Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 9 Review: Fun and Games

I’m not sure what I expected to happen with Kim Wexler by the end of Better Call Saul, but this feels like, perhaps, the most tragic outcome. On Better Call Saul Season 6 Episode 9, “Fun and Games,” it seems we have the answer as to why Kim isn’t someone we saw in Breaking Bad. 

In fact, this episode closes a chapter on the series altogether. “The end of an era,” or so it’s put during Howard Hamlin’s memorial, when Jimmy and Kim learn that HHM will be no longer.

But with Lalo out of the picture too, we get the feeling that the final episodes of the series will truly set things up to see how Jimmy became the version of Saul we knew on Breaking Bad. 

Because even though he’s already going by Saul, and even though he’s already begun to evolve in that way, he’s still been Jimmy McGill at heart.

This is a guy who’s just been trying to get by, to shed a bad name and get out from underneath his brothers’ shadow. There’s a sadness to him, and then Howard being killed in front of him and Kim becomes a turning point.

Jimmy and Kim are shaken over Howard, and they feel guilty. It’s clear from every glance and every mundane moment. And the lies don’t help matters.

Then when they speak to Howard’s former wife and she’s so certain, at first, that he could have never been doing the things everyone said he was — that something else must have happened — they lie, maybe too easily, to convince her that he had. 

Kim, in particular, forces herself to tell one final, very good lie about Howard. The ease with which she’s able to do that is probably the breaking point. 

It isn’t just that Kim is leaving Jimmy. She’s leaving her profession and her entire life as she knows it. After all the work she’s put in to become the kind of lawyer she’s wanted to be since we first saw on her on our screens, this outcome is devestating.

And when Jimmy learns what’s happened, he tries everything he can to get her to change it. The way he pleads for her to let him help her undo it, to order a pizza and pull an all-nighter to fix things, and then to leave that place together forever, is so earnest and painful.

These two actors are so incredibly talented, and the performances from both of them on this episode are exactly as excellent as you’d expect from Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn. 

Then he sees her things are packed. She’s leaving, not because Jimmy is bad for her, because they are bad for each other. We know that’s true — Jimmy and Kim make one heck of an amazing team, but it’s never been in a positive way.

The elaborate scam they were pulling on Howard is proof of that.

Add the fact that Kim admits she was ultimately having too much fun pulling that scam, and that she’d been lying to Jimmy — that she knew Lalo was alive — and it’s clearer than ever. And it’s so very sad.

That how these two part ways isn’t Kim being killed or put in prison, but that she ends their relationship — despite loving him — is even more of a gut punch than the alternatives would have been. 

What’s interesting about Kim is that we somehow never got to know her character all that well, either. In fact, if I had any complaints about the series, it’s probably that, especially in this last season.

Of course, that’s also what’s made her intriguing, and the point that she could have been just as bad for Jimmy as he was for her is really important here. 

She’s such a wildly important part of his origin story even before she leaves, then as we see in a flashforward that was hinted at earlier in the season, it’s her departure that really pushes him to become Saul Goodman and leave every bit of Jimmy McGill behind.

Does that mean we won’t see Kim again? That’s a good question, but I’d be surprised if we didn’t. And hey, maybe those outcomes I mentioned above are also possible, but for the moment, it doesn’t seem like that will be the case.

I also have to note the imagery that is, as usual on this show, so gorgeous and artistic throughout the episode. The cold open shows Jimmy and Kim each doing their best to go about their normal day while Mike and his crew work to clean up the mess in their apartment.

The switch back and forth from the mundane to the horrifying is so seamless and symbolic. Coffee brewing into a paper cup become blood being squeezed out of a cloth. More blood being wiped up becomes marinara sauce being sopped up by bread as Jimmy talks with clients. 

Another memorable shot, of course, is of that silent kiss between Jimmy and Kim as they part ways after Howard’s memorial service. That faraway glance at their silhouettes becomes heavy once you find out what’s next for the two of them. It’s just such an incredible detail.

Final thoughts:

Elsewhere on the episode, Gus has a meeting with Don Eladio that ultimately works in his favor. It’s honestly all just fun to watch, mainly because Gus is so steady and so charismatic.

These details are all also setting the stage for some of what we know on Breaking Bad, though it’s really a shame that so much time has now passed between the shows. It’s likely worth it to re-watch a bit of Breaking Bad to get the full enjoyment out of some of these scenes.

There’s also a sad moment with Mike, when he decides he needs to visit Nacho’s father. He delivers the news that his son won’t be found, and that it was painless. It’s gutwrenching, especially since Mike is also able to say something else he knows about Nacho — that he had a good heart. 

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Better Call Saul airs Mondays at 9/8c on AMC.

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Rhea Seehorn Talks ‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6 and Says Fans Should Be ‘Concerned’ About Kim Wexler [Interview]