Spoiler Warning: Better Call Saul Season 5 & 6
Better Call Saulis approaching the end of the first half of its final sixth season. The penultimate episode, “Axe and Grind,” is set to premiere on Monday, May 16th, and will likely see the pieces start to fall into place. It is expected to cement Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) as Saul Goodman and see theBetter Call Saultimeline finally catch up withBreaking Bad.
Ever since Nacho Varga’s (Michael Mando) death in the season’s third episode, “Rock and a Hard Place,” tension has been building as Gus (Giancarlo Esposito) anticipates Lalo’s (Tony Dalton) return, and Jimmy and Kim (Rhea Seehorn) continue their con against Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian). With only two episodes left before the mid-season break it’s safe to say that things are about to escalate in a big way.
So far, the con against Howard has been kept separate from Jimmy and Kim’s connection with Lalo and the cartel, but this may change in the next two episodes. The most recent episode, “Black and Blue,“saw Lalo finally return as he searched for evidence of Werner Ziegler’s (Rainer Bock) connections to Gus' superlab in Germany, meeting with Ziegler’s wife, Margarethe (Andrea Sooch). At the same time, Cliff Main (Ed Begley Jr.) finally confronts Howard about his fictitious cocaine addiction, leading Howard to realize Jimmy is once again pulling the strings to embarrass Howard in his personal and professional life.
Howard is poised to fight back, enlisting the help of a private investigator to dig up dirt on and follow Jimmy. However, the results of this investigation may lead to Howard getting involved in the world of the cartel, possibly becoming collateral damage in Jimmy’s transformation into Saul.
The Con on Howard
Jimmy and Kim’s con on Howard has been playing out since the season’s first episode, but the details of their plan have yet to be revealed to the audience, creating a mystery as to what Jimmy and Kim hope to achieve through their actions. The first step of their plan was getting Jimmy to plant fake cocaine in Howard’s locker at a country club. Howard had been golfing with Cliff Main, and when Howard opened his locker, the suspicious baggie fell out of his locker. Howard tried to play it off like it was already in there, and Cliff seemed inclined to believe him, but the only goal of the ruse was to sow the seed in Cliff’s mind that Howard may have a cocaine addiction.
Afterward, Jimmy enlists the help of Betsy (Julie Ann Emery) and Craig Kettleman (Jeremy Shamos) to enforce the idea of Howard’s addiction in Cliff’s mind. Jimmy tricks them into thinking that Craig was convicted due in part to their lawyer Howard’s drug addiction. Knowing the Kettlemans hate him, Jimmy implores them not to go to Cliff Main with the case, which leads to them doing exactly that to spite Jimmy. Cliff takes the meeting with the Kettlemans but decides not to take the case based on no real evidence.
Related:Better Call Saul Star Opens Up on Leaving the Series After Six Seasons
The next step in Jimmy and Kim’s plan was to get keys to Howard’s car. Jimmy gets Huell (Lavell Crawford) to lift Howard’s keys off the valet, getting them replicated just in time before the valet comes back to search for the keys. Now that they have a copy of Howard’s keys, Kim sets a meeting with Cliff at a café while Jimmy dresses up as Howard and steals his car while Howard is at therapy. Jimmy goes to the Crossroads Motel “Crystal Palace,” where he picks up a prostitute named Wendy (Julia Minesci), a callback toBreaking Bad. Jimmy drives Wendy by the café where Cliff and Kim are meeting so that Cliff can see Howard’s car. Once the car is in sight, Jimmy tosses Wendy from the car and speeds off, giving Cliff visual confirmation of Howard’s troubles.
This also ties into Jimmy’s ruse in season five, where he paid two prostitutes to confront Howard at a meeting with Cliff. In “Black and Blue,” Cliff finally confronts Howard after a meeting with the sandpiper clients, telling Howard that he knows about his addiction and wants him to get help. While confused at first, Howard puts it together that Jimmy is behind it and has his schedule cleared for the week.
Howard Discovers Jimmy’s Involvement
Howard sets up a meeting with Jimmy under the alias, H.O. Ward, getting Jimmy to meet Howard at a boxing gym. Howard confronts Jimmy and says he’s tired of the conflict between them and hopes that by punching it out in the ring, Jimmy will be able to get over his malice against him. Howard tells Jimmy that he wanted to get caught and that it was simple to see all the roads leading back to him. Jimmy denies the acquisitions, but as he turns to walk away, he decides that he’ll take Howard up on his offer to box at the last minute. The two begin their match with both Howard and Jimmy landing some solid blows, but in the end,it is Howard who delivers the winning punch, knocking Jimmy flat on his back. As Howard stands over Jimmy, he tells him that he had mistaken his kindness for weakness and hoped the match between the two made a difference, but before walking out of the ring, Howard tells Jimmy that it likely didn’t.
Howard leaves the gym and gets in the passenger seat of a nearby car, where he meets with a private investigator. The P.I. asks if Howard is looking for anything particular on Jimmy, to which Howard says that he needs to “know everything that he does and everyone he talks to.” After Howard leaves, the P.I. waits for Jimmy to leave the gym, tailing him back to his apartment. Once back at the apartment, Jimmy puts some makeup on to conceal his black eye, while Kim jokes that he shouldn’t cover it up, that it’s a good look for his Saul Goodman persona.
Kim tells Jimmy about her meeting with Viola (Christine Keiko Agena) and that she’s found a retired judge whose perfect for their plans. Jimmy vents his frustration to Kim about letting Howard sucker him into the boxing match, to which Kim says that he had his reasons because he knows what’s coming next. Howard discovering Jimmy’s involvement was all part of their mysterious plan, which seems to now involve bringing a judge into the mix to deliver a crushing blow to Howard.
Howard Is in the Game
It’s clear that Jimmy and Kim planned for Howard to learn of Jimmy’s involvement in the con, but it’s not clear whether they believed Howard would fight back with a private investigator. This move could be a disastrous one on Howard’s part for multiple reasons.
First off, Howard’s P.I. is not the only person tailing Jimmy, as it was revealed in episode four, “Hit and Run,” that Mike (Jonathan Banks) had been tailing Kim and Jimmy in the event that Lalo turns back up and decides to go after them. If Lalo does go after the two, Howard’s P.I. will see it all take place and become a loose end for the cartel. Not only will the P.I. be killed, but if he reveals he’s a P.I., it’ll likely take Lalo back to Howard. There’s a chance that Gus or Mike may have to kill Howard as well. Mike is following Jimmy and Kim, which means he’ll learn about the P.I. sooner rather than later. If the P.I. does witness something related to Lalo, it will make sense thatGus would have him killed. If he discovers the link back to Howard, it won’t end well for him either. The second Howard’s P.I. witnesses anything cartel-related, Howard will be in the game.
Related:Better Call Saul’s Rhea Seehorn Touches on Kim Wexler’s Fate: ‘She Doesn’t Evaporate’
In the teaser for thepenultimate episode, “Axe and Grind,“the phone number of Ed (Robert Forster), the vacuum salesman, who helps people to vanish with new identities, is shown. Audiences will finally learn how Jimmy acquired Ed’s number, but the main question is, who will Ed be helping to vanish? The popular theory is that Kim uses Ed’s services, and that’s why she isn’t in Jimmy’s life inBreaking Bad.But perhaps Howard will be the one who needs to use Ed’s services.
While there is a chance that Howard will die as a result of seeing something he shouldn’t, it seems more likely that his life would be ruined, and he’d have to leave his career and family behind. The goal of Jimmy and Kim’s con seems to be to ruin Howard in some way, and it may work, but not in the way that they intended, resulting in Howard having to go on the run. Whether Howard dies or has to flee, things are not looking good for Jimmy’s old adversary. The closer Howard gets to Jimmy’s cartel connections, the closer he gets to indirectly uprooting his own life.
