The cig and the Machine (Translation from Spanish)

 

Four or five times after Tuesday the 16th, I felt as if a sting was piercing into my heart, a delicate but potent pain, an emotional ghost silhouetted by the irreparable. Amazing, because in this case the irreparable is not real (it’s like when they tell you “ah, how can you freak out with this -the blood- if it’s only paint”) It doesn’t matter, it affects us as if it were real. That’s the magic of fiction. And nothing makes us more sad than which we cannot turn back: that’s the big issue, the great performance of the chapter “Saul Gone”. 

Or as it reads the end of the film Amores Perros: “we are also what we have lost”. And when we see Kim looking at Jimmy through the penitentiary fence, that's when it goes through like a stream of images (color vs black and white) all the past with no return, buried: Jimmy at Sandpiper Crossing, Jimmy at the bingo, Jimmy at the nails salon, Jimmy at the copy shop, Jimmy vs Mesa Verde, Jimmy and the full moon pie; and above all, Jimmy and Kim, a cig in the middle.  

In summary, what is lost is Jimmy; he’s in the ground beneath the figure of Saul Goodman (or along with Lalo and Howard, in the underworld of the Mother of Labs). ¿Or shall it be “It’s all wrong man”? Because on that alter-ego, slowly -or indeed very fast- everything is going to hell.

But Jimmy’s secret is to always get away with it. To sink, and sinking all around him more and more: but to always escape. Same dynamic than Walt’s, which puts both characters in communion. Right until the end. 

Yes, in the end of both series, it would seem it’s all over for these unstoppable but self-destructive protagonists, smeared by growing losses but always with an ace in the hole, a theatrical solution (It’s showtime). But it’s not really over: it’s themselves who decide to end it all. To be caught. One last time, they get away with it. 

Both chapters, “Felina” and “Saul Gone” are about the same matter: redemption. Walt’s redemption was with Jesse Pinkman, and Jimmy’s was with Kim.

It’s all about to be Jimmy again. It’s about going back, or even better, bringing the past. It’s not a pointless conversation, as Walt says. It is truly possible. 

It’s that final cig with Kim. The color scene, flying towards the gray future, beyond all the setbacks, failed meetings, and points without return. Jimmy and Kim got away with it. They built the Time Machine.