Better Call Saul ***Spoilers***

Just finished that one myself in my rewatch, felt exactly the same. Obviously the different actor for his granddaughter slightly takes away from it but when you look at the two shows together as one story, Mike certainly has the widest and most sentimental arc of them all.

Another thing I've noticed in the rewatch which may have been obvious to most already, Gus isn't half as much a villain as Walt was. As well as that, I actually enjoyed him taunting Hector having seen their story play out between this and BCS. Gus is something of an antivillian now in my eyes, written as a psychopathic antagonist but I couldn't help but side with him on a lot of things this time around (obviously not having the child shot though).

The main reason I wanted to rewatch was to piece together what might happen with Lalo and Kim in the final episodes. The only theory I have for Kim is:

That's my brain dump anyway. It'll be nice to have it in writing in case there's any truth to it, but knowing Vince Gilligan, absolutely nobody has correctly predicted the events of the final episodes yet.

I'd still agree with Jonathan Banks. It felt extremely out of character that Mike would have left Kaylee. Even if he rang her mother, surely you'd be talking at least 15minutes before the mother would have gotten there.

The only real way to justify it would be that some of the cops would have stayed watching Kaylee in order to try catch Mike, but still, just didn't feel like something Mike would do. He would have gotten arrested, waited for Saul to get him out and Walt to pay his bail, and then did a runner.

I just caught up with the show (S6Ep7) and was really disappointed with the first half of this season. Super slow and more about cinematography than story. The massive ratings for the final episode on IMDB suggests that most casual observers have given up in the show. Killing off Howard in the way he was does not make it an amazing episode, it seemed badly planned as even though it is a very slow , character driven show they seemed to cram in the redemption of Howard into the last couple of episodes (Wife, reflective speech, shrink). The whole Howard storyline was badly played out. Massive amounts of time given to a story line with no clear motivation, a huge reliance on good look for kim and Jimmy to succeed , rather than a clever plan and in the end an easy conclusion to the problem.

I fear that the writers are going for the recent trend of trying to get viewers to grow to hate the main characters and kill off the likable ones just to show how unconventional and clever the writers are.

I disagree with this but just to pick up on your last paragraph, getting the viewers to grow to hate the main character is one of the main arcs of Walter in Breaking Bad and arguably likewise with killing the likable ones (Mike, Hank, even Gale). If it is a current trend (I don't watch enough TV to notice it), it was probably inspired by BB to begin with.

A condensed breakdown of the key moments, which put Jimmy on course to becoming Saul.

I'd be surprised if Kim dies to be honest. It just seems like the obvious conclusion to her character and thus the writers will want to go a different route.

I do think she will end up in a bad place, be it disbarred, in prison, or disappeared by the vacuum guy. At least in the Jimmy / Saul timeline. I'm very curious to know if we'll see her in the Gene timeline.

I am probably very slow on the uptake. But I have only realised that the woman who acts as Mike’s daughter in law - Stacey. Is a woman from Tipp called Kerry Condon. I never even twigged any hint of an Irish accent.

Slippin Bob might have slipped up again and given another spoiler away. I will not say what it is, I expect it will turn up in those "theory videos" on youtube, like the last one did.

I know someone who had the end of the first half of this season ruined by Waterford Whispers.

I hope I don't get stung

In the scene near the end in BB, Saul gives his assistant a business card of a top lawyer, when theyre shredding documents, after rewatching BB recently. i took that the lawyer he was on about was Kim

I think it way surpasses BB and that is not a criticism of BB.

The depth of character exploration in BCS is amazing. Kim is still a mystery and Jimmy is an evolving paradox. Brilliant film making.

Loved Breaking Bad, and I agree that BCS is at least its equal. Neither of them surpass the Wire for me though. Still the best I’ve seen, or expect to see.

I was listening to the Breaking Bad Insider podcast for one of the final episodes which would have been recorded in back in 2013 and Vince Gilligan was saying his career can only go downhill because he'll never be able to match the success of Breaking Bad. At that point, I think they knew privately that Better Call Saul was in the pipeline but I'm sure even he couldn't have guessed it would match or even surpass Breaking Bad.

He's had an amazing career - a writer / producer of loads of The X-Files episodes, and creator / showrunner of Breaking Bad, and Better Call Saul. Three of the best TV shows ever.

Maybe I'm in the minority here but i do not think BB and BCS are on the same level. BB is far better and more interesting than BCS. I enjoy BCS but BB had me hooked.

Did we see the ending of the show in this short teaser for season 6?

Gene makes it right by handing himself in to police ends up going to Jail?