BETTER CALL SAUL has come to an end. It’s a shock, and how could it not be, if it means the end of the most glorious production in the history of television, because there is not — and there will hardly be — a universe as perfect and complex as the one created and developed by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould.
Warning! Spoilers Ahead!
It’s no secret that Breaking Bad, The Road and Better Call Saul are not different stories. They are thoroughly thought out to intertwine, understand each other, and be analyzed together. However, many fall into the trap of comparison, putting Breaking Bad face to face with Better Call Saul unnecessarily. Both are extensions of each other. Tales of the future, past and also present. Because, as Hughes writes in ABC, without Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), who does not appear in Breaking Bad, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) probably would not have trusted Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) to represent him. And without Saul Goodman, as he himself admits in court with a great deal of pride but also a hint of embarrassment, Walter White would not have been able to build his drug empire.
Kim is more than essential in this universe, an unexpected cornerstone. She appears almost in a supporting role, alongside the good Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian), in a spin-off that promised to be Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) and James McGill, or as he is colloquially known, Jimmy. As it turns out, she ended up owning the story. Jimmy’s, particularly. Because without her, Saul Goodman wouldn’t have existed.
Kim is the one who lights the match that turns Jimmy McGill into the colorful lawyer who defends drug dealers, and criminals creating a legal empire in Albuquerque so that becoming a millionaire at the expense of the success of the mafias. Her presence had a strong impact on Jimmy’s life, but her absence was simply devastating. It drove him to his worst and cruelest version.
That’s not to say that James McGill is a good guy, let alone his ratty version Slippin’ Jimmy. On the contrary, the man is far from being a perfect protagonist, at best he is a very complex anti-hero, with a past impossible to sweep under the rug that, even if it doesn’t seem so, torments Jimmy over and over again. A past that runs faster than he does and which seems to lure criminality into his corner. From the first season, in fact, he struggles with the acceptance of bribes, the manipulation of evidence, the moral debate about representing criminals and, at the climax of the series, whether to go that far with Howard.
His context does not cooperate with him. His brother, Chuck, who acted immaculate, never wanted to help him redeem himself. He just didn’t trust him, he wanted him around to tie him down, because he was right about one thing: if Jimmy went on a rampage, he wasn’t going to stop and, thanks to the power the law gave him, coupled with his innate skills for deception, he would create a perfect storm that would do a lot of damage. That happened, but to pin this responsibility solely on the youngest McGill is being a reductionist.
Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman or Jimmy McGill on left, Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler on right, in one of the final scenes of ‘Better Call Saul’. Photo credit: Better Call Saul official Twitter.
However, beyond the power being played in the criminal world and the law, Better Call Saul is not a story of drugs, crime, or the law. It is a tale of redemption. Almost all the main characters need to run away or make amends for something that torments them and does not let them live in peace. Mike has a terrible death on his shoulders, Nacho the suffering of his family and Kim was never the same after causing, in part, the murder of a person who did not deserve to die. But no one seeks redemption more than Jimmy McGill.
The last episode, with all the cameos there and then, explains it perfectly. In his conversations with Mike, Walter White and his brother Chuck, Jimmy’s final decision is foreshadowed.
He asks Mike in the desert, still defining himself as Jimmy McGill and before giving way to the final version of Saul Goodman, about what he would do if he had the opportunity to travel back in time. Mike accepts that he would not take the first bribe from him, because that would change his life and that of his family. Jimmy, on the other hand, says that he would invest in a store that would later be successful and he would become an incredible billionaire. But it wasn’t true and that is evident in the dialogue with White, where the creator of the purest methamphetamine in the world, tells the now lawyer Saul Goodman that his silly question was not about time travel, but about remorse.
Jimmy, disgruntled, listens to Walter’s sob story about how friends of his took advantage of him and his ingenuity to getting richer through science. McGill is only able to say that he would only have gone to the moment where he injured his knee decades ago, changing his story and blatantly lying to White, who looks at him with genuine contempt.
Where would you go if you had a time machine? #BetterCallSaul pic.twitter.com/bDzH4msARf
— Better Call Saul (@BetterCallSaul) August 18, 2022
The truth is that Jimmy, although he does not accept it, has regrets in his head. Although he says he is only looking for money and to continue with his shady life, everything is portrayed in the cameo with Chuck, where Jimmy himself admits that he would do everything possible to help his brother who suffers from a psychological disability. A task that, perfectly, could be done by an intern at the firm where his brother is nothing more and nothing less than a senior partner. But Jimmy fulfills his mission, bringing him bags of ice, food, and his favorite newspapers, because, somehow, he wants to show his brother that he can and must redeem himself.
But the development of the story leads Jimmy McGill to become an even more cynical and repulsive character, with a tremendous ability to do evil and who, as a final act, succeeds one last time in outwitting the system that has, for years, been trying to catch him to give him an extraordinary punishment. The man manages, with humiliating ease, to lower his absurdly long sentence to only seven years when what he deserved was to spend the rest of his life in prison.
But that last legal move to reduce his sentence came at a price: Kim Wexler, the woman who changed him forever and whom he never forgot, would hate him for the rest of his days. It was then that Saul Goodman, who transiently became Gene while on the run from justice, returned to being the Jimmy McGill seeking redemption, admitting all his crimes and complicity with White and leaving Wexler out of the conflict. An act not only of love, but of genuine repentance, in front of the victims, the authorities and the judge who was squirming to sentence him.
The final scene, the last conservation, the last cigarette, and the imaginary drawn guns put an end to Jimmy McGill’s essential story of redemption. The most complex character in the Breaking Bad universe and, of course, the man who will be known by the most popular catchphrase among Albuquerque’s criminals: Better Call Saul!
Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón is a journalist at El American specializing in the areas of American politics and media analysis // Emmanuel Alejandro Rondón es periodista de El American especializado en las áreas de política americana y análisis de medios de comunicación.
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