Casting Bob Odenkirk, a Saturday Night Live writer and sketch performer from Mr. Show with Bob and David, in the role of the unscrupulous Albuquerque criminal lawyer Saul Goodman in Breaking Badwas ingenious on the part of showrunner Vince Gilligan. With Saul being a fast-talking and quick-witted attorney, only someone with a background in sketch comedy could make this character feel alive. Odenkirk’s sharp comedic timing also enhances the character’s most lurid qualities, including his kitsch suits, eccentric commercials, and overall sleazy practice of the law.
After bursting onto the scene in his debut episode, aptly titled “Better Call Saul,” Odenkirk quickly established Saul as more than just comic relief. While he remained a scene-stealer whenever consulting with Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), Saul was no laughing matter, as his expertise in the criminal underworld was eerily cold and calculating, as seen in one scene in the Season 2 episode, “Phoenix,” that proved to everyone that he was capable of leading his own spin-off show, Better Call Saul.
Saul Goodman Advised Walter White on How To Be a Professional Criminal in “Phoenix”
At their lowest point, following the fatal shooting of Jesse’s friend and trusted dealer, Combo (Rodney Rush), Walt and Jesse sullenly reflect in Saul’s office, wondering where to go next after taking one step forward and two steps backwards. Saul’s form of consoling comes in the form of harsh feedback. “You two suck at peddling meth,” their criminal lawyer says to them. This is not just a criticism of their attempts at operating an independent distribution model, but also a sobering reality that these two are simply not fit for the cutthroat drug trade. They are sitting on a whole mountain of product that needs to be sold in bulk, but Walt and Jesse have sworn off ever working with a top-brass distributor with a hot temper and raging addiction like Tuco Salamanca (Raymond Cruz).
This is where Saul says the immortal words. “I know a guy who knows a guy… who knows another guy.” This “guy,” who would be the series’ future antagonist and foil to Walter White in his first episode, Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), is a business executive first and a drug dealer second. He will treat Heisenberg’s production of blue meth as if it were a publicly traded company on the NYSE. What’s more revelatory is the manner in which Saul delivers this information to his clients. He might be a wisecracker on the show, but Saul is far more shrewd and equipped to handle these grave matters than anyone. Walt and Jesse are distraught by Combo’s death (more so Jesse, as Walt couldn’t have picked Combo out of a lineup) and panic about what to do without a dealing network. Saul, sitting on the opposite side of the desk, is cool, calm, and collected, dismissing Combo’s death as a routine hazard pay. His knowledge of a high-level, experienced, and invincible meth distributor like Gus underlines Walt and Jesse’s amateur status.
In Episode 12 of Season 2, “Phoenix,” Saul gives Walt a crash course in money laundering. Taking advantage of Walter Jr.’s (RJ Mitte) donation website to help fund his father’s cancer treatment, Saul contacts a hacker to funnel the drug money into the PayPal account meant for collecting charity. Within no time, Walter Jr. and Skyler (Anna Gunn) believe that people around the world are so moved by Walt’s story that they collectively donated thousands of dollars to his cause. Once again, the lawyer’s poise and astute understanding of conning and scheming is unimpeachable. This act is nefarious, as it preys upon the goodwill and innocence of Walt’s son, manipulating emotions to pull off seamless money laundering. Walt aspired to keep his family separate from his illicit dealings, but Saul poisoned his soul by forcing Skyler and Junior to become unknown victims of his criminal lifestyle.
Saul Goodman Breaks Bad in This ‘Breaking Bad’ Scene
More so than getting in bed with Tuco or Gus, this exchange highlights how far off the deep end the former chemistry teacher and student go. Walt’s early aspirations of earning $737,000 to leave a sizable nest egg for his family in his wake will soon metastasize into operating a lab that churns out billions of dollars’ worth of meth that affects relations between the U.S. and the Mexican cartel. In future episodes, Saul will continue advising Walt and Jesse on how to transform into top-of-the-line drug traffickers, fit with a legitimate business front in the White family-owned car wash. Walt is certainly responsible for all his sins, but he would’ve never turned into the monster he became without proper guidance from Saul Goodman, who fulfilled his wish of, in the parlance of The Godfather, being the Tom Hagen to Walt’s Vito Corleone.
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In a post-Better Call Saul world, this scene carries a darker register, where we now know that Saul Goodman, the alter-ego of the once idealistic and impressionable Jimmy McGill, witnessed six seasons’ worth of mischief and tragedy in a prior life before performing dirty work for Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. Of course, the mischief and tragedy were primarily his own doing, notably the deaths of his brother, Chuck (Michael McKean), and his former colleague Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian). Before Walt would eventually tear apart his family, Jimmy was Albuquerque’s most notorious case of self-destruction, and his soul is so compromised that he has no qualms about contributing to another criminal’s moral demise. He should know better than getting chummy with the drug world in the aftermath of his dealings with Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton) and the cartel, but he’s lost all perspective inside his strip mall office while wearing tacky suits. In the scene in “Mandala,” Saul was promoted from consigliere to partner.
This ‘Breaking Bad’ Scene Paved the Way for Exploring Saul’s Dark Past in ‘Better Call Saul’
The dampening of Saul’s comedic value in Breaking Bad is a testament to the impact and pathos that its prequel spin-off had on the Heisenberg “universe.” While he was always shady, Saul’s lack of interiority as a character made him feel relatively harmless, with his flair and quips being a product of a hustling and underdog attorney. With the knowledge of what occurs in Better Call Saul, we’re not watching Saul; we’re watching a broken Jimmy McGill. The fact that he can continue his Slippin’ Jimmy ways after destroying his relationship with his wife and lifelong partner Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) shows how soulless he’s truly become. Compared to Kim, who Jimmy turned from an upstanding, noble lawyer to a conniving and vindictive schemer, enabling Walter White to build a meth empire is nothing. “Mandala” closes with Walt choosing to complete his first deal with Gus over witnessing the birth of his newborn daughter, signaling that peddling meth is now his first priority.
Upon Breaking Bad‘s conclusion in 2013, the idea of centering a spin-off series around the show’s comic relief seemed like a grave misread on Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould‘s part. However, if you examined a handful of scenes throughout the series, notably his lesson in distribution, money laundering, and illicit business in “Phoenix” it was clear that there was more to Saul Goodman than just tasteless metaphors and forced pop culture references. Beneath his calculating expertise and criminal insight is a sad, broken man who lost everything due to his own reckless abandonment of the law and morality. That sure sounds like an interesting premise for a show.
- Release Date
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2008 – 2013-00-00
- Network
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AMC
- Showrunner
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Vince Gilligan
- Directors
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Vince Gilligan, Michelle Maclaren
- Writers
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Peter Gould, Gennifer Hutchison, Vince Gilligan, George Mastras, Moira Walley-Beckett, Sam Catlin, Thomas Schnauz
