In 2009,
Breaking Bad opened the book on Lalo Salamanca, and now, 13 years later,
Better Call Saul writer-EP
Gordon Smith has closed it.
After writing several of the most critically acclaimed hours in the series, Smith’s decorated career as a writer-producer on
Better Call Saul has also come to a close as of Monday’s midseason premiere, “Point and Shoot.” The Michigan native started out as an office PA on
Breaking Bad season three and worked his way up to executive producer on
Saul, winning a WGA award for season three’s “Chicanery” along the way.
Together, with director and co-creator Vince Gilligan, Smith put the finishing touches on a backstory that was alluded to during Saul Goodman’s
Breaking Bad debut, the aptly titled “Better Call Saul.” In the Peter Gould-scripted episode, a masked Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) threaten a frightened Saul in the desert, and the criminal lawyer immediately fears that contract killers have come for him on behalf of someone named “Lalo.” Saul even blamed another mysterious figure named Ignacio (Michael Mando’s future role) by yelling, “It wasn’t me! It was Ignacio!”
Given the degree of difficulty required to flesh out a story from what were once considered throwaway lines, Smith and his colleagues felt it was important to be as exact and precise as possible in order to resolve these enduring questions on
Saul. That meant having Bob Odenkirk’s Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman literally say the 13-year-old “Ignacio” line again, this time in front of
Tony Dalton’s Lalo Salamanca.
“There are times to be oblique, and there are times where we like to give breadcrumbs. But these breadcrumbs are 13 years apart, so it felt like they needed to be big breadcrumbs,” Smith tells
The Hollywood Reporter. “That was our thinking in terms of making it that exact and that specific. It also helps us feel why Jimmy is so scared in
Breaking Bad’s [“Better Call Saul”]. He’s carried the terror of this moment all these years.”
In a recent spoiler conversation with
THR, Smith also discusses Lalo’s final moments and how they differed from his script.
So the teaser is the last scene you shot for the entire series. It’s also the only time you’ve shot Better Call Saul outside of New Mexico, right?
Yeah, I don’t think we’ve shot outside of New Mexico. If we did, it was probably something pretty small, so this was certainly our first major shoot. There was a splinter unit with a fair amount of our crew, and our long-time DP Marshall Adams shot it because the episode’s DP, Paul Donachie, couldn’t get here from England or wherever he was. We shot it at Leo Carrillo State Beach, north of Malibu, which fit the bill and looked good.
Breaking Bad’s Duane Chow was really sold a bill of goods with that lemon of a Jaguar.
(
Laughs.) It’s amazing that it made it back to New Mexico from a crime scene. Life finds a way as they say. [Writer’s Note: Smith’s tone was sarcastic, so don’t consider this confirmation that Howard Hamlin’s Jaguar and Duane Chow’s identical-looking Jaguar are one and the same.]
www.looper.com
Only way they could write him out was the old "Villain gets overly cocky and pays the price" stuff. But it was fitting enough, didn't feel too forced either.
