Created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould
Written and Directed by Gordon Smith
Starring Bob Odenkirk, Rhea Seehorn, Michael Mando and Jonathan Banks
New episodes airing Mondays on AMC

by Alex Rudolph, Staff Writer

It's raining in the desert, a piece of curved glass is in the dust, and we're in the middle of one of Better Call Saul/Breaking Bad's classic slow cold opens, where we get glances of a location and an item, and then spend the next 40 minutes learning their significance.

People don't realize that not saying anything is the best way to keep a secret. I went to sleep on Monday night, and on Tuesday morning Twitter was full of folks saying, "Michael Mando... wow" and "Try to go into this without knowing anything!" Which means it's an episode that especially relies on you not knowing anything and which, probably, means somebody's going to get killed. And so later on, as Michael Mando was submerged in either rancid oil or fecal waste, I assumed the glass from the cold open was coming straight for his throat.

Still, I was surprised we'd lose Nacho so early. Hank, a character with comparable importance to Breaking Bad's story, died in the first half of that show's final season too, so there's precedent. More importantly, I appreciate a show that breaks precedent without being too showy about it. Nacho got a heroic, victorious end, he just did it at the beginning of a television season, rather than the expected grand finale. It was natural and, if it was shocking, that's just because 1) so many shows are more formulaic and 2) violent death is pretty shocking.

To back up: Nacho begins the episode with a pistol and a car. He quickly abandons the car, making his way through dirt and septic tanks on his way out of Mexico. He's pursued by the Cousins (Daniel and Luis Moncada), he's alone, and he looks like total shit. We see Jimmy and Kim work to make Howard Hamlin's life harder, but mentally I spent the entire episode with Nacho. I watched like Joaquin Phoenix in Signs, waving my hands at the TV and shouting, "Move, children. Vamanos!" like I could make the other characters scatter. (That said, Lavell Crawford's Huell is one of the few characters you could imagine getting a spin-off after this current spin-off ends. Give me three seasons of Huell bumping into people and I'd be thrilled.)

Nacho's in an impossible situation. Trudging back to the States, he happens on an auto shop and is able to call his father, obliviously at work in his own auto shop. By that point, Nacho understands there's no way out. The grief in Michael Mando's performance helps the audience recognize that, too. After a brief conversation, Nacho says goodbye to his dad and makes contact with Mike (Jonathan Banks).

The plan is to smuggle Nacho back into New Mexico and make it look like Gus's (Giancarlo Esposito) people captured him after a struggle. There's going to be a parley with cartel middleman Juan Bolsa (Javier Grajeda), Gus and his henchmen, and Hector Salamanca (Mark Margolis) and the Cousins. Mike will watch from a distance with a sniper rifle. And Nacho is going to die. We know this, if only because every other character in the scene shows up in Breaking Bad. Nacho acts like he's watched Breaking Bad, too.

The Gus we see in Saul isn't that far from the Gus we saw toward the end of the previous series. At first, Breaking Bad portrayed Gus as a normal guy, as far as drug kingpins went. When he turned berserk, it was after Walt pushed him. The Gus of Breaking Bad's early seasons didn't appear to be the kind of person who would slit his own employee's throat to teach somebody else a lesson. Saul argues he's always been that ruthless, that the Gus we saw earlier was customer-facing Gus. We saw him as he appeared to the people outside of the drug trafficking game. In Saul, we start behind closed doors. We know he's always been calculating, with the potential for volatility.

Even if Mike wants to save Nacho, and he does, Gus is happy to sacrifice Nacho over a botched mission he, himself, planned. Mike promises Nacho he'll protect his father, but that's as good as he can do with Gus in charge. If Gus wants you dead, or if he doesn't care whether you live, then you die.

Nacho does the only thing he can do with his final moments alive - he verbally demolishes Hector Salamanca. Nacho takes the deserved glory for Hector's current condition. He damages the egos of almost every man standing around him, and he mentally eviscerates a person he's already taken physically. And, by taking credit for Hector's health problems, Nacho also destroys Gus - who had wanted nothing more than to hurt Hector. Now, Nacho's true significance in Hector's life has been revealed. Gus can never take that place. He can never have his full revenge. The way Mando delivers this monologue, with a snarling bark, is cathartic. He calls his attackers psychopaths, and dominates a bunch of people who usually hold the power in whatever scene they're in.

The glass from the cold open goes into Juan Bolsa's thigh, Nacho grabs him as a human shield, points the gun at his own head instead of Juan's and kills himself. It's real "I am the master of my fate" shit.

If I had to guess where this part of the story goes, which is something people like me do because we never learn, I'd say Lalo Salamanca will try to kill Nacho's father. He can't have the satisfaction of killing Nacho, the man who called a hit on a compound full of his family and friends, so Nacho's dad is the next best option. We have 11 more episodes, but Gus doesn't really have any loose ends. The other Salamancas don't really matter, and we know they all survive. Mike's Better Call Saul agenda, I think, will now be based around protecting Manuel Varga from the superhuman force that is Lalo. In my review of Saul's first two episodes, I said this was a show about stand-in father figures, and it's clear the Mike-Nacho relationship is the healthiest one of those we've seen. We saw what happened to the guys who killed Mike's biological son, and I think we're about to see what happens when you take out the next best thing.