There is no Breaking Bad without Better Call Saul. Yes, the former show might’ve been conceived and broadcast first. But its spinoff — set several years before Walter White contemplates cooking meth and centering on the backstory of his crooked attorney, Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), known for most of BCS by his real name, Jimmy McGill — lays all the chronological groundwork not only for Breaking Bad, but also for its recent feature-length sequel, El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie.
The good news is you’ve got plenty of time to catch up with Jimmy between now and the fifth-season BCS premiere on Sunday, February 23, at 10 p.m. ET on AMC. (It’s a two-evening event, with the second episode airing the following night at 9 p.m., during its regular Monday time slot.) The even better news is that we’re here to entice you with a roundup of 10 iconic Saul moments that not only exemplify the show’s sure-handed grasp of guns-blazing drama and deadpan comedy, but also serve as a roadmap to realize the very roots of its sister series’ most compelling characters and conflicts. So, to use lawyer speak like Jimmy would want us to, before we adjourn — and even if you’ve already watched BCS’s first four seasons and simply need a refresher — please do consider Exhibits A-J, i.e., the 10 Better Call Saul moments no Breaking Bad fan should miss. (And for a concise Saul cast list, click here.)
Exhibit A: Jimmy and Tuco Talk Turkey
Or, at least, they talk legs. Specifically, those belonging to twin-brother skateboarders/scam artists Cal (Daniel Spenser Levine) and Lars (Steven Levine) Lindholm, whom Jimmy recruits in an ill-fated ruse that runs them afoul of cartel associate Tuco Salamanca (Raymond Cruz). During a tense desert showdown over Cal and Lars’s fate, Jimmy convinces Tuco to smash each of their femurs and call it a day. The nearly five-minute negotiation, and its brutal denouement, serve as an origin story for Jimmy’s/Saul’s second-degree ties to gangland, in addition to showcasing BCS’s nuanced approach to humor and horrific violence and introducing series mainstay Nacho (Michael Mando), whom Saul would famously allude to down the road in Breaking Bad.
Exhibit B: Chuck Dresses Jimmy Down
Oh brother, indeed. After working hard to pin down a crooked retirement home on behalf of its elderly patients, Jimmy brings the case to his elder brother Chuck’s (Michael McKean’s) law firm, HHM. But the partners essentially opt to buy Jimmy off the case because, as we discover, Chuck refused to grease the wheels for his snot-nosed little brother to go legit. “You’re not a real lawyer,†Chuck barks. “You don’t slide into it like a cheap pair of slippers.†Ouch. Jimmy knows that Chuck — confined to his home due to a debilitating, presumably psychosomatic allergy to electric currents — is bitter and alone, but big brother’s act of Shakespearian betrayal sets Jimmy on a course toward ultimate corruption.
Exhibit C: Jimmy and Kim Swindle Ken
Good old Ken (Kyle Bornheimer). Breaking Bad fans will fondly recall him as the Bluetooth-bearing yuppie who inspired one of Walter White’s earliest and giddiest acts of arson. Turns out Jimmy and Kim had a go at him first. Years earlier, Ken — already emboldened by his ever-present earpiece — was wheeling, dealing, and downing drinks at an Albuquerque restaurant when he encountered “Giselle†and “Viktor,†Kim and Jimmy’s role-playing alter egos. Before he knew how much tequila hit him, he was duped into paying their tab in exchange for a pair of phony signatures on a bunch of financial paperwork. A glimpse at how seamlessly Jimmy can slip into self-serving salesman, and foreshadowing of Kim’s and his rocky common ground.
Exhibit D: Tuco Beats the Crap Out of Mike
If you thought Tuco’s Breaking Bad beatdown of his own henchman, No-Doze (Cesar Garcia), was wildly impulsive, then wait till you see how he flies off the handle with Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) — who, to the best of his knowledge, is merely a prideful old man — in this brutal BCS assault. Granted, Mike, who’d been paid handsomely by Nacho, was baiting Tuco into a trap, leading to time in the slammer. Nevertheless, this is the incident that truly animates the Tuco who eventually terrorizes Walt and Jesse and puts Mike on the collision course with Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) that alters his life forever.
Exhibit E: Jimmy Self-Sabotages
As mentioned, the seeds for Jimmy’s mischief were planted when Chuck undermined his efforts to go the straight-and-narrow with HHM. So much so that when Jimmy lands a plum position with prestigious firm Davis & Main, he finds himself so boxed in and bored that he stages one flagrant misconduct after another — as depicted via the episode’s now-classic comedic montage — until his otherwise benevolent boss Cliff Main (Ed Begley, Jr.) goes apoplectic and cans his ass. However, Jimmy’s loss of orientation is our gain, as we get our first gander at the blinding suit colors that would soon become Saul’s signature.
Exhibit F: Hector Steps in Mierda
If you’re itching to know what made Gus so spiteful toward Hector Salamanca (Mark Margolis), then it might have to do with how the elder cartel captain scratched and scraped excrement off the soles of his alligator-skin shoes onto Gus’s desk in the back of Los Pollos Hermanos. And this was only after Hector and his men hijacked the restaurant — during the day and with customers and staff inside — in order to strong arm Gus into carrying extra drug weight on his trucks. Hector’s desperation is as palpable as his unforgivable offense. Upon the Salamancas’ departure, Gus merely goes about cleaning up detritus inside the dining room, balling up a piece of foil and lobbing it long-distance directly into a garbage pail. He smiles. The world is his.
Exhibit G: Jimmy Eviscerates Chuck
At a bar hearing determining Jimmy’s future, Chuck is set to testify against his own brother. This is when Jimmy brings in the big guns — specifically his pickpocketing pal Huell Babineaux (Lavell Crawford) — to plant a cell phone on Chuck so he can humiliate him and out him as mentally unstable. It works. It also crosses a red line Jimmy never comes back from, particularly given what happens five episodes later.
Exhibit H: Gus and the Killer Coati
Want to know what motivates Gus Fring? Start with this scene from last season, in which the vindictive chicken mogul/meth distributor leans into his comatose nemesis, Hector, and delivers a monologue worthy of multiple re-listens. The short version? Gus was a poor kid in Chile who prized his lúcuma tree. A wily coati tried to pillage the tree, at which point young Gus battled the feral creature and held it captive rather than killing it, a metaphor for how he planned to torment his enemies and enslave his employees. Hard to say if Hector got the message (though he did eventually snag the final snortle), but we all saw what happened when Walter and Jesse didn’t.
Exhibit I:  Lalo Rings Hector’s Bell
Just when Nacho thinks things are getting easier with Hector laid up, in comes his homicidal nephew Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton), who’s intent on righting the ship and shaking things up. And that starts with Lalo visiting Hector in his nursing home and giving him a gift to help tame the old man’s twitching index finger. Lalo whispers a reminiscence in his uncle’s ear, revisiting one of their greatest triumphs: the burning down of Hotel Tulipan and murder of its proprietor. Lalo just so happened to keep a totem from the occasion: a concierge bell. He fastens it to Hector’s wheelchair arm, none the wiser that it would one day play a part in blowing their nemesis, Gus, to smithereens. Or that, several years later, his aura would strike fear in the heart of an adversarial attorney named Saul Goodman.
Exhibit J: Jimmy Introduces Kim to Saul Goodman
As we segue into season five, any pretense of Jimmy straddling the line of civility has been cast aside. His utterly acquiesces to the winner-takes-all ethos that had thus far held him back, typified by an insincere speech to the bar about grieving Chuck’s passing that earns him reinstatement. It is, in effect, his time to break bad, a message he clarifies for Kim — who’s stunned despite his gradual slide into misanthropy — by assuring her (and winking to the audience) that from now on, “It’s all good, man.†Sounds great.
Watch AMC’s two-night Better Call Saul Season Five premiere event, starting with the season premiere on February 23 at 10 p.m. ET and followed by episode two on February 24 in the show’s regular time slot of Mondays at 9 p.m. ET.
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