It starts with a mechanic at a service station who has every reason to fear and reject the stranger hosing oil off his body but instead offers him a rag to clean himself up and a phone to use free of charge. What stands out in this moving episode are the extensions of kindness and connection that greet this condemned man as he stares into the abyss. None of these monsters deserves the courtesy, but Nacho makes the simple calculation that he has one playable card in his dwindled hand, which is to save his father from the forces that have engulfed him. If he’s the one to deliver this traitor to the Salamancas and offer a false confession, then the whiff of betrayal is off Gus for now. Though little else unfolds how Gus scripted it - most conspicuously, Lalo lives - the way Nacho goes out does more or less follow the plan. The Salamancas obviously want to kill anyone responsible for Lalo’s murder (or attempted murder), but Gus cannot allow Nacho to get captured and reveal he ordered the hit. And that’s the “rock and hard place” of the episode title: Nacho was sent to Mexico to carry out a hit on Lalo, but he could never be allowed to live no matter what happened in the operation. “But there are good deaths, and there are bad deaths.” Nacho would agree with that statement, but their ideas of what constitutes a “good death” differ, and it’s important to Nacho that he depart on his own terms rather than the ones set by Gus or the Salamancas. “Today, you are going to die,” says Juan Bolsa to Nacho. He was an extremely capable drug dealer who got himself into a spot and now can’t get out of it. Movies and television don’t often give us the stories of henchmen like Nacho, who are usually the disposable minions of more charismatic heels, and truth be told, his stoicism has made him a less accessible character than the other comparable players during his run on Better Call Saul. Watching him fight for survival throughout the episode turns poignant, then, both because it’s important to him to set the terms of his own death and because of his regrets over the short life he’s chosen to lead. It’s hard to identify the exact point when Nacho realizes he’s meant to die - that it’s an absolute certainty, part of the plan - but it’s before “Rock and Hard Place” begins, perhaps at the motel where he’s being monitored. Photo: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Televison
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