It’s a fool’s errand to wish for happy endings in the world of Better Call Saul. But I had a faint bit of hope for Nacho Varga. I thought maybe, just maybe, he would find some way to get out. He could leave this life behind and start again with his father by his side. I even imagined Jesse Pinkman arriving in Alaska years later and meeting Ignacio under an assumed name. Wouldn’t that be nice? Mike’s two surrogate sons coming together, looking after each other the way he might have done himself.
Instead, Nacho is dead. And we are left to take comfort in precious few saving graces. Ignacio Varga went out his way, choosing his own “good death” instead of being the plaything of other, more powerful individuals like he’s been for so much of the series. He found a means to guarantee the safety of his father, after a painful final phone call with him, freighted with meaning for the young man. He claimed one final measure of control, seized the meager last gasps of destiny, to make his death worth something, for himself and the people he cared about.
These are small blessings and minor comforts. I teared up at the fateful moment when Nacho took his own life rather than subject himself to the plans of the drug lords around him. Because this is a tragedy. Because this went south just as Nacho’s father said. Because Ignacio thought he could stay ahead of the worst elements of this business, and was instead sucked down by their inexorable gravity. Because despite his best efforts, Mike Ehrmantraut lost another son.
These are not showy, emotional men, so their tiniest expressions speak volumes. The scrunch of Mike’s mouth when he knows Nacho’s gone shows his abject pain and disgust at this whole thing. The slightly raised eyebrows of Gus Fring reveal his quiet terror at the prospect that, with one word, Nacho could blow everything up. The almost imperceptible nod shared by Ignacio and Mike serves as an acknowledgment of deeds that say more than any words either man could muster. This is a grim, unusually sentimental experience for all, made that much more forceful by how Better Call Saul underplays it.
God help me, Michael Mando deserves an Emmy for this episode alone. He, like so many in this incredibly talented cast, has deserved recognition for a long time now. But this is a masterclass in layered, subtle performance. The sheer physicality Mando puts on display when Nacho buries himself in the sludge of an old tanker truck, the unspoken well of pain and regret pouring out of him when he hears his father’s voice one last time, the sheer vitriol on display when he curses the Salamancas and declares himself the author of all their pain. These shades of desperation, resignation, and self-immolation are virtuosic to the last. If this is truly Mando’s final performance in Better Call Saul, he goes out with a masterpiece.
But it’s not all Nacho in this episode. “Rock and Hard Place” also advances Kim and Jimmy’s plan to undermine Howard. It represents one of the couple’s smaller efforts, but there’s a sufficient amount of tension in a scheme where Huell(!) and a bootleg locksmith use their combined skills to duplicate Howard’s car keys before his valet can catch wise.
One of this show’s great features is its ability to take the most mundane facets of these scams and ratchet up the tension. Writer-director Gordon Smith splices together the teenage valet rushing back to a parking garage with the grooves of the key being drilled. Creative, flowing shots of the building’s stairwells, and the stop-and-start classical music soundtrack, makes a comparatively straightforward part of this plan seem like an urgent crisis-in-the-making.
But after such chicanery, Huell asks Saul a simple but telling question — why do you do this? Huell suggests that he himself takes these chances because he needs the funds. He doesn’t have other options. Jimmy, on the other hand, is a lawyer. His wife is a lawyer. They could get by without any of this. So why keep at it?
It’s a valid question. Why go through this? What’s to be gained? Jimmy claims that Huell doesn’t understand, that this is for the greater good, that even if the tactics are underhanded, the desired result is good, which makes taking these risks worthwhile. And yet, Kim and Jimmy seem to revel in the chase. There’s something personal in this for both of them. The inherent thrill lights both of their fires. Taken together, it suggests their motives for continuing with this thing they don’t have to pursue, may not be as altruistic as Saul pretends. More to the point, they have more to lose in all this than either one of them seems ready to acknowledge.
There’s a lifeline though. Suzanne Ericsen, the prosecutor who once called Jimmy a scumbag, offers to let him turn state’s evidence. She pieces together not only the real deal with Lalo, but how Jimmy didn’t want to be the cartel’s lawyer. After Kim puts her own scrupulousness on display, Suzanne shares the offer with her, with the idea that Jimmy might listen to her in a way he wouldn’t listen to a prosecutor.
Suzanne frames it as an opportunity to do what’s right after being steeped in something dirty. Kim frames it as a choice between being a “friend of the cartel” or a rat. But neither of them seems to fully appreciate the context we all-seeing viewers have for this decision. It’s a chance for Jimmy to do what Nacho didn’t — to get out of this, to step away before it’s too late.
It is, sadly, too late for Nacho. He valiantly tries to avoid the worst of the blowback. His descent into the muck to avoid his killers is as symbolic as it is terrifying. His kindness (and cash) for a friendly mechanic who offers him help when he needs it and asks for nothing in return shows the decency within a troubled young man. His grief, not just at never being able to see his father again, but at confirming Manuel Varga’s worst fears about his son and his fate, is palpable.
Still, there is something admirable in Nacho during his final days, when he accepts the inevitability of his end. He cannot change the reality of his death sentence. He’s made too many bad choices to reach this point. But he can use his life, the value it still has, to protect the person he cares about most.
The sharpest thing Nacho does is leverage the value of whether he’ll tell the Salamancas the truth, or whether he’ll play along with Fring’s plan. He realizes that, for once, he holds a rare power over Gus, rather than the other way around. Yet, he doesn’t want to use it for final comforts or to bargain a way out. He simply wants to protect his dad. So he uses the last thing of his with any worth whatsoever — his life.
It wouldn’t work, though, without his similarly paternal bond with Mike. For all his “Not my call” talk, Mike is a man of honor. The only way a promise from a snake like Gus means anything to Ignacio is that it comes backed by Mr. Ehrmantraut’s promise.
There’s a rapport between the two men, an understanding, a familial intimacy that adds to the solemn but spiritual air of all this. Mike insists on being the one to rough up Nacho, so he looks the part of someone working against Gus’ operation rather than for it. It’s a duty, a guarantee that it will be done right yet humanely. Beforehand, they share that drink together, an acknowledgment of mutual respect and care.
And in the end, Mike puts himself out there as an “insurance policy” for the plan. He offers his services to Gus as a failsafe for his boss, but in his heart of hearts, he’s there to ensure that Nacho doesn’t have to suffer. He observes the poor young man through the scope of a sniper rifle, much as he did back in season 2’s “Klick”. And he sees someone who understands the lengths a father and son will go to protect one another.
Except, when the time comes, Nacho goes off script. Rather than simply announcing, as Fring insisted, that he was in league with Alvarez and paid off by rivals in Peru to sabotage the Salamancas, he takes it a step further. He laughs at the prospect of “the chicken man” being involved as “a joke,” further absolving Fring. He swears his hatred of the whole Salamanca family, offering up the motive for him to do this without any need for being aligned with Gus. He takes credit for replacing Hector’s nitroglycerin, pointing to Fring’s intervention as the only reason the man is still alive at all.
In brief, he makes the story better and more plausible than even Gus had in mind. It’s clever, proving his worth even in his final moments, giving Fring everything he could possibly want to throw the heat off of him, in the hopes that it will convince the crime lord to keep his word and spare Nacho’s father. After so long, so many missteps, Ignacio Varga seized control and went out on his own terms, if only within the limited options left for him.
It turns out he palmed a piece of glass at the Fring compound, presumably from the cup Gus broke an episode ago. When the time is right, he uses it to cut through the zip ties that bind him. He seizes Don Bolsa’s gun and holds it to the man’s head, giving Nacho another moment’s leverage. And then, with the weapon in hand, he decides to kill himself, rather than subject him to the Salamancas’ torture or other humiliating or excruciating ways to leave his world.
His death is still a sad, terrible, regrettable thing. But it comes with a moment of self-actualization. For one brief moment, Nacho is not the pawn of these men. He is their equal. And then he is gone.
Another life wasted. Another existence snuffed out in the middle of the desert. Another son lost amid the plata y plomo. In a beautiful opening sequence, we see the flora growing over the spot where Nacho died, its growth fed by his hidden remains. Amid such desolation grows a beautiful azure flower, the rain come to wash it all away. There, catching its droplets, is that same shard of glass, the one that gave Nacho his last bit of freedom, before the collective weight of these larger forces firmly and finally took it away.
It would be too much to call Nacho a good person. At his best, he was still a drug dealer profiting off of others’ addiction and misery. He may have been a touch nobler, a touch younger and thus more excusable, than the psychos he worked for. But he was still a bad guy doing bad things.
And yet, there was something recognizable in his fall and folly. Too many of us see shortcuts to the things we want and believe we can avoid the worst dangers along the way. We understand Nacho’s regret, his emptiness, his sense of being too trapped in this before he realized how far he had fallen. We see how his desire to protect his dad — from Hector, from Gus, from his own mistakes — led him to this point, where he was in too deep with no good options.
Nacho may not have been perfect, but he was pitiable; he was recognizable; he was loved. There is always tragedy in the death of someone who holds a place in the hearts of others. Jimmy is likewise loved. He too has his chance to get out, to turn to the police like Nacho’s father told his son to do. But Ignacio didn’t listen. He’ll never have that chance to escape. He won’t ever meet Jesse in Alaska. All he can do is hope that his death spares the man who warned of it.
Exit ramps are rare. Happy endings are in short supply in the world of Walter White. And in the end, there weren’t enough of either left for Manuel Varga’s little boy.
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