The first half of the final season of BETTER CALL SAUL has had two main plot lines: Lalo's journey from the ashes to take down Fring; and Saul and Kim's plan to take down long time frenemy Howard Hamlin.
The Lalo plot has been a slow burn; it's definitely the story of the season. But each episode we've seen Jimmy and Kim taking their next step against Howard. And basically what they've been doing is a long form caper, with each next move taking them another step forward without ever fully revealing the full plan. That's a big part of what makes a caper so engaging for an audience: the lack of information draws us into formulating theories of our own; meanwhile the craft involved in every step is itself immensely satisfying.
In SAUL 307, written and directed by Thomas Schnauz, we finally get to the payoff. We see the final step, a massive and gutsy caper of its own, and one made so much more complicated by one single variation. And as a result the Howard half of the episode has a certain breathless quality, the initial crisis like coal fed into an old timey train engine, stoking the story's momentum and making the final success that much sweeter.
(There's some great acting and direction along the way here. As crazy as Howard ends up seeming, Ed Begley Jr. does a fantastic job as Cliff Main to make it seem like he's still listening to Howard, still considering the possibility what he's saying might be true. It's a small choice, but one that withholds the resolution of the caper that much longer. Even as it looks like they've pulled it off, there's a final moment of uh oh, what if.)
But then in the final minutes of the episode Howard confronts them. What was the point of all this, he wonders. Why would they put so much energy into doing this? And with all the capering said and done, there's nothing to distract us from the truth of those questions. What they did might have been fun, but seen in the light of day it's without any basis whatsoever and the scale of it is insane. They basically tried to ruin this man's whole life, for no reason other than they wanted to. They were so good at it and worked so hard at it, they absolutely got us on side. But it was all smoke and mirrors. These two aren't heroes, they are at best lost souls.
My operative metaphor for screenwriting is always sleight of hand--how a writer gets us looking to the left when everything important is happening to the right. And here in the midseason finale, we see SAUL having done that on a massive scale.
And there's a couple great lessons in there for us as writers, I think. First, if you show a character working hard at something the audience will start rooting for them and stop questioning them.
Second: A big final beat that the audience has been waiting for casts a big shadow, and you can definitely hide another move in there.
I've talked about this before as "The Gillen," after Kieron Gillen, who when writing the comic book THE WICKED + THE DIVINE often talked about how there are moments in a story that the audience anticipates, whether consciously or unconsciously. These are the things you've implied are coming--so for instance, Howard is going to get served up on a platter. But those moments offer a whole other kind of opportunity as well, because when the audience gets there, they assume the story is over. That's where they've been told everything has been headed, after all. And because they're not looking for anything more to happen, it's a perfect place to hit them with something more or new.
It's interesting, the episode ends with Howard dead and the two of shrieking in horror at it. And part of me wants to say that's way too neat, a coincidence that smacks of what the writers need rather than what the story merits.
And yet, is what happens to Howard really all that far from where they tried to lead him themselves? I don't think so. So even if it is a bit contrived, maybe Howard's death actually ends up being the exclamation point at the end of his sentence, really. "This right here, this is what you both did." And come July we'll see how that sits with both of them...
