Rock and Hard Place

The episode was written and directed by executive producer Gordon Smith. "Rock and Hard Place" marked the death of longtime character Nacho Varga, played by Michael Mando, who had been with the series since the second episode. Series co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould and executive producer Melissa Bernstein first told Mando about his character's fate in the winter of 2020, a few months before filming began on the sixth season of Better Call Saul. Smith said the writers had decided early on that it was better for the series to conclude Nacho's storyline early on in the season instead of spending several episodes of him "on the run and getting out of jams."[3] Earlier scenes in the episode, as Mando put in, were meant to symbolize "what life meant to this character, and what he was willing to stand up for."[4][5]

Filming for the episode began in April 2021. The first scene that was shot was of Nacho pouring himself a drink and noticing the broken glass in Gus's trash, which had been thrown out in the previous episode "Carrot and Stick". The shot taken from the point of view of the trash can was meant to symbolize how fragmented the character was at that moment. Smith filmed a take of Mando without the effect, and two weeks later projected the shot onto a screen where they could adjust where the glass was and how it was fractured.[6]^{: 57:31–1:01:45} The oil tanker scene was shot on location and in a studio for the exterior and interior of the tanker, respectively. Nacho's submergence in the oil, which was first discussed in December 2020, was filmed on a soundstage in May 2021. It was the last scene Mando filmed on Better Call Saul. Each take would last one to two minutes with Mando performing the stunt himself, using about 40 U.S. gallons (150 L) of a vegetable-based substance. Its thickness made it difficult for Mando to submerge so he had to hold onto horizontal scaffolding poles nearby to pull himself under. Resetting the scene would take at least an hour. The set in the studio had to be flipped upside down every time the crew wanted to point the camera in a different direction so a crane could fit inside.[7][8][6]^{: 29:41–40:50} The episode's cold open was shot simultaneously with the oil tanker scene on a different soundstage where they added a 40 by 40 feet (12 by 12 m) patch of desert with a green screen in the background. It took two days to prep and was shot using a motion control rig.[6]^{: 1:01:53–1:04:24}

Mando compared Nacho's journey to the legend of Orpheus, a man who, in a literal sense, went through hell to rescue his loved one.

Mando compared Nacho's phone call to his father (played by Juan Carlos Cantu) to the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, which details the story of a man between a rock and a hard place who voluntarily descends and goes through hell to save the person he loves on the condition that they can never see them again. "In that particular phone call," said Mando, "he's free, he's won, and he's looking into the sunset. But his heart turns around and asks his father to come with him, indirectly, subtextually. And his father says no. So he willingly walks back into the fire and trades his life for the life of his father."[3][4][5][9] Assistant director Rich Sickler read Mando the lines to both of Nacho's phone calls in the episode. Mando said he did not shoot his side of the conversations with Cantu or Jonathan Banks, who plays Mike, on set because he thought it would be ideal if the actors did not see each other, much like the characters they played, to create a sense of disconnection.[10][6]^{: 17:08–19:14} Cantu was not given access to the season's scripts so while filming, he actually did not know what Nacho had gone through, what he looked like, or where he was in the story. Mando agreed to be on set when Cantu shot his side of the dialogue.[11]

Mando likened the moment of being interrogated before his death to being on trial and his heart being weighed.[6]^{: 25:25–27:21} He called it the "first time he has no fear of any of these people ... completely willing to tell the story that will save his father, regardless of what anybody else thinks."[4][10] He saw Nacho's confession to Hector as keeping his promise to his father in standing up to the cartel. He also said it was the moment Nacho and Mike's relationship broke apart as they made allegiances to different people, Nacho to his father and Mike to Gus. A Latin American documentary about the Aztecs and the Mayans, which said the victors of a sport would sacrifice themselves for their Gods as to bring rain, inspired Mando's performance. He viewed his character's suicide as a moment of no regrets because Nacho knew when and for what reason he was going to die: "For the first time in his life, he has a clear image of himself."[4][5][10] Mando said that the purple flower that appears in the opening scene at the site of Nacho's suicide represents enlightenment from these cultures that comes from facing death.[10]

The crew wore Nacho shirts and fake tear tattoos to commemorate Mando's last days on set. A series of misfortunes arose in the process of shooting the scenes in the desert. Off-set, Mando was rushed to the hospital after he severely cut his thumb and lost all sensation in his left hand. He was not able to start shooting his scenes for a week and a half. On the first day of filming the desert scenes, a sandstorm hit the set, so the cast and crew had to come back the next day to film it. By the time they stopped, everyone's coverage had been shot but Mando's. The second day saw Smith give Mando a note featuring a change in direction and interpretation of Nacho's last words; Mando said that was the moment he "realized that this was not an f-you speech, this was a speech that is filled with the underlying values and integrity of who Nacho really is, and where he'd like to see his community go." That night, Mando arrived home to discover that a tree struck by lightning had fallen in his driveway, blocking his entrance.[4][7][10][6]^{: 22:56–24:49} Smith's approach as director was to meet audience expectations and focus on maximizing the tension in the scene despite the outcome seeming obvious in hindsight.[6]^{: 20:39–22:56} Mando brought some of the character acting he did as Vaas Montenegro from the video game Far Cry 3 in the final scene, though he had to tone it back at Smith's request.[12] Mando called the finale ominous because every other character would eventually meet their own fates on Breaking Bad: "These are all dead men walking, watching the first man die."[13]

Smith compared Jimmy and Kim's relationship in "Rock and Hard Place" to an episode of Arrested Development where Gob gets married after "a series of escalating dares." He noted their newly developed habit of smoking indoors as a sign that the "discipline is breaking down a little bit. It's a little bit chaotic and dangerous, but not terribly. Every step down a slippery slope is fine until you're at the bottom." The staircase sequence with the valet featured a number of wipe transitions. The crew found a parallelogram-shaped parking garage to shoot the scene. The staircase in the location had a hollow spot where they could fit the camera with a descender rig. Smith described it as "building a little elevator shaft for a camera body in this small, triangular hole that ran the length of the stairwell."[3] During post-production, editing for the episode was completed by Joey Reinisch in his second solo editing credit on television.[6]^{: 0:36–0:53}

• Official website at AMC
• "Rock and Hard Place" at IMDb