Better Call Saul

The series finale of 'Better Call Saul' drew the show's biggest same-day audience since the end of season three.

Elsewhere Monday, The Bachelorette led primetime on the broadcast networks with 3.29 million viewers and a 0.76 in the 18-49 demo. The episode, “Saul Gone,” also had more viewers than any episode in season five, or season four — or any Saul installment since the third-season finale back in June 2017 drew 1.85 million people on its first night. Those numbers will only grow, of course, with delayed viewing and streaming. [series finale](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/better-call-saul-series-finale-explained-interview-1235199278/) for the Breaking Bad spinoff averaged 1.8 million viewers for AMC, a same-day season high by almost 400,000 viewers (the season premiere in April had 1.42 million viewers). Fox News’ The Five was the most watched cable program with 3.6 million viewers, and WWE Monday Night Raw on USA led the 18-49 chart on cable with a 0.53 rating. The Better Call Saul finale also averaged a 0.47 rating among adults 18-49, its best mark in the key ad demographic since the season five premiere in 2020. Better Call Saul has been adding about a million viewers with three days of DVR playback this season, according to Nielsen, and AMC says the show has performed well on its AMC+ streaming platform (though as is often the case with streaming services, there’s no public data to back up the claim). [Better Call Saul](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/t/better-call-saul/) drew the show’s biggest audience in three seasons — a span of more than five years. [Subscribe Sign Up](https://pages.email.hollywoodreporter.com/signup/) [Share this article on Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/&title=TV%20Ratings:%20‘Better%20Call%20Saul’%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High&sdk=joey&display=popup&ref=plugin&src=share_button&app_id=352999048212581) [Share this article on Twitter](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/&text=TV%20Ratings%3A%20%E2%80%98Better%20Call%20Saul%E2%80%99%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High&via=thr) [Share this article on Email](mailto:?subject=thr%20:%20TV%20Ratings:%20‘Better%20Call%20Saul’%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High&body=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/%20-%20TV%20Ratings:%20‘Better%20Call%20Saul’%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High) [Show additional share options](#) [Share this article on Print]() [Share this article on Comment](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/#respond) [Share this article on Whatsapp](whatsapp://send?text=TV%20Ratings:%20‘Better%20Call%20Saul’%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High%20-%20https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/) [Share this article on Linkedin](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=1&url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/&title=TV%20Ratings:%20‘Better%20Call%20Saul’%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High&summary&source=thr) [Share this article on Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/submit?url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/&title=TV%20Ratings:%20‘Better%20Call%20Saul’%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High) [Share this article on Pinit](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/link/?url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/&description=TV%20Ratings:%20‘Better%20Call%20Saul’%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High) [Share this article on Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/widgets/share/tool/preview?shareSource=legacy&canonicalUrl&url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/tv-ratings-monday-aug-15-2022-1235200151/&posttype=link&title=TV%20Ratings:%20‘Better%20Call%20Saul’%20Ends%20With%20Three-Season%20High) The final episode of

Following the series finale of Better Call Saul, Rhea Seehorn discusses six seasons spent getting inside the head of the inscrutable Kim Wexler, ...

Because he had some rehabilitation to do, I actually shot at least a week and a half of stuff that was always supposed to be without him: the walking up to Gus’s house, the driving scenes. It’s just how I work, that I do a lot of homework so that I am free to let it all go when I get there and then be organic and respond to whatever. Her final look to him, Peter and I talked about it and Bob and I talked about that there’s great compassion, fear, love, worry for him in that moment when he exits the courtroom. So I just tried to go about thinking like, “Okay, saying goodbye to somebody is a very real thing that one can use, but even more so the idea that she can’t let it go right now. You said something that I absolutely knew that Kim had to be playing, and that the audience would know she was playing, which is, “Is this real this time?” Someone that’s a professional scam artist, it’s like, “How do I know when he’s not bullshitting me?” I would rather him articulate exactly what he found was the shift, but to me, when he came back and did it again, there needed to be that question of like, is he contrite? They showed me the route we were going to take, so that was a bit of a rehearsal for me to just understand, “Where are people going to be near me and what will I be able to see in front of me?” And that way, I can rehearse it to the degree of understanding, “Okay, on each take, when we come around that corner and I see that skyline, let that skyline inform the life I could have had. You can’t rehearse it in a traditional way, but I did a lot of thinking about it and then gave myself some tactile markers that I knew that I could have as a reminder of my starting point each time when I get on the bus. I literally just put the things physically that we have all felt in extreme shame in our lives or extreme pain in our lives and then try to not let them come all the way out. It is not fair for her to be the one that has to be consoled in any way, which is why I’m so stoic in those scenes. She’s crying for the entire Shakespearean tragedy of Jimmy McGill and of Kim Wexler and of their relationship and of Chuck and of Howard and of people that try to be a good person and how hard that fight could be in day-to-day real life. I had not thought of that but I’m sure it’s among the infinite interpretations that Peter wants there to be.

The closing moments of the Better Call Saul series finale, “Saul Gone,” played out like the final refrain of the saddest love song.

It’s up for interpretation whether the two actually believe that he can get out earlier with good behavior, but it makes for a touching moment for a couple who always kept their heads up in the face of hardship. Perhaps they always knew this about each other, but out of all the regrets we’ve seen shared in this hour of television, and for as bittersweet as their resolution would be, that time they had together wouldn’t have been something they’d use a time machine for. It’s hard to talk about this series without acknowledging the impact Kim had on the show, with her can-do attitude and genuine compassion for helping others in legal trouble (something that the finale hints she’ll return to) being the inspiration for the goodness that lied within Goodman. He gave the world the slip for a brief moment, but when it came down to the fate of Kim Wexler, a woman he always admired, he decided that the game just wasn’t worth it. It’s funny in that Vince Gilligan way that the last episode of a prequel series would revolve around the idea of going back in time, with the “Where would you go if you had a time machine?” discussion being the focal point of each flashback scene. [Better Call Saul](https://collider.com/tag/better-call-saul/) series finale, with an episode title that couldn’t be more appropriate than “Saul Gone,” played out like the final refrain of the saddest love song; a quiet coda to cap off seven years of slip-ups and smoke breaks between the show’s most sedulous characters in Jimmy McGill and Kim Wexler (the incomparable Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn).

Kim and Marie could (perhaps still?) have a buddy-cop spinoff. Gould referred to Betsy Brandt, who reprised her role as the widow Marie Schrader in the finale, ...

While Odenkirk described the scene as “the easiest scene we ever shot” because of the actors’ comfort with each other, the cigarettes they had to smoke posed some difficulty — Odenkirk and Seehorn were coughing, and Gould said he had cigarette smoke down his throat for days afterward. “I just felt so strongly that the right ending for Saul was to be in the system, the system that he’s made light of and that he’s twisted around for his own purposes,” Gould said. The writers’ room decided around season four or five that the series would be returning to the post–Breaking Bad world of Gene Takavic, Saul’s alias when he went into hiding and became manager of a Cinnabon in Omaha. And the last scene is the judge in jail crying.” While it may not have been in the cards for Better Call Saul, it’s one that would’ve worked just fine for a “Hopefully Vince won’t be mad, but I think some of us, I especially, said, ‘What about another ending for Jesse?’ And I think the ending he came up with for Jesse was exactly the right one.” One ending for Jesse was very similar to the ending Gould and the writers had in mind for Saul.

As the series makes clear, the Saul Goodman character (Bob Odenkirk) in AMC's “Breaking Bad” prequel (and ultimately, its sequel, with the timelines of the ...

In fact, I celebrated his character, or the last one, anyway: For the finale, I went out and bought frozen-food aisle Cinnabons. Ever the con, he deals, until – spoiler alert – when trading his last bit of info, he accidentally jeopardizes Kim and hands prosecutors the corroboration they need to bring charges against her. At first it’s to get leverage over a man who knows him and could put him in legal jeopardy. Jimmy as “Gene” appears less conflicted about his past and isn’t going to be content making Cinnabons (even with a million or so in cash from his previous life stashed away). He heads out on his own, taking in tow, and eventually marrying, Kim, a smart, no-nonsense lawyer, also from humble beginnings who’s just worked her way to associate. Then he’s Jimmy McGill, the ne’er-do-well younger brother of whiz-kid Chuck, who grows up to be a top-notch criminal lawyer at a white-shoe firm in Albuquerque.

The 'Better Call Saul' stars and EP speculate on Jimmy and Kim's future after the series finale, reveal an alternate ending and more.

Brandt surprised fans by reprising her Breaking Bad role as Hank Schrader’s widow Marie in the Saul finale, and Gould says she was a late addition to the script, but “I think we wanted very much someone to be the voice of the victims… Gould agreed that “it was a really important scene,” so he went back and “simplified the dialogue a little bit” for the third day of shooting. Years ago, when Saul co-creator Vince Gilligan was working on the Breaking Bad sequel movie El Camino, he pitched a number of possible endings for the movie to the Saul writing staff, and “one of the endings was very similar to this, except for Jesse,” Gould remembers. “This is the one bit of color in his world,” Gould notes, “the relationship with Kim, such as it is… I think ultimately, we all felt like ending with the two of them felt like the strongest way to go.” Also in the original version, Jimmy “was fearful about what was going to happen to him in prison, and it was a lot about the fear. Odenkirk made that connection when speaking about Bryan Cranston’s cameo as Walt in the finale: “Jimmy finds himself in a f–king room with a guy who’s just like his brother Chuck, and he realizes he’s done it yet again. “It was scheduled for two days of shooting,” but they had to come back for a third day, and the actor told Gould, “‘If it’s OK with you, I want to reshoot the whole monologue.’ And everybody who overheard that little conversation wanted to kill me.” But Odenkirk wasn’t satisfied with the version they had: “It got very emotional, and I’d become more and more skeptical of gushing emotion on screen. Then ultimately, having watched them both, I felt like it was right, and it felt more honest to end with the two of them apart rather than the two of them together.” The climactic scene where Jimmy confesses to his crimes in a soul-baring courtroom monologue was “very hard” to shoot, Odenkirk recalls. Gould, who wrote and directed the finale, said he had actually written several different versions of that scene where “there was a lot more said, and a lot more catching up.” But “it just kept getting leaner and leaner as I worked on it, because in a weird way, they don’t have to say that much to each other. Odenkirk called it “the easiest scene we ever shot,” adding that “it’s one of the few times that one of them isn’t trying to manipulate the moment [or] push some argument in some direction… When the writers were first working on the finale, Gould revealed, they originally had Jimmy and Kim “meeting in Albuquerque before he went to prison, and the last scene was him in prison by himself, thinking.

6. Howard Hamlin. There has perhaps never been a more shocking and undeserving death in modern television than when Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian) fell victim ...

Nacho will forever be a legend to all of us, and one of the most likable antiheroes in Breaking Bad lore. The death is deserved, both from the perspective that Lalo is a horrible person who didn’t deserve to live, and that his arch-nemesis throughout the series was the one who got him. As we got to see Nacho’s relationship with his father, his unique code of ethics in the cartel game, and his friendship with Mike Ehrmantraut ( Jonathan Banks) blossomed, he became a fan favorite on par with Jesse Pinkman. [kicking a lantern over in his house](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/better-call-saul-season-3-episode-10-review-lantern/), it is clear that Chuck’s pure contempt left nothing left to live for. He’s a man doing his job, and he becomes a cog in the cat and mouse game between Mike (Jonathan Banks) and Lalo. His scathing monologue that laid waste to the Salamanca name, along with calling out Gus on his cowardly act before shooting himself in the head was the high point of the beginning of season six. He’s a man who is doing something criminal, but he doesn’t really understand the entirety of his situation or the misdeeds he’s performing. The friendship that developed between Mike and Werner also served a great purpose in Mike’s character arc. He could be a mean person in his life outside of his job. He also treated Kim (Rhea Seehorn) and Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) with some disdain that seemed a little petty at times, but he paid a price that was completely unnecessary. Now that the show has wrapped its run, we thought it would be a great time to recap which departed characters got the most and least deserving fates. Did their death signify a turning point in the story, or could Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould give these people more of a dramatic farewell?

"Better Call Saul" stars Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn and co-creator Peter Gould broke down the series finale and revealed things could have been ...

He added: "There was a version that ended with the two of them smoking, and I went back and forth on that for a while. "Jimmy finds himself in a f**king room with a guy who's just like his brother Chuck, and he realizes he's done it yet again. Gould said of the scene: "This felt like these two guys, in a weird way, are on parallel tracks. [Vince Gilligan](https://www.newsweek.com/vince-gilligan-new-project-not-breaking-bad-universe-1732906) had different plans for Jesse, as Gould said of Better Call Saul's ending: "We had an image in the writers room sometime in Season four or five, that he would end up in jail. "I love that aspect of it. For me that was about, in my case, looking at it through Saul's eyes. "I think ultimately, we all felt like ending with the two of them felt like the strongest way to go. Cheryl [Howard Hamlin's wife, played by Sandrine Holt] certainly is a victim but she's a victim of everything that Jimmy and Kim did together. but I totally agree with Bob as well, as far as the characters, if we understood that this is them at their best, horrible place. It's mostly about connection and wistful connection, it seems to me." And I liked that a lot, but it seemed a little cold. "It was a lot about the fear.

Jimmy and Kim in Better Call Saul. (Image credit: AMC). When it comes to some of those most legendary shows you can imagine ...

I wasn’t there when Breaking Bad originally aired back in 2008, but I was there for the second half of the series (starting in 2011), and for Better Call Saul when it premiered. I have had a journey watching these characters from beginning to end, seeing the acting evolutions of Bob Odenkirk, Rhea Seehorn, heck, even Giancarlo Esposito as Gus, [one of my favorite villains ever on TV.](https://www.cinemablend.com/television/better-call-saul-5-reasons-why-gus-fring-is-one-of-the-best-tv-villains-ever) Admittedly, [like Bob Odenkirk](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2022-08-15/better-call-saul-season-6-finale-bob-odenkirk-breaking-bad), I’m shattered to see this series end, but happy I got to watch it. Big nerd and lover of Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire. It shocked me but in that moment, I didn’t see Saul Goodman only, I saw Jimmy using the acting and manipulation skills of Saul, before letting that all go and becoming Jimmy once again in the end. And that shot of her walking out of the prison, with Jimmy staying behind bars, sent a shockwave of relief through me. Imagine my utter relief when I found out at the end of the series finale that she walks away without a damn crime to her name. But I have to admit I was feeling quite content when I found out that his ridiculous seven year plea deal was revoked after his confessions and he was given eighty-six years. Was anyone else smacking their heads in confusion when Saul kept trying to push his deal that he made with the prosecutors during this finale? Like I said, seeing Jonathan Banks again was always a pleasure, but what really had me on my feet and pointing at the TV like that Leonardo DiCaprio meme was Betsy Brandt coming back as Marie. She ran away, built a life for herself, and in the end, reconciled in a way with Jimmy after he confesses, showing that amazing parallel between the first scene of them together and their last. Now that was a twist I didn’t see coming. And here are feelings that I’m sure you felt as well.

Better Call Saul actress Rhea Seehorn has a wonderful idea for what happens to Jimmy and Kim after the show's emotional send-off.

[Sony just dropped The Last of Us: Part 1 PS5 trailer. [Check out the teaser trailer for Avatar: The Way of Water, the upcoming movie starring Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Edie Falco, Jemaine Clement, and Kate Winslet. Finally, Jimmy faces up to the consequences of his actions. In the end, it came down to one person to set him on the straight and narrow – Kim Wexler. Face up to his crimes and be the better man, or work his magic and negotiate a smaller sentence? “I personally am a hopeless romantic,” she said.

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Breaking Bad carried the mantle of prestige television for six years, but in 2015 Better Call Saul picked up the mantle and ran with it. Instead of replacing Lalo with, say, a QAnon gang, the series watches Jimmy and Kim get eaten up by their own guilt, showing the different paths the two characters take. Kim is also an excellent addition to the series and Rhea Seehorn was perfectly cast in the role. So the writers just introduce a load of neo-nazis. Saul wrestling with his own conscience feels more tense, and is far better writing, than having Walt machine gun some nazis - although I’m not denying that that scene was badass. But even when Breaking Bad was still airing, and Better Call Saul was not even a twinkle in Vince Gilligan’s eye, many fans agreed that Odenkirk’s Saul Goodman was the best character in the series.

The original “Better Call Saul” episode aired 13 years ago, and as much as we'd all like Cranston and Paul to discover the secret to eternal youth, it's not ...

The advantages of not de-aging also extend to a large number of scenes in the post-Breaking Bad timeline (the bulk of the final four episodes), aiding the show in a way that Gould and Gilligan may not have intended. They’re two different scenes in two different shows, each intended to be glimpsed with a different perspective that furthers the development of their lead character(s) in their own specific way, and to spend millions of dollars fixing a problem that many people won’t even realize exists would not only have been a colossal waste of resources, but would only have served to undermine the franchise’s return to one of its most iconic moments. It’s a contender for the best prequel ever made, with its most recent seasons making the case that it has even surpassed its predecessor as the most nuanced character study in modern television. In fact, the story may prove so engrossing that they only notice said issues in hindsight, which is a sure sign that the show is in good hands. As long as the story is engaging, and the performances are believable, audiences are willing to overlook niggles that would otherwise prove troublesome. Paul’s performance is more than enough, capturing the essence of Breaking Bad-era Jesse which is all that is required, allowing viewers to focus on the content of the scene rather than being distracted by digital trickery. The actors may not always look the age that they should, but thanks to how effortlessly they are able to play these characters (along with some clever framing and lighting), what could have been a calamitous issue is ultimately never felt. The energy with which he delivers his lines is astonishing, and watching him ramble on about the time his friend ended up in court after stealing a fake baby Jesus from a church nativity play, oblivious to the fact that Kim isn’t paying a lick of attention to him, conjures images of his egotistical younger self before his partnership with Walter White left him wise beyond his years. In these instances the problem is only exacerbated, with the younger versions of these characters looking older than the future versions that Walter and Jesse will later meet. Putting aside the budgetary requirements needed to de-age such a large percentage of its cast, it would have also sacrificed one of the most essential parts of Better Call Saul’s success: Its authenticity. And that’s not even mentioning the disconnect between the de-aged face and the au naturale body, creating situations where different parts of the anatomy appear to be operating in different decades. Appropriately enough the episode was titled "Breaking Bad," a nod to its predecessor's second season episode "Better Call Saul," which introduced the world to Bob Odenkirk’s con-artist turned criminal lawyer Saul Goodman.

Better Call Saul's finale helped improve Breaking Bad and say goodbye to its own characters in fantastic fashion.

The greatest trick the Better Call Saul finale – and its closing stretch of black-and-white episodes – pulled was to turn the show into a Breaking Bad epilogue. Better Call Saul stuck the landing – and then some. Better Call Saul remembers this – and finds space for the Breaking Bad-verse's old soul to depart some wisdom before the fate that inevitably awaits him years down the line at Walter White's hand. It's an all-timer of a finale that stamps the show's place in the Mount Rushmore of prestige dramas – and helps elevate a series many call the best of all time. But the last cigarette that Kim and Saul share (a mirror of their smoking break during the pilot) is an additional moment of heartbreak, one that subverts the medium's usual propensity for a Big Moment in its concluding episode. [Entertainment Weekly](https://ew.com/tv/better-call-saul-rhea-seehorn-on-series-finale/?utm_campaign=entertainmentweekly_entertainmentweekly&utm_content=new&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_term=62fb04b46c2626000191695a) (opens in new tab) that she filmed an alternate take on the scene, one where she replied in turn with finger guns of her own. The driving dynamic behind Better Call Saul opts for the path less taken, ending in silence, bar a few quick finger guns from Saul. It's not a triumphant finale – it never could be – but it's a small personal win for a man who finally feels comfortable in his own skin, and is now unburdened from all his past transgressions. He confesses to his crimes, exonerates Kim, and even finds time to apologize for what he did to his brother – a crucial little button given how much the show has wandered away from that key relationship since Chuck's death. Given what came before – the shootouts, the deaths, the poisonings – you could be forgiven for thinking Better Call Saul co-creators Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan would want to up the ante on their way out. And it made both shows all the better for it. The Better Call Saul finale, mercifully, didn't fall into that trap.

In Better Call Saul season 6 episode 12 — and the series finale, episode 13 — Jimmy McGill finally has to stop running. It's not all fun and games, ...

The latest McGill mutation — the one that brings Kim Wexler back into his life, the one that’s willing to do hard time to pay for his mistakes — isn’t a step backward into the Jimmy McGill we first met working his way up the ranks of his brother’s law firm. We saw Gene transform into Saul from the second he was thrown in jail; we saw Saul transform into Jimmy when he heard news about Kim while being extradited back to New Mexico. That scene is cushioned by a flashback to a conversation with his brother Chuck, seemingly early in the course of the mental illness that would eventually erode their relationship and lead to his tragic death. After confessing in court, somewhat dubiously, to being the brains behind the Walter White operation, Jimmy ends up on a bus to prison for the next 80-something years (first he had to prove he could get off, next he had to prove he could do hard time). He was just as flawed and almost as misguided, but where Walter White wanted to show the world at large exactly what he was capable of, Jimmy McGill, at his core, just wanted someone specific to be proud of him. Denying his identity only draws more attention to him, and the other prisoners start rhythmically chanting the slogan that made him famous to the kind of person who would end up on a prisoner transport. Saul is motivated by spite in a way Jimmy wasn’t; he takes Jimmy’s “watch me” attitude and his desire to do things just because he can to a whole new, dangerous level. It’s also incredibly satisfying to see the craftsman, in his hubris, taken down a peg. In a way, it was silly to go into this finale believing Jimmy McGill was irredeemable, that he’d crossed moral lines that could never be uncrossed in the same way Walter White did on They were both motivated by greed and hubris, but Jimmy never quite had the bloodlust of Walter White. But Better Call Saul often felt so satisfying because of the investment we as viewers made into keeping tabs on the behavior of these super-intelligent and competent characters, which often seemed nonsensical up until the very moment it didn’t. There is art in the skill it takes these people to pull off the schemes they pull off.

The sixth-and-final season of Netflix's Breaking Bad spin-off came to an end on Tuesday.

"Saul Gone [the finale] is dense with them, invoking a multitude of images from past episodes to absolutely devastating effect. "Sometimes, letting things just calmly play out can be the most affecting, satisfying end there is," he added. "With a series as flawless as Better Call Saul, there is the nagging worry it will come unstuck at the very end. "Is it better or worse than the conclusion to Breaking Bad? "So a superlative series comes to an end and, like many I imagine, I hope we never get another instalment," he wrote. This all plays out in beautifully in the last episode via one "masterful courtroom scene", he added, and another scene in jail that adds up to "surely as ingenious and satisfying a resolution to this story as humanly possible". [For the Telegraph's Ed Power,](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/better-call-sauls-finale-slower-sadder-just-momentous-breaking/) the spin-off's finale, with its black-and-white treatment, proved to be "slower and sadder - but just as momentous" as that of its predecessor. "The precision of the plotting, of the character development, has been spot on over the course of six seasons and the satisfaction of watching has been such that I wouldn't ever want anything else to undo it. Saul's story, the critic concluded, will be remembered as "an achievement from an era of television that seemed to have ended before the show itself did: It had a willingness to putter around the edges of its story and a faith in its audience." [Variety's Daniel D'Addario described it](https://variety.com/2022/tv/reviews/better-call-saul-finale-review-1235341967/) as a "striking and elegant finale to one of TV's most consistently strong dramas of the past decade". "The show's willingness, especially in its last stretch of episodes, to alternate major and striking moments with quotidian sequences of characters' ordinary existences - a conversation with a bartender, a day at the office - that seemed to run just a little too long was a striking choice. The finale of Better Call Saul has been praised as "masterful" by critics, as Netflix's Breaking Bad spin-off drew to a close after six seasons.

For faithful viewers the finale was one treat after another. There were unexpected returns from old characters and breathtaking surprises. Up until the end, ...

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The title would seem to give us the answer. The series reintroduces us to Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), whom we met in Season 2 of “Breaking Bad” as the sleazy ...

Maybe he is finally less comparable to Walter White than to Don Draper of “Mad Men,” another fast-talking slick in a suit whose words save him until they don’t, who is taken with the idea of time machines, who has a history of changing his name and running from trouble. At last he can be himself, and, in its closing run, so could “Better Call Saul.” I don’t want to make too much of the much-heralded End of the Antihero — “Barry” is still around, for starters. As Saul says to Walter White in one of their first “Breaking Bad” meetings, “Conscience gets expensive, doesn’t it?” The final run of “Saul” keeps finding little pockets of story to revisit within it, restaging Saul’s first run-in with Walter and having Kim meet Jesse during the “Breaking Bad” timeline, at a crucial moment in both their lives. The climax of “Saul” seems at first to be going a similar way. Despite the reappearance in flashbacks of Bryan Cranston as Walter White and Aaron Paul as his sidekick, Jesse Pinkman, the last half-season is less an attempt to reprise “Breaking Bad” and more a productive conversation with it — maybe even a friendly argument. Instead, the protagonist utters something you would never expect to hear from Saul Goodman in a courtroom — the truth — and blows up his plea deal. As Saul says of Walter, in a late-season flashback, “Guy with that mustache probably doesn’t make a lot of good life choices.” Now he seems to be proving his own point. In “Better Call Saul,” crime is mostly just sad, the more so the closer the series gets to its end. In its closing run, “Better Call Saul” has jumped about in time, shuffling these identities like the moving targets in a shell game. The series reintroduces us to Saul Goodman ( Bob Odenkirk), whom we met in Season 2 of “Breaking Bad” as the sleazy lawyer to the chemistry teacher turned drug lord, Walter White. Each has a little of the others in him.

Our TV critic, David Bianculli, wondered whether "Better Call Saul" co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould would end this long TV saga properly and stick ...

Better call Saul. Saul, Saul, you better call Saul. You better call Saul. In a new article in The New York Times, he says the extreme views of the new wave of Republican candidates in this swing state are unlike anything he's seen in his two decades of covering conservative politics. BIANCULLI: That puts Jimmy - or Saul or Gene - on the run again in the finale episode. He's a wanted man, and his name is Saul Goodman. This is Valerie (ph) with Life Alert. The AMC series "Better Call Saul" televised its series finale Monday night, putting an end to 14 years of storytelling that had begun with AMC's "Breaking Bad" and continued with the Netflix movie "El Camino." UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As Valerie) Marion? Our TV critic, David Bianculli, wondered whether "Better Call Saul" co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould would end this long TV saga properly and stick the landing. The finale made room for unexpected returns by five different characters, including stars from both "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" covering several timelines. And the actors who came back for one last lap around the track got great things to do and to say.

Which it probably could have done even without such a boffo series finale, but co-creators Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan and more somehow pulled off as close ...

Head to our [2022 TV premiere schedule](https://www.cinemablend.com/television/2022-tv-premiere-dates) to see what other big and memorable shows will be around to take BCS' place in the future. But that was absolutely rectified in “Saul Gone,” and Peter Gould explained the surprise cameo to Because even when Jimmy’s head is in the clouds with his fantasies, Mike never takes his eyes off of his priorities. Even after all Better Call Saul's prior Breaking Bad character arrivals, from Fring and Hector to Gale and Walt, I admittedly wasn’t expecting any franchise vets beyond Bryan Cranson to pop up in the finale, and definitely didn't expect anything outside of flashbacks. We've seen Saul pull off some ridiculous plots over the years, but it was still a joyful surprise that his final swing for the fences was also a success. Instead, he made all the right (if not entirely ethical) moves and half-conned others into convincing Kim to travel to Albuquerque from Florida, all so he could put his future on the line by confessing and proving to Kim that he was able to revert back to the person she fell in love with. A peaceful Kim is what the world needs and deserves, and if she can still do pro bono work in the meantime, even better. Plus, despite many Better Call Saul fans thinking Jimmy and Kim’s ties were fully severed by their broken marriage, the finale presented an olive branch to viewers and the characters themselves. As “Saul Gone” went on, spotlighting the endlessly excellent Peter Diseth as Bill Oakle, it was clear that something much harsher was in store for Jimmy, despite his successful legal wranglings. [sold out by Carol Burnett’s Marion in a jaw-clenching scene](https://www.cinemablend.com/television/better-call-saul-fans-have-a-lot-of-thoughts-about-that-major-carol-burnett-scene) from the penultimate ep, Jimmy will almost definitely spend his remaining years in prison for his Heisenberg-related misdeeds. While it didn’t seem possible back in 2015, Better Caul Saul has earned a spot not only in the same TV trophy case as predecessor Breaking Bad, but on the same shelf. In building the backstory to Heisenberg and Fring’s meth-infused crime reign in Albuquerque, as well as the extended epilogue via Gene, BCS has set a high and slippery bar for fictional universe expansions.