Better Call Saul?
Vince Gilligan on why he wanted to add a character like Saul to the mix: “The darker things get, the more I feel a desire to have humor. I want humor in the show, as much as it can reasonably exist. Saul Goodman is a good outlet for that. He’s not a clown—he’s a character who seems clownish on the surface, but is better than that. He’s a character who doesn’t lie to himself. He knows he‘s a dirty lawyer, he knows he’s in it for the money. He doesn’t have any illusions that some day he’s going to chuck all this and make it to the Supreme Court. That is such a 180-degree difference from a guy like Walt, who does nothing but lie to himself. To me, it’s refreshing on two levels: The humor is refreshing, and that he doesn’t lie to himself.”
“Better Call Saul” is a darkly funny comedy of errors, as Walt and Jesse7 leap through hoops to stay free without killing Badger. But Saul’s introduction also suggests an operation that’s about to get more serious. As Saul notes in his final encounter with Walt, our man is more like Vito Corleone’s bumbling eldest son Fredo than Vito Corleone himself. We know what Walt and Jesse are capable of when their backs are up against the wall, but the whole point of them getting into this business was to avoid spending their lives struggling to escape the latest crisis. Saul suggests another way, and one that could open many opportunities to both his clients and the show that chronicles those crises.
1 Saul is played by Bob Odenkirk, who was, at this point in his career, known almost exclusively for comedy, particularly his ’90s HBO work on Mr. Show with Bob and David and The Larry Sanders Show.
2 Saul’s love of movie references—reflected, for instance, in his request that his payment be made out to a company named after Ice Station Zebra—will be a defining trait for him across both this series and his own.
3 Though less technically flashy than some of the season’s other pre-credits sequences, the undercover sting on Badger is another reminder of the care the show puts into each of its teasers, so much so that they feel like impressive short films that could stand on their own. In typical Breaking Bad fashion, the scene takes its sweet time getting to the punch line, lingering forever (in a single, well-paced shot) on Badger letting himself get outsmarted by the cop.
4 The scene where Walt shows up to help talk Hank out of the bedroom was very nicely played by both Bryan Cranston and Dean Norris. The show keeps doing these moments where it seems like Walt is on the verge of confessing his criminal life to someone (the shrink, Skyler, Hank) when he manages to find a version of the truth that somehow proves applicable to the situation without including crystal meth. Though Walt’s inexperienced at the crime game, Saul Goodman could learn a lot from him when it comes to BS.
5 Two bits of Saul backstory are hinted at here, but not fully explored until the spin-off: He admits his real name is McGill, and when Walt and Jesse take him into the desert, he assumes they have been sent by someone named Ignacio.
6 Though the series has by and large avoided having problems resolve themselves neatly for Walt and Jesse, the matter of Spooge’s murder is described by Saul as an open-and-shut case, thus sidestepping the issue of Jesse having to worry about his DNA being found at the murder scene, and/or Skank or her son testifying about the man who was present during the murder.
7 On the home front with Jesse, we get a major piece of the Jane puzzle when she tosses him her eighteen-month sobriety chip. That both explains her initial reticence and her eventual attraction: She knows Jesse is bad for her, but her willpower only goes so far.
SEASON 2 / EPISODE 9
“4 Days Out”
Written by Sam Catlin
Directed by Michelle MacLaren
Warning Light
“Why couldn’t I have just gone to Santa Fe? Why?”—Jesse
Though our understanding of Skyler and the rest of the ensemble has only deepened throughout season two, the core of Breaking Bad at this stage is still Walt and Jesse, fumbling their way through the criminal world, escaping one threat to their existence after another. “4 Days Out” zooms in even more tightly on this idea, stranding Walt and Jesse in the middle of the desert, the battery of their mobile meth lab drained, with nothing for each of them to do but dwell on what they’ve allowed themselves to become—and what role, if any, the other man played in that transformation.
Jesse should have just gone to Santa Fe to admire “vagina pictures” with Jane instead of facing death by dehydration with his hated former chemistry teacher/current partner. But then, he should never have let Walt talk him into stepping up his game from being a low-level Cap’n Cook. When he was Cap’n Cook, the profits were meager, but so was the risk. There was a way out. Now the stakes are too high, the attention (from the DEA and, eventually, from the cartel) too big, and his partner too arrogant and reckless. Though they manage to avoid dying in the RV with $1.34 million (after expenses) worth of crystal, this isn’t the first time that Jesse’s association with Walt has brought him close to death, nor can it be the last.
Walt, meanwhile, is usually too busy cleaning up the latest mess that he and/or Jesse has made for self-reflection. But stuck in that RV, fearing imminent death twice over—even if they can get the battery going, he assumes he has only a short time left to live, based on his (mis) reading of the PET scan—Walt has this moment of clarity where he truly acknowledges all he’s done, all the lies he’s told, all the people who have been and will be hurt by his actions. But because he’s ultimately more selfish than he allows himself to know, it sours from a moment of self-realization to one of self-pity; he’s prepared to lie there and wallow, and let the chemical engine that is his body slowly and painfully stop working. But then Jesse is able to rouse Walt from his stupor, and we’re reminded that, for all his many faults, he’s still a genius chemist,1 as we watch him cobble together keys, spare change, and sponges to make a battery strong enough to jump-start the RV.
Having evaded the first brush with death, Walt discovers, to his amazement (and lack of relief), that the experimental cancer treatment has succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectations, and he’s left to wonder: What now? He and Jesse have come to an understanding, but it seems predicated on Jesse’s assumption that Walt will die soon. For that matter, his entire criminal career was operated under the same assumption: that he wouldn’t survive long enough to ever have to live with the consequences of his actions.
In the episode’s powerful final scene, Walt studies his reflection in the bathroom mirror, then in the gleaming paper-towel dispenser. He does not like what he sees, and pounds on the dispenser until it’s so badly dented that all he can see is a warped reflection—the man he once was now completely unrecognizable.
It’s one last remarkable image in an episode full of them. “4 Days Out” was meant to be a “bottle show,” an industry term for a budget-saving episode produced largely on pre-existing sets and with a minimum of guest stars. The initial plan was to have the bulk of the show take place inside the RV, but director Michelle MacLaren (in her first assignment for the series)2 kept nudging the action outside, where she and director of photography Michael Slovis could capture the harsh beauty of the desert and the direness of the partners’ situation.
Image after image—the glowing orange light of the desert, the cool blues of the chemicals mixing together, the tableaux of the RV resting in the tall grass or Walt and Jesse enjoying the night air after a hard day’s work—looks absolutely gorgeous, and captures the dual-edged nature of what’s happening here. The meth itself is destructive, both to its users and to the lives of the men who cook it, but the actual process of making it is a work of art. The desert could kill them without fuel or adequate supplies, but there are far, far uglier resting places. Even the clinic where Walt gets the good news—so shiny and clean and modern, and with a fountain overflowing with the kind of water Walt will badly need a few days later—isn’t quite what it seems, because he doesn’t really want the treatment to work.
But it has—well enough that he ac
tually has a realistic shot at beating the cancer. Now what the hell does he do?
1 He is not, however, a genius chemistry teacher. He tries to turn the battery-building process into a science lesson for Jesse, who never quite gets it, thinking that “a wire” is the elemental answer Walt’s looking for.
2 Unsurprisingly, based on the work she did here, this would not be her last Breaking Bad assignment; she became a producer on the series and went on to direct more episodes than anyone else.
SEASON 2 / EPISODE 10
“Over”
Written by Moira Walley-Beckett
Directed by Phil Abraham
Damage Repair
“I’m not exactly sure who that was yesterday, but it wasn’t me.”—Walt
After giving us our most extended tease yet of The Curious Incident of the Burnt Teddybear in the Daytime (which adds Walt’s smashed-up windshield and two corpses laid out in his driveway to the scene), “Over” dials back on the action and shows Walt struggling to deal with a longer life than he expected.
The news of Walt’s cancer going into remission seems to promise a painless way out both for Walt and for Jesse, who takes the news of his partner’s retirement well—better, likely, than Walt would if the roles were reversed. Jesse’s still a decent person and is simply happy to hear that his partner will stay alive. And whereas Walt feels more important the deeper he gets into this drug empire, Jesse is still a little scared of it, and he can understand why someone might want to get out.
Walt, meanwhile, once again has a chance to leave the world of crystal meth behind (after accepting his share of the profits from the last batch they cooked in the desert) and makes a good-faith effort at it. He tries to be a more attentive husband and father, and even does some long-overdue repair work on the house.
But this is not who Walt really wants to be. He wrecks the party Skyler throws to celebrate his remission by pouring one drink of tequila after another into Walter Jr., finally stepping to Hank for the sin of daring to play surrogate father figure to Jr. while Walt’s been distracted these past months. And as Jr. vomits into the pool1 and Skyler,2 Hank, and the other guests appear hurt, Walt looks like he’s been bathing in schadenfreude—like he can only enjoy the party if everyone else feels as miserable as he does in this monotonous domestic existence.
The remainder of the episode wears its subtext on its sleeve, as Walt gets around to replacing the decaying water heater. Just as his meth career seemed to be more about damage control than cooking meth, he finds that fixing the water heater only exposes another problem, the rotted foundation that only he can see. (Director Phil Abraham, a longtime director of photography on series like The Sopranos, returns to the show’s periodic sci-fi visual motifs with a number of haunting shots, whether it’s Walt hanging upside down in the crawl space like an alien invader, or the light of the sunset oscillating like a UFO beacon.)
“Just cut it out and start fresh,” Walt says, but that’s easier to do with floorboards than with the rot in his soul. And as he makes yet another trip to the hardware store and stumbles across an aspiring meth cooker loading up on supplies, he recognizes once and for all that the only thing that gives him personal satisfaction—that makes this extended life he’s gotten worth living—is playing drug lord, and he chases the cook and his partner away with a menacing warning to “Stay out of my territory.”
Once again, Walt has received a clear sign from the cosmos that it’s time to get out. And once again, he doesn’t want to take it.
1 Oh, the mortified look on Bryan Cranston’s face in the scene where Walt apologizes to Walter Jr. for the puking incident, and Walter Jr. swells with puppy pride as he notes that he kept up with his dad and uncle by having three drinks. Walt doesn’t deserve a kid that eager to please. No one does.
2 Skyler and Walt have been getting on much better ever since he lied to her about Gretchen and Elliott, but part of that was predicated on her belief that if Walt ever got better, he’d become happier, and easier to live with. But that’s not what he’s about, and as his ceaseless misery becomes more obvious to her, she starts going after Ted Beneke, even knocking over her pencil cup to lure him into her office at the end of a shift.
SEASON 2 / EPISODE 11
“Mandala”
Written by George Mastras
Directed by Adam Bernstein
All You Get Is One Shot
“You can never trust a drug addict.”—Gus
Three times in “Mandala,” a character (Jane, then Skyler, then Walt) is forced to make a choice between what is right and what will feed their craving. For Jane, it’s heroin, for Skyler, Ted Beneke, and for Walt, the chance to keep dealing drugs and making money. Three times, a character closes their eyes for a moment and tries to convince themselves to resist temptation and do the right thing.
And three times, they give in.
Jane walks back to Jesse’s bedroom, smokes some crystal with him, and eventually introduces him to the joys of heroin. Skyler gets out of her car and returns to work at Beneke Fabricators.1 Walt ignores Skyler’s text about going into labor, hoists a garbage bag full of meth, and goes to meet the mysterious Gustavo “Gus” Fring (Giancarlo Esposito)2 for the biggest sale of his career.
We’re reaching a point with this series where it feels like praising the actors is almost unnecessary—that the brilliance of the cast is so obvious that it can go without saying. But one of the trickiest things an actor can do is to simply show the audience what their character is thinking, and in “Mandala,” the actors—Cranston in the kitchen, Paul while Jesse is high on dope,3 Anna Gunn in the car, and Krysten Ritter at the doorway—all nailed those moments. Ritter in particular does excellent work, since we as viewers know so little about Jane and she still manages to tell us a very long story during that pause.
Drug dealers prey on human weakness; in becoming a dealer, Walt has attacked the weaknesses of the people all around him. He pushed Jesse into expanding their territory, which leads to a rival drug gang murdering Jesse’s buddy Combo,4 which in turn leads to Jesse wanting to escape by doing drugs—first smoking meth and then, after dragging Jane down with him, shooting heroin. Walt made Skyler feel so alienated that she would seek out Ted Beneke’s company, even though she doesn’t want to cheat on her husband, and even though she doesn’t want to work for a man who cheats on his bookkeeping. And for Walt, the dealing itself has become like a drug, one that makes him feel as powerful and alive as he has in years, if ever—so much so that he’s even willing to choose a drug deal over witnessing the birth of his daughter.
It would seem impossible for anyone within the circle of influence of this drug world to make smart, careful choices—or it would, if in the same episode we weren’t also introduced to the enigmatic Gus Fring.
Gus appears to be everything Walt aspires to be: a careful, successful drug lord who not only acts like a legitimate businessman, but, in the form of a string of Los Pollos Hermanos chicken restaurants, actually owns a legitimate business. Walt believes he and Gus are kindred spirits, but Gus knows better, telling him, “I don’t think we’re alike at all, Mr. White.” Between Walt’s ignorance of the drug game, his reliance on Jesse, his own stubborn pride, and his need to make money as fast as possible, Walt has repeatedly made the kind of mistakes that could end a career—or a life. He may be careful and measured when he cooks his blue meth, but the rest of the time, he’s improvising—with often terrible results.
Even if Walt somehow pulls off this deal, things seem to be falling apart—which would be clear even without the Teddy Bear of Doom hanging over the whole episode. As Walt himself finally admits to Saul Goodman, “This entire process has been so … it‘s always been one step forward, and two steps back.” But as long as each character is consumed only with feeding his or her addiction, no real progress can be made.
1 Skyler is, yet again, drawn to a man who commits a crime for what he claims to be a selfless reason, though at least she knows about it in Ted’s
case. And her performance of Marilyn Monroe’s version of “Happy Birthday”—reprising something she did the last time she worked for Beneke—provides evidence that what went on before wasn’t sexual harassment, but some kind of mutual-consent flirtation, if not a full-blown affair.
2 Esposito first came to prominence in the late ’80s as part of Spike Lee’s repertory company of actors, most famously as the militant Buggin’ Out in Do the Right Thing. His mixed heritage—born of an African-American mother and an Italian father—led to him being cast as many different ethnicities over his busy career, including here as Gus, who in time will be revealed to be from Chile.
3 Dazzling work on the entire heroin sequence, with Jesse appearing to float up to the ceiling of his bedroom, as “Enchanted” by The Platters plays. Check that look of pure bliss (and relief) on Paul’s face, and you can see that Jesse is not going to want to stop doing this anytime soon.
4 Effective misdirection in the teaser, where all the shots of the little boy on his bike suggest he’s going to be collateral damage in the hit on Combo, only for him to be revealed as the killer.
SEASON 2 / EPISODE 12
“Phoenix”
Written by John Shiban
Directed by Colin Bucksey
Know What’s Best
“Want to see what your daddy did for you? That’s right: Daddy did that. Daddy did that for you.”—Walt
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