#10 - Better Call Saul
Aired 2015 to ??? (4 seasons thus far) on AMC
Created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould
Currently streaming on Netflix
For a brief introduction to this countdown, click here.
This post is going to be shorter than the others in this series for one simple reason: Better Call Saul is the only show on this list that hasn't ended. Because of this I necessarily can't write with the same final authority that I hope I am bringing to my other pieces. So I'd rather not try. I will still say that Better Call Saul has been a welcome extension of the ABQ universe initiated by the same creative team in Breaking Bad (more on that show later in the countdown, I promise). The part of the story featuring Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk as the man who will become Saul) has often lived up to and occasionally exceeded the dramatic heft of the original. The plots with Mike and Gus have mostly not, and this mild failing probably prevents it from inclusion in the very very best of TV. Ultimately, we'll just have to wait and find out together.
What I do want to speak to is my misgivings about how critics typically talk about the show. Like its predecessor, Better Call Saul is largely acknowledged to be a morality play where its characters wrestle with the decisions that lead to a life of crime. But critics are often imprecise when describing this, and don't always acknowledge the full scope of what the show has to say about this.
The best way to dig into this is by looking at reviews of the most recent episode, the season four finale "Winner." In the episode, Jimmy gets his law license reinstated, and in doing so finally becomes the Saul Goodman we know from Breaking Bad. Critics differed slightly on their interpretations of this, but largely struck the same tone. Take Matt Zoller Seitz's review:
"“Good” is a concept that Jimmy’s gotten further away from during the run of the show, and there is nothing good about the way he achieves his victory here. Kim’s reaction to his revelation of insincerity — the same quality that caused a different tribunal to reject him the previous week — is wrenching in part because it stands in for viewers who like Jimmy, and who want to continue to see redeemable qualities along with his amazing facility for con games and improvised bullshit. It’s hard to see Jimmy going the other way between now and the end of this show, whenever that turns out to be."
And Alan Sepinwall:
"Walter White was a man the world believed to be good, only for circumstance, arrogance and sheer force of will to reveal the monster that was always hiding underneath that beige wardrobe. Jimmy McGill, on the other hand, was a man the world believed to be bad, despite his tremendous capacity for decency and self-sacrifice. And that continued skepticism combined with his own abundant flaws to become a self-fulfilling prophecy: he opted to live down to everyone’s lowest expectations of him."
And Emily St. James:
"But on Better Call Saul, the fall of man is more like it is for the rest of us: a series of choices where we might have done the right thing, if only the wrong thing hadn’t been ever so slightly easier. It’s not a cliff one plunges from; it’s a long, slippery slope into oblivion. Suddenly, the nickname of Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), the show’s protagonist, back when he was a full-time conman — Slippin’ Jimmy — seems even more like foreshadowing than it already did.
What’s most remarkable about this series, even when it feels like it’s marking time (as it has here and there, in every season), is how it finds a way to tell stories about the slow wearing down of moral standards in characters whose ultimate fates we already know.
We know that Jimmy will practice law as Saul Goodman, sleazy, skeezy lawyer who specializes in helping lowlifes skirt jail time, then ultimately have to flee both his life and his identity. "
To be clear, I very much value the work of these and many other critics. I don't think these passages necessarily reflect their thoughts about the entirety of the show. And I don't even think these are inherently bad takes! That said, the reveal of Saul Goodman is what the series has been building to, and as such it is the main inflection point in Jimmy/Saul's moral journey. This primacy of the moment requires any good critic to share their thoughts on What This Means, which makes the reactions to it uniquely revealing. And it that way, I find their incisiveness lacking.
The most obvious shortcoming here is a minimization of the structural forces that have led Jimmy to this decision. Yes, Jimmy is ultimately responsible for his decisions but what this paragraph presupposes is that...maybe he isn't? His older brother Chuck can easily be painted as the main culprit in all of this, as he stifled Jimmy's career at every turn both out of a sense of superiority and feelings of spite towards how easily Jimmy earned others' love. But everything else - from the heartlessness of the bar reinstatement process, to his treatment as a public defender, to his loss of control of the Sandpiper case - has laid the foundation for the rise of Saul Goodman. And while the show tends to sprinkle these indignities in subtly, the scholarship plot in this very episode is one of the rare moments where the writers hang a neon sign over the proceedings and say "look at this!" When Jimmy tells the applicant with a checkered past that "your mistake is all you are," he knows the score. His own checkered past has doomed him to his fate. The choice to become Saul isn't really a choice at all - it's a necessity.
But what's more interesting to me is how universally accepted it is that becoming Saul Goodman is the most tragic possible outcome for Jimmy. To be clear, the Saul we know from Breaking Bad is no angel. As Jesse promises, he is the embodiment of a "criminal lawyer" - he helps cover up Jane's death and suggests that they "take care" of Badger when he gets caught by the police. And the flash forwards to Saul's grim future as Cinnabon Gene at the start of each season confirm that down this path lies only ruin. But the counter to this assumption is, well, everything else in the show! Better Call Saul spends a lot of time building what is reputedly one of the most accurate pictures of the world of American law. And while this is rarely made explicit, the reality of that world is bleak. The only way to get ahead is to work yourself nearly to death and/or to brown-nose mercilessly. And the reward for being part of the club is never painted as something of inherent value; you either get to help open a bunch of banks across the Southwest, bilk a class-action suit for as many billable hours as possible, or win cases on arcane technicalities.
To be fair to all the critics, the show telegraphs very little of this. It's one of the strengths of the ABQ universe that most things are presented at face value, which lets the viewer participate in stringing together items of thematic value. The side effect of this is that interpretations of the show are going to be at the mercy of critics' worldviews, even more so than usual. This doesn't mean that I think views counter to my own are immoral or even necessarily wrong. What it does mean is that many critics haven't had enough introspection into their own concepts of what the law is and who it serves, which gives them a somewhat blinkered view on the show. Which is too bad, because I think the show is at its richest when you view it as a tale of how our unjust world influences and warps its subjects such that making the truly moral decision becomes impossible. And that's how you get Saul Goodman.
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