I finished watching the first season of the American
television drama series Better Call Saul. Better Call Saul is a spin-off
from the popular television series Breaking Bad. I really enjoyed watching the
Breaking Bad series, and was quite keen about the spin-off when I first heard
about it being in the making. It features Saul Goodman as the protagonist. Saul
was the infamous lawyer in Breaking Bad who aided the main characters there,
Walter White and Jesse Pinkman in their drug-related business. The name of the
show takes after the iconic line used by the titular character, Saul Goodman,
in his outlandish advertisements promoting his service as a lawyer. The show is
a prequel to the Breaking Bad series, and portrays Saul Goodman in his early
career life. Back then, he was known by his real name, Jimmy McGill. Before
continuing, I must warn readers of spoilers in my write-up.
Prior to being a lawyer, Jimmy was a professional
conman, who together with his friend and partner-in-crime, pulled numerous
scams over greedy and unsuspecting victims. He was given the nickname Slippin’
Jimmy for his unctuous ways. When he got into trouble with the law later on for
some misdemeanor against an influential person who used his connections to get
the public prosecutor to press harsh charges against him, Jimmy promised his older
brother Chuck, who was a well-respected lawyer, to give up his illicit ways if
Chuck would defend him from those charges. Subsequently, after being acquitted
by having those charges dropped, he started working in the mailroom in the big
law firm which his older brother was a named partner in. He subsequently got a
law degree through an online course, and proceeded to his career as a lawyer.
The purpose of the series is supposedly to show how
Jimmy McGill began from the ‘little fish’ he was to become the ‘big shark’ Saul
Goodman he was in the Breaking Bad Series. From my impression of Jimmy McGill
so far in season one, he seems to be a pretty likable person as a deeply flawed
man who retains within him some level of conscience. Even though he succumbed
to the temptations of choosing the wrong ways at times, he would recant of his
wrong actions subsequently and speak about ‘doing the right thing’. He even
exhibited virtues at times such as courage and magnanimity when trying to
obtain a lighter punishment for his accomplices who had ratted on him to the
hot-headed gang boss Tuco Salamanca. And when he ventured to elder law later on
in the show, he was a pretty nice guy towards the old folks in the elderly
institution and was soft on them when they couldn’t afford his lawyer fees. I
was thus wondering while watching the show as to how such a character could transform
into Saul Goodman.
I guess the writers of the show must have struggled
with trying to write a script which presents Jimmy McGill as a flawed but
likable character, with his relatively more unscrupulous and nefarious persona
as Saul Goodman. If the trajectory of the show had continued the way it was up
to nearing the end of the season’s episode, and without the need to reconcile
with the backdrop of his future facade as Saul Goodman, it might very well have
made for a heart-warming ‘flawed but good-hearted man with an insidious past
changes for the better to help the weak and oppressed’ kind of show. It wouldn’t
have dawned on anyone who is unfamiliar with Breaking Bad that Jimmy McGill
would go on to become the lawyer that actively helps drug lords get away with
their crimes.
I am unsure whether this portrayal of Jimmy McGill
makes for a huge gap in his characterization with that of Saul Goodman. I guess
there was an attempt towards the ending of the season’s episode to try to
bridge this gap by introducing a precursor to why Jimmy would go back to his shady
Slippin’ Jimmy ways. This precursor was when Jimmy’s brother Chuck revealed to Jimmy
that he was the one who had opposed Jimmy’s employment as a lawyer in his law
firm because he thought Jimmy was not fit to be a lawyer given his innately
shady character. And Jimmy, instead of trying to prove his brother wrong,
decides to go back to his Slippin’ Jimmy ways and vows that he would not allow
himself to be held back by his conscience to do the right thing in the future. I
wonder whether this a little bit of a stretch to try to converge the character
of Jimmy McGill with Saul Goodman. The show could very well have started Jimmy
off along a different footing as not being such a nice guy in the first place,
with the sort of unethical, hard-nosed traits that one might come across in
other lawyer shows like Suits. That said, I actually appreciate a lawyer show where
the main lawyer character comes off as humane and nice, rather than a show
where the main lawyer character is an alpha-male top dog who comes up top when
it comes to an ego fight. It is one reason why I didn’t like Suits even though a
lot of my peers like it because the protagonist Harvey Spector seems almost
like a human cyborg who goes about bamboozling his opposition without breaking
a sweat or a shred of respect for them. Compared to Harvey Spector, Jimmy
McGill is more of an underdog, who faces tougher and meaner opponents than him,
and that makes Jimmy more likable and relatable as a character for me
Perhaps the moral of the show can be taken as being
about how a person trying to change for the better can relapse into his shady
ways because of wrong decisions, and also because of the lack of faith or
support in him by those who could have had the ability to help him change for
the better.
