{"id":158151,"date":"2025-11-28T22:36:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T22:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/158151\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T22:36:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T22:36:10","slug":"better-call-saul-cameo-and-cliffhanger-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/158151\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Better Call Saul’ Cameo and Cliffhanger, Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t[This story contains spoilers from Pluribus<\/a> season one, episode five, \u201cGot Milk.\u201d]<\/p>\n

\n\tMatters have escalated since The Hollywood Reporter last caught up with Pluribus writer-director\/executive producer Gordon Smith<\/a> a couple weeks ago.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Smith\u2019s third episode, Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn<\/a>) mishandled a live hand grenade, prompting her liaison, Zosia (Karolina Wydra<\/a>), to quickly dispose of it and shield Carol from the nearby blast. Zosia ended up in the hospital for her injuries, but she and the rest of the Joined still gave Carol the benefit of the doubt after Zosia\u2019s then-total of three near-death experiences. Their hive mind was even willing to supply Carol with an atom bomb or a bazooka \u2014 despite the grenade mishap and two emotional outbursts that killed millions of other Joined people around the world.<\/p>\n

\n\tRealizing that the collective will grant just about any wish and never tell a lie, Carol pushes the envelope in episode four, \u201cPlease, Carol.\u201d She drugs a still-recovering Zosia with sodium thiopental, hoping its truth serum-type properties will compel Zosia to reveal how to undo the Joining. Instead, Zosia and the Joined fall into a state of mass distress, resulting in Zosia\u2019s own cardiac arrest and fourth brush with death at the hands of Carol. (The woman who revived Zosia with an AED is former Better Call Saul<\/a> healthy and safety supervisor, Rosa Estrada. She brought Bob Odenkirk back after his cardiac incident on Saul\u2019s final season.)<\/p>\n

\n\tReturning in short order, Smith directed this week\u2019s Ariel Levine-written fifth episode, \u201cGot Milk,\u201d marking the first time he\u2019s helmed a script he didn\u2019t write himself. The Michigander was tasked with illustrating the fallout of Carol\u2019s dangerous scheme to save the human race. That meant depicting the Joined\u2019s mass exodus<\/a> from Albuquerque with an ambitious panoramic shot of taillights on ABQ\u2019s freeway system. And instead of a live concierge to answer her requests by phone, Carol is now greeted with an automated voice recording. She\u2019s still able to ask for anything she needs, but the familiar voice also adds, \u201cOur feelings for you haven\u2019t changed, Carol. But after everything that\u2019s happened, we just need a little space.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIf the sound of the Joined\u2019s voicemail greeter sounds like Better Call Saul star Patrick Fabian<\/a>, your ears do not deceive you. It\u2019s a fitting choice in a couple ways. Firstly, Fabian has a knack for sugarcoating unwelcome news. And considering that Carol is now the most despised person on Earth, it makes sense for the Saul brain trust to cast the actor behind Howard Hamlin, who at one point was the most detested character on Better Call Saul.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe said, \u2018You know who would be perfect? Patrick.\u2019 He didn\u2019t really know what he was recording,\u201d Smith tells THR. \u201cAs a person and actor, Patrick has a darkness within him, but he has done a lot of work to present and understand the positive in life. We captured dozens of versions, any one of which would have been perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSmith and the rest of the Pluribus crew recorded the greeting ahead of filming Carol\u2019s introduction to it, so they decided to play a game with Seehorn on the day. They wanted to see if she would break character upon hearing the sound of her friend and former housemate during Saul. (Seehorn and Fabian shared a rental with Odenkirk throughout most of the series; Seehorn, along with her Saul hair stylist Trish Almeida, re-rented the place for Pluribus.)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe didn\u2019t give [Seehorn] the heads up. We wanted to see what she would do and if she would break,\u201d Smith admits. \u201cBut, of course, she\u2019s too good. She did the scene [without being fazed], and when we yelled \u2018cut,\u2019 she was like, \u2018Was that Patrick!? Excuse me, nobody said that was going to be Patrick.\u2019 Her reaction was very funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, during a recent conversation with THR, Smith also discusses how Carol\u2019s morally questionable behavior challenges the traditional definition of a hero, before addressing episode five\u2019s ghastly cliffhanger.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tEpisode five is the first time you\u2019ve directed a script you didn\u2019t write. In this case, it belongs to Emmy collector Ariel Levine<\/a>. Did you step in because someone else\u2019s availability changed?<\/p>\n

\n\tYes, essentially. We had a turbulent schedule. We were anticipating starting shooting in June or July of 2023, and we obviously didn\u2019t because the strikes hit. They hit when we were maybe a month and a half away from finishing the breaking of the season. We had directors on the line who we wanted to work with, and when we emerged from the strikes, people\u2019s schedules just continued to move. Some people had personal or health issues and all sorts of things that would shake up a schedule. So I offered that I would be willing to do another one, and in the absence of a better choice, they said okay.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRhea Seehorn<\/a>\u2018s Carol Sturka and Karolina Wydra\u2019s Zosia in Pluribus\u2018 fourth episode, \u201cPlease, Carol.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tApple TV<\/p>\n

\n\tWe previously discussed<\/a> why the Joined would give their kryptonite, Carol, even more weapons to potentially harm them. But you couldn\u2019t say at the time of episode three that they\u2019d soon be getting out of Dodge after Carol nearly killed Zosia for the fourth time. How do you square the drugging of Zosia with the notion that Carol is a hero<\/a>?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBeing a hero doesn\u2019t necessarily mean always doing something nice. The trick of the modern world is that everybody thinks they\u2019re a hero even when they\u2019re at their worst behavior. But in this case, Carol really thinks this is the right thing to do. She believes this loss of individuality is bad, and I can\u2019t say she\u2019s wrong. I know that\u2019s what she thinks. The people involved in the Joining didn\u2019t get a choice, and anything you don\u2019t get a choice in is going to be morally questionable. I think Carol is on pretty stable moral ground to try to do something.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe is very careful about it. She doses herself. She tests as best she can for a layman. She\u2019s already determined that they must tell the truth. Even if it feels like something a normal person would lie about. But she didn\u2019t realize how much her forcing the issue would put Zosia in a state of distress. It was going to put all of them not just in harm\u2019s way, psychologically, but physically, too. It\u2019s so bad for them that it causes a physical meltdown.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf they said, \u201cHey, can we work on Zosia?\u201d and Carol said no, that\u2019s when we would head into territory where I would be less likely to call her a hero. She did some bad things. She pushed things unknowingly, but how could she know this was going to be the outcome?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tShe wants to be a hero. She writes these heroic romance novels that include the romantic notion of the hero, but she\u2019s not really well-equipped to know what that is. She keeps asking other Old-Schoolers to figure this out together, but nobody takes her up on it. So it\u2019s up to her, and she\u2019s up against 7 billion people. She doesn\u2019t quite know what the next steps are, and she\u2019s constantly experimenting. So episode five is her feeling bad this happened, but she has to keep moving. What can she learn from the footprints of 7 billion other people? She tries to play detective as best she can.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn episode four, the woman who rushes in to revive Zosia with an AED is actually Better Call Saul\u2019s former health and safety supervisor, Rosa Estrada. She helped bring Bob Odenkirk back to life on the set of the final season. Overall, how much did Bob\u2019s cardiac incident<\/a> influence Zosia\u2019s cardiac arrest at the end of episode four?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNot at all. I\u2019m not saying it was never mentioned in advance, but we in no way aimed towards it for effect. I\u2019m not even sure what the effect would be, or for whom. We included Rosa because she knew exactly the proper procedure for the scene, and she was the tech we consulted in preparing for it. She\u2019s done some acting, too. [Writer\u2019s Note: Estrada appeared as a doctor on season three of Breaking Bad<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

\n\tBetter Call Saul\u2019s Patrick \u201cP-Fab\u201d Fabian cameos as the automatic voicemail greeting Carol receives whenever she calls the Joined now. How did Patrick\u2019s auditory and uncredited return come to be?<\/p>\n

\n\tWe said, \u201cYou know who would be perfect? Patrick.\u201d So we asked, and he said yes. He didn\u2019t really know what he was recording. I was on the Zoom session with him, and I just talked to him through what the emotional register should be. He\u2019s such a lovely human being. In a certain way, he\u2019s the perfect guy for this. As a person and actor, Patrick has a darkness within him, for sure, but he has done a lot of work to present and understand the positive in life. During the session, it was like, \u201cHey, let\u2019s try one that\u2019s a little less crazy upbeat and more casual and easy.\u201d We captured dozens of versions, any one of which would have been perfect. But I did love this one.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen we were shooting the [introductory] scene, it was fun to see Rhea discover it was Patrick in the moment. We didn\u2019t give her the heads up. We wanted to see what she would do and if she would break. But, of course, she\u2019s too good. She did the scene [without being fazed], and when we yelled \u2018cut,\u2019 she was like, \u201cWas that Patrick!? Excuse me, nobody said that was going to be Patrick.\u201d Her reaction was very funny.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn your Saul episode, \u201cRico,\u201d the glass partition in HHM\u2019s mailroom was, at one point, that show\u2019s most expensive VFX shot to date. Where does the Joined fleeing Albuquerque rank among the most ambitious VFX shots you guys have ever done?<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s one of the big ones. There\u2019s a bunch of shots in episodes one and two that I\u2019m pretty sure are bigger. I\u2019m pretty sure we have some bigger ones coming up later in the season. But this particular shot was quite intense. It\u2019s actually two shots. First, we shot Rhea on stage, on a set we built to match the actual rooftop where we shot the 270-degree pan. And the pan needed to be shot at a precise time of day to be able to see the right amount of taillights, even though they would mostly be added in post. Then we have a wide drone shot of the hotel that also needed to be shot in that sunset-y window of time, and we did a matching drone shot of Rhea on the backlot. It just wasn\u2019t safe to put her up there on the hotel roof, so those two shots required a lot of planning, in addition to VFX of the cars departing. So you\u2019re totally not wrong that it\u2019s a megillah, but I don\u2019t know that it\u2019s the biggest.<\/p>\n

\n\tBesides tourist prevention, episodes three and five both demonstrate why you built Carol\u2019s cul-de-sac from scratch. In episode five, you fly drones, you unleash savage wolf-dogs and you drive a cop car through a fence. You must\u2019ve been relieved to not have to worry about sleeping neighbors during those night shoots.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAbsolutely. I don\u2019t think we could have done the show without building Carol\u2019s cul-de-sac, certainly not as we scripted it. We knew fairly early on we were going to build the cul-de-sac, and it allowed us to imagine and play in the scenes in a way that\u2019s next to impossible to do in a real neighborhood with real people. You\u2019d drive everybody nuts. We couldn\u2019t accomplish most of these sequences in one night. Most of them were several night endeavors. A real neighborhood full of people would be less solicitous, as they should be, when you come back for a second or third night.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWe want to be good neighbors to the people of Albuquerque. There\u2019s always a dread when you see a film crew descending on your street. I have that dread, and I work in the business. You want to minimize the dread and be respectful to the people around you. And given the scale of what we were trying to do, this was the only way to be respectful to the people around us. If we had to find a real house for Carol\u2019s house, many of the set pieces would\u2019ve been completely different.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tPluribus star Rhea Seehorn, as Carol Sturka, in the Ariel Levine-written and Gordon Smith<\/a>-directed fifth episode, \u201cGot Milk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tApple TV<\/p>\n

\n\tCharacters love using camcorders on Vince Gilligan shows. Carol is now making self-tapes for the other Old-Schoolers in order to share her scientific findings about the Joined. And having gone too far in one instance, she deletes her first take. She shows the self-awareness of someone who doesn\u2019t actually revel in being the \u201cmost miserable person on Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWe all have times where we want to be able to say something, and one thing that has happened to us as a society lately is we\u2019ve all become so self-conscious. We don\u2019t want to be embarrassed by what we say or who we are. So you either shy away from that and self-censor, or you become a certain kind of bravado. You put yourself out there and be loud, but that leads you down paths that you should be embarrassed by sometimes.<\/p>\n

\n\tCarol becoming aware of herself seems very human to me. She\u2019s so far out on a limb that she doesn\u2019t really know what she\u2019s talking about. She\u2019s hoping to know what she\u2019s talking about. She\u2019s hoping to come to some discovery where the clouds part. Going back to your question about her being a hero, she realizes she\u2019s being ridiculous. She has a whole range of emotions, and she stops herself. She then decides to keep going with a second take. To me, that\u2019s a hero.<\/p>\n

\n\tYour Raiders of the Lost Ark shot is really stunning. It rivals Breaking Bad\u2019s own Funyuns-infused tribute in \u201c4 Days Out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWe rolled right into prep on episode five after I finished shooting three. When we got to that sequence, I was like, \u201cGod, I would love to do this \u2018Well of Souls\u2019 shot.\u201d We\u2019d been out at the cul-de-sac so many times, and I\u2019d seen the sun set in a nice place I knew would be great. We were still running for our lives on the day, and it took a lot of luck to be able to get it set up at exactly the right time when the sun drops. We got a few takes before the light stopped being magical.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tPluribus star Rhea Seehorn, as Carol Sturka, in the Ariel Levine-written and Gordon Smith-directed fifth episode, \u201cGot Milk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tApple TV<\/p>\n

\n\tLastly, you wrote Jimmy McGill\u2019s first dumpster dive on Saul\u2019s \u201cRico,\u201d so it\u2019s fitting you directed Carol\u2019s first crack at it. Those Duke City Dairy milk cartons lead her to a shocking discovery. What do you want to tease at this juncture?<\/p>\n

\n\tIf you liked where you\u2019ve been so far, you\u2019ll enjoy where we\u2019re going. There\u2019s the Billy Wilder quote of, \u201cLet the audience add up two plus two.\u201d If the audience makes four out of it, it\u2019s really satisfying. So this is a case where we\u2019ve hopefully given the audience two plus two, but we don\u2019t go to the place you think we\u2019re going in the way you think we\u2019re going there.<\/p>\n

\n\t***
Pluribus is currently streaming new episodes every Friday on Apple TV. Read THR\u2019s previous interviews with creator Vince Gilligan<\/a>, EP Gordon Smith<\/a> and stars Rhea Seehorn<\/a> and Karolina Wydra<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[This story contains spoilers from Pluribus season one, episode five, \u201cGot Milk.\u201d] Matters have escalated since The Hollywood…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[75229,74469,146,86040,85,46,95332,68266,68263],"class_list":{"0":"post-158151","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-better-call-saul","9":"tag-breaking-bad","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-gordon-smith","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-patrick-fabian","15":"tag-pluribus","16":"tag-rhea-seehorn"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}