Saul Goodman

After a week away, Working the Weekend with Luke is back! While I do apologize for leaving you in the dark last weekend, it was for a very good reason as my kitchen has been completely overhauled and looks spectacular if I do say so myself. But you certainly don’t care about my home remodeling, so what exactly do I have in store for you this week? Well, I’ve actually been waiting six days to write this and you’ve probably already seen a ton of coverage on it, but I refuse to not write about last week’s episode of Better Call Saul. I will warn you once right now and that’s it. THIS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS! Continue at your own risk.

“I broke my boy.”

Damn, I knew I was going to get ahead of myself. Okay, before I get to that, let’s just get this out of the way. I have a problem and the first step is admitting that you have a problem. But it’s an issue that I will never fix and I’m completely okay with it. Whew, here it goes….Hi. My name is Luke and I’m addicted to all things related to Breaking Bad. I’m not even sure anymore how many times I’ve been through the series. In all reality, I just finished binge watching all five (or what Gilligan calls five) seasons yet again and yes, I took some more new things out of it…yet again. But before I write 100,000 words on a series that’s been over for a year and a half (and that may be low-balling it), let me move on to the best prequel, sequel, and spin-off that will ever be. (Sorry, I didn’t watch that much Frasier).

When the announcement was made that Better Call Saul was actually going to be a show, I will admit that I was nervous. Breaking Bad was so absolutely perfect in my eyes that I thought tinkering with anything at all could be disastrous. The fact that Saul Goodman and Mike Ehrmantraut were my favorite supporting characters only heightened my fear that the show could fail and I’d be left with a bad taste in my mouth. But that’s what I get for doubting Vince Gilligan. Better Call Saul is absolutely phenomenal and I will literally (using my best Rob Lowe voice here) fight anyone who thinks otherwise.

Okay, that may be a bit much, but let’s get serious. The early storytelling of this show has been perfect. While the reviews have been pretty solid, I have heard rumblings that “it’s too slow” or “it’s certainly not Breaking Bad”, but here’s the thing. It’s not supposed to be. Is it cool to see some of the old faces from time to time? Sure. I mean, seriously, who didn’t gasp at least a little bit when we saw this at the end of the first episode?

Tuco? Are you kidding me? And how hilarious was it in the next episode when he looked at No-Doze as they had Saul in the middle of nowhere and told him to “stop helping”? Any Breaking Bad fan worth anything had to get a good chuckle out of that. But let’s all remember that for the time being, this is an origin story. Sure, later on, I see things moving in a direction where we maybe get Saul’s side of what’s going on during the Breaking Bad timeline, or what happens to Saul after he ends up in Nebraska (we already know that his best-case scenario of working at a Cinnabon in Omaha has happened). And yes, it would always be great to get another taste of Walter White or Jesse Pinkman or who seems to be everyone else’s favorite secondary character, Gus Fring. But for now, as I said, it’s an origin story for Saul Goodman and will continue to be. But in all the greatness that the first five episodes gave us, last week’s episode (Five-O) finally let viewers in to the origin story that we’ve all been waiting anxiously for, that of Mike Ehrmantraut.

We open Season 1, Episode 6 in a flashback as Mike is fresh off the train in the ABQ. He’s met by a woman named Stacy and they exchange quick pleasantries but before they can leave, Mike heads towards the restroom.

But instead of entering the men’s room, he instead walks into the women’s room to get himself a maxi-pad. Wait, what? This is stone cold hard-ass Mike we’re talking about here. Oh, now I get it. He needs it to cover up a bullet wound to the shoulder. That’s more like it, Mike. But when and where did Mike get shot?

We’re now back at Stacy’s and as a familiar little girl (well of course it’s Kaylee) plays in the background, we learn that the husband and father of this family, Matt, has recently died. Stacy asks Mike if Matt seemed different in the weeks leading up to his death, but in true Mike fashion, he plays the whole conversation very nonchalantly, responding merely with “he seemed okay to me.” Obviously not satisfied with Mike’s answer, Stacy continues to press about a phone call she overheard between Matt and a mystery man on the other end, who she is pretty sure was Mike, mainly due to the fact that Matt wasn’t an angry person unless it had to do with Mike. Shockingly enough, Mike denies it, gets in a cab and leaves.

Okay, by this time, we’ve obviously figured out that Matt is Mike’s son. To be honest with you, that answered a ton of questions that I had during the Breaking Bad days. Seriously, how many times did you sit and watch as Mike would drop off Kaylee but not really talk with her mother? Initially, I thought maybe he had some kind of falling out with his daughter, but it’s actually quite nice to know that this woman isn’t his daughter at all, but instead his son’s wife. So even if nothing else came out of this episode, I at least had an answer to that.

After a very quick yet awesome scene where Mike gets his wound stitched up by a veterinarian…….

…….we’re back in the present, at least what we’re calling the present for this show. Mike is now being questioned by the two detectives that showed up at the end of the previous episode.

As these two attempt to get Mike to talk, he only responds with one word: “Lawyer.” But who by chance would Mike know to represent him?

Why yes, it’s Saul Goodman…..I mean, Jimmy McGill. Sorry, it takes some getting used to. Make note of that cup of coffee in his hand, by the way. At this point, Jimmy is absolutely clueless to why he’s been called in, but he’s about to find out that Mike has a plan. Shocking, I know. That cup of coffee I mentioned is actually an integral part of how he’d like things to go down once the four of them are in the interrogation room together. Mike wants Jimmy to spill the coffee on the shorter detective to the right in the picture above, Detective Abbasi, so Mike can grab the notepad that he’s been writing notes in. Trying to play it straight from here on out, Jimmy’s not happy with the plan and initially refuses, until he hears what comes next.

This is where we really start to dig deep. Matt Ehrmantraut was a Philly cop just like his old man. After answering a call about shots being fired with his partner and a third officer, we learn that Matt didn’t make it out alive. There were no suspects and only two months ago, the other two cops (Hoffman and Fenske) were found murdered. And here we go.

At this point, I must ask that if you watch the episode again, please take a look at Bob Odenkirk during this scene. This is the kind of stuff that makes a great actor. His subtle reactions and facial expressions as he listens to the struggles of a man he barely knows and has had some recent sticker run-ins with are perfect. Sorry, but I just had to get that in there. But things are now starting to take shape. Have I mentioned that we’re not even close to this being the best part of the episode?

As the conversation nears its close, Mike explains that he doesn’t know anything about the murders and didn’t even hear about it until he was past Kansas City, which happens to be the day after the killings occurred. He tells the detectives that he had seen the two out drinking that night. And as we knew he would, Jimmy changes his mind and spills the coffee, allowing Mike to retrieve what he was after.

With everything that comes later, it’s easy to overlook a very key part of the timeline here. In my mind, this is really where Jimmy takes a big turn towards becoming Saul Goodman and it’s definitely the real start of the relationship with Mike. There’s now some emotion that doesn’t involve parking stickers, but more importantly we now have something to bond the two together: a little bit of trust.

We all know why the detectives are there. Obviously, Jimmy knows why as well. “In case you missed it, your friends from Philly back there think you killed two cops.” And it’s here that we get a classic Mike Ehrmantraut answer: “Yup!” Awesome.

So now Mike is on a mission. He calls Stacy with a demand of “we need to talk” and things get even better from here. He asks if she’s the one who called the cops and it turns out that she had after finding thousands of dollars in one of Matt’s old suitcases. Stacy thinks her husband was a cop on the take.

“My son wasn’t dirty!” Chills.

We’re now back in Philly on the night in question. We see Mike breaking into a cop car outside of the aforementioned bar. Soon after, we’re inside as a very drunken Mike (apparently a problem back in the day) sits at the bar and spots Hoffman and Fenske across the room. He staggers over, puts his arm around them, and gives them a quick “I know it was you”, as only the legendary Michael Corleone could have done it.

Mike, now fully inebriated, is attempting to walk home as Hoffman and Fenske pull up in their police cruiser and offer a ride home. After a search and retrieval of Mike’s gun, they buckle him up in the backseat and head out.

“You killed him, you killed Matty. You killed him for nothing. You killed him because you were scared of what he might do. You made it look like it was a junkie with a gun, but it was you. I know it was you and I’m gonna prove it.” Silence.

With the plan to simply drive Mike home now derailed, the officers instead take him to an abandoned part of the city to figure out where to go from here. Damn, I’m getting excited just getting to it. We now see that this is going exactly the way Mike wanted it to. Mike isn’t drunk. He’s in complete control of the situation. Why had he broken into the cop car? Oh, you mean the backseat of the cop car he was just in? It might be a good place to hide an extra piece. He takes a bullet to the shoulder (okay, we’ve got that cleared up), but he does indeed kill Hoffman and Fenske.

So that just happened. Damn, Mike, you weren’t kidding. That’s certainly not a half-measure now, is it? Did I mention that we’re STILL not to the best part of the episode?

I can only describe the next scene as what I believe to be the best part of this series thus far, but arguably one of the best scenes in the entirety of this fictional world as a whole, meaning that yes, I’m including Breaking Bad as well. I’m not even going to attempt a description. Just read this and then watch the episode if you haven’t already. And then watch it again.