Created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould
6.07 “Plan and Execution”
Written & Directed by Thomas Schnauz
Starring Bob Odenkirk, Rhea Seehorn, Michael Mando and Jonathan Banks
New episodes starting July 11th on AMC

by Alex Rudolph, Staff Writer

Reviewing last week's episode, which left Lalo Salamanca in Europe, I wrote: "At some point, maybe next week, Lalo's going to get back into New Mexico still on every DEA watchlist, still with every little security camera in Gus's world pointed at him and none of that is going to matter. The show has spent so much time showing us how careful Gus is now that he fears Lalo and, separately, it's shown us for seasons how little normal barriers impede that same guy." 

I thought that meant Lalo would calmly stride across an Albuquerque street, but we instead get something semi-magical. In the first shot of the last episode of Saul for five or six weeks, Lalo emerges from a manhole in New Mexico, changes into flip flops, gets in a car, heads to a gas station shower, and takes a nap regulated by a kitchen timer. He wakes up just before it goes off.

For all we know, Lalo found some impossible way to get from North America to Europe and back through the sewers. He didn't, of course - he flew under an assumed identity, or whatever - but that doesn't matter. Lalo has pulled off mythical feats on-screen (jumping out of a car rental agency's ceiling, crouch-sprinting through an underground tunnel, and single-handedly killing an entire hit squad sent to raid his compound) and the show has now allowed him to pull off mythical ones off-screen. He can do anything. He may as well have just invented a cross-Atlantic pipe.

And I was, for most of the episode, rooting for him. Over the course of "Plan and Execution," Lalo spends four nights living in the sewers outside Gus's laundry/meth mega-lab, leaking information to Don Eladio. Lalo looks perfect throughout this, which I take less to be a makeup and costuming oversight, and more to be a show that he cannot be cracked. At the end of his four nights in the sewers, Lalo calls Hector and tells him of a plan to strike against Gus, knowing Hector's phone is tapped and that announcing his big, dramatic retribution will lead all of Gus's men to roll out, and leave the laundry unattended.

Rooting for Lalo seemed to be the same as rooting against Gus. This would, at best, be a psychological victory in the same vein as Nacho's last stand in the desert because we know Gus can't die in Saul, and because we know that unfinished lab below the laundry gets built by the second season of Breaking Bad. Lalo's a psycho but he's focused on taking out a bigger psycho.

The problem is Lalo's less predictable than Gus, and even though we watch him clear security out of the laundry, ready to cause chaos in a half-constructed lab, he decides to visit Jimmy and Kim's apartment first. You can't root for a total wildcard antagonist to do what you want because, if he's written well, you can't predict what he wants.

Before the scene in the apartment, Jimmy gathers the local actor, played by John Ennis, and his film crew from the local college to create the fake bribery photos he thought he had in the can last week. Everybody rushes to take the perfect pictures of Jimmy handing a suitcase to the Sandpiper trial mediator, but it's hilarious enough that this still counts as a breather. The pretentious cameraman gives a long, snotty speech to students about which cameras they're allowed to touch, and the makeup specialist shows up in a fantasy costume, having been pulled out of rehearsals for a Dark Crystal musical.

The photos are taken, coated in a mystery substance and passed off to Howard's P.I. By the time everybody's gathered in Hamlin Hamlin McGill's Network conference room, the substance has dilated Howard's pupils, the fake photos have been swapped for other fake photos, and Howard looks like he's melting down in the same way his forever mentor Chuck McGill did.

When the mediator walks into the meeting, Howard blows what he thinks is a whistle and calls the mediator out for taking money from Jimmy. And as he says it, everybody in the room - Clifford Main, Erin Brill, Rich Schweikart, our old favorite, Irene Landry, who lives at Sandpiper - shifts uncomfortably. Both because Howard sounds nuts, and because they all have history with Jimmy. Everybody believes Jimmy is capable of the shit Howard's accusing him of, but they also recognize that Howard sounds like he's yelling about a conspiracy theory. Taking Howard aside, Cliff flatly tells him that it doesn't matter if Jimmy switched photos and made Howard's pupils dilate. What matters is Howard looking crazy and messing up a years-long case. Just like that, it's over.

It's a reversal of the dynamic from the first three seasons, when Jimmy dealt with a mentally deteriorating Chuck. Chuck spent his final years insisting he wasn't compromised and the HHM folks chose to believe him, even if some of them knew he was wrapped in space blankets, ripping wires out of his walls. They all treated Jimmy like garbage. Now, Howard is fine, but everybody thinks he's becoming unhinged. Howard's a prick, just like Chuck was, but he isn't delusional. Chuck dragged Jimmy down and then Jimmy dragged Howard down.

The night after the conference room meltdown, Howard shows up to Kim and Jimmy's apartment with a bottle of wine. He wants to know why they would go to so much effort to humiliate him. It's a mirror of last season's standoff with Lalo, when he confronted them in the same apartment. Howard accuses his two former mailroom employees of having "a piece missing." He says they're perfect for each other. He condescendingly congratulates them on being awful people. It doesn't really matter much. The most Howard can do is hand them a bottle of wine and walk away pissed. And then the mirror becomes perfect when Lalo shows up. The candles flicker, and then Lalo is in the room with a pistol and a desire to talk to his lawyers. Howard doesn't leave, he's bemused, and then by the time he's worried, Lalo shoots him in the head.

That's the moment I remembered I shouldn't have been rooting for Lalo in any capacity. He was never just going to go after Gus. Of course he's going to arrive on a few good people's doorsteps before he gets to the bad one. Earlier this season, I guessed Lalo would go after Nacho's father and, subsequently, get into it with Mike. That could still happen. No matter what, he's going to clash with some people I'd rather he leave alone.

And that's it until July. Lalo kills Howard and gets ready for a conversation that won't happen for another month-and-a-half. I'll be a father when the show comes back on the air. I can't imagine all the ways my life will be different. I'm glad Better Call Saul will still be around for a little while longer, a constant of good art I'm thankful I can rely on.