Better Call Saul: The Saul Goodman’s Leap Through Trials, Tragedies and Moral Challenges

Better Call Saul, created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould is an American crime drama series. The show is the spin-off prequel of Breaking Bad. The two shows are put roughly 6 years shy of each other. Spin-offs are supposed to be worse than the shows that gave birth to the right? Well, Gilligan had something else in mind. Unlike a lot of prequels which are mere derivatives, Better Call Saul is surprisingly original over the course of its first season. Ex-con artist Jimmy McGill turns into a small-time attorney and goes through a series of trials and tragedies, as he transforms into his alter ego Saul Goodman, a morally challenged criminal lawyer. After putting the life of a con man behind, Jimmy starts working at the mailroom of HHM. Jim parallelly pursues his law degree at the University of American Samoa. Jimmy doesn’t reveal this to anyone until he became a lawyer.

James McGill to Saul Goodman

Since the beginning of Better Call Saul, the fans desperately waited to see Jimmy McGill take the Saul Goodman leap. The story started off as an afterlife of Saul Goodman and then intertwined the three dimensions, that is, Jimmy McGill’s life, Saul Goodman’s life the life after that. With Season 5 being the second last of Better Call Saul, fans anticipated the leap to diminish to zero but, Gilligan and Gould had something else planned.

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Read more about the Breaking Bad Chronology

The Trials

We have seen both Jimmy McGill and Saul Goodman being on both sides of the law. Jimmy was initially a struggling public defender in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He almost got his first big client Mr. Kettleman who’s accused of embezzlement. But, Mrs. Kettleman thought Jimmy can’t handle this high profile case and they should move to a big firm i.e. HHM. HHM is co-founded by Jimmy’s older brother Chuck. Chuck has been on a sabbatical for his belief of having a hypersensitivity to the electronic field, roughly translated to an allergy to electricity. Now that he’s gone so long with little hope of coming back, Jimmy asks the firm to cash him out.

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Later, Jimmy on Kim’s advice goes ahead with practicing elderly law. While catering to an elderly client with her will, Jim finds that she is being overcharged greatly by Sandpipers Crossing Carehome. Jimmy takes it up with Chuck and asks him to get more info on it. After Jim had made a strong case against Carehome, Chuck asks him to hand over the case to HHM.

It’s the start of an ending from there. It seemed that Chuck is just sick of Jimmy getting away with everything he does. The bittersweet relationship of brothers is delicately put in Better Call Saul.

The Ehrmantraut Angle

Mike arrives in Albuquerque as a part of a flashback in season 1. Here, we learn that his son (Matty) has recently been murdered. On the same note, Ehrmantraut drunkenly confronts two cops telling them that he knows two of them killed his son and makes an exit with an announcement of him moving to Albuquerque. The same dirty cops follow him with the intention to kill him.  But that’s when Mike reveals his second weapon and kills both the cops. Back in 2002 he comes clean with his daughter in law Stacy and tells him that Mattey was the only clean cop in the department. He revealed that Mike himself was a bit of a dirty cop and Mattey was killed because he wouldn’t play along with other dirty cops. Better Call Saul has worked great on the development of Mike’s background.

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Mike takes up a security job to support Stacey and his granddaughter. Mike fights off two mercenaries to win the job. While at the job, Mike meets Nacho for the first time and lets him know that he’s switched sides with the law. Mike has been a man of his word by all means. He later joined hands with Nacho to Kill Hector Salamanca. On the job, he receives the orders or retrieval from Gus Fring because there’s more to it. Gus Fring thinks the death shouldn’t come that handy to an evil man like Hector. Chicken Man finally hires Mike as Head of Security for his business.

The Tragedies

Life isn’t really fair to most of us. James McGill was no stranger to this. Life did throw lemons at him, its just he made the world believe that its oranges. The most tragic part of his life was the transitional leap. The leap from James McGill to Saul Goodman. From elderly clients to drug bosses and gangsters. From $700 per case to millions to nothing at all. The whole package.

Although, it could’ve been probably avoided or pushed forwarded if only Chuck didn’t trick Jimmy into confessing to a felon. I know a guy, who knows a guy, who knows another guy who lives in his mother’s basement in Belarus. The guy.

Slippin’ Jimmy

The Twisted Tale of Love

Jimmy and Kim go way back to the mailroom. They often enjoyed sharing a quite cigarette once in a while. The whole point of the Better Call Saul is to showcase the downfall of Jimmy. Kim and Jimmy started dating right after conning the Stock Broker together. If it wasn’t for Kim, Jimmy would’ve been a con artist for life. Jimmy always resorted to Kim to pull him before he fell into an irreversible fix. Kim always had a thing for scams now and then but the show across the season hinted on Kim becoming a badass which evidently that came out to be the case in conclusion.

Jimmy realized that this is not the first time he’s getting into trouble with the kind of clientele Saul Goodman caters to now.

Up until the last season of Better Call Saul, we have understood that Gilligan is obsessed with the details. Each detail in the show eventually turns out to be a big hint. Although, the hint in the finale of Season 5 directs us to a very heartbreaking but anticipated event. When Jimmy and Kim decide to get married, the judge points out the missing middle name of Kim Wexler which suggests toward the beginning of the end of this twisted love story.

Read more about Kim & Jimmy Love Story

The Cartel Angle

If you remember Kettleman, you’d know that Jimmy tried tricking them into becoming a client through a skateboard accident. On the contrary, the plan backfired and Jimmy ended up having a gun pointed at from the gangster Tuco Salamanca. Although he manages to talk his way out of the situation, he’s paid a visit by Nacho later. Nacho proposes to rob the Kettlemans which Jimmy refuses claiming to be a lawyer and not a criminal. Jimmy anonymously warns Kettleman of the potential robbery. Turns out that they have been kidnapped and Nacho gets picked up by the cops. Nacho accuses Jimmy of ratting him out to the cops. He threatens to kill him unless he’s able to prove Nacho’s innocence.

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The Wait