy for Howard, then others quickly remind me that he kicked Jimmy out of his money. For some people, this is unforgivable. I think Howard is a good guy, and I think he tried his best. But there is definitely a case that must be proven that some of the things he did helped push Jimmy to become Saul.
Schnauz: Howard bore the full burden that Jimmy had to bear, and did all the work he needed to better himself. He underwent treatment for depression. He worked it out the way anyone should, and Jimmy didn’t do any of that. Somehow, Jimmy still suffers and carries this burden, but instead of improving himself, he criticizes Howard. So Howard shouldn’t be an antagonist in the story, but because of Jimmy’s psychological issues, he is.
When did you know Howard was going to die?
Fabian: They called me before the season started and told me I could probably make my vacation plans earlier than usual this season. They said, “Look, we found a hinge that swings the rest of the season open. It reveals a lot and is about you. But that means you’re not going to move forward in the second part of the season.” They didn’t tell me the details of how that would happen, and I was happy about that. I never knew what was going on in three scenarios, and as an actor, I totally preferred it because you can only play what’s in front of you. Although I was told it was coming, it was still surprising to read it on the page, and I might as well be surprised to photograph it.
What a great last monologue I got.
Fabian: It’s funny, my place on the show wasn’t the monologue guy. You have been somewhat reactive. I’ve definitely got great things to say – there’s no doubt about that – but I’ve spent a lot of it listening to Kim yell at me and Jimmy slandering me with things. So I was a little nervous… and suddenly I became more like a Howard loop. The good news is that I am surrounded by such great artists and I had to stand next to Rhea and Bob in this last scene, two of my best friends and my favorite people ever to work with.
When Howard walked into Kim and Jimmy’s apartment, he called them “soulless.” are they?
Fabian: I think for him, yes. When you see all the ways Howard tried to show them the light, show them the right way to act, and give them a way out of their wrong ways of acting… In the end, what conclusion could he come up with? In Episode 4, his solution is boxing, unlike Howard, but he’s trying. But he already knows it won’t work because he goes straight from the boxing ring to the private investigator – he already has Plan B. By the time he reaches the apartment at the end of Episode 7, Kim and Jimmy insult him; They stripped him naked in his office. You know, he’s taking advantage of being – a silver spoon, a white guy, all those kinds of things. But in the end, he sticks to the rules, and Kim and Jimmy don’t do that at all. And that’s soulless, and I think he believes that. Howard admitted Chuck’s death, which the public knows wasn’t his fault. They know Jimmy just sat there and had a chance to get rid of Howard’s guilt instead. I think a lot of what Howard says in that last scene are some of the questions that might be creeping into the audience’s brains as well. Like, why would you do this? What’s going on? We want Jimmy and Kim to go and live near Santa Fe and have two kids, and the fact that we know that’s not happening is part of the awesome dread of seeing the show in the first place.
How much of Kim and Jimmy’s plan could Howard have figured out?
Fabian: Howard may be many things. He may be arrogant, and he may be narcissistic, but he is not a dumb guy. There is only one person who can do this – the bowler, the prostitute. So he finds out quickly in the conference room. He embarrasses himself, but he sees it. But the more he tries to explain it, the more it feels like a crazy person is trying to explain something. And that doesn’t make any sense, so it’s an escalating thing. And even when he puts it together and puts together the evidence, it doesn’t even matter because you can’t decipher what was filmed, viewed, and publicly displayed.
Were their plots always going to be like this, or were other options explored in the writers room?
Schnauz: We’ve probably had a dozen different directions with this plot. The one that stuck in my mind the most was about the skateboard twins from Season 1 Episode 1. We were tricking Howard into accidentally hitting one of them with his car, sending him over a fender and killing him. But it would be a switch as one of them passed over the side of a railroad, but the other twin was already lying at the bottom, all bloody and twisted. We had all these other crazy plots, but eventually we needed to figure out how Howard could embarrass himself during mediation and do enough damage that settling the Sandpiper suit makes more sense than a renegotiation.
Did Howard’s refusal to play a dirty role prevent him from resisting Kim and Jimmy?
Fabian: He’s not going to play dirty, but in the end, Howard doesn’t care what happens to him. He’ll be fine because he has enough behind him to bounce back. But regarding Kim and Jimmy, he just came to proclaim, “Good, but I’m going to be in it for the long haul. And I’m going to do everything I can and organize my resources to make sure you pay.” This is the new Howard. This is my vengeful Howard. If things aren’t cut short, it will be interesting to see how it turns out.
There’s a lot of talk about Chuck in this episode, and his picture looming over the mediation room almost had Howard’s eye on it. Why was there such an emphasis on him?
Schnauz: We wanted to touch on what Chuck means for the show and what Chuck means to Howard. And when he called Chuck “the greatest legal mind” he’s ever known [but then recognizes] “There are more important things”…on some level, he knows that Chuck didn’t act the way he should toward Jimmy.
Does Chuck’s trick of not making the shaken soda explode really work?
Fabian: Tom Schnauz’s uncle taught him that trick. I bet after tonight there will be a lot of people trying it.
When did Howard die?
Schnauz: We wrote these episodes a couple of years ago, so I can’t say exactly when, but at some point, I sensed that something terrible had happened as a result of the scam. Things can’t go perfectly with Jimmy and Kim. Maybe they’ll be discovered, or someone will see, or the police will find out… And the more we thought about the two worlds colliding, the more we knew Lalo was doing something so bad to Howard Hamlin that it felt almost inevitable.
What was it like to hang Howard’s suit seven years later on ‘Better Call Saul’?
Fabian: It was very emotional. That was the feeling of leaving high school after graduation. But I had a great trip, and they took me outside in a beautiful way. I can’t ask for more. If you were shot by someone, you might as well be shot by handsome Tony Dalton with all that charisma. What way to go.
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