This isn’t going to be endlessly debated like The Sopranos. At the end, Jimmy and Kim got the most redemption that was possible for them given the circumstances. Jimmy would have slithered out in seven years and gone back to some kind of grift. James took his medicine and will just live out the rest of his life in greyscale. Chuck would have been pleased.
I also gave that a thought. As it turns out the scene does show us that Saul becomes a popular guy - everyone calls him Saul and seem to like him as we see when he’s called from baking to meet Kim.
I played along with the (sharp) Zafori Anejo stopper mattering somehow but that S6 opening shot didn’t lead anywhere. The Time Machine book seen in that same sequence mattered more (seen at the end of the scene with Chuck).
Yes, to actual criminals, Saul is probably kind of a hero. He’s been fantastic at getting clearly guilty people a much better result than they were expecting/deserve.
In some ways they both got what they wanted. Jimmy is in a place surrounded by people who respect him. Kim gets to do legal aid work, albeit as a volunteer clerk rather than as an attorney.
I liked how the last act opened with Jimmy making dough with a giant mixer, just like many of the Cinnabon scenes opened. His life in prison and his life in Omaha aren’t that different, except in Omaha he was forced to be a loner/recluse for fear of detection.
How much can Kim contribute to the legal aid organization? She hasn’t been charged with anything, but would her confession/statement prevent her from getting a law license in Florida? She can’t give legal advice directly to clients, but can she help the lawyers with strategy advice and paperwork? Basically do lawyerly work funnelled through a licensed attorney?
His fellow prison inmates will love Jimmy, for the most part. He’ll be an awesome ‘jailhouse’ lawyer for them, helping them with their endless appeals. And he’ll probably get some of them sprung on appeal with the advice he gives.
I’ve spent the past 20 years dealing with jailhouse/prison lawsuits. I’d not want to tangle with an inmate case that had been buffed by Saul.
It’ll probably only matter to me but Bill Oakley had a Grateful Dead sticker on his car.
What a ripoff! Didn’t Gould or Gilligan say in an interview that we should pay attention and it would matter. The fact that Kim was from Nebraska was a feint too.
Bill Oakley also had a really old car, right? Something from the 70s or 80s? That sort of thing drives me nuts when watching shows that jump around in timelines because even though none of this series took place in the 70s I was still like “ok what timeline is this?”
My apologies if Bill Oakley’s Ye Olde car is a well-known part of the character. I tend to forget those sort of details (took me a minute to realize who Bill Oakley even was).
Also, being from the midwest - the land of snow and salt - I am definitely not used to seeing such old vehicles serving as a guy’s daily driver!
So, apparently all Gould said was “Keep your eye on the bottle stopper”. He said this after the S5 finale. He never really said “this is an important thing for the series finale.”
Bill Oakley is in the dry climate of Albuquerque, so old cars are not that uncommon.
I have a feeling that his practice is going to start picking up, with a lot of appeal work coming out of ABX Montrose.
Yes that is literally what I was saying.
Was anyone else shocked that Jimmy was baking bread in the prison kitchen, I assume to serve to the inmates? So the inmates at ABX Montrose get fresh baked bread, apparently. That really is a nice prison.
He has an AMC Eagle. And I for one loved that bit of “car casting”. I mean they had to have sought that car out; they’re not exactly common anymore.
At first I thought he was making Cinnabons, since he knows the recipe by heart.
It was an AMC Concord which was manufactured from 1978 to 1983, so at least 30 years old.
They gave him that car to show the discrepancy between what Bill Oakley was hoping for as a defense attorney - the BB era Saul Goodman Cadillac lifestyle - and what he actually got - the pre-BCS Jimmy McGill Suzuki Esteem lifestyle.
I thought it was a very fitting finale. Nothing too crazy in terms of twists or action, but just very well done and in keeping with Jimmy/Saul’s character. The scene with Marie where Saul tells his story to start plea negotiations was fantastic.
A detail I saw mentioned is that Jimmy says he’ll bring the Financial Times to Chuck - in the very first episode Jimmy brings that paper to Chuck, so that places the scene in the finale as the day before the start of the series. So it’s right before Jimmy runs the scam with the skaters, meets Tuco, and starts everything off. It’s his time machine moment.
It’s been just a wonderful show. I’ve enjoyed all the discussions here and I’m sorry to see it end.
ABX Montrose is the one he was trying to avoid - the Alcatraz of the Rockies.
Edit: ABX might have been the North Carolina prison, but Jimmy ended up in the bad one in the Rockies.
Speaking of his old Suzuki Esteem, based on the teaser after the previous episode I thought we were going to see more of it in the finale. I thought the shot of it sitting in the desert years later might have been a hint that maybe Saul had hidden something in it, and he was going to return to New Mexico to retrieve it. But that might be a little too similar to what Walter White did in the BB finale.
Ah. I got them mixed up, obviously. But still, they get fresh baked bread, apparently.
I assume he got assigned the baking job based on his previous experience at Cinnabon.
I like that we never really get his true answer as to what his time machine moment is. All of the flashbacks in these past few episodes feel like they could be time machine moments. He should’ve not keep working with Walt, not been a dick to Kim during the divorce, stopped working with the cartel, etc.
Also, while I do think Gilligan is really done, Mike comment of “That was the day I took my first bribe” felt like BCS’s version of “I’ll be managing a Cinnabon in Nebraska”. Leaving just a little tease if they do another spin-off.
I want to shout out Rhea’s physical acting in the final episode. She’s been playing Florida Kim as sort of meek and almost shrunken. The shot of her filing at the legal office you could just see how much better she felt. She was old Kim again.
ADX Montrose is fictional but apparently based on ADX Florence, a supermax prison known as Alcatraz of the Rockies.