‘Better Call Saul’ Season 6, Episode 3 Recap: Viva Nacho

Season 3, Episode 6: ‘Rock and Onerous Place’

Within the historical past of tv, no present did dying scenes with extra panache than “Breaking Unhealthy.” Consider Gus’s final moments, with half his face blown off after his arch nemesis, Hector Salamanca, detonated a bomb below his wheelchair. Walter White’s sluggish and bloody exit as he sentimentally communes together with his meth-making gear. Hank Schrader’s demise by the hands of neo-Nazis within the dessert, punctuated with a defiant f-bomb.

In the end, “Higher Name Saul” has contributed to this pantheon. Nacho Varga’s farewell in “Rock and Onerous Place,” because the episode is fittingly titled, was wrenching, tense, violent, unhappy, crammed with pathos and unforgettable. Whereas on the run in Mexico, he decides that the one strategy to save his father’s life is to dutifully return and “confess” to the Salamancas proper earlier than they kill him. Powerful project. However like all of Nacho’s powerful assignments, he doesn’t have a alternative within the matter. And as soon as once more, he over-delivers. Had he halfheartedly mumbled the falsehood that Peruvian drug lords put him as much as the Lalo hit, the cloud of suspicion over Gus would have lingered.

So as an alternative, Nacho clears Gus by suggesting that the “rooster man” lacked the heart and guile to rearrange Lalo’s homicide. What’s extra, he goes on, Gus saved Hector’s life by intervening when Nacho tried to kill Hector by switching out his coronary heart meds for sugar drugs. (It is a good, exculpating contact as a result of it occurs to be true.)

Nacho wanders method off script solely when he cuts unfastened his zip tied palms and threatens to kill Don Bolsa, proper earlier than committing suicide. Nacho wished to reveal a modest quantity of company in knowledgeable life that has been dictated by a rotating group of murderous sociopaths. This was a pawn telling a king, “I may kill you.”

Nacho bought the zip-tie reducing shank from the glass that Gus broke within the earlier episode, which sat in a rubbish bin within the workplace on the rooster farm. (The tip off is that kaleidoscopic shot of Nacho’s face, as if the digicam have been taking pictures via glass within the bin.) The shard exhibits up within the episode’s open sequence because the digicam pans throughout the desert panorama the place Nacho’s bullet-ridden physique as soon as lay, a type of bafflers that is smart solely when the top credit begin rolling.

Within the run as much as his dying, Nacho has a number of remaining torments to endure. These embody hiding in an oil tanker, below a puddle of oil, and getting crushed up by Mike so he seems appropriately bruised when it’s present time. If Nacho experiences any pleasure on this episode, it’s throughout the temporary telephone name to his father. He’s relieved to be taught that the person is alive, or at the very least not a captive. And he will get to say goodbye.

Nacho made some horrible life decisions, however like Jesse Pinkman in “Breaking Unhealthy,” he’s over-punished for them. It’s onerous to think about a single second of his life, seen to viewers, that appeared satisfying. When he wasn’t being chased, threatened, shot or crushed up, he was in a state of abject terror or despair.

So, a salute right here to Michael Mando, whose Nacho was a research in bottled up anguish, a personality roiled by feelings that have been evidenced solely by superhuman efforts to comprise them. As a personality, he will get to precise rage solely within the remaining seconds of his life, and it erupts out of him like lava. It could have been nice to see extra of this stellar actor, however when you should go away a present, a extra dramatic and affecting finish is tough to think about.

On the white collar aspect of our story, Jimmy and Kim are stealing Howard’s automobile as a part of their persevering with marketing campaign to border him as a drug abuser. As soon as once more, Huell Babineaux (Lavell Crawford) is employed to select a pocket and assist create a duplicate of Howard’s automobile keys. When Jimmy conveys this plan to Kim — “I’ve bought it. Valet rip-off” — it has an aphrodisiac-like impact on her. She all of a sudden will get amorous.

It’s only one small trace that she’s on her strategy to a mind-set that could possibly be described as criminally rotten. That is particularly apparent in her dialog with Assistant District Legal professional Suzanne Ericsen, (Julie Pearl), who tries to persuade her that Jimmy ought to speak about his putatively deceased shopper, Lalo, and assist prosecutors and police nail the a part of the Mexican cartel that’s nonetheless in Albuquerque.

Ericsen appears to consider that Kim is extra vulnerable than Jimmy to ethical suasion. Incorrect. When Kim conveys this dialog to Jimmy she performs it something however straight.

“Do you wish to be a good friend of the cartel,” she says when Jimmy asks for her recommendation, “or do you wish to be a rat?”

Fascinating strategy to body it.

Understand that though this present was off the air for 2 years, the top of Season 5 and the opening of Season 6 happen inside a number of days of one another. Jimmy has barely misplaced the sunburn he acquired whereas legging $7 million via the desert on the finish of Season 5. And earlier than that idiot’s errand, Kim begged Jimmy to rethink the entire concept of working for drug kingpins south of the border.

So, what accounts for Kim’s radical transformation, in a matter of days? One attainable reply is cash. Perhaps she bought a gander at Jimmy’s lower of the bail money and had a change of coronary heart. Have in mind, she believes that the Wreck Howard scheme goes to internet Jimmy and her a few million when it forces the settlement of a class-action lawsuit. She plans to make use of that cash to open a legislation agency for the indigent, which is a really noble concept. Maybe Kim goes to make, or has already made, a peculiar sort of Faustian cut price. She will be able to connive, cheat and even abet criminals so long as the upshot is that she will get to defend poor folks in court docket.

Think about the present trajectory of Kim’s awful-ward path and you’ll’t assist however assume she’ll be within the meth sport inside a number of episodes. Or she’ll be a cartel lawyer. Or one thing else that may be very a lot in opposition to the legislation.

Odds and Ends

• Shout out to Gordon Smith, who did an excellent job each writing and directing this episode. Particular due to whoever got here up with the look of the storage the place Mike and Nacho have their dialog and final drink. It’s ominous and ideal.

• Talking of grim touches: Nacho eat his final meal with plastic utensils.

• The place’s Lalo? And when is he going to point out up and damage Gus’s story by producing the “proof” he mentions on the finish of Episode 1?

• A lot for the speculation that Nacho survives into the “Breaking Unhealthy” timeline as a result of Saul mentions “Ignacio” in Season 2 of that present. Was that only a crimson herring, or did the writers have another plan to sq. that up?

• Can somebody assist Your Devoted Recapper perceive how Gus Fring explains to the cartel how he nabbed Nacho? He can plausibly say he was each bit as wanting to seize the man, on condition that he’s a suspect within the assassination plot in opposition to Lalo. However Gus doesn’t have operatives in Mexico, at the very least that the cartel is aware of about. Doesn’t this all appear … fishy, even when Nacho exhibits up bruised?

• Please opine on this and all the opposite particulars Your Devoted Recapper missed or ignored. Or simply couldn’t match within the cruelly restricted phrase depend he’s been assigned.