And then I'd go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like I love you....
Correct me if I'm wrong but.... I am almost certain that their parting of ways here is the very first time Jimmy and Kim have uttered the words "I love you" on screen to one another. I am, honestly, devastated. I've never been hit quite like this by any TV show before, but
Better Call Saul has done it, consistently, week after week, episode after episode, since 2015. The cut, from inside the apartment with Jimmy and Kim to Saul's mansion was just... something else. And I hated it, with every fiber of my being, in exactly the way the show wanted me to; it is brilliant and beautiful and awful and tragic.
This episode also has what might now be one of the most profoundly uncomfortable, repulsive moments in the whole series for me, like I just felt dirty watching it happen. Kim, as she's talking things over with Howard's wife, knowing full well that they were estranged, and weaponizing that into her comment about how his wife would be the one to know because they're married, she'd have seen the signs of his drug abuse, etc. until she runs off, practically blaming herself for not catching what had (supposedly) been going on with Howard. God.
That Gus scene was wonderful, too. Lalo is dead and buried, construction is resuming on the superlab, Don Eladio believes him so the Salamancas can't move against him. Here he is, trying to meet someone romantically and he just... can't. He is
"Dedicado a Max". I bet this is the last we see of both Gus and Mike in the show. Perfect endings for both of them, without having to get into the mess of where they are in
Breaking Bad, or their inevitable deaths. Gus accepting that he just cannot function in the world outside of the business that he has dedicated himself too, and Mike being told the hard truth by Nacho's dad: He's no better than any of the others.
And now, with all of that, we are firmly in the
Breaking Bad timeline, right at Saul's introduction into that show, right down to getting the call about the public masturbation case, which he mixes up with Badger's files.