TV Review: Better Call Saul "Hero"

Jimmy McGill plays the long con right into a career.

Review by Brandon Wolfe

Better Call Saul continues using the device of dipping even further into Jimmy McGill’s past to help inform the man we see in the series’ present (which, in turn, informs the man we saw in Jimmy’s Breaking Bad-set future) to terrific effect, this week showing us what an elaborate con artist the guy once was as a sketchy bottom-feeder and how that trait hadn’t diminished in any way once Jimmy started putting on a suit. Past Jimmy strolls down an alley with a drinking buddy he just met and the two stumble across the wallet and then the passed-out body of a large man who, in his drunken stupor, likes to talk tough about his Van Damme-like roundhouse kicking abilities. While Jimmy’s new pal cleans out the contents of the fat man’s wallet, Jimmy is more interested in the Rolex on the drunken sot’s wrist. Recognizing that the Rolex’s worth far exceeds the contents of the wallet, Drinking Buddy frantically hands Jimmy all the money, including the contents of his own wallet to sweeten the deal, and hightails it out of the scene with the Rolex in hand, not realizing that Jimmy and the fat man are in cahoots, operating an ongoing scam to clean out chumps using phony Rolexes. It’s a lot of effort and performance for only about $500 profit, but Jimmy will take it.

Jimmy runs a similar long con years later after he grudgingly accepts his first (but far from his last) bribe, from the desperate Kettleman family, and uses it to beef up his practice’s profile, first by enhancing his wardrobe and then by purchasing an enormous billboard in a prime freeway-adjacent location. This seems like a reasonable use of those illicit funds until it becomes clear that Jimmy has a petty agenda behind it, crafting the billboard to deliberately resemble the promotional material of his nemesis, the law firm of Hamlin, Hamlin and McGill, right down to the logo font and suit type worn by one of the Hamlins, who responds by hitting Jimmy with a cease-and-desist and getting a judge to order the billboard’s removal. It’s fun watching Jimmy attempt to spin his blatant copycattiness as if the unmistakable similarities are mere coincidences, and while we gather that Hamlin is a snake (then again, so is Jimmy, but he’s our snake), the sheer pettiness on display from Jimmy is initially a bit frustrating. Why waste your shot at crafting a name for yourself just to annoy a professional rival?

When Jimmy won’t let the matter go and decides to grab a college camera crew to film his attempt at self-martyring in front of the dismantling of the billboard, the true aim of his plan begins to come into focus. The worker taking down the sign tumbles off the edge of the billboard’s platform and dangles precariously as Jimmy springs into action, abandoning his David-and-Goliath speechifying and climbing up the billboard heroically to rescue the man, whom, it instantly becomes clear, is a co-conspirator in an elaborate publicity-garnering scheme orchestrated by a conniving Jimmy. It’s a clever con, if almost insane in its complexity, and it achieves the desired result of launching Jimmy into a full answering machine of potential clients and a burgeoning practice, even if it doesn’t fool Hamlin for a second.

“Hero” positions Jimmy as a slippery fish who feels completely in line with the weaselly Saul Goodman who always knew what shifty extralegal hocus-pocus to deploy in order to save Walter White’s bacon. However, the streak of morality sporadically present in Jimmy at this stage in his life is what starts to seem somewhat incongruous after a point. Why would the man capable of such intricate shams hesitate for even a millisecond before taking that “fat stack” off of Mrs. Kettleman? It sort of felt in the previous episodes of the series that Better Call Saul would deal with how Jimmy squandered his integrity before deciding to wallow in the mud, yet the series is now insinuating that Jimmy has been pretty damned muddy for a long time.

While Bob Odenkirk continues to soar week after week, the supporting characters to Jimmy McGill still need some work. It remains difficult to discern what we’re supposed to make of Chuck, Jimmy’s troubled brother. Jimmy goes to great lengths to conceal his billboard scheme from Chuck, who risks…whatever it is he’s suffering from by going outside to swipe a neighbor’s newspaper to find out what his kid brother is hiding. Chuck’s mysterious ailment, the state of his professional career and the nature of his relationship with his brother are all extremely murky thus far, and the show always grinds to a bit of a standstill whenever it returns to Chuck, through no fault of Michael McKean, Chuck’s portrayer. Also struggling to make an impression is Jimmy’s love interest (?) Kim Wexler, an attorney at HHM who’s friendly enough with Jimmy to invite him out for an evening of Kurt Russell-based moviegoing, yet bristles at being caught in the middle of his trivial war with Hamlin. It’s not clear just yet precisely what Kim’s relationship to Jimmy is supposed to be, or even why she has such a soft spot for the scuzzball. She seems a bit of a token female thus far, regrettably. Hopefully that changes before long.

Also somewhat problematic is a much less unfamiliar character. Mike Ehrmantraut is still knocking around the margins of Jimmy’s world without giving any indication as of yet that he’ll soon become more pivotal. He’s still at his parking booth and still doesn’t see fit to give McGill the time of day. Obviously this will change eventually (as, I’m sure, will the similar limitations surrounding Chuck and Kim), but for Mike to continue to remain such an outlier at this point feels disappointing. One more episode of him sitting gruffly in his toll booth is going to officially seem like one too many.

Despite the griping about the molasses pace of establishing the supporting cast, Better Call Saul is a hoot thus far, genuinely funny and endlessly compelling. Jimmy/Saul continues to anchor a series far more adeptly than the character honestly seemed capable of with only Breaking Bad to go off of. Perhaps the best compliment I can pay the series right now is that I haven’t thought of Walt and Jesse once while watching it, and generally don’t often dwell on the fact that I’m watching something existing within the Breaking Bad universe. For a spin-off, that’s about as high as praise can get.

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