"If I died tonight... no one would care. What difference would it make? (...) My landlord would pack up my stuff. It'd take him three hours. And Cinnabon would just hire a new manager. Gene who? Poof! I'd be gone. I'd be a... a ghost. Less than a ghost. I'd be a... a shadow. I'd just be... nothing."
— "Gene Takovic"
In Omaha, Nebraska, an elderly, mobility scooter-bound woman named Marion gets her groceries. On the way back home, her scooter gets stuck in a snowbank. Gene, putting out posters for a lost dog named "Nippy", gets her unstuck, but surreptitiously cuts a wire on the scooter's base. With her scooter now broken, Jimmy pushes Marion home.
Jeff, the cab driver who recognized Saul, arrives home to find Gene in his kitchen charming Marion, his mother. When they finally have a moment to themselves later that night, Gene tells Jeff that he knows what he wants, and it's not blackmail. Jeff wants in "the game", and he thinks Gene can get him in. Gene offers him one job — just a taste of the game, and then they're done. After returning home, Gene takes Marco's pinky ring out of his hiding spot and puts it on.
After closing up at Cinnabon, Gene heads down to the security office with two cinnamon buns one night. There, he meets Nick, the guard that arrested the shoplifter Gene told to get a lawyer, and Frank. Nick is initially hostile, but after Gene offers them the cinnamon buns in thanks for calling the paramedics after he fainted, all is forgiven. Nick takes his on the go as he does his rounds. As Frank starts on his (turning away from the cameras as he eats), Gene bluffs through small talk about college football while timing how it takes for Frank to finish.
Gene turns this gift into a routine, learns more about college football to more effectively talk to Frank, and times Frank each and every time. Gene also scouts the mall's department store, pacing out the displays and drawing a map.
In a remote field, Gene sets up a stick-and-tape model of the department store for Jeff to practice their planned heist. In the 3 minute window while Frank is distracted with his cinnamon bun, Jeff is going to rob the department store, taking only 3 of each item in order to not arouse suspicion until the tapes are wiped. When Jeff starts having doubts, Gene references his reputation as Heisenbeg's consigliere, and says if Jeff won't do it, his friend Buddy will. Convinced, Jeff says he's in.
At the department store, the manager asks for maintenance to buff out a scuff mark on her floor. She gets a call that she has a large package she didn't order. Down at the loading dock, she sees Buddy delivering a large box. When she calls Buddy's supervisor, the call goes to Gene's phone, who persuades her to keep the package overnight.
Gene continues with his routine, taking the cinnamon bun down to Frank, and gives Jeff the signal. Jeff climbs out of the box and begins robbing the department store. Everything goes off without a hitch... until Jeff comes across the recently-buffed patch of floor and slips, knocking himself out. Gene watches the whole thing with horror. When Frank finishes his cinnamon bun and begins to turn around, Gene manipulates an existential (and true) breakdown to hold his attention. As he sobs that he has no friends or family and that no one would remember him if he died tomorrow, Jeff regains consciousness, stashes his haul in the empty box, and staggers into the bathroom to hide until morning. Gene concludes his breakdown and leaves, taking a moment to collect himself once he's alone.
The next morning, Jeff leaves the bathroom and walks out through the store. Back in his garage, he and Buddy inspect their haul. Gene interrupts their excitement to remind them that, on his advice, they used a truck rented across state lines to perform the heist, meaning that they could face decades in prison if they're caught. Now, if Gene goes down, Jeff and Buddy do too. Gene menacingly warns Jeff that they are done, and Jeff is never to speak to him again. Marion arrives home, and she mentions to Gene that Jeff fell in with a bad crowd in Albuquerque, and she's glad Gene is around to be a good influence. When she asks about Nippy, Gene tells her that she's been found with another family.
The next day, on his lunch break, Gene stops by the department store and inspects a garish shirt and tie — exactly the sort of thing Saul would have worn. He sadly puts the shirt back on the rack and walks away.
Tropes:
- Bait-and-Switch: AMC's summary for the episode reads thusly: "A new player enters the game." Since it had already leaked that Walt (and Jesse) would be appearing in the last few episodes, many fans assumed this referred to Walt. In reality it refers to Jeff.
- Batman Gambit: The heist depends on Kathy (the department store manager) suggesting that the box be kept in her loading bay overnight. Which she does.
- Betrayal Insurance: Gene deliberately sets up the caper so that he has serious evidence of a federal crime against Jeff, so that Jeff can't blackmail him or turn him in to the authorities. Jeff points out that Gene is equally implicated in the crime, and Gene agrees that the only way he'd turn Jeff in is if he had nothing to lose, explicitly referencing Mutually Assured Destruction.
- Big Eater: Despite claiming to watch for his waist the first time he brings them, Frank cannot resist devouring the cinnamon rolls Gene brings in every visit to distract him from the monitors.
- Bittersweet Ending: By the end, Gene has mitigated the threat Jeff posed to him by setting him up on a heist and then using the laws they broke as blackmail to make sure he'll never speak out about Saul Goodman being in Omaha. And he resumes work at Cinnabon, feeling less paranoid and even possibly being more comfortable in his new life now having gotten a little taste of his old hobbies again. But as he spots a gaudy suit and tie that he briefly fancies buying at the Lancaster's, he solemnly puts it away, remembering that for as fun as the brief stint being Saul was, he can never return to that life again, and he's still all alone to the point that he feels nobody will even care when he dies.
- Breaking Old Trends: A few of the series' regular traditions change here.
- The intro VHS tape finally wears down to the point that it breaks, cutting the rest of the song quicker and leaving a big blue screen of the VCR's menu.
- This is the first episode to ever center around the Gene timeline, and the start of episodes filmed completely in black and white.
- Breather Episode: Despite being set during a rather depressing period of Jimmy/Saul/Gene's life and featuring a risky criminal endeavour as the central plot point, the episode feels as a rather upbeat addition to the season, if not for the fact that it is preceded by a three episode row of heartbreaking drama and tension.
- Call-Back:
- It's a bit more portraying himself as sad and pathetic, but still helpful to elderly women that they still love Jimmy/Gene.
- After making a deal with Jeff to pull off one single heist, Gene goes into his closet when he gets home and pulls out Marco's ring, which previously served to motivate him to not take the straight and narrow path.
- When Jeff tells Gene that the whole plan to rob the department store seems crazy, Gene comments that what really seemed crazy was a broke 50-year old chemistry teacher coming to his office, and a year later having a pile of money as big as a Volkswagen.
- Jimmy carries on Mike's trait of referring to the criminal life as "the game".
- As he's preparing for the big robbery, Gene looks into a mirror and throws out jazz hands, recalling his "It's showtime!" psych-up routine from the first season.
- Jimmy's first visit to the security guards is tense, because one of them, Nick, still remembers that Gene had pointed out a shoplifter to them and then yelled out for him to "Get a lawyer!" as they were leading him away. He also claims the Cinnabons are a gift to the guards for calling an EMT after his fainting spell.
- The "SG WAS HERE" graffiti Gene left inside the garbage room when he was locked in can be briefly seen during the montage of Gene's "Cinnabon runs" to the guard station.
- In order to distract Frank long enough to keep away from looking at the cameras, Gene starts a quasi-fake breakdown about how he's all alone, throwing in real details about how both his parents are dead, and then pauses when noting his brother is dead too (which isn't the first time he's invoked the memory of his dead brother as part of a scheme).
- Gene/Saul's gambit of "mutually-assured destruction" to get Jeff to leave him alone is highly reminiscent of how he convinced Betsy Kettleman to back off and accept a plea deal.
- Gene exploits the fact that crimes that take place across state lines carry much stiffer punishments to make even more sure that Jeff and his friend don't try selling him out, much like how he and Chuck took advantage of Sandpiper Crossing's having accepted shipments across state lines in order to elevate what would otherwise have been a settlement of around $100,000 into a multi-million-dollar lawsuit.
- The Caper: Gene puts one together with Jeff and Jeff's friend in order to make some money and give Jeff something to lose if he turns Gene in.
- First, Gene befriends the overnight security guards who work at the mall where Gene works over the course of several weeks, developing a pattern of stopping by with a couple leftover Cinnabons from work and having a cup of coffee in the security room. This is so he can engage in a conversation with Frank while he eats his Cinnabon, keeping him from looking at the security feed for several minutes while Nick is out making his rounds.
- All the while, Gene measures out the exact layout of an upscale department store in the same mall, then sets up a replica of the store in a field using wooden stakes and tape. He then trains Jeff on the most efficient pattern to run through the store and grabbing a few expensive items, while not taking enough of any one item to make it obvious the next day, and doing it all in the time window Gene can keep Frank from looking at the camera feeds (3 minutes).
- On the night of the heist, right before closing time, Jeff's friend shows up to the mall disguised as a delivery man, delivering a giant crate that he claims to contain an industrial sprayer to the department store, which of course the department store did not order. The manager contacts the deliveryman's supervisor (Gene), who convinces the manager to allow the crate to sit in the loading dock overnight to be picked up by the deliveryman before opening, by making it clear that any other option would be a massive inconvenience for him, her, or both.
- After closing, Jeff pops out of the crate and begins snatching items as he rehearsed in the field, while Gene (who has now picked up on Frank's hobbies and knows exactly how to engross him in conversation) runs his typical Cinnabon distraction with the guards.
- Jeff makes multiple trips back to the crate, dropping off his stolen items before returning to the store. On the final trip, he slips on a slippery part of the floor and smacks his head, knocking him out cold for a couple minutes, but Gene is able to hold Frank's attention off the cameras by suddenly breaking down in a fit of sadness over feeling lonely.
- The crate now full of stolen items and sealed back up, Jeff runs into the department store's bathroom and hides in one of the stalls until morning, when he casually leaves the store while feigning being a customer. Meanwhile, Jeff's friend picks up the crate as the store opens.
- The department store doesn't immediately notice the theft, as Jeff made sure to only grab three of each item. By the time they do an inventory count and realize high priced items are missing, it will be too late, as the security cameras record over themselves after 72 hours, meaning the footage of Jeff running around after closing will be long gone.
- With the heist over, Jeff and his friend have now participated in a felony, with enough moving parts in it to guarantee both of them would get decades in prison if their role in it was discovered. Gene can now threaten them both to keep them quiet about his identity, as he can bring them down along with him, which was the whole point of the caper.
- Celebrity Paradox: Chuck mentions Carol Burnett by name in an early episode of the show, and here she plays Jeff's mother.
- Continuity Nod:
- Gene has Jeff and his friend rent their truck from an out-of-state company for their heist, which he knows full well will allow RICO provisions to kick in if they're ever brought to court.
- For whatever reason, Gene still has resentment towards his dad, and this is the first mention of him in a long time.
- Crocodile Tears: Played with, as Gene starts faking a breakdown to distract Frank, but reality starts to seep in when he thinks about Chuck and how alone he really is, and he has to collect himself for both the scam eventually working and all the emotions he's dredged up.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Nick, the other guard at Frank's office, is initially cold and distrustful towards Gene, remembering him for a strange incident when the latter shouted "get a lawyer" to the detained shoplifter. A few visits later, he is seen excited to throw Cinnabon packages as if they were baseball balls with Gene and Frank.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Keeping in line with all the previous Flash Forwards set in Omaha, the entire episode is presented in black and white (barring a few moments of color in the title sequence). This even extends to the episode's ending credits and production company logos.
- Delicious Distraction: Gene uses the Cinnabon rolls he brings to the security guards in this way; coupled with his chat with Frank, he creates a three-minute window where there's nobody watching the CCTV (although he has to play for time when Jeff slips and knocks himself out).
- Donut Mess with a Cop: The security guards turn out to be very partial to Cinnabon rolls.
- Dramatic Irony: Gene makes a charming "Mr. Takavic was my father" joke, but of course his actual father is Mr. McGill and he has daddy issues.
- Easter Egg: The cheese Marion samples and dislikes at the beginning of the episode carries the brand name Schnauz Farms, after Thomas Schnauz, who's written a combined twenty episodes of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.
- Foreshadowing: The manager of the department store notices a heavy shoe scuff on the floor as she's preparing to close up and asks for it to be polished away by maintenance. As Gene makes his way to the security room as usual, he doesn't see and greet the floor cleaner on his usual route. Later, as Jeff is executing the robbery, he slips and falls on that newly-polished spot and almost ruins the entire heist.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: After most of the series took place in the early 2000's in Jimmy's past with the Flash Forwards to early 2010's Omaha reserved for season premiere cold opens, for the first time an entire episode is devoted to Gene Takavic and his new life in Omaha, dealing with the fallout of Jeff the cab driver having recognized him.
- Framing the Guilty Party: Played with; Gene dupes Jeff and his friend into hiring their truck from a company in an adjoining state, which will help cover their tracks in the event of an investigation, but also elevates their caper to the status of a federal crime, ensuring that Jeff has even less reason to try selling out Gene for his part in the scam.
- Glad You Thought of It: Kathy, the department store manager, is the one who suggests that the box can be kept on the loading bay overnight after evidently buying Gene's story about Buddy having a big (and messy) pick-up for his next job, and the only other available delivery lorry being four hours away.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: After weekly deliveries of Cinnabon to their room and some idle chatter about college football in Nebraska, Gene manages to befriend the security guards to distract them while Jeff executes The Caper. And fortunately for Gene and his crew, Frank seems to always turn around to eat his cinnamon bun, away from all the security cameras.
- Internal Homage:
- Gene's choice of distraction when the plan hits a snag is almost note-for-note what Walt did to both place and remove a bug in Hank's office.
- "Gene", with his balding hair, glasses, and moustache, looks strikingly similar to Walter White. This is brought even further when he meets up with Jeff and Buddy to plan the heist. Jeff is wearing a jacket with a beanie that evokes Jesse's look and Gene lectures him in a similar fashion Walt did to his protege. The effect becomes even scarier during his final confrontation with Jeff where Saul threateningly makes him say that he and Jeff are done, echoing the way Walt threatened him by saying "We're done when I say we're done."
- Ironic Echo:
- Gene crying in this episode to Jimmy crying in "Expenses", as that started off his real problems and then faked "worry" about his brother mentally ill, and this starts off blatantly fake, and gets very quiet when he brings up that his brother is dead.
- In "Gloves Off", Jimmy reassured Chuck that it'd be like "poof!" he never even existed. In this episode, with Gene getting a bit too real with how he feels, says similar.Gene: Gene who? Poof! I'd be gone, a ghost.
- Like Kim in "Black and Blue", Gene gets treated as a good influence when he'd just done something shitty, and is put off by it.
- Gene insists Jeff and his friend "say it".
- Irony: After making a living out of staged slip-and-falls as "Slippin' Jimmy", what's the one thing that almost does "Gene" in? Jeff slipping on a wet spot of the floor.
- The Last Dance: Gene ultimately decides to pull off one more con in order to save himself, and sets up an elaborate plot to rob the store in the hopes that it'll be the solution to getting Jeff off his back for good. At the same time, he'll be aiding in the haul of merchandise worth thousands of dollars total, and if anything goes wrong, it won't really change much since he was already under the threat of getting turned in anyway.
- Logo Joke: Two of them, involving the opening and ending logos.
- The intro starts as the standard Better Call Saul "Episode 10" variant, now (much like the other intros) degraded to the point of being almost totally black and white, until the music suddenly distorts and the image changes to a blank video screen that just says "Better Call Saul" (accompanied by sound which indicates someone has just taken the VHS tape out of the VCR and is about to record over a different one).
- The ending credits and even the Vanity Plates shown at the end are all rendered in black and white like the rest of the episode.
- Loss of Identity: Gene slips in and out of "slippin' Jimmy", "Jimmy McGill" and "Saul Goodman” but seems to realise at the end that he can't be any of them again. He also channels Walter White at certain points, still not over that experience.
- The Lost Lenore: Gene still isn't dealing with losing Kim well, croaking out that he's got no wife, and having a bag of her favourite baseball team's logo.
- Made Myself Sad: Gene starts invoking Chuck a lot like he did in “Winner”, pretending to feel bad, but then he pauses and it really seems to sink in for the first time in years. His brother is dead.
- Mood Whiplash: Gene starts off hilariously fake at the Crocodile Tears, but it all starts to get a little too real when he says "my brother... my brother is dead."
- Minimalist Cast: For the first time in the series, Bob Odenkirk is not only the only starring cast member to appear, he's the only one credited at the beginning. This is also only the second episode in the whole series to not feature Rhea Seehorn.
- Never Trust a Trailer:
- Some media outlets reported
that this episode would feature the first of Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul's much anticipated guest appearances. However, this didn't come to pass. - One of the trailers for the 2nd half of Season 6 featured a voiceover of Jimmy saying "And after all that...a happy ending." However, in the context of this episode it's said by Gene in reference to his bullshit story of losing his dog that he made up to gain Marion's confidence.
- Some media outlets reported
- No Name Given: Jeff's accomplice. It's not even really established what their relationship is or why he always seems to be hanging around.
- Noir Episode: While the entire show can slot into the neo-noir genre, this episode plays it up more than usual, being the only episode completely in black and white, using extreme camera angles, and having jazzy background music, on top of featuring an elaborate criminal scheme. Unlike many episodes using this trope, this is palyed straight and doesn't have anyone doing a monologue.
- Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Marion praises Gene for being a "good influence" on Jeff, which makes him wince.
- Odd Friendship: Jeff and his accomplice are a pretty mismatched pair. Jeff appears much older and not nearly as physically imposing.
- Painting the Medium: Usually, the show's regular cast members are credited at the beginning even if they don't appear (which extends to them continuing to be credited for the rest of the season even after their character has been killed off). This time, only Bob Odenkirk receives credit, emphasising that the show has left the 2002-04 timeframe behind for good.
- Precision F-Strike: Occurs when Jeff confronts Gene in the backyard for showing up at his house and getting acquainted with his mother.
- Rule of Symbolism:
- While mapping out the store in preparation for the heist, a sign in the background reads "A SPLASH OF COLOR FOR FALL". The caper is the first real sign of happiness or peace Gene has shown in this drab and dreary post-Saul existence, just a brief moment reliving the vibrant, colorful life he led as Saul.
- At the end of the episode, Gene holds up a garish shirt and tie to his body but then puts it back with a pained look, showing no matter how much he wants it, he can’t be Saul Goodman again. The writer compared it to a long lost love, knowing you have to walk away.
- Rule of Three: Jeff has a three-minute window to do the heist, and is instructed to only take three of each item so that the people who work in the clothing store don't realise that they've been robbed until after they do a stock-check, by which time the security tapes will have been recorded over. Which happens every 72 hours (ie. three days).
- Secret-Keeper: Jeff and his friend happen to be the only people (besides Ed the Disappearer) who know that the unremarkable manager at Cinnabon is Saul Goodman himself. Their silence on the matter is backed by Gene's threat of blackmail through their complicity in his criminal scheme.
- Seinfeldian Conversation: Exploited by Gene, who studies up on the current situation surrounding Nebraska's college football campaign so he can worm his way into friendship with the mall security guards.
- Shown Their Work: In-universe example. The first time the guard wants to talk about college football, Jimmy has to bluff his way through the conversation. Afterward, he makes it a point of reading up on all the games so he can fake being a fan as well. Eventually, their conversations form a pretty good recap of the real-life 2010 Nebraska football season, including losing to unranked Texas, (Taylor) Martinez setting a freshman passing record, and the debate over the qualifications of then-coach Bo Pelini, with the only minor error being that they didn't know whether Nebraska was to join the Big 10 conference (in real life that had been decided several months earlier).
- Shout-Out: The fake license number Gene gives to the store manager over the phone, 1968AE35, is a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey, as 1968 is the year the film came out, and AE-35 is the name of the part Hal 9000 sends Frank out to repair, ultimately coaxing him into a ploy the same way Gene and crew coax the store management.
- Taking You with Me: Gene does a non-lethal variant of this to Jeff and Buddy. While they know his real identity, Gene convinced them to commit an entire string of crimes that could send them all behind bars for several decades when combined. Now if Jeff threatens to turn Saul into the authorities, Saul can then report Jeff and Buddy for the mall heist.
- Tap on the Head: Towards the end of his heist, Jeff slips and hits his head on the department store floor and lies there motionless for several minutes, seemingly unconscious; then gets up, collects the stolen merchandise, and runs away with no apparent ill effects.
- The Unreveal: As Gene talks with Marion, she tells him that Jeffy and his friends got mixed up with a bad crowd back in Albuquerque. Whether or not these bad folks are people we already know is never stated.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Since we already know the plan, something has to go wrong. In this case, things go awry because Jeff slips on a recently polished patch of floor and knocks himself out.
- We Need a Distraction: Gene shows up every weekend at the mall security room to deliver Cinnabon pastries for the guards, as a way of "thanking" them for the time he fainted and received help. With one going home and another looking away from his desk to eat, this gives Jeff a 3-minute window to steal as much as he can from the department store.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: In-universe: at the end of the episode Marion asks Gene whether Nippy has shown up. It takes him a second to remember what she's talking about, before he comes up with some story on the fly.
"So, after all that... a happy ending."
