‘Better Call Saul’ Recap, Season 6 Premiere: Run Nacho, Run

This recap is for Episode 1 of the back-to-back season opener only; come back soon for the recap of Episode 2.

Season 6, Episode 1: ‘Wine and Roses’

Now, that was a season opener.

No doubt the creative minds behind “Better Call Saul” didn’t need a lengthy, Covid-induced hiatus to come up with an episode as strong, twisty and gripping as this one. But whatever it took to write and shoot the Season 6 premiere, it must be hailed as a masterly curtain raiser, one that managed to pick up the story right where it was left, two years ago, and hurl it forward at a promising pace. By the end, Your Faithful Recapper wanted to stand and applaud.

We open, as always, in black-and-white and the future — which is to say, after the events of the show’s sequel, “Breaking Bad,” have taken place. Except this time, the black-and-white lasts for just a few seconds. We’re in the last known address of Saul Goodman, a garishly opulent home, tricked out with Roman columns, tacky art and the ultimate accouterment for the man with too much money, a golden toilet. An efficient team of uniformed repo men and women pack up Saul’s belongings with Henry Mancini’s stirring and sentimental “Days of Wine and Roses” playing in the background.

Kudos to director Michael Morris, a Brit who has directed three previous episodes of “Better Call Saul.” He stages this sequence, which unfolds in slow motion, like a tightly orchestrated ballet, and every moment, every boxed-up possession, hints at a story. (One example: Saul stashed a bulletproof vest in a room hidden behind a mirror.) The entire spectacle is reminiscent of the closing shots of “Citizen Kane,” when the title character’s sprawling, overstuffed mansion is crated and packed away.

Except, who knew that Saul owned his very own Xanadu? Sure, the guy liked to make a dollar, but this is the house of someone who has turned spending into a kind of psychosis. The writers have some explaining to do. We need to know how Saul, who as Jimmy lives in a very humble one bedroom, becomes the sort of person who commissions artists to paint tacky murals over a hot tub.

Yes, he clearly went full-time for the cartel and apparently his whole TV persona was a ruse to cover his drug-connected work. The question isn’t whether he had the money. It’s how he became the sort of egomaniac who spent it on a gold bas-relief portrait of his face above the entrance of a giant walk-in closet.

The drug plot of our story starts at a familiar unlocked rear gate, where Nacho Varga (Michael Mando) has helped a group of heavily armed killers enter the compound belonging to Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton), setting off a violent spree that occurred at the end of last season’s finale. We know these men fail, but it turns out that Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito,) the Albuquerque meth wholesaler who sent the mercenaries, does not. He thinks Lalo is dead, and Lalo spends much of this episode ensuring that nobody learns otherwise.

This includes a visit to the humble abode of a couple who live nearby and who know Lalo well enough to fear him. Lalo has stopped by for a cup of coffee and a murder. Why? Because the man of this modest house looks a lot like Lalo, especially once he shaves his thatch-like beard, and spares his mustache, as Lalo suggests. Lalo needs a corpse that resembles him in order to maintain the fiction that he was slain in that botched home invasion.

But won’t the federales fingerprint the guy and figure out it’s not Lalo? Good question. Maybe neither man has ever been arrested? Or maybe the federales will help him in the cover-up.

Say this for Lalo. After spending two seasons a step or two behind his enemy, he finally knows something that Gus does not. Namely, that he’s alive. His plan, initially, is to link up with a couple of smugglers and sneak over the U.S. border to exact some revenge. He changes his mind after he calls Don Hector (Mark Margolis) in his New Mexico nursing home. Hector taps out a single word of advice on the bell attached to his wheelchair: “prueba,” or, “proof.” He means “proof” that Gus was behind the mercenary attack, something Lalo initially thinks he doesn’t have. A moment later, he has a eureka moment, grins and ends up driving back into Mexico in a vehicle stolen from the smugglers he just shot.

Nacho is again the most stressed out man on earth, this time running from everyone with a pair of eyes in Mexico as he tries to return to the United States, now with a bounty on his head. Gus has an extraction strategy in the works, which involves stashing Nacho in a motel with a gun, some cash and orders to shoot anyone who comes through the door.

On the (mostly) law-abiding side of our tale, Kim has the best day of her professional life, as she explains to Jimmy over dinner. Once she is done with the details, she re-pitches the idea of wrecking the career of her former law firm boss, Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian), because it would be fun and financially rewarding, as she explained in last season’s finale — a way to force the settlement of the long-running Sandpiper lawsuit and net themselves a cool couple of million. Thankfully, the camera cuts to an outside shot, looking in on the scheming couple, when Kim outlines her plan, so we don’t know any details.

Your Faithful Recapper says “thankful” because the plan is no doubt cockamamie and cringeworthy, at least judging from its opening salvo, which we soon watch. Jimmy sneaks a small bag of powder into Howard’s golf club locker room on the theory that his golf partner and fellow law firm eminence Clifford Main (Ed Begley Jr.), will spot that baggie and instantly conclude that Mr. Hamlin has a drug problem.

Well, of course he will!

As far-fetched as this whole operation sounds — even the ease with which Jimmy divines Howard’s locker number strains credulity — it seems to work. Everything about this subplot, which threatens to become a major part of the Season 6 narrative, seems about 40 I.Q. points dimmer and daffier than the rest of the show. It also seems pointlessly cruel. If the writers want Kim to explore her wicked side, there is surely a worthier target for her machinations, no?

Easily the best part of the golf club excursion is Jimmy’s improvised accusation of antisemitism once he is asked to leave the premises. “Five thousand years, and it never ends!” says the Irish guy with the new Jewish name.

ODDS AND ENDS

• The opening montage is filled with Easter egg-like treasures. One of the meds on Jimmy’s bathroom sink is a prescription for Numilifor, a fictional drug for which we see a television ad in Episode 3 of last season. Also, the pages of Saul’s little black book are filled with non-alphabetic code of numbers and symbols. When you work for the cartel, all caution is advised.

• In an establishment shot outside of the motel where Nacho stays, there seems to be a shout out to the photographer William Eggleston.

• Shall we guess in the comments about what “proof” Hector has in mind? My only idea: It has something to do with a bottle of liquor. We see one at Lalo’s compound as the police comb through the crime scene, and the much-treasured top of another bottle is tracked in the opening scene at Saul’s impounded house, as it falls from a chest of drawers to the sidewalk.

• “Proof” also has a good double meaning if it’s related to booze. And if you’re Don Hector, it’s quicker than spelling “Bottle of liquor.”

• If I’m right, it’s sheer luck. If I’m wrong, remember that stress is hell on diverticulitis.