The Tragical Magic of Saul Goodman aka James Mcgill From Better Call Saul.
Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad is arguably the best ever TV show. I happened to watch it for the first time in 2017. And keep going back to some of the iconic scenes from the show like “Say My Name”, “I am The One Who Knocks”, “a man has to provide for his family” The whole last episode “Felina” and many more. The show is really something and the creators made sure not to unnecessarily stretch and end it right on time or else it would have met a Game of Thrones fate.
Now in 2015, we got a spin-off series based on one of the characters from Breaking Bad ie Saul Goodman, a lawyer who was introduced in the second season of BB. He was an Albuquerque based defence lawyer who represented criminals because he was best at it. Street smart Saul made the most out of his involvement with Jesse Pinkman, Walter White but couldn’t help getting into a mess which might have killed him but he disappeared into thin air and started a new life with a new identity — Gene, the manager of Cinnabon in Omaha, Nebraska and that’s exactly where Better Call Saul starts off.
I am yet to start with season 5 and taking a break after continuously watching forty episodes, four seasons in four days And boy, what a fantastic show Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould have created.
The character development is astoundingly full of humane conflicts. Jimmy’s brother Chuck Mcgill is someone who he totally looks up to and wants to be like but gradually it’s revealed how Chuck wants him to be anything but a lawyer. Why? Because he is insecure. Again, why? Because he feels Jimmy is not worth it and a loser like Slimmy Jimmy who never had an ambition or anything like Chuck suddenly prepares for a law exam from a long-distance lesser-known law college and stands equally beside him. It’s an authentic portrayal of how crooked and unimaginable a human relationship can be. While Jimmy leaves no stones unturned in taking care of his only brother who is allergic to electromagnetic waves; Chuck wants him to not succeed as a lawyer or even in life for that matter. He wants Jimmy to just be a mailman at HHM, a job which Chuck got him when they re-allocated. It was extremely satisfying to see how Chuck ends up in the fourth season of the show.
Poor Jimmy only tried to make his brother proud by taking responsibilities, by becoming something by doing everything his brother and family wanted him to but even going all in and putting all the efforts he failed and mostly due to his brother. The pillar of his life Kim Wexler, a fellow lawyer and an outsider who built herself alone from the scratch is another character from BCS that has been written extremely well and is almost opposite to James Mcgill hence we see an unshakable equation among them which remains rock-solid through-out the show.
All Jimmy ever wanted was to be a lawyer. A lawyer of any kind; he even gave a shot at elderly law and became pretty successful because he had this special something to make people like him in no-time.
Everything that happened in the four seasons precisely 39 episodes / 3.9 season of BCS is perfectly summed up in just one closing line of the 40th episode of the show when out of nowhere, Jimmy Mcgill decides to ditch his original name and practice law under Saul Good Man and says “It’s All Good, Man” to the love of his life Kim. That’s the moment I had been waiting for.
The beauty of the show; we already know how it all ends yet we are hooked and that we can call the brilliance of Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould.
