HaveUHeard

Bryan Cranston returned to play meth kingpin Walter White opposite Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman on Monday during the series finale of Better Call Saul on AMC.

The 66-year-old actor helped establish the Breaking Bad franchise created by Vince Gilligan, 55, with his portrayal of high school chemistry teacher turned methamphetamine drug lord Heisenberg and returned for the spin-off series finale titled Saul Gone.

Walter was shown with shady attorney Saul during the endgame of his criminal enterprise as depicted in the 2013 Breaking Bad penultimate series episode titled Granite State.

They were holed up together as they waited to get new identities and Walter tried to fix a hot water issue.

‘Hey, you’re a scientist, right? So, uh, I have a question. What would you do if you had a time machine?,’ Saul asked during the scene.

‘A time machine?,’ Walter asked incredulously.

‘Yeah. From a scientist’s point of view. You can go backwards, forwards. Where would you go?,’ Saul said.

‘A meaningless question,’ Walter replied before coughing as a result of his late-stage cancer.

Walter ridiculed the idea of time travel and noted that it would violate the ‘Second Law of Thermodynamics.’

‘Uh, but what about a wormhole,’ Saul countered as he cited an episode of Nova hosted by Alan Alda.

Walter mocked him and told Saul to stay in his lane.

Saul admitted that he was speaking more about regrets and asked Walter to share his regrets.

‘When I was a graduate student, I started a company with some… At the time, I thought they were my friends. Our goal was to commercialize discoveries that I had made. And at a certain point, I stepped away. I thought I was doing the gentlemanly thing. But little did I understand that they were artfully maneuvering me into leaving my own creation,’ Walter revealed.

Saul said he should’ve told him and they could have sued for wrongful termination.

‘You’d have been the last lawyer I’d have gone to,’ Walter said.

‘Yeah. Sure,’ Saul agreed.

Jimmy then shared his regret and told how he pulled a ‘slip and fall’ at age 22 outside of a Marshall Field’s store.

‘And I was stupid and young and I was trying to show off. So I hit the ice as fast as I could. I biffed it so hard, I heard a crack! Whew. Wasn’t the ice, it was me. I actually hurt myself. I mean, my knee has never been the same,’ Saul said.

‘A slip and fall?,’ Walter asked.

‘Yeah. That’s how I put myself through bartending school,’ Saul admitted.

‘Right. So, so you were always like this,’ Walter told him as Saul suddenly seemed pensive.

The series finale opened with a jump back to the season five episode titled Bagman that featured a brutal crossing of the New Mexico desert by Saul and Mike Ehrmantraut [Jonathan Banks] with $7 million cash.

Saul played the time machine game with Mike who said he would return to March 17, 1984, which was the day when he first took a bribe as a police officer.

‘And then I’d go forward. There’s some people I’d like to check on in five or ten years, make sure they’re doing okay,’ Mike added.

Saul said he would go back to May 10, 1965.

‘That’s the day Warren Buffett took over at Berkshire Hathaway,’ said Saul who said he would become a billionaire.

Mike asked if there was anything else he would change and Saul said he was rested and got up to resume their trek.

The show then cut to black-and-white and followed Saul’s as his alias Gene Takavic was on the run after being exposed by Marion, played by Hollywood legend Carol Burnett, 89.

He fled police and hid in a dumpster where he looked at a business card for his alias fixer and recited, ‘Hoover Max Extract pressure-pro, model 60.’

‘Anybody home?,’ an officer asked while knocking on the trash bin before they took Saul into custody.

Saul then enlisted new legal defender Bill Oakley [Peter Diseth] as his co-counsel as he sought the most favorable plea deal.

‘Where do you see this ending?,’ Bill asked him.

‘Where do I see it ending? With me on top. Like always,’ Saul said boastfully.

Prosecutors during a meeting told Saul that he was facing multiple charges and a sentence of 162 years.

They offered him a plea deal of 30 years in prison and Saul asked for the widow of slain DEA Agent Hank Schrader to be present.

‘They tell me they found you in a garbage dumpster. Well, that makes sense,’ said widow Marie Schrader [Betsy Brandt].

‘My husband was the best man that I have ever known. He lived to help others. If somebody was in trouble, no matter the time, no matter the place, Hank Schrader would be there. With a smile and a joke. He was kind, he was decent, he was strong,’ Marie told Saul.

She accused Saul of being motivated by money and he responded by trying out a potential defense that placed much of the blame on Walter.

Saul eventually got his sentence reduced to seven and a half years.

He tried to sweeten his deal by offering details about the death of Harry Hamlin, but learned that Kim Wexler [Rhea Seehorn] had already shared the incriminating information.

Saul later switched back to his James McGill identity as he confessed to more wrongdoing in a bid to save Kim’s reputation and career and received a sentence of 86 years in prison.

He shared a final cigarette with his former wife and attorney Kim before she left him behind in the prison.

Jimmy fired his hands as air pistols and blew away the imaginary smoke as the screen turned to black and the critically acclaimed series came to an end.

Watch the final season of Better Call Saul only on Stan in Australia.