Better Call Saul: Wine and Roses

"Sounds like the day from Hell."

"It was one of the best days of my life."

And so begins the final season. It seems, at the start of episode one of thirteen, that we're a long way from the events of Breaking Bad. But there can't be far to go. And the pre-toitles is a slow, lingering scene with Saul Goodman's opulent and disgustingly tateless office being examined by the Feds. In the present day, with Saul in Nebraska, the net is closing in. And the episode really lingers on that fact.

And we move directly to the contrast with Nacho, also hunted, desperate, and possibly doomed, with a price from Don Eladio on his head. All the scenes with him are impossibly tense, with us feeling fear on his behalf. Yet he's a pawn. Lalo, wanting everyone to think him dead (although Gus suspects) is out to get him, and plotting with Hector. Mike tries to speak up to Gus about him, but Gus is playing his own inscrutable game. And Lalo has seldom been scarier.

Meanwhile, Kim and Jimmy are the usual contrast- Kim doing good work for the vulnerable and loving it while Jimmy remains a "friend of the cartel". Yet they're both tainted, and Kim is the driving force in their fascinating plot to do over Howard. We're not privy to the details, so it's fun to see the early stages of the scheme play out, reminding us of the scams from earlier seasons... but the stakes are higher. The golf club scene is fascinatingly layered. The golf club stands for the snobbery againstwhich Jimmy has alwayds genuinely struggled... yet Kevin is right to blackball him for being the bounder and the cad that he is. And to play the antisemitism card ("only following orders", ouch!) when he's about as Jewish as my cat... wow.

And plot threads abound. Is Jimmy going to get rumbled in court for the stints he played to get Lalo bail? Is Mike suddenly now not the person on the phone to Nacho? What is Lalo planning? What are Jimmy and Kim planning? And what of that sphinx, Gus? This is a superb start.