Empathy and Mystery in Better Call Saul As noted in Chapter 9, Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) of Better Call Saul fame is a former con man who has straightened out just enough to become a lawyer with a degree from the University of American Samoa. Outwardly, Jimmy is the picture of cocky confidence; he’s lightning fast on his feet and rarely gets into a situation he can’t talk himself out of. Jimmy doesn’t care much what anyone thinks of him, with one big exception: He desperately wants to earn the admiration and love of his older brother, Chuck. Jimmy’s void was created by a sense of inferiority that began in childhood. His father had been such a Good Samaritan that he’d allowed himself to be swindled out of his business. The young Jimmy had decided that he’d rather be the one doing the conning, and “Slippin’ Jimmy” was born. If that was all there was to Jimmy, we wouldn’t care that much about him, since slippery con men types are a dime a dozen. What makes us empathize with him is that he has a heart. Jimmy cares about big brother Chuck so much that even after Chuck callously betrays him, he comes to the rescue one more time when Chuck falls !1 and ends up in the hospital with a head injury. When the doctor advises Jimmy to commit Chuck to a mental institution, Jimmy refuses. He takes Chuck home but gets very little thanks for it. And that decision will lead to Chuck’s betraying Jimmy yet again. Jimmy is ashamed of his limitations and tries to hide them. He fakes being a good lawyer until he really becomes one, with a specialty in Elder Law. But even that’s not enough to win Chuck’s approval. Another way Better Call Saul sets up empathy for Jimmy is by showing us how low he has fallen in the pilot. His glory days—if you could call them that—of representing Walter White/Heisenberg (Bryan Cranston) are not only over, he’s not allowed to say a word to anyone about them. Stripped of his identity and given a new one by the Witness Protection Program, there is zero joy or hope in his new life as a Cinnabon manager in an Omaha mall. The silver-tongued Saul is now completely bald, sports an unfortunate mustache and goes by the name of “Gene.” We know he’s made mistakes, but this is a nightmare for him. In the Season 2 opener, entitled “Switch,” we see “Gene” literally at the bottom —he’s gotten himself locked into the dumpster room of the mall. He is caught between a rock and a hard place, because the emergency exit will cause an !2 alarm to sound and he’s too afraid to open it. But he obviously can't stay locked away in the garbage room forever. It is a perfect metaphor for the current quality of Gene/Jimmy/Saul’s existence, and it’s all done with almost no dialogue, visually and succinctly. In this terrific teaser, Gene slumps down to the floor in exasperation and picks up a drywall screw. After he’s “rescued” by the janitor, the camera slowly pushes in on a bit of graffiti on the wall. Significantly, it’s the first time in the show that we’re treated to any reference of his former identity. It’s literally a tease, but in the most satisfying of ways. INT. MALL – DUMPSTER ROOM – MOMENTS LATER Gene pushes open the heavy door and chocks it open with a WOODEN WEDGE. Giving it an extra push with his foot for safety, he walks the bags over to one of the dumpsters. It’s a bit of a mess back here. Cigarette butts and debris on the floor that didn’t quite make it into the dumpsters. Graffiti on the wall – nothing elaborate. Just tagged by bored, unoriginal teenagers. Gene lifts one bag and tosses it in the dumpster with effort. As he struggles to heft the second bag... The wooden stop on the door slips and SCRAPES. Gene turns his head at the sound, seeing the door swing shut. Gene makes a lunge for it... GENE No, no, no, no, no, no-- BOOM. The door closes tight and locks. Shit. Gene pulls on the door, but this thing ain’t budging. !3 GENE (CONT’D) Dammit. No. (calls out) Hey, hello?! Hey! Aw, c’mon. Hello!!! Somebody? He pounds on the door, calling out for help. No response. Gene turns and looks back. There’s one other door – an EMERGENCY EXIT – with a PUSH BAR marked with the warning: “ALARM WILL SOUND.” Gene stares at it. A way out. He can shove through and make a run for it before anyone responds to the bell. He steps up to the exit door and considers a long beat, but... He can’t do it. He just can’t. He’s too afraid. Gene returns to the other door. Bangs harder and yells louder. GENE (CONT’D) Hello?!? Hey!!! I’m in here! Can someone help? Hey... I’m... But he’s wasting his energy. Gene backs off and leans against the wall. Sits on a crate. Pathetic. He notices the graffiti on the wall behind where he sits. Picks up a loose DRYWALL SCREW off the floor and absently fiddles with it. Off of sad little Gene, afraid to break the rules and be free... TIME CUT TO: INT. MALL – HALLWAY – LATER The CLOCK that Gene passed under earlier now reads 11:48 pm. More than two hours have gone by. Silent, until... The janitor with headphones wheels a bin of collected garbage bags up the hall. He turns the corner toward the dumpster room... !4 INT. MALL – DUMPSTER ROOM – SAME Gene’s still sitting in the same place, head drooped, his heavy eyes needing sleep. Drywall screw barely hanging in his fingers, until... The janitor pushes the door open. Gene drops the screw and stands quickly, as if he hadn’t been waiting here helpless and alone for the past hour. He brushes abruptly past, two drones passing in the night again. The janitor wonders briefly – whatever. We stay in the Dumpster Room as Gene pads away out of sight. While the janitor (properly) wedges the door open and dumps his garbage, we don’t focus on him. We slowly PUSH IN on the wall of graffiti. What is this weird, meandering Michelangelo Antonioni shot we’re looking at? Moving toward the wall, there’s nothing to see. The camera continues to approach the spot where Gene was sitting. The janitor WIPES PAST FRAME. We don’t alter the shot to follow him. We just hear the sound of the wedge being pulled and the door closing. We continue to creep closer to the wall, and now, finally, we notice something scratched into the paint. Words. Carved with the tip of a drywall screw. Something that wasn’t there before... Tiny, tiny letters that simply read: SG WAS HERE. We have to wonder: what, exactly, does this mean? Is it possible a tiny ember of the Saul Goodman spirit still glows somewhere deep inside the husk that is Gene the Cinnabon Manager? Off this tiny, enigmatic rebellion, we... END TEASER !5 The genius of Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould and the show’s writers is in making us empathize with a character who we know is headed for ruin. Again, the heart of empathy is realizing that “nobody’s perfect.” We will often forgive a vulnerable character of some pretty major crimes, because we see ourselves in them. We’ve all been stubborn, made bad choices and even told lies. But while we count on being forgiven by our loved ones, Jimmy/Saul isn’t going to be so lucky. Season 2 of Breaking Bad—arguably one of the best dramas in television history —first introduced us to Saul Goodman (“’S’all good, man”). When Walt and Jesse’s (Aaron Paul) friend Badger (Matt Jones) is arrested for dealing meth— their meth—they hire Saul to defend him. Jesse tells Walt: “We don’t need a criminal lawyer. We need a lawyer who's a criminal.” By the end of Season 5 of Breaking Bad, Saul has to choose between the aforementioned Witness Protection Program and almost certain death at the hands of his enemies. In the Better Call Saul pilot, at the end of a day’s work at the Cinnabon, he goes home to his generic one-bedroom apartment, gets drunk and drowns his sorrows by watching VHS tapes of his old lawyer commercials, triggering a flashback of how he started out as a young lawyer named Jimmy McGill. !6 Better Call Saul may be one of the few successful crime/drama series with an underlying mystery at its core that is not actually a crime. It is simply the mystery of how and why Jimmy, who has a big heart in spite of his shady past and tendency to bend the rules, becomes the hard-bitten, seemingly soulless Saul. Creators Gilligan and Gould have both been quoted as saying that they love Jimmy so much, they actually dread having to turn him into Saul Goodman. As Gilligan explains: Knowing that Jimmy McGill is going to become Saul Goodman, what we don’t know is how he is going to become Saul Goodman, and we don’t know how long it’s going to take. And I am not being coy when I say that, we truly don’t.