Created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould
6.09 “Fun and Games”
Written by Ann Cherkis
Directed by Michael Morris
Starring Bob Odenkirk, Rhea Seehorn, Michael Mando and Jonathan Banks
New episodes airing Mondays on AMC

by Alex Rudolph, Staff Writer

When I sit down to watch Better Call Saul and take notes for these write-ups, I start by consulting Wikipedia's list of the show's episodes so that I can take down titles and credits. As of last week, the page looked like this:

That's nine episodes with "_____ and _____" title formats and then, out of nowhere, one called "Nippy," as in the cold Omaha winter, rather than the Alburquerque anything. Before this week's episode, number 9 of 13, began, I knew I was in for a shift.

There's a lot of covered ground here, but the heart of the episode comes in the last ten minutes and, if you're anything like me, it's what you've been anticipating since the show premiered in 2015. By the end of that first season, Saul had established two protagonists we never saw in Breaking Bad. One of those characters, Nacho Varga, died earlier this season and Kim Wexler was the big remaining question mark. Kim could leave or die and every time a Lalo or a Gus got too close, it seemed like she'd get the shorter end of that stick.

To skip to the end: Kim leaves. She gets a mature exit when a vicious one felt likely. The rest of the episode—in some senses, the rest of the series—builds up to it.

As "Fun and Games" opens, Jimmy and Kim pretend to have normal days as Mike and his crew clear Howard's blood, and Lalo's bullet, out of their condo. It's a quiet episode, even if both characters' jaws are clenched the whole time. In their big action scene, Jimmy and Kim visit Hamlin Hamlin McGill and stand around awkwardly. We enter the firm with a gorgeous tracking shot and watch the Albuquerque and Santa Fe legal communities gathered to mourn Howard. The two Hs and one M in HHM are all dead and the firm is downsizing. The scene is literally a wake for Howard Hamlin and, more subtly, a wake for these characters, who we probably won't see again. There's Rich Schweikart and Clifford Main and there's a new, undented trash can. Kim lies to Howard's suspicious widow to cover for herself and Jimmy. They gaslight her and there will be no closure.

Meanwhile, Mike visits Nacho's father. I was relieved to see Manuel Varga. We'd gone so long without an appearance that I was worried he wouldn't return and that Nacho's side of the story was completely over. Mike, alone at home, gazes at a toy he made for his granddaughter and, remembering his own son, heads out to find Manuel and provide what little comfort he can. Mike assures Manuel that there will be justice for Nacho's death and Manuel counters that more murder isn't justice. "You gangsters and your justice," he chides. "You're all the same." The lack of closure will be our closure.

Gus meets with the Salamancas at Don Eladio's house to account for Lalo's death. I love the way Hector continually refers to Gus as "the chicken man" in his transcribed letter to Eladio. He'll diminish his competition any way he can, even after that competition helped take away most of his motor functions and "won" the fight. I always get a little buzz when we visit Eladio's compound because I remember Gus, Mike, and Jesse clearing the place out in Breaking Bad. Bad things happen down there.

Don Juan and Don Eladio are terrific here. This may be the last time we see them, so it's worth reflecting on their relationship for a moment. Juan is all business while Eladio makes fun of Hector, smiling to appease his boss even while otherwise looking like he's standing on a landmine. I always feel uneasy when Eladio is around and I always feel a little sympathy for Juan, trying to hold everything together as Gus and the Salamancas are clearly tearing each other apart. The Salamancas can't prove Lalo made it out of last season's compound raid alive and the matter is as settled as it's going to be. There will be no closure for now, but each of these men will die horribly in Breaking Bad—some by each other's hands.

After the HHM wake, Kim resigns from the bar and packs up her belongings. "You asked if you were bad for me," she says to Jimmy. "That's not it. We are bad for each other." She loves him, but sees their relationship as a destructive force in the world. Note that it's "their relationship" and not "Jimmy." Kim takes responsibility for her part in what's happened. We've watched Kim get a little darker and at times, like when she asked Jimmy if he was a "friend of the cartel" and seemed to push him to take on more elicit work, it felt bad—like Jimmy was corrupting her. But this show is too smart to lay the blame totally on one person. This is an ensemble cast on a show with a dozen overlapping plotlines and it has always existed in a world more complicated than the one Chuck McGill bemoaned when he told Jimmy he ruined everybody he came into contact with. Kim is more mature than Jimmy and she is, by any metric, a better person, but that doesn't mean her hands are clean and it never means she's so smart she can convince herself that she's an unwilling participant in the seven years of messes we've been watching.

"I love you," Jimmy says to her.

"I love you too," she responds. "But so what?"

It's sad. It's the (temporary) end to a love story as well written and performed as anything you're going to see in this lifetime. But it's also a relief because Kim is safe.

We cut to the future, to the Breaking Bad period, with a fully Saul-ed out Jimmy. I had thought Bob Odenkirk was already essentially playing Saul Goodman by the end of the last season, but this little scene at the end of the episode is so much more garish than what we've seen on Better Call Saul. The combover, the gaudy mansion, the piano he can't play, the escort he can barely look at but wakes up with a Journey alarm, the radio ad with insufficiently clear audio fidelity. The differences between Jimmy and Saul are now fully apparent and the final minutes of this episode highlight how much further he had to fall.

Where do we go from here? As worried as I am about the idea, it's been confirmed Walter White and Jesse Pinkman will show up somewhere in the next four episodes. We know Carol Burnett is coming in, which is exciting (I can't believe she's 89!). Everything else is unknown. My guess is that episode 10 will begin in Omaha, in the black and white period we've seen glimpses of in the openings of the first five seasons and Jimmy/Saul/Gene Takovic will attempt to find and reconcile with Kim. He's been made—at least one cab driver and that cab driver's friend friend know the Cinnabon manager at the local mall was actually a player in the grisly fallout of New Mexico's meth trade collapsing—so the next four episodes won't "just" be a love story. Before he can try to make up with Kim, Jimmy has to reconcile his (blown) new identity with Saul, with Jimmy. This has always been a show about identity, from the first episode, when we found out Saul Goodman's real name was Jimmy McGill. The best show on TV was titled Better Call Saul and didn't even feature a character named "Saul" until its fourth season.

And so Jimmy has to decide who he is before the series ends. He'll always be Slippin' Jimmy, the guy who pulled tiny cons in Illinois, and he'll always be Jimmy the law firm mail guy and he'll always be Saul Goodman, the phony asshole, but maybe he can wrap all of those disparate parts of himself together into something resembling the person he was when his relationship with Kim was at its best. Unlike Walter White, I'm convinced Jimmy deserves a happy ending. I have no doubt Peter Gould and company feel the same way, we'll just have to wait and see if they're interested in delivering one.