SAUL AND WALKING DEAD RACE THEIR OWN DEVILS

Robert Downey Bardeem has an idea, and it's probably that he's gonna be Rick's biggest WALKING DEAD foe

It could have been one of the best episodes of BETTER CALL SAUL last week, for the fact that Michael McKean, as super-lawyer turned super-crazy Chuck McGill, finally stops being a "human potato," really, truly, and strategically shedding that vapid foil blanket to get his big client back from Rhea Seehorn's idealistic good-lawyer Kim Wexler in a brilliant way that perhaps now we know only Michael McKean, the actor that began as one of two dumb-bells upstairs and then progressed into a fake rock god and played thereafter countless thankless roles, can...

Jimmy facing his unseen bro

And yet, who knows, maybe it's Kim's fault for once-again trusting the unlucky coin toss of a human being known as Jimmy McGill, Chuck's little brother who has yet to, and yet seems very close to becoming, Saul Goodman, the crooked lawyer side-character who stole scenes in BREAKING BAD and, now as a leading man, often tries too hard but that's also who he is: Bob Odenkirk is right on par in his performance while Jimmy himself "overacts" just to stay on track with the normal people surrounding him: the kind of polite villains that fit Jimmy like the venomous meth dealers did Walter White on BAD... those of the yuppy, white collar nature, underestimating the con-man "creep" who seems not as smart as their legitimate, framed degrees, hung upon solid walls where Jimmy's never quite welcomed or, at this point, comfortable remaining...

STIR CRAZY Banks

The cold-blooded kind of villain is left for Mike, played by another BREAKING alumni and one of the coolest old dudes in double-whammy TV history: that being Jonathan Banks who, for decades on the big screen, starting against Richard Pryor in STIR CRAZY and Eddie Murphy in BEVERLY HILLS COP, and was often taken for granite as "that bad dude from all those movies"... a perpetually tired-eyed killer, fatal hired-hand or just a spooky voice (the Canadian filmed PIN is recommended for indie horror fans)...

Lenny St. Hubbins as Chuck

Meanwhile, as SAUL keeps on moving down the highway while actually staying in the same New Mexico town, yet always seeming like he's going somewhere through dime novel dialogue that some BAD fans find slower than they prefer from that non-stop-thrilling predecessor, the gang in WALKING DEAD, as everyone knows, has reached the end of yet another... long... road, and it's no Governor this time. He took a little while and actually tried to seem... nice, kinda, in the beginning...

Not Finda Satanic Cults

But the road leading to Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Negan has been paved endlessly by a mountain-surrounding troupe of killer white trash maniacs, warning of this UNTOUCHABLES style finale that includes a baseball bat named after B.B. King's "axe," which will kill one of the cast and, following a long and torturous "pleased to meet you" monologue, with an ambiguous perspective of that unlucky someone being slaughtered actually turning-out, the serial question now is: who bought the farm after all that?

Hulka with Hot Lips

The episode itself is kind of one-dimensional and roadblock repetitive, existing just to end, which involves an RV that, while DEAD's first moral compass Dale drove the same kind of, and Rick's had for a little while now, seems more befitting a particular 1975 horror homage, intentional or otherwise: that being RACE WITH THE DEVIL, actor/director Jack Starrett's White Trash Satanic Cult Road Movie starring the gritty duo of Peter Fonda and Warren Oates with their wives Lara Parker and Loretta Switt...

But here, when Rick and company have gone too far, they're not surrounded by a ring of fire but of fiery, fearsome folk; Negan's gang, to be exact... And then He Himself appears, perhaps a bit too clean-cut and sophisticated for such a rural, zombie apocalyptic heavy and as the question looms of whom he killed, the likelihood of having an entire season centering on this one particular chief goon, while Rick quietly bands his people together to destroy him from the inside, not the outside, will most likely be liken to a prison flick, more of the COOL HAND LUKE Chain Gang nature and is hopefully worthier a season than this one was, trudging to yet another point of no return (and the second with Carol safely... somewhere else). But one last thing, connecting both shows being centered on, is that on BETTER CALL SAUL, Jimmy's brother Chuck (McKean) may very well turn out more sinister than any of the twisted WALKING DEAD souls put together, in his own way, for they're much different shows: lawyers and zombies are different, aren't they? (My, my, another cliché lawyer joke... excuse thee!)