‘Better Call Saul’ finale review: Jimmy McGill steps back, moves forward

Tonight, “Better Call Saul” aired its season 1 finale, and it was … odd. No offense to the Marco character, but we were shocked to take such a long detour from everything in Albuquerque to bring Jimmy McGill all the way back to Chicago. To think that learning the meaning of the Chicago sunroof was one of the best things about this episode.

The episode took us back to where Jimmy comes from after he decided that he didn’t want to be around anymore in the fallout of Chuck’s betrayal. He took the deal, but decided that he wanted to go back to his old ways of scamming people for a while with Marco. They had their fun, at least until Jimmy was seemingly convinced to head back to New Mexico after listening to phone messages from his clients. He agreed to do one last mission with Marco, only for Marco to die along the way nad leave him with a bizarre, empty feeling.

All season long, Jimmy has struggled with what is right and what is wrong, and for a while he settled with right. Where did it get him? A small deal with HHM for his case, a meltdown at a bingo game, and then an offer to work at a Santa Fe firm, which he turned down. Why? He decided that he did not want to be someone who followed the rules anymore.

We wanted to see Jimmy make the big leap from a man who lived by the rules to one who followed his own path, but there just wasn’t enough transformation in this episode for us to buy it. Maybe we are still trying to let this all sort of settle out in our mind, but for this being the season finale, we really expected something greater than just Jimmy making a philosophical change after the loss of a friend and a realization that he is unhappy at times in his present life. Grade: B-.

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