"You know what I was thinking about this morning? The smell of burning leather and horsehair stuffing. Do you remember? Hotel Tulipan. You were so polite to that guy. And he turns his back on you? Makes that big deal to show he's not scared... You took your time with him. And his wife listening from the side. That asshole was so proud of his beautiful Spanish, his books, his antiques. But when it burned, it all smelled like shit. I never told you this, but... I went back inside. I went through the flames, the smoke. It was so hot the rubber on my shoes melted a little. Yes, I know it was very stupid, but... I'm sentimental. I wanted a souvenir."
— Lalo Salamanca, "Wiedersehen"
Moments pages are Spoilers Off. You Have Been Warned!
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Season 1
- Tuco Salamanca. He was terrifying enough in Breaking Bad, but in season 1, he takes it to new extremes including beating the shit out of the skateboarding brothers with his grandmother's cane, lying to his grandmother that a blood stain from the beating is spilled salsa, but even that is nothing compared to when he threatens to sadistically torture them in the desert and give them Colombian necktiesdefinition of "Colombian necktie". Jimmy manages to negotiate with him, but only just: their legs are broken off-screen as he is Forced to Watch and listen.note Said incident is enough to scar him so much that even he cannot watch breadsticks get broken without thinking of it. So much that he immediately runs and vomits in a bar toilet.
- Chuck suffering from his electromagnetic sensitivity from just walking outside to get the paper. This is followed in the next episode by him getting tasered by cops who think that he's a drug addict.
- "Bingo" has the scenes with the damn Kettlemans again. Betsy Kettleman's sociopathic behaviour here is even worse than it was the last time we saw her. Even when Jimmy gives her a satisfying shut-down, she seems to one-up herself.
- While it's not quite as disturbing as the other scenes, in "Pimento", Chuck suddenly goes apeshit and rants at Jimmy is still unnerving because it just... comes out the blue and turns their relationship upside-down.
Season 2
- Nacho hires Mike to get Tuco out of the picture, ostensibly by killing him. When Mike asks if he is ready to kill his partner, Nacho tells a story that explains just how horrific working with someone like Tuco is: during one of their extortion efforts, on a guy named Dog Paulsen, Tuco snapped due to being high on crank and blew off Dog's head with a Sawed-Off Shotgun at point-blank range while Nacho was standing behind Dog. He still has a chunk of skull stuck in his body ever since to prove it. And that's before Tuco graduated to harder drugs.
- Nacho says that he has unsuccessfully tried to cut out the skull fragment himself. It appears to be shallow and in a spot where it likely wouldn't impair his movement, which implies he did that just not to be constantly reminded of it. And he can't seek a proper surgeon to remove it since they would likely call the police to ask how he ended up with a splinter of another person's bones under his skin.
- Also somehow both sad and heartwarming because he's doing it for Kim, Jimmy sounds on the edge of manic and deranged when he’s almost begging Chuck to ruin his life, get him to quit the law and it'll be like Jimmy McGill never even existed, plus Chuck would get away with it and Jimmy would never tell anyone. Even Chuck starts to think that he's not the only mentally ill one in the family after that.
- Tuco's beatdown of Mike, in particular after that one blow that dazes Mike. There's seeing Mike all bloodied and beaten up, and his psychotic laugh before delivering the final blow to Mike's face.
- The Cousins were always creepy whenever they appeared on-camera in Breaking Bad. But here, they are first shown looking down onto to Mike and his granddaughter. They don't say anything. They just stare. Then Marco casually points his finger towards Mike's granddaughter in a gun formation. This gets Mike scared shitless to the point that he immediately gets Kaylee out of the pool and dries her off in a way that looks very akin to someone shielding a person from gunfire.
- We get to see where Tuco got his psychotic tendencies from: Hector. The scariest part? Hector appears more fastidious and stable than Tuco. Worth noting is how Nacho is reacting to the whole thing. He's more frightened than we'd ever seen him, especially since Mike tells him later that "Your problem is coming back sooner than expected."
- Chuck suddenly collapsing after having endured a meeting in normal no-lights-off-conditions with the Mesa Verde people. He's left a shivering mess back at his house and ends up sleeping until the afternoon. Howard gets nervous at the thought of Chuck going outside unprotected again and Ernesto is at a loss when Jimmy's usual solutions to help Chuck recover fail to do anything.
- During Mike's heist of the ice cream truck, notice how the bound and gagged driver starts thrashing on the ground the moment Mike revs up the saw to cut open the tires. He's reacting like he thinks Mike is about to cut him to pieces.
- The aftermath of the above, when Nacho tells Mike that Hector killed a Good Samaritan who stumbled upon the aftermath of the robbery.
- Chuck going into a seizure and knocking himself unconscious on a desk at the copy center. And Jimmy can do nothing to help him because he's afraid of getting caught.
- On a subtler level, however much Chuck is an ass, Jimmy's Gaslighting with the documents is quite creepy; imagine a close family member taking advantage of a medical condition and trying to convince you that you were losing your ability to do the job you love. In Jimmy's defense, he almost certainly knew Chuck would immediately figure out the truth, but won't be able to prove it.
- Chuck desperately trying to tell the doctors about his condition and having all his pleas fall on deaf ears is truly something out of a nightmare, made all the more unnerving by keeping the camera anchored upside-down on his face while the doctors are faceless voices who keep blandly repeating that everything's going to be fine. He receives a CAT scan against his will, an experience so traumatic that he's left catatonic for a day.
- Chuck pretending to have a Villainous Breakdown, covering his walls in tinfoil, all to abuse Jimmy's sympathy and trick him into confessing.
Season 3
- The entire third season is incredibly dark, much more so than the previous two.
- The end of the flash-forward in the first episode. After speaking up and telling a young shoplifter to get a lawyer, "Gene" returns to work, only to collapse in a manner very similar to Walter's collapse in the first episode of Breaking Bad and Chuck's various collapses, as well.
- Jimmy going off of the handle at the end of "Witness" after learning that Chuck taped him. Rarely has the goofy Jimmy ever threatened to burn the house to the ground before.
- Hell the lengths Chuck's willing to go to to incriminate his brother is pure Nightmare Fuel in and of itself.
- Gus and his Terminator-like turn towards the camera in the middle of cleaning litter. Fring's back, indeed.
- Although Chuck DEFINITELY has it coming this time round, Jimmy's speech about hoping that he dies alone paints a bleak picture of what could happen if Chuck doesn't change his ways and is a subtly scary example of Jimmy in Tranquil Fury mode, brrrrrrrrr. Considering how much of this turns out to be proven right...
- Being a customer or lower level boss of Los Pollos Hermanos and having Hector and his goons come into the restaurant looking for Gus Fring in "Sabrosito". It's a good thing Nacho was wise enough to permit the patrons to leave so that they only were holding the employees hostage until Gus comes back.
- Chuck's Villainous Breakdown at the very end of Chicanery is terrifying. All the true reasons for his resentment towards Jimmy come pouring out in one spell-binding performance by Michael McKean.
- Nacho having to dish out a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to Krazy-8 for being short on his payments, he's clearly shaken up about it afterwards as he's not concentrating on his job and winds up getting an upholstery sewing machine needle tearing through his skin, between his thumb and index finger, by accident. Worse is that he barely reacts to the injury.
- Nacho's realization that Hector will drag his father's business into the drug game no matter what is terrifying, especially given Hector's sadism. Because of Nacho's involvement in the drug game, his father's entire livelihood — and life — are now in jeopardy.
- Hector's Villainous Breakdown serves as an unnerving teaser for when he gets his stroke in the future of BCS.
- Jimmy's combination of Evil Is Petty, Crocodile Tears and Never My Fault, all in one during the scene in the insurance office is even more disturbing than his 'fire me' plan at Davis and Main and Chuck's tape recorder trick. It drives home that Jimmy does serious damage con-wise if you've crossed him.
- Daniel Wormald coming home to find Nacho waiting for him on the couch despite his security system, reminiscent of what Walt pulled on Eliot and Gretchen in his final episode.
- After stretching herself too far by taking another client and having to pull several all-nighters, Kim falls asleep at the wheel and crashes in a quite visceral piece of direction, with her slowly trailing off while practicing her explanation of the deal, and then abruptly cutting to the crash waking her up. She stumbles out with a broken arm and her papers spilled all around, with perhaps the worst part being how much worse it could have been.
- Jimmy going full Alpha Bitch and socially marginalising Irene from the rest of the elderlies so that she can be forced to settle and he gets his payday. Especially scary as his elder law gap in the market was supposed to be one of his most humanising qualities. Imagine what could happen if Kim found out about this dastardly scheme.
- The events leading up to Chuck's suicide. After being given the boot from HHM and delivering one final Take That! to Jimmy, Chuck relapses hard on his EHS delusion. He pulls all of the breakers in his house, disconnects the phone, and when he notices that the meter is still running, tears his walls to shreds looking for whatever hidden wiring the current may be coming from. After he spends hours doing this and finds the meter still running, he violently destroys it with a baseball bat. The last we see of him is that of derelict human wreckage, having decided to give up on it all. He deliberately kicks over his gas lantern, and immolates himself as his house burns down.
- According to Peter Gould, Michael McKean got so deeply into character over the four days it took to film the sequence that he was legitimately afraid he was watching someone have a complete mental breakdown.
- Hector's second Villainous Breakdown leading to an actual heart attack, even if he's a detestable drug lord is still intense to watch.
Season 4
Smoke
- In the present day story, Jimmy sees that his cab driver is from Albuquerque, and suddenly the man starts looking at him hard in the rearview mirror, like he recognizes Jimmy. He asks to get out, and it still takes a while to happen, and he's left to walk the rest of the way home with no idea how close an encounter this might be.
- Nacho heavily tenses up as he's trying to toss the pills down a sewer grate while Gus is distracted, not sure if Gus won't turn around and catch him. He's interrupted before he can throw the bottle away, but breathes a sigh of relief when Gus doesn't ask him what he's doing. He and Arturo go with Gus to a meeting with Bolsa in a Pollos warehouse. After the meeting, Nacho drives in his truck to a remote bridge to throw the pills into the river. Then, just as Nacho is exhaling in relief, the camera changes to show Victor sitting in his car near the end of the bridge, watching Nacho through binoculars, and has installed a tracker on Nacho's truck.
- It's a minor one, but we see some traces of Saul come out when Jimmy throws Howard's guilt over Chuck's suicide back in his face.
Breathe
- Gus reminds us why he's a crimelord not to be trifled with. Just from reading Hector's medical charts and Victor's report from when he got back after tailing Nacho, he's able to figure out that Nacho induced Hector's stroke, and sets a trap that night when Arturo and Nacho make the next scheduled drug pickup. As Nacho and Arturo are walking back to their car, Gus suddenly emerges from beside the refrigerator trucks, and before anyone can react, hogties Arturo and puts a plastic bag over his head. Simultaneously, Victor and several other henchmen pull guns on Nacho and force him to watch as Arturo suffocates to death in front of him.Gus Fring: I know what you've done. The Salamancas, they do not. Do you understand what I am saying? [Nacho gives a wide-eyed glance as he realizes what Gus is talking about, and looks back at Arturo] Look at me. From now on, You. Are. MINE.
- And then the music dies off as Gus walks off, reminding us that the music is for the benefit of us, the audience; and for Nacho, this all happened without the benefit of the soundtrack.
- Even more is the realization that yeah, Nacho has nowhere to run. The Salamancas are very powerful, and Mike won't be able to help Nacho out of this one since unbeknownst to Nacho, Mike has started working for Gus as well. Any efforts he made at getting out of the game have left him reduced to being a pawn for Gus to use.
- To illustrate just how horrible Arturo's murder is, imagine getting a plastic bag forced over your head from out of nowhere, and then getting zip-tied up so you can't do anything about it. Then, they just leave you there on the ground to helplessly suffocate, while forcing your partner to stand by and watch. Arturo's long and needlessly cruel death stands out as one of the most terrifying in both series. The scene also reminds us that, much like what he's going to do down the road with Hector, Gus is a sadist.
- Perhaps more chilling, is that Gus just innovated on what was done to him by the Cartel, having found a way to actually make it worse than it was for him. And coldly did it to someone else.
Something Beautiful
- Nacho is forced to go along with Tyrus and Victor as they run a False Flag Operation in which they fake evidence of a shooting ambush to cover up Arturo's demise. Part of the scheme involves Victor shooting Nacho and then leaving him to slowly bleed out in the desert. By the time the Cousins come along, Nacho is barely hanging on to life. It also firmly cements Gus' Bad Boss status as Nacho could easily have died if the Cousins showed up too late.
- Dr. Caldera doing a "sniff test" to check that Nacho's bowel isn't ruptured and leaking fecal matter into his open wound is this as well as Nausea Fuel.
- Dr. Caldera then graphically describing what will happen if Nacho's bowel has been perforated and ruptured by a bullet, saying he will have the worst infection of his life, it'll hurt worse than anything else he's ever felt, and then he'll die.
Piñata
- While he wasn't going to kill them, it's a little chilling that Jimmy's idea of payback on the guys who mugged him is to hang them upside down from a ceiling like piñatas and have Man Mountain and Huell threaten them with baseball bats. He'd rather do this instead of therapy, which should you tell you everything about his state of mind this season.
- Gus decides to visit Hector in the hospital, and has a five minute long scene where he describes in graphic detail how he grabbed a coati with one broken leg WITH HIS BARE HANDS. And when it got away, he just waited for hours like a predator until it came out from hiding because it was hungry. Then, rather than just kill it, he kept it alive, waiting for it to die in the slowest way possible. And he uses this as an analogy to explain to Hector what his fate will be.
Something Stupid
- We get the payoff to the above-mentioned monologue from Gus. Hector might have eventually regained much more mobility, but Gus halts his treatment so that he'll spend the rest of his life almost completely paralyzed. Suddenly that Death Glare Hector gives before killing Gus has a lot more context.
Coushatta
- It's a more mundane one, but Mike has to give an Implied Death Threat to Werner to warn him that after his drunken slip-up at the bar, he needs to remember that Gus may not be so forgiving if he messes up again. A reminder both of just what Gus does to liabilities that negatively affects his business, but also shows how hardened Mike has become in a year of working for Gus.
- Since we last saw him, Nacho is pretty shaken by having to rip a bling-wearing dealer's earring off, and he chides Krazy-8 for not doing it, which also suggests he's become a bit hardened as well having to head the Salamanca street crew and be a double agent to Gus.
- The first appearance of Eduardo "Lalo" Salamanca. He is easily the most affable and approachable Salamanca met so far, but there is definitely something off about him, similar to that of Gus. His more dangerous side is even further hinted when you look at the terrified faces of Krazy-8 and the cook, who are both visibly disturbed by his presence. And going all the way back to Breaking Bad, even Saul is terrified of this guy!
- In particular, the part of the scene where Nacho walks in on Lalo cooking. Lalo offers Nacho a taste of what he's making... but he makes a point of saying that Nacho will die once he does.
Wiedersehen
- The origin story behind Hector's communication bell. A hotel proprietor in Mexico made the mistake of disrespecting Hector. Hector and Lalo retaliated by torturing the proprietor (with his wife being forced to listen in the next room) and burning down the hotel. Lalo ventured into the hotel as it was burning and retrieved the bell from the front desk as a souvenir. Today, years later, he gives the bell to Hector to help him communicate. Making it more disturbing is the fact that Lalo talks about it like it were some funny anecdote.
Winner
- After Lalo heads into Travel Wire to find out where Werner went (since he knows that Mike, also looking for Werner, had already been there), the clerk, Fred, refuses to give him the information he needs, then steps away to deal with a phone call. When he returns to the counter, Lalo has vanished... and, to Fred's concern, in the corner of the room, one of the ceiling tiles was moved... Then, in a scene that practically acts as an Alien tribute, Fred can only look in slowly dawning horror as he hears creaking in the ceiling, before Lalo bursts out and lands in front of him, gun at the ready. Thankfully, we don't see the shooting, but cut to Lalo examining the security camera footage while Fred's body lays next to him.
- According to the script
, and later confirmed in "Wexler v. Goodman," Lalo covers up his tracks by burning down the Travel Wire.EXT. TRAVEL WIRE - MINUTES LATER
PULLING Lalo forward as he emerges, wiping his face with a paper towel as he goes. Fingers of SMOKE curl from inside — a FIRE glows behind the counter.
In classic Salamanca style, Lalo is burning the evidence. We can guess that Fred is still in there, somewhere. Lalo may be charming, but he's also a cold-hearted murderer. Off Lalo, motel brochures in hand, hot on Mike's trail... - In "Wexler v. Goodman," Mike gets access to the police files, which include crime scene photographs of what remains of the Travel Wire. The images show merely a burned out husk of a building.
- According to the script
- Speaking of Lalo, the whole episode showcases brilliantly how terrifyingly effective Lalo really is. He manages to extract information on Gus' underground laboratory in a matter of hours. First he follows Mike to a parking lot; when Mike manages to gum up the exit so that the car separating him and Lalo gets stuck, Lalo rams the car and follows him anyways. Then he sneaks into Travel Wire (as detailed above), and then he manages to figure out where Werner is faster than Mike and calls him, pretending to be one of Gus' subordinates. He is the first Salamanca to not come across as mentally unstable but rather as a calculated, intelligent and outright refocused individual. He is not to be taken lightly, not even someone like Gus.
Season 5
50% Off
- Gus' way of ensuring Nacho's cooperation is to abduct him in the middle of the night, then reveal to him that he knows the places where his father goes to hang out socially, and that Victor has even wormed his way into becoming friendly with Manuel.Victor: Pop's a nice guy...
- A minor one but when Lalo and Nacho are discussing on whether Krazy-8 keeps his mouth shut after being arrested, Lalo just stares at Nacho for a good ten seconds straight without even blinking. And unlike Gus' permanent Death Glare, Lalo just looks and acts, well, normal, which drives the point further on how he's always listening and paying attention.
Bagman
- The ambush scene. Jimmy is just driving down the dirt road, heading back to the highway, when he's ambushed by several cars of cartel hitmen who cut him off. They are all armed, Jimmy is not, and Jimmy is left having to fast-talk in hopes he can talk them out of shooting him. One of them points a gun straight at his head, finger on the trigger, and just as he's about to squeeze, a shot is heard...as the gunman is felled by a sniper bullet from Mike. Jimmy is left hunkering down by his car as the gunmen try to find and shoot back, as Mike picks them all off one at a time.
- Not to mention Jimmy says repeatedly "Un amigo del Cartel"(A friend of the Cartel), but due to his lack of proficiency in Spanish it might as well be heard as "Enemigo del Cartel"(Enemy of the Cartel). Both ways would have ended up badly.
- Jimmy chugging the bottle of his own urine. Less said, the better.
- After retrieving one of the bills from a cactus, Jimmy stubs his toe on it and it pierces his shoe. We are treated to the slow, cringey process of extraction.
- The whole discussion between Kim and Lalo. After asking him where Jimmy is, Lalo is completely silent at first until he suddenly interrupts her bluntly, seeming very disappointed with Jimmy for telling his secrets to someone he loves. And after realizing Kim is Jimmy's wife, Lalo seems more amused than angry. Kim then realizes a way too late that she is also part of the game now.
- Jimmy realizes too late he's being chased into an ambush, and finds himself at the mercy of gun-toting thugs who are clearly intent on murdering him. And then he's left pinned down as Mike picks off the gunmen one by one with his sniper rifle, then comes in and uses his revolver to finish off the last one.
Bad Choice Road
- The ending scene is ten minutes of unbearable tenseness, with the threat of Lalo shooting Jimmy or Kim looming over the entire scene.
- Lalo repeatedly demanding to hear Jimmy's side of the story on what happened in the desert, clearly wanting to smoke out the truth of the mysterious bullet holes in his car. The whole time, Lalo has his gun prominently displayed.
- The whole buildup leading to this scene is filled to the brim with Oh, Crap! and Paranoia Fuel. Jimmy gets a phone call which he hangs up. Then, someone knocks on his door even though it's already nighttime. Then, he is called again, but this time Jimmy answers. It's Mike, who instructs him to leave the phone on so he can hear and we also see that he is speeding. Jimmy and Kim open the door and - it's Lalo in the hallway, the very last person they wanted to find out where they live.
- Jimmy is about to actually talk (tying in with his PTSD and not being able to be his Motor Mouth self when he's emotionally exhausted). Kim saves him, but as Point and Shoot makes clear, Lalo remembers this.
- Kim repeatedly hammers home the point to Lalo that he doesn't trust his men with $7 million, and he needs to get his own affairs in order. Lalo leaves quietly, but orders Nacho to head to Mexico by another route, and he has a long night ahead. Kim may have inadvertently opened Lalo's eyes and sealed Nacho's fate.
Something Unforgivable
- Lalo escapes Gus' hit on his family, and after finding them dead heads off for a Roaring Rampage of Revenge with a look of raging fury in his eyes, the sound of his footsteps on the gravel distorting until he sounds like a monster from Hell. Years later, Saul will still be terrified of Lalo coming back for revenge over this.
- Also, this is the first time we see Lalo completely stripped of any humor whatsoever and the true depths of his inner beast become fully visible. He is now like all the other Salamancas!
- Lalo being smart enough to force one of the assassins into calling the middleman and falsely report that the hit was a success. Everyone thinks Lalo is dead but he is still on the loose and is about to set things right. Should this facade carry over to Breaking Bad, even Gus believes it!
- Before Lalo heads off, he looks at the bottle and two glasses of liquor that Nacho brought him, implying that he knows that Nacho had a hand in the assassination attempt.
- Kim plans to ruin Howard's career for the heck of it. This makes Jimmy very concerned.
Season 6
Wine and Roses
- After the attack on his hacienda, Lalo visits a nice Mexican couple who live nearby and has a friendly, casual conversation with the wife about how he had previously funded her husband's oral surgery. Then without warning, Lalo brutally kills them both (offscreen) because he needs the husband's body to serve as a decoy. Even when Lalo might genuinely consider you a friend who has not wronged him in any way, you're not safe. If he needs to walk over your dead body in pursuit of his own goal, he will.
- Lalo visits Mateo (the husband) in the bathroom after he's shaved his beard and exchanges pleasantries with him. Then when Mateo's back is turned, Lalo's smile turns into a cold, uncaring grimace and you know what's about to happen.
- Additionally, it's clear that the entire reason Lalo generously paid for oral surgery for the husband was simply to have a body double for situation like this one. For all his seeming kindness, he was always looking at the couple as an expendable tool in case he needed to fake his death one day.
Carrot and Stick
- Kim Wexler shows just what she's capable of as she browbeats the Kettlemans into playing ball with them. First, she makes a call to the criminal investigation department of the IRS and forces the Kettlemans to overhear her conversation with the agent, in which she is prepared to turn the couple in for tax preparer fraud if they rat out Jimmy to Howard. Then, when Betsy caves, Kim coldly tells her if she thought she "lost everything" when Craig was sent to jail, that experience would pale in comparison to what Kim would do to their family if they get on Kim's bad side again, adding that she will be keeping her eye on them. Even Jimmy is visibly disturbed by the confrontation.
- Additionally, consider Jimmy and Kim's plot against Howard from Howard's perspective: suddenly, people suspect him of having a serious drug problem and nasty rumors are spreading all over town, reaching important professional friends and allies. And manufactured "evidence" seems to turn up all around you.
Rock and a Hard Place
- The entire scene where Nacho is handed over to the Cartel in the desert is intense. The scariest though has to be when the comparatively genial Bolsa tells him "Today, you are going to die. But there are good deaths, and there are bad ones." As he says this, we are given a view from the back of a car where an array of tools has been laid out in preparation for what is to be a "bad death".
- More of a sobering thought, but it can get kind of spooky, looking at all the people assembled for Nacho's execution and realising that in a few short years, every single one of them will have died one way or another, leaving no memory of what took place in that barren desert beyond a piece of broken glass and a single flower where Nacho's body was left behind.Michael Mando: There’s an ominous thing to this scene, where these are all dead men walking, watching the first man die. But they’re already dead, they just don’t know it yet.
Black and Blue
- Lalo breaks into Margarethe Ziegler's house while she's away for work to look for notes about the Superlab. He's surprisingly sweet to her dog, so for a moment you'd think he's finally given up his tendency to target innocents. Except he then hears Margarethe entering the house, having forgotten her phone. And then her agitated dog points her upstairs. And then Lalo pulls out a gun and puts a silencer on it. What follows might be one of the most terrifying moments in the series as Margarethe slowly creeps towards Lalo's room as Lalo stays put, fully willing to add another victim to his bloody trail. It's only in the nick of time that he finds identifying info for Casper on one of the gifts given to her, and jumps out the window by the time she gets in. Despite everything, for a moment you're left wondering if they're about to go full Shoot the Shaggy Dog with Werner's posthumous arc. Casper on the other hand...
Axe and Grind
- Lalo versus Casper has the latter use an axe handle to hit Lalo’s ribcage. He feigns being hurt before using a razor blade hidden behind a business card to slice Casper’s face and then takes the axe to chop Casper’s left foot off. All while Lalo comments that one of his ribs might be broken, but otherwise he seems no worse for wear.
Plan and Execution
- While Kim and Jimmy are at home, an ominous shot of a candle flickering is shown, making the viewer think Lalo has come to pay the pair another visit, just at a point in which Mike's men who previously covered for Kim are busy with Gus... but instead it’s simply Howard. After chiding them over the scam they pulled on him that day, the shot of a candle flickering plays a second time... and this time it's Lalo who walks in the door from the other room. He decides that Howard has already seen too much and slowly pulls out his pistol and screws on the suppressor, all while the pair desperately try to get Howard to leave - before Lalo blasts him in the head and kills him right in their living room, leaving Jimmy and Kim screaming.
- The suddenness of his death is also frightening with just how casual Lalo is about it.
- Once Howard's body hits the ground, we see a haunting shot of his face with his eyes still open and his mouth ajar from being Killed Mid-Sentence. Even worse, look at his jaw - the way it's hanging open implies that it might have broken from the fall.
- Even more chilling is how amongst all the confusion mixed with mild drunken stupor, Howard has no idea who Lalo is and sounds like a confused child when trying to put the pieces together and figure out what's going on. It's only after Lalo pulls out his pistol when Howard realizes he's in the worst possible moment at the worst possible time and tries to desperately reason with Lalo, but to no avail.
- Just the fact how effortlessly Lalo breaks into Jimmy and Kim's apartment is worth a mention as he makes no noise whatsoever until he is right there in the same room with them. Heck, the aforementioned candle flicker is the only indication he was already there. The disturbingly eerie music that starts playing in this part is enough to make anyone's skin crawl.
- On a relatively lighter note, the scam against Howard is so thoroughly planned it's almost ridiculous how helpless he is once it has kicked into gear, and shows how much damage a crafty con artist can do. Even his catching on and his attempt at fighting back were engineered, as the "P.I." he had hired was on Jimmy's payroll. In the end Howard loses his colleagues' respect, can't do anything about it without hurting his case, and has no one in his corner due to circumstances outside of his control.
Point and Shoot
- There's a long shot of Howard's blood seeping down the floor, before distorted sounds are heard of Jimmy and Kim still panicking.
- Lalo and Howard are buried together under the floor of the excavation. Meaning that during all of the superlab scenes in Breaking Bad, Walt, Jesse, and Gale were obliviously working on top of Lalo and Howard's shared grave. Brrrrrrr.
- While thinking that Jimmy was the one to help Nacho with the assassination attempt, Lalo ties him up and gags him while Jimmy is begging that he had nothing to do with it, and leaves while turning up the TV to muffle his screams. Jimmy tips over while struggling and is forced to look into Howard's dead eyes - even worse, since Howard was Killed Mid-Sentence, his mouth is still open, and it almost looks like his corpse is smiling at Jimmy's suffering. The writer even said that for the rest of his life, a part of Jimmy’s brain will always be stuck helpless in this moment, thinking Lalo will come back and kill him and everyone he’s ever cared about.
- Kim having to force herself to carry out a murder of a man she has no idea existed before now, terrified but willing to do it if it means Jimmy will be safe, and her expression at the end looks like a large chunk of her humanity has died thanks to the trauma.
- Lalo easily overcomes Gus' bodyguards but keeps him alive so he can show him the location of the underground laboratory he is constructing, while shooting a movie by camcorder to justify himself to Don Eladio and Juan Bolsa. He even permits Gus to record an insulting farewell message, just to let him implicate himself further. He managed to defeat Gus, and gloats about it. All the while, Lalo's smugness and jokes all show his cruelty while on his power trip.
- Even Lalo's death is creepy. After Gus manages to outsmart him at the last minute with careful planning and sheer luck in his part, Lalo ends up dead: choking in a pool of his own blood after getting hit by a stray bullet in the neck. Instead of looking disappointed, Lalo musters one last laugh with the remaining breath before ultimately succumbing. He sure died the way he lived, laughing and smiling all the way until the very end.
Fun and Games
- Kim's ability to heartlessly gaslight and guilt trip Cheryl while she's grieving the loss of her husband whose name tarnishing and death Kim and Jimmy were responsible for is deeply unnerving. The script openly calls it the worst thing she's ever done.
- At the end of the episode, seeing Saul Goodman as he existed in Breaking Bad has a quietly unsettling quality to it. Jimmy McGill is gone, disappeared from Saul's mannerisms like he never existed in the first place. It's just bluster and overconfidence, just as we were used to from Saul in the days of that show. After spending six seasons with Jimmy, seeing the character we've known replaced entirely with a hedonistic, shallow, too-cartoonish jerk feels...wrong. Jimmy no longer exists. We're seeing a demon inhabiting his reanimated corpse, wearing his skin like a suit. And from her reaction in "Waterworks", Kim seems to feel much the same way the audience does, with the added bonus guilt that she encouraged and suggested all this.
Nippy
- It's depicted in a humorous light, but Jeff coming home from work to find the wanted man he bullied into revealing his identity just a few days ago sitting in his kitchen laughing over drinks with his mother is disturbing from his point of view.
- While also cool of him and Jeff deserved it, Gene imitating Walt (when he was saying “we’re done when I say when we’re done”) when he’s making Jeff say it’s done. The writer confirmed Gene has trauma over that whole experience, and this is the only way he can admit it.
Breaking Bad
- The Cold Open takes us back to when Walt and Jesse kidnapped Saul and took him to the desert, but reframed it from Saul's perspective. As such, hearing him plead for his life and beg to not be taken to the desert hits a lot worse given all we have learned since this show started. It even has the benefit of having a certain line sound even more desperate than it was originally:Saul: (Sees the grave; screams in fear) OH NO NO NO NO NO! NO, IT WASN'T ME! IT WAS IGNACIO! HE'S THE ONE- (hard cut to black)
- After his failed attempt at reconnecting with Kim, Gene begins drugging and robbing strangers. It’s a series of crimes that feel less sophisticated and uglier than Jimmy’s cons or Saul’s creative approach to legal defense. One of his targets is a man with cancer who seems genuinely nice and for a second it seems like Gene might not go through with the robbery. But instead it’s Buddy who refuses to rob him and after failing to bully him into going through with the robbery Gene decides to do it himself. The episode ends with him smashing into the house of a man with cancer who Gene drugged.
- Lalo struck such fear into Jimmy that even Jesse simply asking who he is makes him shudder in discomfort. Just the thought of him seems to horrify Jimmy.
- The transition from the grave that was going to be Saul’s, to Gene lying in bed, almost in the grave himself, showing just how much he’s destroying himself and digging his own grave in both the Saul and Gene timelines.
Waterworks
- After ripping the cord off of Marion's phone, Gene extends it like a garrote in his hands while softly threatening her into not calling the cops. This culminates in Gene holding Marion's Life Alert device in an aggressive manner, only stopping when Marion calls him out. The disturbing hostility Gene displays to Marion truly shows just how far the man previously known in a past life as elder law specialist Jimmy McGill has fallen.Gene: Listen, I'm still the good friend you thought I was, okay? Jeff understands me! Buddy understands me! And you will, too. You just have to, uh... you know, keep things on an even keel, alright?
- A split-second, Sadako-esque shot of a distorted, pure-black female silhouette in the intro. It later turns out to be (as you can easily guess) a warped shot of Kim's arrival back into Albuquerque, but the moment in the intro is a chilling reminder of the fact that, beneath the colorful tapes of Saul and all his cartoonish bluster, Jimmy desperately misses the ever-fading memory of his wife.
Saul Gone
- While nothing bad happens, just a horrible edge to the whole thing, Saul definitely feels Alone with the Psycho with Walt, flinching if he gets too loud and trying to be quiet while Walt insults him for anything he can think of. What makes this scene more disturbing is Saul finally realizes he was attracted to Walt because the guy was like Chuck (not the only reason of course, but a big one), and he's recreated a bad relationship from his childhood. It makes both Saul's relationship with Walt and Jimmy's relationship with Chuck so much worse.
- At the legal office Kim volunteers at, one of the clients is a young, pregnant woman with a restraining order against a man. Before leaving, the lawyer reminds her not to let him in if he shows up, and to both call the police and her. While it could simply be a Crazy Jealous Guy and the pregnancy is unrelated, it raises the possibility that she was raped and can't get an abortion.
