Netflix: “Better Call Saul, Season 6, Part 1”

Mediocre series usually run out of gas by Season 2. Great ones like “Better Call Saul” last considerably longer—Season 6, Part 1 has just wrapped. Obviously, the writers and producers are powered by diesel.

So what’s going on this season? Family feuds, but not the game show variety. The feud between Chicken Man Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) and the Salamanca drug cartel is as hot as the New Mexico desert. And that’s exactly where we find Nacho Varga (Michael Mando), the renegade who is on the lam from the family.

Meanwhile, Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton, a ringer for Burt Reynolds) suspects Fring of double-crossing the family. He travels everywhere from Germany to the sewers of Albuquerque in his quest for the truth. He is indestructible. Or is he?

Not enough feuds and excitement for you? There’s always weasley Jimmy McGill (aka Saul Goodman aka Bob Odenkirk) and Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), America’s most lovable sadists/practical jokers. Their ongoing feud with uptight, smug attorney Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian) over the nursing home case leads them to some creative, and borderline-illegal capers.

As per usual, all the action takes place against the cloudless skies and barren landscape of the New Mexico desert. The dialogue is crisp and stripped down as ever.  Chapeau, Vince Gilligan!

The finale of Part 1 is a powerful, razor-sharp stick in the eye—and I’ll bet none of you had that on your Bingo card. But all is not lost. Part 2 of Season 6 debuts July 11. Try and have a good summer till then.