'Better Call Saul' review: Insanely great (as always)

WHAT IT'S ABOUT At the end of the fifth season, Nacho Varga (Michael Mando) went on the lam after orchestrating the hit on cartel enforcer Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton). Lalo, however, survived the hit. In the sixth season opener, he goes after Nacho, then decides to stage his own death instead. Why? To make archrival Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) think he's dead.

Meanwhile, Kim (Rhea Seehorn), now happily doing pro bono work, tells Saul (Bob Odenkirk) she has a plan to settle the Sandpiper Crossing retirement home class action lawsuit (which effectively started the series). In the second of two episodes provided for review,, Kim and Saul pay a visit to a pair of crooks who appeared in the first season. They make them an offer they can't refuse. 

This sixth and final season will air in two parts, with the second half beginning July 11. 

MY SAY Almost everything from here on out leads to one specific vanishing point entitled "Better Call Saul." That's the eighth episode of "Breaking Bad's" second season (airdate April 6, 2009) and because that's when Saul Goodman was first introduced, it's where all of this — the actual series named for him — is leading up to. Full circle means completion, and the end of a glorious ride that began all the way back on Jan. 20, 2008 when "Bad" launched. In a sense, our TV lives are about to come full circle too — the better, richer parts of that life, or for some of us anyway.

But not to get too wistful here (or worse, maudlin), there's another finale we should really be expecting. This is the one that occurs after the events of "Breaking Bad," when Saul assumed yet another identity — Gene Takovic, mild-mannered proprietor of that Omaha Cinnabon and whose cover was blown at the start of "Saul's" fifth season when a sinister cabbie recognized him in the mall. Gene/Saul/Jimmy's final words after deciding not to flee: "I'm gonna fix it myself!"

Notably (or tellingly), this final season doesn't open at the Cinnabon as it has the previous five but instead at what appears to be Saul's palatial/monumentally tacky Albuquerque home. Movers are packing all his belongings — including, hilariously, packages of Viagra and Minoxidil and a life-size cutout of Saul himself. The opening shot evokes the famous cold open of "Breaking Bad," when Walt's (Bryan Cranston) pants floated out of the sky. Here, neckties are doing the floating, as Henry Mancini's theme from the 1962 movie "Days of Wine and Roses" tracks. (The episode is titled "Wine and Roses").

Because everything in "Saul" poses a riddle that eventually yields a solution, perhaps we're witnessing the events that take place after Saul has fled for Omaha, or just before he becomes the ambulance chaser of "Breaking Bad." 

Maybe we're getting a foreshadow of what befalls Saul and Kim too. "Days of Wine and Roses" was about two people (played by Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick) whose alcoholism almost destroyed them.

Almost (that word again). In the final scene, the door was left ajar, so to speak, with the possibility of healing and specifically of redemption.

Same here?

The next few months will determine what sort of series we've been watching all these years other than a certifiably great one. Could "Better Call Saul'' have been a story of redemption? And could this have really been Kim's story — Kim Wexler, who saves her own soul and the soul of the person she loves in the process?

Could "Better Call Saul" have been a love story all along? 

 BOTTOM LINE Insanely great start (but what else would you expect from one of "Saul's" biggest fans?).