Rock and Hard Place
"Rock and Hard Place" | |
---|---|
Better Call Saul episode | |
Episode no. | Season 6 Episode 3 |
Directed by | Gordon Smith |
Written by | Gordon Smith |
Produced by |
|
Featured music | Beethoven |
Cinematography by | Marshall Adams |
Editing by | Joey Reinisch |
Original air date | April 25, 2022 |
Running time | 47 minutes |
Guest appearances | |
| |
"Rock and Hard Place" is the third episode of the sixth season of Better Call Saul, the spin-off television series of Breaking Bad. It was written and directed by Gordon Smith. The episode aired on April 25, 2022, on AMC and AMC+. In several countries outside the United States and Canada, the episode premiered on Netflix the following day.
In the episode,
Filming for the episode took place between April and May 2021. Actor
"Rock and Hard Place" was met with critical acclaim for its themes, story, Smith's direction, and Mando's performance. It marked the final appearance in the series for Mando (Nacho Varga). An estimated 1.16 million viewers saw the episode during its first broadcast on AMC.
Plot
Opening
As rain begins to fall, a close-up scan of a small patch of desert stops on a blue flower, then settles on a piece of broken glass.
Main story
The truck
Gus,
Production
The episode was written and directed by co-executive producer Gordon Smith. "Rock and Hard Place" marked the death of longtime character Nacho Varga, played by Michael Mando, who had been with the series since the second episode. Series co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould and executive producer Melissa Bernstein first told Mando about his character's fate in the winter of 2020, a few months before filming began on the sixth season of Better Call Saul. Smith said the writers had decided early on that it was better for the series to conclude Nacho's storyline early on in the season instead of spending several episodes of him "on the run and getting out of jams".[3] Earlier scenes in the episode, as Mando put it, were meant to symbolize "what life meant to this character, and what he was willing to stand up for."[4][5]
Filming for the episode began in April 2021. The first scene that was shot was of Nacho pouring himself a drink and noticing the broken glass in Gus' trash, which had been thrown out in the previous episode "Carrot and Stick". The shot taken from the point of view of the trash can was meant to symbolize how fragmented the character was at that moment. Smith filmed a take of Mando without the effect and, two weeks later, projected the shot onto a screen, where they could adjust where the glass was and how it was fractured.[6]: 57:31–1:01:45 The oil tanker scene was shot on location for the exterior and in a studio for the interior. Nacho's submergence in the oil, which was first discussed in December 2020, was filmed on a soundstage in May 2021. It was the last scene Mando filmed on Better Call Saul. Each take would last one to two minutes with Mando performing the stunt himself, using about 40 U.S. gallons (150 L) of a vegetable-based substance. Its thickness made it difficult for Mando to submerge, so he had to hold onto horizontal scaffolding poles nearby to pull himself under. Resetting the scene would take at least an hour. The set in the studio had to be flipped upside down every time the crew wanted to point the camera in a different direction so a crane could fit inside.[7][8][6]: 29:41–40:50 The episode's cold open was shot simultaneously with the oil tanker scene on a different soundstage, where they added a 40 by 40 feet (12 by 12 m) patch of desert with a green screen in the background. It took two days to prepare and was shot using a motion control rig.[6]: 1:01:53–1:04:24
Mando compared Nacho's phone call to his father (played by Juan Carlos Cantu) to the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, which details the story of a man between a rock and a hard place who voluntarily goes through Hades to save the person he loves on the condition that he can never see her again. "In that particular phone call," said Mando, "he's free, he's won, and he's looking into the sunset. But his heart turns around and asks his father to come with him, indirectly, subtextually. And his father says no. So he willingly walks back into the fire and trades his life for the life of his father."[3][4][5][9] Assistant director Rich Sickler read Mando the lines to both of Nacho's phone calls in the episode. Mando said he did not shoot his side of the conversations with Cantu or Jonathan Banks, who plays Mike, on set because he thought it would be ideal if the actors did not see each other, much like the characters they played, to create a sense of disconnection.[10][6]: 17:08–19:14 Cantu was not given access to the season's scripts, so, while filming, he actually did not know what Nacho had gone through, what he looked like, or where he was in the story. Mando agreed to be on set when Cantu shot his side of the dialogue.[11]
Mando likened the moment of being interrogated before his death to being on trial and his heart being weighed.[6]: 25:25–27:21 He called it the "first time he has no fear of any of these people ... completely willing to tell the story that will save his father, regardless of what anybody else thinks."[4][10] He saw Nacho's confession to Hector as keeping his promise to his father in standing up to the cartel. He also said it was the moment Nacho and Mike's relationship broke apart as they made allegiances to different people, Nacho to his father and Mike to Gus. A Latin American documentary about the Aztecs and the Mayans, which said the victors of a sport would sacrifice themselves for their gods to bring rain, inspired Mando's performance. He viewed his character's suicide as a moment of no regrets because Nacho knew when and for what reason he was going to die: "For the first time in his life, he has a clear image of himself."[4][5][10] Mando called the finale ominous because every other character present during Nacho's execution would eventually meet their own fates on Breaking Bad: "These are all dead men walking, watching the first man die."[12] He also said that the purple flower that appears in the opening scene at the site of Nacho's suicide represents enlightenment from these cultures that comes from facing death.[10]
The crew wore Nacho shirts and fake
Smith compared Jimmy and Kim's relationship in "Rock and Hard Place" to an episode of Arrested Development where a character gets married after "a series of escalating dares". He noted their newly developed habit of smoking indoors as a sign that the "discipline is breaking down a little bit. It's a little bit chaotic and dangerous, but not terribly. Every step down a slippery slope is fine until you're at the bottom." The staircase sequence with the valet featured a number of wipe transitions. The crew found a parallelogram-shaped parking garage to shoot the scene. The staircase in the location had a hollow spot where they could fit the camera with a descender rig. Smith described it as "building a little elevator shaft for a camera body in this small, triangular hole that ran the length of the stairwell".[3] During post-production, editing for the episode was completed by Joey Reinisch in his second solo editing credit on television.[6]: 0:36–0:53
Reception
Critical response
On the review aggregator website
Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone complimented the episode's straightforward narrative and said Mando's performance was "fantastic throughout — so tired, so defeated, and yet so insistent about ending things on something resembling his own terms if he can. It is a tour de force, particularly the phone call sequence and Nacho staring down the Salamancas for the last time."[19] TVLine named Mando the performer of the week ending on April 30, 2022. They called it "a beautifully moving episode that saw Mando hit new dramatic heights ... we could see the emotions welling up in Mando's eyes as his character's tragic fate began to settle in. ... Nacho may not have lived long enough to share the screen with Breaking Bad's Walt and Jesse — but with Mando's truly exceptional performance this week, he's more than earned the right to share the screen with anyone."[20]
Ratings
An estimated 1.16 million viewers watched "Rock and Hard Place" during its first broadcast on AMC on April 25, 2022.[21]
Notes
- ^ Mike and Gus' side of the call was depicted in the preceding episode, "Carrot and Stick".
- ^ Mike is in the same spot where he intended to kill Hector in "Klick".[1]
- ^ As seen in "Lantern".[2]
- ^ Gus breaking and cleaning up a drinking glass was depicted in the preceding episode, "Carrot and Stick".
References
- ^ @BetterCallSaul (April 29, 2022). "Mike's always on the lookout" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ^ Scassellati, Erica (April 26, 2022). "Better Call Saul Season 6: Nacho Implicates Alvarez, an Unseen Character". Showbiz Cheat Sheet. Archived from the original on May 2, 2022. Retrieved May 2, 2022.
- ^ a b c Davids, Brian (April 26, 2022). "Better Call Saul Writer-Director Gordon Smith Breaks Down Devastating Third Episode". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on April 28, 2022. Retrieved April 29, 2022.
- ^ a b c d e Snierson, Dan (April 25, 2022). "Better Call Saul star Michael Mando breaks down Nacho's shocking move". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on April 26, 2022. Retrieved April 25, 2022.
- ^ a b c Nemetz, Dave (April 25, 2022). "Better Call Saul's Michael Mando Breaks Down Nacho's 'Heroic' Episode". TVLine. Archived from the original on April 26, 2022. Retrieved April 29, 2022.
- ^ a b c d e f g h McCaleb, Chris; Dixon, Kelley; Gould, Peter; Gilligan, Vince; Mando, Michael; Smith, Gordon; Reinisch, Joey (April 26, 2022). "603 Better Call Saul Insider" (Podcast). AMC. Archived from the original on April 27, 2022. Retrieved April 29, 2022.
- ^ a b Greene, Steve (April 26, 2022). "Better Call Saul: Michael Mando Dealt with Sandstorms and Lightning While Filming Nacho's Big Scene". IndieWire. Archived from the original on April 28, 2022. Retrieved April 29, 2022.
- ^ Lane, Carly (April 25, 2022). "Better Call Saul Season 6: Michael Mando on How Nacho Is Finally Breaking Good". Collider. Archived from the original on April 26, 2022. Retrieved April 29, 2022.
- ^ Potts, Kimberly (April 26, 2022). "Michael Mando on Nacho Varga's major moment in last night's Better Call Saul". The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on April 27, 2022. Retrieved April 29, 2022.
- ^ a b c d e Davids, Brian (April 25, 2022). "Better Call Saul Star Michael Mando Dissects Emotional Ignacio 'Nacho' Varga Episode". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on April 26, 2022. Retrieved April 25, 2022.
- ^ Picurro, Allison (April 25, 2022). "Better Call Saul's Michael Mando Unpacks the First Major Tragedy of the Final Season". TV Guide. Archived from the original on May 1, 2022. Retrieved May 1, 2022.
- ^ Moreau, Jordan (April 25, 2022). "Better Call Saul Star Michael Mando Explains Nacho's [SPOILER] and Oil Baptism". Variety. Archived from the original on April 26, 2022. Retrieved April 26, 2022.
- ^ Rosenstock, Ben (April 28, 2022). "Better Call Saul's Michael Mando on Nacho's 'Story of Emancipation'". Vulture. Archived from the original on May 1, 2022. Retrieved May 1, 2022.
- ^ "Rock and Hard Place". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved April 29, 2022.
- ^ Rivera, Kaleena (April 27, 2022). "Better Call Saul Episode 3: On the Run". Pajiba. Archived from the original on April 27, 2022. Retrieved April 29, 2022.
- ^ Potts, Kimberly (April 25, 2022). "In Better Call Saul, the ultimate sacrifice makes for a wicked twist". The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on April 27, 2022. Retrieved April 29, 2022.
- Segal, David (April 25, 2022). "Better Call Saul Season 6, Episode 3 Recap: Viva Nacho". The New York Times. Archivedfrom the original on April 28, 2022. Retrieved May 1, 2022.
- ^ Greene, Steve (April 25, 2022). "Better Call Saul Review: Tense and Tragic 'Rock and Hard Place' Is a Requiem for Two Dead Men Walking". IndieWire. Archived from the original on April 28, 2022. Retrieved April 29, 2022.
- ^ Sepinwall, Alan (April 25, 2022). "Better Call Saul Recap: Nacho Libre?". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on April 28, 2022. Retrieved April 29, 2022.
- ^ "TVLine's Performer of the Week (tie): Oscar Isaac and Michael Mando". TVLine. April 30, 2022. Archived from the original on May 8, 2022. Retrieved May 8, 2022.
- ^ Salem, Mitch (April 26, 2022). "ShowBuzzDaily's Monday 4.25.2022 Top 150 Cable Originals & Network Finals Updated". ShowBuzzDaily. Archived from the original on April 26, 2022. Retrieved April 26, 2022.
External links
- Official website at AMC
- "Rock and Hard Place" at IMDb