Better Call Saul had a tough act to follow considering how highly-rated the final season of Breaking Bad was by both critics and viewers alike. It was astonishing then that the prequel show began to be considered potentially superior to its predecessor but, when going back over the best episodes of Better Call Saul, it’s easy to see why the prequel show came to rival the original in terms of quality, and even surpass it in some areas. Better Call Saul began with all the hard-earned skills developed over Breaking Bad‘s run and squandered none of them.
Though the series already had a host of iconic characters, like Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) himself and Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), to work with from the word go, every new face they introduced felt right at home and many of them, like Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) and Chuck McGill (Michael McKean), even ended up overshadowing their counterparts from Breaking Bad. By its end, Better Call Saul is the perfect kind of prequel, the kind where even longtime fans begin to convince themselves that the hardships in the characters’ futures that they know happen can somehow reverse themselves, but it’s ultimately unthinkable to replace the show’s bittersweet ending.
10 Nailed
Season 2, Episode 9
“Nailed” may not see the show kicking into its highest gear quite yet but this is the first real taste that the audience gets of the big conflicts that are to come. After verbally sparring with Jimmy in previous episodes, Chuck transforms his living room into a courtroom where he puts his brother on trial, with Kim as the judge. However, Kim’s assessment of Chuck proves to be as equally devastating as Chuck’s eerily accurate dissection of Jimmy’s crimes and their motives, and the sparks that fly outshine even the pulse-pounding robbery scene in the episode’s opening that sees Mike start to become the soldier he is in Breaking Bad.
9 Something Beautiful
Season 4, Episode 3
Like Breaking Bad, a number of the best episodes of Better Call Saul often go under-sung because they aren’t event episodes, and focus instead on building toward larger confrontations and more ambitious criminal escapades. “Something Beautiful” is one of these episodes and the first in a trilogy of Better Call Saul episodes with the word “Something” opening its title. Though it doesn’t feature one of Jimmy’s worst schemes, it doesn’t see him or anyone else at their finest. Jimmy embarks on an ill-advised heist of a Hummel figurine while Kim is drawn further into the soul-crushing banality of Mesa Verde, but Nacho Varga (Michael Mando) gets it the worst.
Nacho is left bleeding in the desert in a beautifully constructed opening scene in which a shooting is staged to cover up the murder of Nacho’s partner. “Something Beautiful” teases a lot, like Jimmy replacing Dr. Caldera (Joe DeRosa) as Albuquerque’s underworld go-between, Gale Boetticher’s (David Costabile) tragic tenure as Gus Fring’s (Giancarlo Esposito) most trusted meth cook, the incident in Tucumcari in the following season, and it even introduces Ira (Franc Ross), who goes on to act as a gateway into the world of the white supremacists in Breaking Bad, but it’s Chuck’s posthumously-delivered letter to Jimmy, and Jimmy’s emotionless response to it, that spells the most doom.
8 Something Unforgivable
Season 5, Episode 10
The third and final “Something…” episode of Better Call Saul, “Something Unforgivable” is the season 5 finale and the episode that finally answers the question of why Jimmy–or Saul, at that point–is so deathly afraid of being blamed for something that Nacho did to Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton). Both are mentioned once very briefly in the Breaking Bad episode “Better Call Saul” when Walt (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse (Aaron Paul) attempt to intimidate Saul in the desert by pretending that they’re going to execute him. It’s initially very effective but only because Saul believes that they’re there on behalf of Lalo.
Following on directly from the incredibly tense final scene of the previous episode, “Bad Choice Road”, in which Lalo interrogates Jimmy and Kim about the events of the episode prior to that, “Something Unforgivable” sees Lalo head to Mexico with Nacho and Gus Fring makes his move to assassinate him. Nacho, now under Fring’s thumb, lets the assassins into Lalo’s compound and the ensuing chaos is Better Call Saul at its most bullet-riddled. It’s impossible to watch Lalo storm off to seek his revenge in the final shot and not want to immediately see what happens next.
7 Winner
Season 4, Episode 10
“Winner” is Better Call Saul at its most emotional. As Jimmy attempts to get his law license back, Kim attempts to get Jimmy to finally face his grief about Chuck’s death, all while Mike hunts down an escaped Werner Ziegler (Rainer Bock) with a tenacious Lalo hot on his tail. Lalo had only just been introduced into the show, and this was fans’ first introduction to just how relentless he is. Mike is forced to make a soul-crushing choice after finding Werner and Jimmy brings back Chuck’s letter from “Something Beautiful” only to reveal he’s lost even more of his humanity in the pursuit of burying his feelings of guilt.
Even though it was the show’s biggest promise, it’s a heartbreaking moment when Saul Goodman decides to finally birth himself legally into the world. The audience is made intimately aware of how much pain Jimmy is in deep down regarding the death of his brother in a powerful moment where he sobs alone in his car. The smile of Saul plastered on Jimmy’s face as he pulls away from Kim in the episode’s final shot is simply haunting.
6 Rock And Hard Place
Season 6, Episode 3
“Rock and Hard Place” brings an end to one of the show’s longest and most interesting character arcs. It’s the final episode featuring Nacho Varga, and it gives a heartbreakingly perfect ending to his story. Jimmy and Kim have an interesting development in their ongoing plot against Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian), pulling off an eloquently simple key heist, of sorts, but it’s all secondary to Nacho’s goodbye.
The final season of Better Call Saul has the specter of death constantly looming over almost every scene, with the viewer being encouraged to constantly theorize over who will and won’t make it to the end of the finale. Main character deaths are expected in shows like Better Call Saul and the series handles its last big ones with the level of care that fans of the series had come to expect. This was the first of several big death episodes in season 6 but, while the others were built up to throughout the majority of the season, Nacho’s fate is abrupt and stands out for inescapable it feels.
5 Five-O
Season 1, Episode 6
Throughout the course of Breaking Bad, the audience never sees what makes Mike tick. What is shown is that he was Gus Fring’s right-hand man and that he wasn’t to be trifled with. The sixth episode of the first season changed all of that as fans finally got a fleshed-out backstory for Mike that explains the so-called drama that surrounded Mike’s departure from his native Philadelphia, which had been teased by Hank Schrader (Dean Norris) during his interrogation of Mike in Breaking Bad. “Five-O” is one of those Better Call Saul episodes that’s a miniature movie within itself.
Jimmy features quite minimally in the episode, with the focus being on Mike’s past as a corrupt police officer who takes revenge on the men who murdered his son. Mike’s confession to his son’s widow sets up not only Mike’s past but his future too, as he tries to make amends with what’s left of his family while fans of Breaking Bad know just how tragically his story ends. This is the most emotionally vulnerable that the audience ever sees Mike in either show and Jonathan Banks doesn’t squander the opportunity to show every facet of Mike’s psyche that ordinarily has to be kept under strict lock and key.
4 Bagman
Season 5, Episode 8
One of the most cinematic episodes of Better Call Saul, “Bagman” revolves entirely around Jimmy’s decision to transport Lalo’s bail money from the US/Mexican border to the courthouse. Jimmy is attacked almost immediately by an armed group, prompting one of Better Call Saul‘s biggest shootouts and a life-changing ordeal in the desert with Mike. Though more action-packed than the typical Better Call Saul episode, “Bagman” is still full of quieter character moments as Jimmy takes some of his painful first steps into truly shedding his Robin Hood persona who’s looking out for the little guy and embracing the soulless Saul Goodman who will do essentially anything for the right price.
3 Plan And Execution
Season 6, Episode 7
There were many shocking and otherwise impactful deaths on Better Call Saul, but none hit quite as hard as Howard Hamlin’s. Though viewers wouldn’t get to see the fruition of Gus and Lalo’s plans until the following episode, the mid-season finale of season 6 sees the execution of Jimmy and Kim’s steadily built-up plan to tear down Howard. The terribly perfect crime is capped by Lalo returning to Kim’s apartment for a sequel to his interrogation scene from “Bad Choice Road” just after Howard arrives there too. Howard’s murder is one of the most graphic and undignified of the entire show, and it leaves a huge impression on the viewer.
Jimmy’s antagonization of Howard is a cycle repeating itself and the true fulfillment of Chuck’s prophecy that Jimmy would hurt and destroy the people closest to him, and the situation inevitably blowing up in Jimmy’s face, as Chuck once put it, is far more horrifying than longtime fans could have imagined. A brilliantly simple and effective trick with the flame of a candle emphasizes just how powerless the out-of-their-league lawyers, and the audience, are in the face of Better Call Saul‘s devil character.
2 Chicanery
Season 3, Episode 5
The fifth episode of the third season of Better Call Saul is one of the most electrifying showdowns of either Better Call Saul or Breaking Bad despite the fact that it features no gunplay or violence. After practice runs in Chuck’s living room, Jimmy and his brother finally go head-to-head in a courtroom when Chuck testifies against Jimmy during his hearing with the bar association. A risky but brutally effective plan causes Chuck to lose composure and air his true feelings about Jimmy on the record. It’s an emotionally devastating turn of events, but the perfectly played courtroom drama is so enveloping that the exhilaration of it overwhelms everything else.
This is a true turning-of-the-tables moment, as Chuck sees for the first time that Jimmy has the ability to best him on his home turf. It’s also the scheme that introduces fan-favorite Breaking Bad character Huell Babineux (Lavell Crawford) into the narrative, thus moving the story one step closer to Breaking Bad while still retaining the core essence of Better Call Saul.
1 Saul Gone
Season 6, Episode 13
The series finale of Better Call Saul has only a few of the show’s major questions still left unanswered, but they’re the most important. It becomes very apparent over the course of the show that Jimmy and Kim’s relationship is the key to everything, with Kim’s fate almost constantly having a question mark hanging over it as she’s neither seen nor mentioned in Breaking Bad. Jimmy McGill’s journey back into the light after falling into the darkness of Saul Goodman seems like an impossible task and, after perfectly detaching Kim from Jimmy during the Breaking Bad years, it seems equally impossible to see the two of them ever reconcile.
As highly rated as the final season of Breaking Bad was, and as great as its last episode is, “Saul Gone” wraps up the remaining plot threads of the show in a much more emotionally resonant way compared to the cold and harsh realities of “Felina”. Better Call Saulis ultimately a love story and a story that invites its audience to judge its characters and weigh their fates. Jimmy’s fate may not be the happiest of endings, but it is perfectly balanced.
