In both Better Call Saul or Breaking Bad, the idea of a redemption arc is a luxury only a select few achieve, let alone deserve. A majority of the cast are so far gone beyond the point of redemption that there’s no going back to their former selves, and you can only wish these characters receive their comeuppance. A prime example is Walter White, who initially entered the meth underworld to pay for his cancer bills, but inevitably fell in love with the game after his monstrous rise. The same is happening to Gene Takavic in these final episodes. Totally buying the notion that he’s “getting away with it,” Gene has become fully unhinged and uncharacteristically reckless now that he has seemingly nothing to lose.

However, Kim Wexler proves to be one of the lucky ones to survive, as she takes on the path to redemption in this week’s incredibly tense episode called “Waterworks.” Written and directed by Vince Gilligan, the episode takes its time painting the picture of Kim’s low-key suburban life in Florida. She works as an overqualified catalog writer for a sprinkler company, and socializes through cookouts and company birthday parties instead of court trials and depositions. She has a dolt of a boyfriend who shouts “Yep!” with each thrust during sex. It’s a peaceful but painfully boring life, where Kim makes it a point to offer no opinions and hardly makes any decisions, constantly answering with I-don’t-knows and maybes. It seems Kim has pretty much accepted the fact that this is how the rest of her life will be.

Then, the call finally happens. This week, we finally get to hear the last episode’s obscured conversation that left Gene angrily smashing the phone receiver in the booth. Kim certainly never expected to hear from Jimmy/Saul ever again, as she’s extremely shocked to receive a call from a “Viktor St. Claire” (one of Jimmy’s aliases) and hear his voice on the phone. Jimmy apparently just wants to catch up after six years. “Still out here, still getting away with it,” he tells Kim. He presses on further to make conversation even when Kim has little to say, hoping that she would be just as bored as Gene is in their new mundane lives. “You want me to say something?” Kim finally answers. “You should turn yourself in.” This sends Gene in a fit of rage, but also confirms that all parties involved in their past dealings with the cartel and the scheme against Howard are gone. Gus, Mike, and Lalo are all dead. Kim ends the call by saying she’s glad to hear he’s still alive. The heartbreaking part is she meant it.

This revelation sends Kim flying back to Albuquerque to confess everything, because she still has a heart and conscience after all these years. Florida Kim might be unrecognizable to us (really, who is this woman?), but the moment she arrives back in Albuquerque the Kim we know instantly comes to the surface. Wasting no time, she immediately goes straight to the courthouse to give a full affidavit of her involvement in Howard’s death. She owes the truth to Cheryl, Howard’s widow. Kim gives Cheryl a copy of her affidavit, admitting that it was never about the money, but for their own amusement. There’s still a bit of the cunning Kim left in there to make this confession a calculated one. Kim knows she won’t be prosecuted by the district attorney since there’s no physical evidence left. And any civil suit filed by Cheryl to bankrupt Kim would be for nothing, as she never gained any money from all of it. On her way back to Florida, Kim reluctantly bursts into tears in the airport shuttle (in a performance of a lifetime by Rhea Seehorn), finally releasing all the burden of carrying Howard’s death with her.

As for Gene, we know he’s completely spiraled down and became completely reckless after his call with Kim. After successfully breaking into the cancer-ridden mark’s house and stealing his information, Gene stays for a while and treats himself with a little bit of wine and relax a bit. Perhaps, he enjoys the thrill of getting caught, or it’s simply because he’s become too confident that he’s getting away with everything. Meanwhile, Jeff is panicked by the police cruises parked behind him and beelines it out, clumsily crashing into a parked vehicle around the corner. Gene leaves him to get arrested and escapes the scene.

What he didn’t account for, however, is Marion smarting up to Gene’s true identity. Suspicious that Jeff called Gene instead of her after getting arrested, Marion decides to search “con man” and “Albuquerque” on her laptop and discovers those “Better Call Saul” commercials. He certainly didn’t think that him teaching her how to search for funny cat videos would bite him back, did he? Slippin’ Jimmy turned into Sloppy Gene. Vince Gilligan raises the stakes with a gripping confrontation between the two, with Gene threatening to strangle Marion to stop her from calling the cops. Thankfully, his humanity slips back – the old Jimmy who’s an ally of the elderly – and gets the better of him, so he turns around and runs out of Marion’s house.

Thoughout Better Call Saul, the Gene scenes have depicted that maybe Jimmy is content with living a low-key life under a new identity in Nebraska. After all, he’s lucky to be alive after everything that’s happened in Breaking Bad. But as we go into the series finale next week, it’s clear that he’s too far gone, much like Walter White,and Jimmy McGill is essentially dead.