Most critics and viewers agree that the fourth season of Better Call Saul was the best one yet. Jimmy finally slipped and became Saul, we saw the construction of the famous meth lab, and we saw Mike battling with his inner morality as he became more and more involved in Gus’s operation.
It was fantastic stuff, and there wasn’t really a bad episode in the bunch. But of course, some episodes are better than others. That’s just how episodic storytelling works!
In this article we will be ranking every episode of Better Call Saul season 4 from worse to best.
Talk
Talk was the fourth episode of the fourth season, and it was arguably the worst of the bunch. But, again, that’s not to say it was bad!
In this episode, Kim observes the courtroom and hopes to take on pro bono work, Mike inspects the Madrigal site, and Jimmy farts around in the cell phone store. Aside from Jonathan Banks’s stellar performance, there isn’t a whole lot to this episode. It’s a lot of board setting for future episodes, but it forgets to be enticing in its own right. It’s nothing but filler, but even Better Call Saul’s filler is still passably entertaining!
Smoke
Kickstarting entire seasons are always a tricky feat to pull off. Not only do they need to wrap up concluded storylines from the previous season, they need to set the entire board for the upcoming season by shuffling characters into various places and setting up brand new storylines. As such, Smoke suffers a bit from too much exposition and table setting.
Most of this episode concerned Jimmy’s depression following Chuck’s death, and that is certainly fine, but it resulted in some audiences thinking the episode too “boring” or “slow.” To each their own!
Something Stupid
By episode seven, the season was going at a pretty good clip. But that came to a bit of a halt with Something Stupid. A large chunk of this episode concerns Jimmy and Kim - Kim is enjoying her pro bono work, and Jimmy is finding success selling prepaid phones to criminals. Their professional lives eventually intertwine when Huell is arrested for assaulting a police officer.
It’s good stuff, and it nicely sets up events and character development for the latter third of the season. But on its own merits, it’s a little slow and plodding. Luckily, the ending promises more excitement…
Something Beautiful
Serving as a counterpoint to episode seven, Something Stupid, is episode three, Something Beautiful. And it’s a much better episode.
This one largely concerns Nacho, the Cousins, and Gus, which is actually quite rare for Better Call Saul. And really, there’s not really a whole lot to dislike here. The episode is imbued with a wonderfully dark and sinister tone, unlike many of the more comedic and lighthearted episodes, and we got to see the return of fan favorite Gale. Yeah, it was a little fan service-y, but hey, what’s wrong with a little fan service?
Quite A Ride
By episode five, the fourth season of Better Call Saul had truly taken off. We got a wonderful and surprisingly humane flash forward to when Jimmy is fully into his Saul persona.
In the present, Jimmy slips even further into debauchery by selling prepaid cell phones. And work finally gets underway for the underground meth lab when Mike takes Werner to scope out its location. By this point, the season had finally broken away from cleaning up season three’s loose storylines and had fully come into its own. And it promised some amazing potential.
Pinata
Immediately following Quite A Ride was Pinata, effectively ensuring a brilliant one-two punch of quality.
Unlike the previous episode, this one actually flashes backwards and we see the budding moments of Kim and Jimmy’s relationship. It’s a humanizing moment for both, and it fills in some much-welcomed blanks in the series’ back story. We also get the death of Wexler-McGill when Kim starts work at Schweikart & Cokley and a fantastic ending involving a particularly menacing Jimmy and some local teenagers. It’s all great stuff.
Breathe
Unlike the rather slow and plodding premiere, Breathe was a welcome breath of fresh air. For one thing, we have to commend Rhea Seehorn’s brilliant performance in this episode. She absolutely kills it in the scene where she attacks Howard for his treatment of Jimmy, and it’s some of her best work in a series full of stellar work.
It’s also a great episode for Gus (and by extension, Giancarlo Esposito), as he brutally strangles Arturo and blackmails Nacho into working for him. It’s fantastic character work, the acting is reliably stirring, and the story gets pushed forward in intriguing directions. It’s a good one.
Coushatta
If there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that the fourth season ended in spectacular style. The final third began with Coushatta, and what an episode it was.
This one takes a break from all the violence and bloodshed to focus primarily on Jimmy and Kim’s relationship. It mostly serves as a character episode for Kim, who ends the story reminiscing about the expensive tequila bottle and telling Jimmy that she would like to do similar work in the future. It’s a place we’ve been to before, but this time it just seemed different. More…permanent.
Wiedersehen
Any time you see Vince Gilligan in the directing chair, you know the episode is going to be good. And that is certainly the case with the penultimate epiosde, Wiedersehen.
This episode pulls off the rare feat of setting up events for the season finale while also remaining incredibly exciting and dramatic in its own right. Each of the three main storylines provided some fantastic moments, and each promised to come together in fulfilling ways for the finale. And luckily for us, it did just that.
Winner
This episode’s title is fitting, because it IS a real winner. Like all good season finales, this episode beautifully and dramatically wrapped up the season’s storylines in satisfying manners and set up intriguing events for the succeeding season five. We get a gorgeous and touching flashback involving Jimmy and Chuck. Mike kills Werner in dramatic (and visually gorgeous) fashion.
And finally, Jimmy gives a rousing speech about Chuck at his appeal hearing before pulling the rug out from under Kim (and the audience) by revealing it was all a ruse. It’s one of the greatest scenes in the show’s four season history, and with it, Saul Goodman was officially born. What an episode.
