After waiting for what seemed like forever, we have made it to the final stretch of Better Call Saul. This season’s eighth episode picks up right where we left off: in Jimmy and Kim’s apartment living room, with a dead Howard Hamlin on the floor and a creepy, smiling Lalo Salamanca wanting to talk. Here is the recap for “Point and Shoot.”
Lalo Has a Plan
Once the smoke clears from Lalo’s silenced gun, he tells Jimmy and Kim what is going to happen next. Jimmy is to drive to a particular house, knock on the door, and shoot the person who opens it. He hands Jimmy directions to the house and tells him that the gun and a camera are in the glove box. The gun is for the job at hand, and the camera is to send proof to Lalo that he went through with it. “Just point and shoot,” Lalo says to Jimmy. But Jimmy begins to advocate for Kim to go in his stead. While Kim is near tears telling Jimmy that she doesn’t want to do this, Jimmy convinces Lalo that no one will open the door to a random guy in the middle of the night. But a woman in distress? Kim will have a better chance of getting the door to open. Lalo wants them both to shut up and get on with his plan, so he agrees to send her instead of him. He tells her she has one hour.
When Kim leaves, Lalo handcuffs Jimmy to a chair with zip ties and gags him. He begins to tell Jimmy about the raid on his compound and how he lost people that he loved. He tells Jimmy that he knows Nacho Varga is the one who let in the shooters, and if Nacho is connected to Jimmy, then Jimmy must have been in on it, too. Jimmy begins to deny this vehemently, but Lalo gags him and turns up the television volume so no one can hear him. He then leaves Jimmy alone.
Kim Arrives at the House
Kim is making her way to the house. She finally arrives to the location, which we now see is Gus Fring’s house, parks the car, grabs the gun from the glove box, and makes her way to the front door. She rings the doorbell, she readies the gun, and while she waits for the door to open, Mike sneaks up behind her and pushes her inside the house. Inside, Mike demands to know what’s happening. Kim explains Lalo appearing at her home, and that Jimmy is still there and is in imminent danger. She says that Lalo ordered her to shoot Gus. Mike tells her to stay put and that he and his guys will handle everything. He then calls all of his guys and pulls them away from every other location they’re surveilling. He wants to bring his full force down on Lalo at Jimmy and Kim’s apartment. As he leaves, Kim screams at him, “I thought you were keeping an eye on us! Where were you?!”
In the other house that’s connected to Gus’ house via the underground tunnel, Gus sees Kim’s arrival and interactions with Mike. Gus calls one of the guys standing with Kim and asks to speak with her. She tells him everything she knows, including the fact that her husband was supposed to be the one who was going to do this, but he convinced Lalo to let her go instead. This alarms Gus, because not only was this plan to shoot Gus never going to work, but also no one can convince Lalo to do anything ever. So Gus now realizes that this “plan” was a ruse to draw the attention of Mike and the others away while Lalo goes to some other location. And Gus guesses the location correctly.
The Superlab is Found
Mike’s guys stationed at Gus’ laundromat scurry away in their cars once Mike has contacted them, and we see Lalo in his car across the street, waiting for them to leave so he can enter the premises. Later, Gus arrives at the laundromat, worried that Lalo is there. And his hunch is right. Almost immediately upon his arrival, Lalo comes out of the shadows and shoots the few remaining guys on security detail dead. Now, Lalo has Gus at gunpoint, and he turns on a video recorder so he can later show Don Eladio proof that Gus plans on cutting him out of the distribution business.
Gus slowly and very begrudgingly walks Lalo to the back machines that serve as a false door to the underground lab. All the while, Lalo is talking a big game, gloating in his capture of Gus. As they walk down to the catwalk of the lab, Lalo is blown away by the scope of the lab. He goads Gus and pokes him with his gun, forcing him to walk more quickly before Mike puts two and two together and arrives at the laundromat. Down on the dirt floor, Lalo invites Gus to tell Don Eladio on camera exactly what he thinks about him. While Lalo listens to Gus spew his venom and hatred toward Eladio, Gus kicks an exposed wire on the ground, which shorts out all of the lights. In the dark, Gus runs over to where he hid a revolver, and he and Lalo begin shooting wildly at each other in the dark. When each man runs out of bullets, Gus turns on the lights and sees Lalo lying on the ground, having been shot in the neck.
Lalo Salamanca is dead.
The Cleanup Begins
Tonight’s cold open took place on a beach. As the waves crashed, we see a shoe wash up onto shore. And as the camera pulls back from the water, we see the other shoe and footprints that take us to a parked green Jaguar. The door is open, and a wallet and wedding band are on the dash. The Jaguar has vanity plates that read “NAMAST3.”
Back at Jimmy and Kim’s apartment, one of Mike’s guys gets instructions from Mike over the phone to immediately empty out everything from their refrigerator. While he does that, Mike enters with a new refrigerator (and a stainless one, at that!) on a dolly. Kim enters shortly thereafter and runs into Jimmy’s arms. Mike sits them down and, as he does so well, he tells them exactly what’s going to happen. He will stage Howard’s death to look like a suicide. Howard’s Jaguar with its vanity plates will be left on a beach. His wedding ring and wallet will be left with the car to make his disappearance look intentional. There will also be a small amount of cocaine in the glove box.
He then instructs Jimmy and Kim to act like nothing bad has happened. If anyone mentions anything about Howard to either of them, they are to call the police and tell them that Howard did arrive to their apartment last night. But he seemed like he was under the influence of something and wasn’t making any sense. He then left, and that’s all they know. “Just tell the lie you’ve been telling,” Mike says. While Mike is instructing them to go about their day like it’s any other, Jimmy looks into the kitchen and sees Howard being stuffed into their old refrigerator.
The last scene of the episode has us back on the dirt floor of Gus’s superlab. A deep hole has been dug into the dirt with a backhoe. We see the bodies of Lalo Salamanca and Howard Hamlin are ready to be thrown in. But before that happens, Mike gets Howard’s wallet, wedding band, and shoes. When the bodies are thrown into the hole, the backhoe starts to move the dirt on top of them.
There are only five more episodes left. Better Call Saul‘s ninth episode, “Fun and Games,” will air next Monday, July 18 at 9 p.m. EST on AMC. Catch our weekly recaps here.
