Fridge / Better Call Saul

As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

---

Fridge Brillance

• The way the Kettlemans fake their kidnapping has a bit of meta-subtext. Everyone thinks they were kidnapped or fled far away, but they only ran to their own backyard. Just like the way the scenes in the final season of Breaking Bad were set in New Hampshire but shot in New Mexico.
• A close observer will notice that there's a recurring theme of corruption/dirtying of the law throughout the title cards. Cigarette butts in the scales of Lady Justice. A necktie left behind in the desert with a tarantula crawling over it. A Saul Goodman business card left in a running urinal. All of these are symbols of the law that have been left in states of disrepair or abandon, indicating the moral decline of the titular character.
• In episode one, Gene is motivated to watch his old advertisements of 'Saul Goodman', despite his paranoia of somebody recognising him as 'Saul', after hearing a weather warning of increased snow in the area, with the announcer specifically mentioning the increased likelihood of slippery footing. Such conditions would have been ideal for a scam run by 'Slippin Jimmy', which likely increased James McGill's desire to re-live the good old days one more time.
• Tuco's abuelita is convinced that club soda will get out "salsa" stains. Anyone who knows a thing about cleaning solutions will tell you that club soda does not really work well when cleaning up salsa stains. However, it's very good at getting rid of bloodstains. This suggests that she's cleaned up bloodstains before that Tuco also called "salsa." Either she really believes that club soda cleans out salsa stains, or she secretly is aware of Tuco's criminal activities.
• Jimmy drives a Suzuki Esteem in the series. And much like Jimmy's own namesake, it's a beat-up, barely-functioning alleged car.
• In "Bingo", when Jimmy talks about his clients' wills, he gets a form number wrong and Chuck corrects him. This may have been deliberate, to motivate Chuck to "look over" Jimmy's work and help him. It also serves as Foreshadowing of the "1216" gambit that later escalates the feud between the brothers.
• The shot in "RICO" when Jimmy is signing in to Sandpiper Crossing to speak to a client juxtaposes him with a picture of Saint Sebastian hanging on the wall behind him. Saint Sebastian was shot full of arrows, but survived. Jimmy has experienced setbacks almost every step of the way in his journey to become a successful lawyer, but he will one day overcome them and make a name for himself - Saul Goodman.
• At the end of "Marco", where Jimmy seems poised to finally break into the big time, he stops, feeling Marco's ring on his hand. His face is seen in profile for several seconds, facing to the right of the screen. This mirrors his earlier con with the Kennedy Half-Dollar; he's facing East, to his past, to Chicago, honest lawyer, and a brother who will never accept him. When he turns around, he is then, as the con goes, facing West, to Albuquerque, to his future as Amoral Attorney Saul Goodman, and, ultimately, to managing a Cinnabon in Omaha.
• At first glance, it seems odd that Mike would travel all the way from Philadelphia to Albuquerque by train. But consider that he had just been shot and the bullet may have still been lodged in his body. So if he tried to fly, the bullet would have set off the metal detector at the airport (and considering the first season is set in 2002, that would have been just one of the security hurdles he would have to deal with in an airport). The TSA agents would have found the bullet wound and they would very likely have reported him to the police. The same police who were investigating the double homicide of cops from Mike's son's precinct. And, of course, Mike was in no condition to drive such a long distance. So the best option would have been to take the train.
• Some have treated Jimmy getting his law degree from an online course as an anachronism. Online schools have been around since the mid-nineties, around the time when Jimmy would have gotten his degree from American Samoa. It would be just like Jimmy to try a novel approach like going online to get his degree. Additionally, even now, online degrees don't hold much prestige in the eyes of professionals and it would hold even less back then.
• In the first episode, Chuck encourages Jimmy to change the name of his law firm, ostensibly to avoid friction with HHM and build a brand for himself. At the time, it seems like Chuck was just meekly knuckling under to whatever his former partners wanted. In hindsight, it's clear that Chuck didn't want the name "McGill" on Jimmy's firm because it's his name, and he doesn't want Jimmy soiling the family name by associating it with his brand of law. This also plays into Jimmy's future name change, he's symbolically embracing his brother's rejection by cutting off the name association.
• Why does Mike seem to have so much respect and affection for Jesse during Breaking Bad? He's trying to make up for the events that caused his own son to get killed.
• When Jimmy's being arrested in "Nacho," he shouts "Ow, I got bad knees!" when being forced to the ground. This is the same thing that he says when being kidnapped in his initial appearance in Breaking Bad. What if Jimmy messed up his knees falling down all the time in his Slippin' Jimmy days?
  • Ascended, Jimmy explains in "Saul Gone" that this is the case.
• In Breaking Bad, we see Jimmy using an automatic back massager in his office. This didn't seem to have much significance at the time, until we see him on the floor of his office in "Slip", having injured his back taking a fall. Combined with his "bad knees," his cons are leaving a physical mark.
• There are many subtle references to the idea that Jimmy will never be seen as more than an Ambulance Chaser even before Chuck's "The Reason You Suck" Speech. Like the police detective who confronts Jimmy for spilling the coffee and saying, "You're the one who spilled the coffee, you ambulance-chasing piece of shit!" or the Kettlemans saying, "You're the kind of lawyer guilty people hire."
• Jimmy describes the Kettleman couple to Kim as "25th Hour starring Ned and Maude Flanders". The story of 25th Hour follows Monty Brogan through his final day before he goes away to prison for seven years. The thing is, Monty was a tough, popular guy. Jimmy replacing them with the Simpsons' geeky neighbors is supposed to reflect how, in his mind, Betsy and Craig are just about the most ridiculous criminals ever.
• Why does Mike execute the corrupt cops in "Five-O" the way he did as opposed to just shoot them in their houses or blow up their cruiser? Well, look closely: he waited until the two pretty much confessed in front of him to do it. If Mike only wanted to kill them, he would have done it in a much easier way where he wouldn't risk getting shot. But Mike wanted to be absolutely, positively sure he was right before doing it.
• It seems that Jimmy's pre-Breaking Bad days are actually a lot like Walt's and there seem to be many scenes in Better Call Saul that actually seem like rehashes of scenes from Breaking Bad, highlighting the parallels.
  • One great example is the scene in "Bingo" where Jimmy gives Kim a tour of the office space he intends to lease out with her as his partner. There's a feeling of familiarity to the scene because it's just like the flashback opening to “Full Measures”, which shows Walt and Skyler touring the house they'll eventually buy. There is a cruel dramatic irony going on in both cases. Jimmy and Walt both feel like buying these spaces will be their first step towards greater things, when the audience already knows their respective fates. Notice how Jimmy remarks that the downtown office space is too cozy, even though it's clearly a bigger space than the strip mall office he'll eventually work out of. Similarly, Walt viewed his house initially as a “starter house”, and didn't want to commit because he felt, “We’ve got nowhere to go but up." Wasted and lost potential is a major theme of the joint Breaking Bad / Better Call Saul universe, and cutting back and forth between the hopeful early days and the bleaker future adds another layer to Jimmy as a character.
  • Jimmy's frustration with Kim's new travel mug not fitting into the cupholder of his Davis & Main Mercedes is like Walter White's car troubles in the Breaking Bad pilot.
• In "Nacho," there's a scene where Jimmy is talking to the DDA about a plea deal. Halfway through the discussion, the DDA realizes he has the wrong file, and they're talking about different cases. Jimmy goes off on him for not caring enough to keep his defendants straight, clearly genuinely caring what happens to his client. Yet, when he first appears in Breaking Bad, Jimmy gets Badger’s drug possession case mixed up with a different client, and doesn’t even apologize when he realizes his mistake.
• In "Nacho," it seemed odd why the police went the way they did to pick Jimmy up so he could represent Nacho - chasing, then cornering him in an alleyway - but there's a deeper explanation: Jimmy was making multiple attempts to contact Nacho from a payphone, unaware that Nacho was in police custody. Presumably, the APD had Nacho's phone or at least had it tapped, and they sent cops to the phone in question to arrest whoever was making the repeated suspicious calls. They may have even thought the caller may be involved in the Kettlemans' disappearance, not realizing Jimmy was making the calls until they caught him in the alley and he told them his name.
• Daniel makes the mistake of showing up for a drug deal in a flashy car, namely a pimped out Hummer H2. Mike says "This business requires restraint, that is the opposite of restraint" because such a flashy car could draw the attention of the cops. In "Cornered," Walt bought a Dodge Challenger for Walt Jr., then was forced by Skyler to return it (he ultimately got rid of it by torching it in a parking lot) so he wouldn't drive around advertising "I'm a drug dealer" wherever he went. Daniel isn't in Walt's league.
• Jimmy's actions throughout season 1 and season 2 take on a new edge when his relationship with Kim is taken into consideration: The ONLY reason Jimmy took the job at Davis & Main was for Kim's sake. Period. Prior to originally turning it down, he asked her whether it would be a deal breaker for them as a couple ....she of course answered that the two were unrelated, but after he said no to the job, he could feel her disappointment. He tries to lure her to his way of life several times, first by asking her to partner with him at his firm, then by pulling the tequila scam on KEN WINS. In that scene at the pool, when leaving voice messages about the "mark" he was spotting poolside, Jimmy realized what while Kim may enjoy visiting that world sometimes, she will never take up permanent residence. So he did what any man in love would do, tried to enter her world and his very next call was to take the position with D&M. The last scene in "Cobbler" brilliantly demonstrates how different their views of the world are. Jimmy will always be morally fractured, and Kim, well, she draws a line in the sand that Jimmy never sees. Meaning whatever happens in their relationship is the final catalyst to Saul...
• Something interesting to note is that Jimmy's lapses into 'Saul' happen whenever someone puts him down, especially when he's at the top of his game.
  • Jimmy's getting the Kettlemans back into the hands of HHM is started because of the way the Kettlemans act abrasive towards him.
  • Chuck's betrayal made Jimmy go back for a week to his old fraud antics with Marco.
  • The Hoboken Squat Cobbler moment was instigated from Chuck showing up at HHM. Given Jimmy knows of Chuck's complicity in roadblocking him, it's no surprise that moments after the stairwell encounter, when Mike called about Daniel, Jimmy accepted the offer.
  • The unauthorized ad happened after Chuck called him on potentially skirting the boundaries of solicitation.
  • Jimmy's document forgery work happened after Chuck filched Mesa Verde away from Kim.
• If you know anything about law firm ads, why Jimmy gets in hot water for running his Davis & Main ad without authorization from the bosses makes a bit more sense. In a way, Jimmy's mistake was assuming that the firm's boring, uninventive ad with the swirl was a product of low creativity or lack of personality/inspiration rather than a product of great legal prudence. I'm sure Jimmy thinks his bosses are highly intelligent, but, in this case, too easily assumed that they are square, uninspired, and dull. This is a common mistake for young and/or new workers, which at this point describes Jimmy. They see prudence as dullness/lack of inspiration rather than as the restraint gained from painful experience. If the partners made such a dull commercial there's probably a reason why it's so dull.
  • There's more to it: Jimmy may have bypassed the bosses because he feared that if he sent it to Cliff first, Chuck would find out, then find a way to sabotage Jimmy's efforts. Remember that Chuck seems intent on seeing Jimmy fall from grace.
• Given Tuco's family connections and his psychotic nature, you would think that by the time of Breaking Bad, he would be higher in the cartel hierarchy or maybe killed off for being a bit of a liability. "Gloves Off" shows us that he spent most of the intervening years in prison for assaulting Mike, which stalled his criminal career but also kept him alive.
• Remember the half-measures speech that Mike gave to Walt about the wifebeater in "Half Measures"? His way of dealing with Tuco is an example of that: set him up to go to prison (the half-measure) instead of killing him (the full measure). The scene where he's approached by Hector Salamanca in "Rebecca" makes clear that Mike’s “half measure” didn’t work out as planned. He may walk away, but he won’t walk away clean.
• Tuco is visibly older and heavier than he was in Breaking Bad, obviously because Raymond Cruz has aged since it was shot. But it's not uncommon for people in poor physical condition to appear older than they are. "Gloves Off" implies that he spent most of the time between the two series in prison. Eating prison food and working out instead of snorting crank and counting money all day might just have agreed with him.
• When Hector approaches Mike at the diner, it's effective when you realize it's a very thinly disguised threat he's making to Mike. He essentially told Mike between the lines "we found you and we can find you again anytime we want, or any other member of your family for that matter". If he knows that Mike is an ex-cop, surely he's aware of his daughter-in-law and granddaughter. That was a lot of chilling build-up in one short scene.
• Speaking of Hector: notice how, in measured tones that a casual listener might consider friendly, Hector makes Mike a friendly offer, with a veiled threat. It’s a lot like the way Mike talked to Nacho at the upholstery shop. He’s smarter than Tuco.
• Something I thought was interesting about Cliff having Erin become Jimmy's babysitter: I think that Cliff sees Erin more like a test. He paired her up with Jimmy because they’re polar opposites: She’s book smart and a sticker for the rules, everything he isn’t. While Jimmy assumes she’s there to babysit him, I think Cliff is playing a deeper game. Erin is flawed in her own way. She knows her way around a brief (the formatting criticism), but she’s got no people skills. Cliff is hoping that Erin will help Jimmy understand the expectations of Davis & Main, but he also hopes that Jimmy will also teach Erin few things about life in the real world, and they’ll each end up better lawyers for it. If Jimmy had handled Erin with a little of the “finesse” he used on the Albuquerque court clerk or Alma Urbano in Amarillo, she would have been his new best friend. He simply needed to thank her for her valuable advice about the formatting of the briefs. Tell her how smart and industrious she is to be working this late (even after all her bosses went home hours ago.) Say something nice about her shoes. Instead, he plays ding-dong-ditch with her and they’re bickering about a double space after every period. And whether a gift of a $6 Beanie Baby constitutes bribery.
• There's an interesting parallel between Hector and Jimmy in the diner scene in "Rebecca". Hector was very different from what the viewer expected. The underlying threat was clearly there, but his surface approach is like Jimmy smooth-talking someone. It illustrates the difference between two criminals who operate similarly on the surface, yet Hector is completely deadly and Jimmy doesn't really want to hurt anyone.
• While the show has done its best to age down Bob Odenkirk so that he'll look younger than when we met Saul on Breaking Bad, no such effort has been attempted with Jonathan Banks. But as "Bali H'ai" shows, it does have its benefits as Mike very clearly feels like he's past the point where he should be pistol whipping guys who are hiding in his house.
  • Additionally, there's the fact that, regardless of if he really was drunk the night he killed his son's murderers, he had at least been a serious drunk for a while before that night which, combined with the stress of his son's death, would've aged him up a few years. By contrast, cleaning up his act for the sake of his daughter-in-law and granddaughter, as well as the new physical regiment he'll be under while working for Gus, would've aged him back down a little.
• It seemed odd in Breaking Bad why Mike, as Gus's uber-loyal subordinate (and friend to some extent), didn't voice any concern about Gus's revenge scheme against Don Eladio or the Salamancas, even though it was a risky thing to do (and something that Mike normally would consider to be as bad as Walt's pride). It makes more sense with Better Call Saul making clear that Mike also harbors a grudge against the Salamancas.
• Jimmy's problems with the cupholders in his Davis & Main company Mercedes not being a match for Kim's travel mug are kinda ironic when you consider that the increase of cupholders as a standard issue feature in cars, especially European ones that did not have them (like the Mercedes), resulted from a case that happened in Albuquerque: the McDonald's Hot Coffee Case.
• Jimmy deliberately getting himself fired from Davis & Main by being impossible to work with is analogous in that episode to the flashback of the conman. Jimmy was the wolf and Davis & Main were the sheep.
• Jimmy's parting of ways with Davis & Main has some extra meaning to it when you realize that Jimmy basically handed them a goldmine case - Sandpiper - and then he got out of their way. Him staying, even trying his best, was going to be a headache not worth the bonus money. Jimmy definitely screwed them over, but that firm still comes out way ahead. Imagine what damage he would have done Sauling his way through that case. Davis & Main is lucky he chose to depart this quickly into the case work. Major liability issues are now gone. It's a win-win for everyone. Although Jimmy shouldn't expect thanks for not flushing and spitting on their kindness.
• In the flashback to Jimmy working in his father's store, look for the TIME Magazine with the cover image about the Watergate scandal. A clever nod to the overall theme of wolf vs. sheep. And the theme of crime/corruption running right through American life. Hard to judge the conman and young Jimmy too harshly when the President of the United States himself is a crook.
  • And it's not the first time that this universe has alluded to Nixon either. In "Open House," Skyler explicitly chastised Walt for buying expensive champagne by pointing out how it was tiny slip-ups (the taped over locks) that led to the Watergate scandal being blown open (there, it being used as a warning to Walt to be careful about his spending to keep Hank from figuring out).
  • It's brought back again in "Klick": during his (unknowingly) recorded confession, Jimmy says that his fraud and cover-up "would have made Nixon proud". It happens with him being recorded on a "Smoking Gun"-esque tape. One thing to understand about the Smoking Gun tape is this: it had been Nixon's idea to record all of his conversations in the Oval Office for his archives/memoirs etc. When the Watergate scandal broke, and it was discovered the tapes existed, there was a huge legal battle over whether Nixon had to hand them over to the investigators. Nixon ultimately lost the battle. And there was so much incriminating evidence on the tapes (despite the 18 1/2 minute gap) that his impeachment or resignation became inevitable. Knowing what happened when the information on the tapes came out makes you wonder just what will cause Jimmy to become Saul.
• A very interesting aspect of this show is how Mike's and Jimmy's plots are almost the same thing, reversed:
  • Jimmy's character progression has him basically being a very cunning, legendary conman who has turned soft (because of the influences of Chuck and especially Kim) trying to be the good guy on the straight path, the show shows him going back to embracing his own crooked ways, that we saw were present in him even as a kid. The show has a man who has gone astray going back to his real self, a more perfected self (Saul Goodman).
  • Mike is basically a good guy at heart. Corrupt ex-cop, maybe, but he still has a sense of morals. We see circumstances that will lead him to give up his morality more and more. Eventually leading to the hardened lieutenant of Gus Fring's that we see in Breaking Bad.
• When Jimmy uses a photocopier and an X-acto knife to alter Chuck's documents, he does it with a practiced ease that it's clear he's done this before. In The '80s, when Jimmy would have been in high school, that method was well known to students who needed to alter their report cards to hide failing grades from their parents. Or, as Chuck reveals in the next episode, to forge ID cards so as to get away with underage drinking, also predominant at the time.
• "Nailed" has a theme of unintended consequences/collateral damage in both plotlines: Mike finds out that Hector knows about the hit on his truck and killed a witness who stumbled upon it. While Chuck struck his head after Jimmy forged the documents. Unforeseen consequences are a recurring theme in the show.
• I only realized now just how magnificent Jimmy is at his forgery, and why he was trying to call Chuck's integrity into question: Chuck's putting Jimmy down has been as much about running within the confines with the law, but also is about his pride. He's like Walter White: he thinks he's better than everyone else. That he's infallible, unlike Jimmy. And it translates to the Banking Board hearing. The discrepancy comes up, as Jimmy had expected. But in the face of the discrepancy, does Chuck contemplate with an open mind "why is there a discrepancy?" Nope, he defaults to, "Everyone else must be wrong." What makes it so painful is that Kevin and Paige are obviously much closer to the situation and with a more vested interest in it than Chuck, yet his reflex is still to treat them like idiots.
  • And it wasn't just the "mistake" that sunk him, it was his flailing around. A lawyer needs to have a good poker face, especially when unexpected problems come up. He has to appear to be in charge, keep his equilibrium. Even Kevin, naïve though he may be, senses that.
  • Also, perhaps the reason the Banking Board commissioner doesn't help Chuck get an earlier review date is because Chuck is acting very smug and cocky. The commissioner may even know about Chuck's illness and assumes he messed up the paperwork because of it. Everyone who isn't Jimmy, Chuck, or Kim will think that. In season 3, Kim actually does get Mesa Verde's review fast-tracked without any HHM resources simply by being polite.
  • It's telling that even Howard goes as far as telling Chuck he's made the same mistake once, and asking him to just move on with the matter. And though he's right to suspect Jimmy, Chuck still refuses to move on.
• When Chuck shows a picture of Jimmy to the copy shop clerk, he uses an advertising pamphlet of Jimmy's, folded over to just show the photo ^note on a closer look, it appears to be a photo of Jimmy taken after the billboard stunt. Is that the only picture he has of his own brother? No photo albums or family portraits in his house? There's two possible explanations for this: 1) He's been unable to use a camera without getting electromagnetic sensitivity symptoms for at least two years, or 2) this is a sign of little affection Chuck has for Jimmy, and how long that's been the case.
• The WM business card that Jimmy makes for him and Kim. At first you think Wexler is more important than McGill because the W comes first. But the WM, fused together, it looks like a stock chart of ups and downs with the W at the bottom and the M going up. She is a hard worker as we seen in "Bali H'ai," but since the system is rigged against her it doesn't matter. I think Kim is realizing she can't save herself as she said, and needs Jimmy's chicanery to succeed, though she doesn't want to admit it to herself. Hypocritically, she even gives him the cold shoulder and literally punches him in the shoulder when he does something immoral, but she doesn't tell him to stop doing it anymore. And she even plants the suggestion that sends Jimmy to the copy shop to make sure he dotted his I's and crossed his T's. She is at least partly to blame for what happens to Chuck.
  • Also Kim used to live in a town on the Kansas/Nebraska border, so that could be the reason why Jimmy chose Nebraska as his clean slate. he could be trying to reconnect with her. If he is in Nebraska, then she would be in Kansas. Again the separation of the two, ripping up the business card in half, always close yet at the same time divided, etc...
  • It also symbolizes the way that everything Jimmy does to try and solidify his bond with Kim actually laying the groundwork for them to split apart, professionally and personally. He brings her along on his cons in Season 2 as a bonding exercise, but this just results in Kim telling him he can't keep doing those things. Then he takes the job at Davis and Main mostly to prove to her that he'd be a worthy partner, but his conduct there makes her look bad because she was the one who fought for him to get that job. And when he finally convinces her to leave for solo practice and she loses Mesa Verde to HHM, Jimmy ignores her direct request that he leave things along and commits fraud to make sure she retains her big client. Except that this drags her further into the conflict between him and Chuck, and also means that she becomes increasingly involved in the cover-up of Jimmy's fraud, at the cost of neglecting the Mesa Verde case and endangering her own professional reputation. Then you notice that the design of the card puts the W and M together, but puts them together in a way that creates a big jagged tear across the card and makes it easier to tear the W and M parts of the card apart.
• Chuck and Jimmy are 16 years apart in age, as established by the dates on Chuck's gravestone and a close-up shot of Jimmy's driver's license in "JMM".^note Incidentally a slightly larger age gap than the actual 15 year 5 day one that exists between Michael McKean and Bod Odenkirk Although they're brothers, Chuck almost looks like he could be Jimmy's father. On top of that existing age gap, it is easy to believe that Chuck would also look further aged as the result of not having been exposed to sunlight in almost a year. You'd be surprised how a simple lack of natural light can make you look older than you actually are.
  • Before Chuck's illness, this age gap between him and Jimmy, and the fact that Chuck's obituary establishes him as a Child Prodigy who graduated high school when he was just 14 years old, explains why Jimmy admired Chuck before "Pimento". It's because he saw Chuck as this incredibly smart guy who worked hard to the point of grey hair, but lacked their father's gullibility.
  Jimmy: Geez Chuck, you're the busiest guy I know.
• Something telling about Chuck's accusing Jimmy of the forgery in "Nailed" is when Chuck decides to dig up Jimmy's high school dealings ("And if you're wondering if Jimmy's up to a little casual forgery, you should know that in high school, he had a thriving business making fake IDs so that his buddies could buy beer"). The fact that he had to go back to the shenanigans Jimmy did in high school (when most teens go through that rebellious stage of their lives) seems so petty and really speaks volumes about Chuck, as much as it does Jimmy. The audience knows Chuck is right, and the audience knows that what Jimmy did was wrong, but what Chuck has been doing to Jimmy all along has been crueler than Jimmy could ever be.
• Look very closely at the seven colorful shirts Jimmy hangs into his wardrobe in the "Inflatable" montage. They are almost "the colors of the rainbow", but one of the classic seven Newtonian rainbow colors is missing: instead of indigo, Jimmy has one in a lighter shade of violet. Perhaps because Jimmy did not want to buy a shirt that looked "Hamlindigo Blue", the corporate color of HHM and in turn Chuck's firm.
• Right from the beginning Chuck could simply have told Jimmy he wasn't going to hire Jimmy as a lawyer with HHM because he doesn't want to be accused of nepotism. He didn't. Instead, he chose to slowly poison Jimmy's career by pretending to be on Jimmy's side. Why? Look at the flashbacks. Look how effortlessly Jimmy got attention from his wife simply by humoring her. Look who their mother's calling before she died, even though it's Chuck who stayed with her. Jimmy's asking Chuck to hire him is Chuck's final straw; to him, simply telling Jimmy no won't be enough. What Chuck wants is to savor his brother's failure. As Chuck's actor, Michael McKean said in an interview, Chuck made his mother proud, Jimmy made her laugh.
  • Also as pointed out by Kim, the two H's in "HHM" are father and son, meaning the image of nepotism was never an issue unless Jimmy wanted to be a new major partner, which he didn't. Chuck knows that the only reason he could give Jimmy is that he isn't a real lawyer to his eyes and he wasn't brave enough to tell his brother how much he hates the idea that Jimmy becomes a lawyer.
• Chuck's condition mirrors his relationship with Jimmy. He believes he is physically allergic to electromagnetic radiation, therefore he is. Never mind that other people have other thoughts about it. Similarly, he believes Jimmy can never improve from his Slippin' Jimmy ways, therefore Jimmy never will. Never mind that other people have other thoughts about Jimmy.
• At first, it seems hypocritical that Kim would be accepting of Jimmy's gaslighting of Chuck (albeit reluctantly), but be less accepting of Jimmy's unauthorized ad. But one has to understand that a recurring theme throughout Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad is that people with professed moral codes can easily be compromised by their own self-interests. Mike, Gus and Jimmy have all demonstrated it, and so has Kim. Kim had a serious problem with Jimmy doing his unauthorized ad because it affected her negatively and got her busted down to doc review. But when Jimmy engaged in an arguably more serious flouting of the law and legal ethics, she accepted it because she benefited from it (Mesa Verde fired HHM and chose to hire her instead). And she didn't turn Jimmy in, like Chuck was thinking she'd do. Instead, she advised Jimmy to cover his tracks, which means she's now an active participant in the Mesa Verde scam. And she's willing to go this way because now she can start her own practice with a lucrative client. Kim couldn't possibly report Jimmy either since that wouldn't benefit her at all: if she reported him, she'd ruin his career and there's no guarantee that she wouldn't also be charged (since she's the beneficiary of his actions). Given the negative treatment that whistleblowers receive, she probably feels denial benefits the most people while admitting it could possibly ruin two people. Therefore, Kim has been compromised and will accept of Jimmy's actions so long as she benefits from them.
• The Gene sequence that opens Season 3 uses the song "Sugar Town" by Nancy Sinatra. "Sugar Town" is a song about drugs, foreshadowing Jimmy's foray into the drug underworld. It's worth noting that Nancy Sinatra's father was alleged to have ties to the Mafia.
• In "Mabel", batteries play a recurring role, and both times, it's to turn the advantage around on the opponents: Mike's whole gambit with the trackers vs. Chuck having Ernesto change the batteries on the tape recorder and "accidentally" hear two seconds of Jimmy's confession.
• A telling clue that Ernesto is a lot closer to Jimmy and Kim than he is to Chuck is what name they use to address him. Kim and Jimmy address him by his nickname, Ernie, and Chuck calls him Ernesto. It shows the kind of relationship Chuck has with the mail room clerks.
• The office for the auto parts salvage yard is filled with banners and posters for the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers. The Eagles clearly make Mike feel at home since he’s from Philadelphia.
• During the timelapse shot as Mike is waiting by his window for the henchman to come by to replace the tracker, the constellation of Orion the Hunter passes overhead, referencing how Mike is becoming the hunter instead of the hunted.
• The significance of The Adventures of Mabel are partially reflected in allusions to the sinking of the Titanic. The novel's author, Harry Thurston Peck, used editorial control at a publication he ran to write a deeply positive review for his own book (which was published under a pseudonym, "Rafford Pyke") without disclosing conflict of interest. Though his affairs were apparently seen as more scandalous, the disgrace of which has been believed to have eventually contributed to his suicide, two years after Jimmy's copy was printed, AKA two years after the sinking of the Titanic. This "going down with the ship" reference is a sly, almost disconnected way to clue people in to the fact that the book itself is more of an ominous warning, than the comforting one Jimmy takes it as. Also Jimmy was taken down by the iceberg that was Heisenberg's blue meth, after boarding the "unsinkable ship" that was Walt and Jesse's enterprise.
• In fact, it's appropriate that The Adventures of Mabel would be a book that Jimmy would love, as its history (the author published it under a pseudonym, then used his day job as a teacher to write an article that praised it) is a con game.
• A parallel between Mike and Gus is visible in the season 3 premiere. After finding out his car has been bugged, Mike goes to work at the courthouse as usual. But before he goes off to have the secret meeting with the vet, he takes the gas cap and tracker out of his car and leaves it in the booth. Then he goes back and picks the tracker and gas cap up before going home. This gives the impression that he was at the booth the whole time. The same thing happened in Breaking Bad: when Hank had Walt install a GPS tracker on Gus's car, Walt tipped Gus off to the tracker. Subsequently, Gus only put the tracker on his car whenever he was traveling between his house and Los Pollos Hermanos and took it off whenever he was going off to do shady business.
• Why was Gus not concerned about Hank putting a tracker on his car in Breaking Bad? Because he's been using trackers for years to monitor his men and knows all the tricks to deceive them.
• Jimmy demonstrates a very serious lack of stealth when he's inside Los Pollos Hermanos watching the drop man. But that was exactly why Mike recruited him for the job: Mike wants Gus to notice that the courier with the backpack is being followed. He knows Jimmy wouldn't be a discreet spy. Of course Mike didn't know Gus was behind it but he knew it was someone in the restaurant, given that the tracker was delivered there.
• The reason Victor gets killed in Breaking Bad is because of careless mistakes (getting seen by Gale's neighbors). By that logic, being a bit reckless and driving a flashy vehicle like a Cadillac Escalade seems like Victor exhibiting the same carelessness. But Gus had spotted Jimmy and Mike together and knew Mike would be watching. Victor's flashy entrance and exit were to make sure Mike noticed the tracker leaving the restaurant, to lure him to the offsite meeting. Mike still doesn't know who Gus is. So this time, Victor's carelessness was actually a deliberate distraction to lure Mike to the meeting.
• In the flash-forward opening to "Sunk Costs", we see the pair of shoes Mike had used to sprinkle the cocaine powder onto Hector's truck, aged from years of sun exposure, break and fall to the ground shortly after a Los Pollos Hermanos truck drives by. The fact that the shoes don't fall until after the Pollos truck drives by is indicative of how evasive Gus' syndicate is. All the evidence landed on Hector's truck, while Gus dodged it completely.
  • Also, the fact that the future scene has a Los Pollos Hermanos truck driving the exact same route as the Regalo Helado one suggests that the shoe stunt played a major role in Gus replacing Hector and the cartel as the major regional force in drug trafficking.
• In "Sabrosito", the parallel theme of Briar Patching is very noticeable in Jimmy's and Gus's storylines. Namely, Kim and Jimmy, and Gus are facing off against a powerful opponent (Chuck; Hector) who seemingly has a great advantage over them.
  • Kim tells Howard and Chuck that she's filing a motion to have the tape suppressed when she actually wants the tape to be played. Kim therefore tricks Chuck into admitting that Jimmy only destroyed a duplicate tape, and the original is still safe; therefore allowing them to expose that Jimmy was the victim of entrapment, which, when accompanied by the photographs they've hired Mike to take of Chuck's house, will turn the tables against Chuck. We know that Kim and Jimmy planned this when she says "Bingo!" to Jimmy after the conversation.
  • Meanwhile, Hector takes Los Pollos Hermanos hostage to intimidate Gus into carrying his drugs. Gus protests that "my trucks are already at maximum capacity" and acts like he has to give in to Hector's extortion efforts. What Hector doesn't know is that Gus is the whole reason why his supply line has been shut down. And we know that Gus planned this when he shoots that piece of garbage into the trash can and smiles.
• Chuck's insistence on adding the $2.98 cost of the cassette tape to the bill for Jimmy's break-in isn't merely pettiness — though it is that — it's also clever legal strategy to get that cassette tape on the record so it can be used in the bar hearing. Jimmy's written statement doesn't mention it, so Chuck brings it up. Howard, Jimmy, and Kim negotiate that to "destroyed a piece of the victim's personal property." Then Jimmy's spoken apology also carefully omits the act of property destruction. So the financial restitution agreement is the very last chance Chuck has to get the detail that a cassette tape was destroyed into the record, which will allow him to bring in the narrative of Jimmy destroying a taped confession. And from there Chuck can get the bar to listen to the confession itself to establish Jimmy's forgery, ensuring a swift disbarment. Of course, Jimmy and Kim are anticipating that, which is why they plan their strategy accordingly.
• The way Hector acts inside Los Pollos Hermanos, demanding to see Gus, insisting that he will stay, and then refusing to believe the staff or just not caring and barging right into Gus' office is very similar to what Walt does when he thinks Jesse's in danger. It's also interesting to note how Hector and Walt pose problems for Gus. In some ways, Walt really is no better than some actual Mexican drug lord, although whilst Hector does it out of wounded Pride, Walt does it out of desperation and concern for Jesse's safety.
• During Gus's Rousing Speech to his employees after Hector's extortion visit, he mentions that he opened his first Los Pollos Hermanos in Michoacán. Michoacán is a huge state for the drug trade, and many of the big narco families are michoacanas. A close observer of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul will notice that the cartel's cars tend to have Michoacán license plates. So all this time Gus has been dealing with a familia michoacana.
• In "Chicanery", the time when the clock in the courtroom is taken down before Chuck's testimony is 12:16 pm, one minute after 12:15 pm. Much like Chuck knows the '1216' address because it's one up from 1215, the year the Magna Carta was signed. In the Bible, Proverbs 12:15 is "The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice." Chuck (the fool) ends up playing into Jimmy's hand by disregarding Howard's suggestion that he not testify by believing that he personally has to strike the death blow to Jimmy's legal career. Jimmy (the wise) agrees to let Kim assist him rather than let him do this alone.
• The point of the Mesa Verde forgery was to humiliate Chuck and destroy his reputation by mixing up the numbers and blaming it on his condition. The exact same thing happens in "Chicanery" - it wasn't 1216, it was 1261. Only this time, Chuck actually did mess it up.
• The opening flashback to "Chicanery" establishes that Chuck had once asked Jimmy to help him hide his condition from Rebecca when she came over to dinner while stopping in town. The cover story they went for was that the utility company got an address wrong and accidentally shut off his utilities instead of someone else who had failed to pay his electric bills. The fact that they had done this "transpositional error" story once is the reason why Chuck instantly figured out what Jimmy did to sabotage him.
• It's small, but during his big rant Chuck says "stealing them blind" instead of the more commonly-used "robbing them blind". Stealing and robbery are technically different legal terms (robbery involves theft by use of threats or coercion, while stealing doesn't), so it's in character for Chuck to use the legally-correct version of the phrase.
• Jimmy exposing Chuck's EMS problems as being mental issues also provides the secondary benefit of showing his ex-wife, his business partner, and a lot of other people in the legal profession, that Chuck needs help. Now that Jimmy wants nothing to do with him, he's set up a laundry list of other people that hopefully have the collective care and funds to get him whatever he really needs.
• Chuck obviously knew Kim and Jimmy would go for how deceptive the tape was and even made sure to explain why it was not entrapment, however he was outsmarted thanks to his two blindspots: His self-diagnosed condition being wrong and his love for his brother being insincere, which after he gets provoked into his breakdown on the stand, makes the tape look like an unhinged dutiful son trying to scam his brother. Chuck couldn't prepare a defense for that since he always denied the possibilities he wanted to hurt his brother or there was something wrong in Chuck's head.
• Hector's anger towards Tuco having stabbed someone in prison becomes much more understandable when you recall that Hector thought that a short stint in prison would give Tuco some time to become less of a hothead and would prompt Tuco to think about the consequences of his actions more. So what does he do in his six months in the joint? Stabs somebody, not only earning himself years added on to his sentence but proving he's learned nothing.
• In "Expenses," Nacho initially goes easy on Krazy-8 for coming up short on payments, then—upon Hector's chiding—drags him back into the restaurant and beats him. Early in Season 1 of Breaking Bad, we learn that Krazy-8 was a DEA informant. It's not hard to imagine that said beatdown would provoke Krazy-8 to continue snitching well after his initial informant deal Saul made for him with the DEA in season 5 (as a tool for Lalo to disrupt Gus's operation) was up.
• After Victor is killed in Breaking Bad, Tyrus Kitt is introduced, and he's a lot colder to Walt and Jesse than Victor ever was. Better Call Saul reveals that Tyrus was already working with Victor for Gus at the start of Breaking Bad, so Tyrus's cold attitude towards Walt and Jesse is actually because he blames them for Victor's death, rather than only just because he's that kind of person.
• After Hector's stroke, Gus is talking on the phone with Bolsa. At the end of the meeting, he says that Bolsa wants to see Nacho, and he also instructs Nacho to drive. Later, after the meeting, we see Nacho throw the pills into the river from a remote bridge, and then we see that Victor is watching him and using a tracker. Gus had Nacho drive to the meeting because he was already planning on putting a tracker on his car; Victor installed it while Nacho was inside with Arturo. Or, since he sees Nacho as being useful to him in the long run, much like he'd done earlier with Mike, Gus had been planning to bug Nacho for a while, and Hector's stroke happened to be a convenient time to go through with it.
• At first, it seems odd that Jimmy could go from miserable at the knowledge of Chuck's death to being apparently cheerful upon learning that he was complicit in it. He comes off as needlessly spiteful towards Howard. But looking at the bigger picture, one could say that Jimmy actually had learned his lesson. The last time a broken man ever came to Jimmy professing guilt, it was Chuck. It was a manipulation tactic and it worked on Jimmy, tricking him into confessing to doctoring the Mesa Verde documents. Now Howard comes to him in much the same manner (albeit here, his profession of guilt is genuine as opposed to fake) and Jimmy is given the same choice: confess his guilt here too, which would probably ease the burden on Howard, or make the smart decision and clam up. Jimmy's telling himself, "Your pity for a broken man caused you to make a stupid decision last time, and you can't let that happen again." He may even think that Howard is trying to manipulate him in the same way Chuck had, so his "your cross to bear" line is his way of saying "I know what you're doing and fuck you."
• When Gus meets Gale in the college lab, Gale says he is working with certain benzodiazepines. Benzodiazepines are a class of medicine used to treat anxiety, such as Xanax and Valium. So he is working on trying to make a more potent Xanax.
• During the flash forward to Jimmy's "last day as Saul Goodman" during Breaking Bad, Francesca is shredding documents. Before she leaves, Jimmy tells her to drive at least five miles away from the office, and to throw out the trash in different dumpsters. Recall how in season 1, Jimmy easily found the shredded documents at Sandpiper, through which he and Chuck found the evidence for the Sandpiper lawsuit. Jimmy learned not to make such a mistake.
• At Jimmy's reinstatement hearing, when the bar committee asks Jimmy about keeping up with the law, he waxes rhapsodic about Crawford v. Washington, the Supreme Court case that reaffirmed the importance of confronting witnesses through cross-examination. The process in which the lawyer for the other side has the right to ask the witness hostile or clarifying questions that the witness has to answer under oath. The process through which Jimmy basically destroyed Chuck at the disciplinary hearing. So, by getting so excited about Crawford, Jimmy was either consciously or sub-consciously defending and celebrating what he did to Chuck. That would've been what they considered "insincerity".
• The fact that Werner's dad worked on the Sydney Opera House is a glaring red flag in hindsight about Werner's liability status: much like the lab Werner is building, the architect of the Sydney Opera House never lived to see his project completed. To this date, it's considered one of the worst project management failures of all time. It came in 10 years late, 14 times over budget, the architect never saw it completed, and the project manager never worked on another project in his career.
• Anita, the widow at the grief support group, talks with Mike about her husband Alan going missing and the police recovering their car. In the next episode, Mike is calling in the dead Samaritan's body from the payphone of a gas station called Allen's Automotive, Inc.
• Mike's infiltrating the Madrigal facility and exposing all of its faults and flaws may seem a bit irrelevant at first. But it helps to place Gus and Lydia's operation in context—a company that fails this hard at basic safety and security procedures sure as hell isn't going to notice that some of their employees are using it to traffic drugs and launder money.
• The idle banter about Bruce Lee vs. Muhammad Ali by the Madrigal employees parallels with the fight Mike had with Tuco. Tuco would be Ali in this situation since he's a boxer (or thinks he's one) that uses brute force. Mike on the other hand is like Bruce Lee in that they are both combat pragmatists and had his own Bruce Lee moments (quickly disarming Sobchak and hitting him in the throat with it). When he asked if Bruce Lee had a gun in this hypothetical fight, he was reflecting on how despite Mike being a capable fighter, he still got roughed up badly by Tuco and in hindsight it would have been easier to have just shot him.
• In "Wiedersehen", we are given the origins of Hector's bell. He tortured the owner of a hotel for "disrespecting" him. Note that hotels are ideal business fronts for laundering money, and before his stroke, Hector was complaining about Nacho's father disrespecting him when he refused to work for him smuggling drugs and money. Putting two and two together paints a very clear picture of what happened (Lalo's retelling of the story even describes a similar attitude between Manuel Varga and the hotel owner) and makes Nacho's decision to go on the offensive against Hector very understandable.
• Mike's self-destruction after killing Werner on the orders of Gus creates an interesting parallel to Jesse's self destructing after killing Gale on the orders of Walt. This might very well be partially why Mike felt compelled to help Jesse in Breaking Bad and take to being a father figure to him, as he went through the same thing.
• In his final moments, Werner pleading for Mike to let him speak with Gus more or less mirrors the scene in the season 3 finale of Breaking Bad where Walt begs Mike to let him call Jesse when he realizes Mike and Victor are about to kill him, right down to even asking for a chance to speak to Gus. But unlike Werner, Mike has no reservations about eliminating Walt, whose constant efforts to save Jesse's ass despite Mike's explicit warning to the contrary at the White residence had made him too much of a liability. With Werner, Mike tries in vain to convince Gus to consider an alternative option first as Werner is a well-intentioned hard worker who underestimated Gus's villainous nature because of his fairness and financial generosity over the course of the project, compared to Walt, who was fully conscious of Gus's lethal capabilities from very early on and was far superior to Werner in terms of critical thinking. While Werner and Walt both appear to be pleading to speak to Gus on borrowed time, only Werner's request was genuine as Walt's begging was merely a ploy designed to get in touch with Jesse by phone and tell him to kill Gale. Which explains why Mike reacts the way he does when he realizes what Walt is up to.
• How is Saul able to accurately predict to Walt that he'll end up managing a Cinnabon in Omaha? For starters, the owner of that particular Cinnabon is in the game. The real Gene Takavic was a guy so far in over his head in gambling debts he could never pay off, and was killed for it. Gene had no one, no friends, no family, no one who'd miss him or find it unusual that he'd not been in touch. He made his money remotely, or maybe living off some kind of windfall. Either way, the police have no reason to believe he is dead. So when the real Gene is killed, the identity is kept alive in the record books to sell to people like the vacuum guy. And when Ed needs to set up a new life for a client, people like the owner of the Cinnabon can, for a price, provide the client a landing spot. Saul must have paid extra to make sure that he'd end up in a solid landing place, not a free-but-uncertain future like Jesse Pinkman's. And when Saul opts to disappear, he watches a few Cinnabon training videos, the owner fires or reassigns the current manager, then brings in Saul, introducing him to the rest of the crew. Nothing suspicious.
• Notice how, whenever someone tries to insinuate Kim is being manipulated by Jimmy, they end up pressing Kim's Berserk Button. And you can kinda see her point. The only people who have said this to her are entitled, towering figures in the legal or banking community, people who have had lots of help getting to the top. Howard, for example, literally just got handed his job from his dad right out of law school. Kevin Wachtell ("This Goodman, McGill character.. whatever. Kim, you could do a hell of a lot better.") was pretty much the same, since his father was the one who started Mesa Verde. Chuck less so, because the McGills weren't rich, and Kim proved she was basically equal to him by being smart and working hard, though still presumably dealing with sexism along the way that Chuck didn't have to deal with. Meanwhile, Kim had to struggle and claw to get where she is, and she's been falling out of love with mainstream corporate law for some time, given how much time is wasted on boring legal work that doesn't help normal people. The whole Acker arc is Mesa Verde throwing an entire team of lawyers at getting an old man kicked out of his house, instead of just taking the loss and moving on to the other available lot. Imagine how many more important cases got ignored because they were too busy doing that. It's tone deaf for Howard to suggest the only reason Kim would leave that environment is if she were tricked or manipulated. Plus, nobody ever says that Jimmy must've been tricked or manipulated into quitting Davis & Main. Because Jimmy is widely viewed as a conman at heart, so everyone concludes that it must have been his own fault. Meanwhile, Kim is seen as an angel at heart, so it can never possibly be her fault when she makes questionable choices. That sort of thought process inherently robs her of agency, because to these men, either Kim sticks with "the program" and wastes her life away in a corporate office, or she'll be known as the woman who was sadly seduced by the conman. There's no scenario where the legal system itself gets questioned, for throwing so many ordinary people under the bus, and any public defenders with actual skill is actively looking to leave for a cushy corporate job like Kim's, so the public is left with lawyers who are overworked and tired. Anyone who doesn't stick with the established system must be deluded or dumb.
• Ever since Nacho admitted to his father that he was working with the Salamancas, Manuel has wanted his son to find the quickest exit out of the criminal underworld. When it became clear that Nacho couldn't simply just quit, and wanted to flee to a new identity in Canada with his father, Manuel told him to turn himself into the police, and that there was nothing else to consider. But Manuel seems to know who the Salamancas are, and has at least some idea of how powerful and dangerous they are. Unless he's very naive, he probably also knows that Nacho going to the police won't actually result in the Salamancas getting arrested, and will probably end with him and Nacho both dead. Yet, he continues to insist that Nacho must do it, implying that he has no interest in even having a relationship with him until he does. Even though going to the police is going to cause disaster and is unlikely to result in anything positive, it's still the right thing to do, and is the only action he can take at this point that has any honor or respect for the law. In other words, let justice be done, though the heavens fall.
• In Breaking Bad, Gus says that he does not believe fear is an effective motivator when trying to court Walt, yet we see in this series that intimidation is pretty much all he uses to motivate Nacho to be his mole a few years prior (murdering Arturo right in front of Nacho, threatening his father if he doesn't produce results). Many have noticed this inconsistency, and it doesn't really make sense...until the events of "Rock and Hard Place". Gus's treatment of Nacho ends up nearly ruining his plans and getting him killed when Nacho manages to escape the hotel alive after realizing that Gus intends to dispose of him. Under normal circumstances, Nacho would either try to run away (which Nacho even mentions will leave the Cartel highly suspicious of Gus, just because they'll want someone to pin it on), or do something incredibly risky to secure either his safety or the safety of his father, like sell Gus out to the Cartel. The only reason why Nacho doesn't do either is because he loves his father too much to just hang him out to dry, and he trusts Mike to keep his word on keeping his father safe. So, this experience educates Gus on the value of developing trust with underlings, which is why he attempts to do this diplomatically with Walt. What happened with Nacho taught Gus that fear isn't an effective motivator.
• It has been widely noted that every single man present at Nacho's death in "Rock and Hard Place" will himself be dead within a few years due to the events of Breaking Bad. However, only two of them manage to come close to meeting their death on their own terms: Nacho and Hector. Everyone is trapped between the rock and the hard place of the title, but it is ironically the two people present who have the least power within the situation who end up having the most say over what happens to them; everyone else has their fate decided by someone else.^SpecificallyBolsa will be assassinated by the Federales thanks to Gus's machinations, Gus will cut Victor's throat, Mike will poison Leonel in the hospital after Hank gravely wounds him and kills his brother, Hector will kill himself, Gus and Tyrus with a bomb supplied to him by Walt, and Walt will shoot Mike dead.
• "Hit and Run" and "Point and Shoot" establish why Walt's attempt to shoot Gus at his house in "Thirty-Eight Snub" was foiled. Gus has surveillance cameras set up all around the house that are being monitored from an adjacent house connected to it via an underground tunnel. They saw Walt coming, giving them plenty of time to call him and order him to go home.
• The way each Gene opening ends foreshadows how that season ends, as well as a general theme of the season:
  • Season 1: Jimmy wants to be respected.
  • Season 2: Jimmy is crooked. He needs to decide on which side of the law is he going to be on. (Gene leaves behind "SG" on the wall when no one is looking. Chuck secretly tapes Jimmy's confession to the address switch.)
  • Season 3: Jimmy is a criminal. (Particular note: in the end of the Gene scene, Gene collapses at work, mirroring the final scene in Season 3 where Chuck kills himself by burning down his house)
  • Season 4: Jimmy is running/hiding away.
  • Season 5: Jimmy is torn away/in a tunnel/in transformation
• Howard shows a new employee a trick to defuse soda that has been shaken up to prevent it from exploding. Howard then explains that Chuck taught it to him. Chuck most likely had to learn it because Jimmy kept screwing with his soda.
• In "Plan and Execution", it's revealed that a virtual small army has been put together by Mike to fight against Lalo. On the face of it this seems absurd, but when it is considered that Lalo took out a dozen or so would-be assassins a few episodes prior, and in that case he wasn't anticipating it, it makes sense.
• In "Plan and Execution", it seems strange that Mike and Gus didn't notice anything off about Lalo's call to Hector (Lalo's call suddenly gets disconnected while he's on hold, he calls back a minute later claiming he lost connection, and blatantly tells Hector he's going to target Gus tonight) and they believe every word he said. It's possible that whoever was listening in on the call only gave Mike the part of the call where Lalo was speaking to Hector and Mike gave that specific recording to Gus. Had they both known the full context of the call, they might have realized that Lalo knows that his call is bugged and he was tricking them.
• Among the things that Howard's had to deal with recently were debt and his marriage falling apart for the better part of a year. He's still recovering financially from using his own funds to buy out Chuck from HHM in "Lantern." And what's a leading cause of marriage failure? Money issues, especially if millions are suddenly removed from a couple's bank account with little or no consultation.
• Mike’s palpable contempt for Saul makes more sense in light of “Point and Shoot”. Part of Mike's code of honor is that people who are "in the game" are acceptable targets, but getting innocents killed is out of bounds. Howard never set foot in the criminal world, but Jimmy's actions ended up getting him killed anyway.
  • Additionally, season 3 established that Mike seems particularly affected by the notion of someone just disappearing, their body never being found, and their family never knowing what happened to them. This was the big reason why he decided to undertake locating the body of the dead Samaritan that Hector killed for stumbling upon the aftermath of Mike's truck heist. The fact that Howard's body would never be found was an additional pain point for him, and he went out of his way to make sure that his family would at least have an explanation.
• The way Gus resolves his feud with Lalo by baiting him into discovering the superlab, then killing him in it, is also the root of the biggest flaw that leads to his downfall during his feud with Walt in Breaking Bad. Despite having all the cards when Walt comes along, Gus dies because he has become complacent and over-confident...the very flaws Lalo had that Gus had been able to exploit in order to take him out. Lalo was someone who made Gus fear for his life to the point that he was on the brink of losing it. After defeating someone like that, Gus was likely convinced he could take out any one of his future enemies. Not only would this be the reason he gets outsmarted by Walt, but his personally killing Lalo also informs why he would perform moves as risky as the ones he performs in Breaking Bad like setting the Cousins up to go after Hank and tipping Hank off about the planned assassination, or taking out the cartel leadership by poisoning Don Eladio and his capos in one go. And why he felt the need to personally kill Hector (which ended up being what sealed his fate).
• "Fun and Games" has Manuel Varga tear down Mike's worldview of there being such a thing as 'good criminals', telling him that he's not any better than the Salamancas, and Mike seems affected by it. This scene is the last time we see Mike before the Breaking Bad timeline, by which time Mike is noticeably nastier and colder to everyone around him, as well as much more obedient to Gus. It seems possible that Mike took Manuel's words to heart, but it caused him to just go deeper into his turn to villainy, as if he realized he really wasn't better than any other criminal and may as well just own it, since he can't just walk away from his commitment to Gus.
• The leap into the Breaking Bad timeline at the end of “Fun and Games” carries more resonance considering it comes right after Kim leaves; with her gone, there’s no reason for Jimmy McGill to stick around.
  • In addition, our re-introduction to Saul Goodman mirrors Jimmy’s intro in the pilot — standing in front of a bathroom mirror and animatedly practicing his defense speech.
• "Breaking Bad" continues a central theme of, well, Breaking Bad by deconstructing Evil Pays Better. Both series suggest that while it's possible to make huge amounts of money through illegal economies like drug dealing, eventually this itself becomes a problem in that the sums being made gradually become impractically large and impossible to conceal from the authorities without exposure. However, both demonstrate this from different directions; while Breaking Bad shows this by having Walter White eventually find himself with a ridiculously huge pile of cash that's ultimately useless to him because he's unable to spend it in any practical way, "Breaking Bad" reveals that all the complex money-laundering schemes and shell companies within shell companies that Saul sets up to try and conceal his ill-gotten gains ultimately had dick-all effect once the government took an active interest in his financial dealings, because it turns out they've gotten very good at investigating and finding illegal money. Evil Pays Better for a short while, but ultimately one man is left with too much money that he can't actually spend without drawing attention to himself, and the other is left with practically nothing.
• Gus insists that Los Pollos Hermanos only uses fresh ingredients, and that using frozen chicken would destroy his business. In "JMM" he literally uses a frozen chicken to ignite the fryer to blow up the Los Pollos Hermanos building.
• Marion exposes Saul Goodman by using her Life Alert device to call the authorities. The Life Alert company has been the subject of numerous lawsuits over the years, with many claiming that they misrepresent their services and take advantage of their elderly customers by over-charging them. To put that another way, Saul Goodman's law career began with him accusing a company of scamming the elderly, and a product created by a company accused of scamming the elderly ended up being his undoing.
• In "Saul Gone", Walter White's final appearance in the Breaking Bad universe involves him talking down to and dismissing Saul's intelligence and abilities, sneering that Saul is the last lawyer he would have chosen to approach had he decided to sue Grey Matter for a larger share of the profits as Saul suggests. So it's quite fitting that, as one of his last acts as Saul Goodman, Jimmy makes it clear that for all the myth of the legendary Heisenberg, Walter White was actually completely out of his depth for the most part and it was only because he had Saul in his corner that he didn't end up dead or in prison after a month or two. A final fuck-you, as it were.
  • It also calls out to the fact that the stories told about other people are often Written by the Winners. In Breaking Bad, we got to see Walter go out in a blaze of glory and settling all his Unfinished Business before dying on his own terms, pointedly seconds before he could be arrested and in a time and place of his choosing, leaving Walt satisfied despite everything. Here, Jimmy lays out the unflattering facts about them both as part of his moral victory and redemption from being 'Saul Goodman', something that would have enraged Walt to hear had he still been alive, and ends his story triumphant and satisfied despite his losses, feeling like a 'winner' at long last precisely because he was finally made to face justice for his misdeeds, and also getting to frame his perspective of the fearsome 'Heisenberg' as being was less competent and fearsome than his reputation made him out to be. The Winner Takes It All.
  • Walt was an Escapist Character who became a criminal and was successful in his 'happy ending' because he was never caught. Jimmy started out as a struggling lawyer trying to be honest despite his mistakes and gets his happy ending when he's finally fully honest and owns up to everything, getting the full consequences he was able to avoid before thanks to his charisma and manipulation skills. He even proves that he was capable of manipulating his sentence down to just seven years before ensuring that he instead gets to full unbiased sentence the law judges him for, both to prove that he's still a good lawyer as well as the fact that he's finally 'good' again.
• Also, as an addendum for the above entry, Saul Goodman is such a good lawyer, he talked his way into an easy seven-year sentence. However, as Jimmy, he decides that enough was enough and admits to everything, giving himself essentially a life sentence, but he made damn sure to tell the prosecutors that it's on his terms, not theirs. They caught him, but they couldn't do much more than the seven years, and even then, in luxury. Only one man was capable of getting Saul Goodman/Jimmy put away for good, and that was himself.
• "Saul Gone" likewise contextualizes Walt’s decision to leave Jesse’s watch behind in "Felina" –– As implied in the bunker conversation, Walt’s true greatest regret was something involving Jesse, so him removing the watch symbolizes his desire to die with no regrets.
• Both Jesse and Walt's final scenes in the show and the franchise comes from them having a conversation with their respective counterpart on Better Call Saul, shortly before said counterpart leaves the story and the criminal lifestyle of the 'present' for good. Even when Gene becomes 'Viktor' afterwards, his scams are of a noticeably different and more self-destructive sort than Saul's professional schemes, and all that gets left behind forever whenever he becomes 'Gene'.
• The show has two overarching 'villains' that affect Jimmy through the duel narratives of the criminal and legal world — Chuck McGill as the 'invokedlegal' villain, and Lalo Salamanca as the 'criminal' villain. In both cases, the biggest impact they both leave on Jimmy that contribute towards turning him into Saul comes from the actions they took whilst alive hurting him emotionally in different ways, and their deaths afterwards leaving him without any means of getting closure, resulting in him gradually becoming 'Saul Goodman' to cope with his guilt and self-loathing
• The Colour Motif of this series is yellow, as contrasted with "Breaking Bad's" Green and '"El Camino's" Red. One gets the colour Green from mixing Blue into it, as in the 'Blue Sky' product Walt created that drove the plot of the original series, referencing how chemical reactions and interactions were deeply entwined in the plot of that series. One could also see this as both Red and Yellow being 'pure' whilst the Green is 'Dirty' from being mixed from separate colours. The events of Breaking Bad were incredibly destructive for everybody involved in them, ending in the death of its main protagonist and the protagonists of the other two winding up worse off overall from having associated with him. However, in their separate 'pure' colour-based stories, they ultimately each retake control of their lives in the aftermath and manage different forms of redemption whilst carrying the consequences of their actions with them regardless, showing how both Jesse and Jimmy were ultimately more morally pure than Walter White in the end.
• Jimmy ends the series by basically doing exactly what he advised Walt to do in "Granite State"—turn himself in, face the music, and enjoy his status as a prison celebrity so the woman he loves is out of legal danger.
  • And despite confessing to his role in Chuck’s death, Jimmy’s confession also serves as one last "Fuck you" to his brother—he proved he can change.
• Now that both Jimmy and Kim have disclosed what actually happened to Howard to those in charge, there's a non-zero chance Howard's body will get discovered by the ones investigating Walt and Los Pollos Hermanos due to Mike and Gus both being major players and the superlab already being discovered, and his name will get cleared from the scam Jimmy and Kim pulled on him.
• When Cary, the intern who is stocking the fridge for the Sandpiper arbitration, says that he hopes someone says he's the "greatest legal mind I ever knew" much like Howard says while describing Chuck, Howard replies, "Well, maybe there are more important things." At first, it does seem like Howard is throwing some shade at Cary's legal abilities, but if anything, he's actually referring to Chuck and his legacy. Had Chuck not been so adamant about not letting go of his law career, Howard wouldn't have had to forcibly retire him to save the firm. Moreover, the whole exchange highlights that while Howard still has his respect for Chuck's legal acumen, he also still very well remembers the malicious and spiteful person that Chuck turned into with his obsession with the law, which ultimately alienated him from all of his friends and family and culminated in him dying alone. So Howard's telling Cary to strive to be a good lawyer, but not to let his desire to leave a lasting legacy consume him.

Fridge Horror

• The revelations at the end of "Pimento" have far-reaching repercussions not only for the rest of the show, but for Jimmy/Saul's portrayal on Breaking Bad. Whenever one watches the latter show, one can actually imagine Chuck's brutal "The Reason You Suck" Speech echoing throughout Saul's mind on a daily basis, reminding him that he is, and forever shall be, Slippin' Jimmy. That will certainly make all of those comic one-liners and amusing cowardice on Breaking Bad play a little different in the re-watch.
• Mike's daughter-in-law took her husband's death poorly, understandably, and reacts to newspapers being dropped like it was gunfire (showrunner Melissa Bernstein confirmed that Stacey has been suffering from PTSD). Since most viewers have hindsight to know about Mike's future, how do you suppose Stacey's going to handle Mike's death or for that matter, Mike's involvement with Gus and Walt?
• The revelation of Mike setting up Tuco to go to jail has some other disturbing implications: stuff that would have caused him to go postal on people in Breaking Bad only mildly annoys him in Better Call Saul. Tuco's time in prison can't have been too good for his mental health.
• There is something worth noting about Mike's expression after Hector offered the bribe. It's the realization that he's been under cartel surveillance all this time. It's all on Mike, thinking about his belated son, feeling the backlash on agreeing to take out Tuco. Now he's caught between a rock and a hard place. Mike can also see who he's dealing with, knowing a hitman when he sees it. Hector's perforated vision demonstrated in the coffee cup. Mike is probably feeling he got way in over his head by agreeing to take out Tuco.
• The scene at the courthouse where Mike gives his amended testimony has some disturbing implications when the DA immediately accuses Mike of being bought off by Hector. It's clear that this is not the first time a witness against Tuco suddenly backed out or changed their testimony. It indicates that the Salamancas have a history of bribing, threatening, or killing off witnesses in cases against them.
• The theme of collateral damage in "Nailed" makes you think there can't have been fallout from the shooting of Jimmy's videos for the school teachers, more likely and harshly the military officers at the Air Force base who let the "Fudge" commercial proceed. The fact that it was shot no more than a year or two after 9/11 makes that breach a strong offense that could get them busted down a rank, spend time in the brig or even face court martial...
• There are some pretty disturbing implications about things Mike does in Breaking Bad that can be drawn from the truck heist:
  • Mike learns that because he spared the driver, an innocent motorist came along and cut him loose. Hector took him out into the desert and shot him in the face point-blank, then buried him in an unmarked grave. This I bring up because of Mike's "half-measures" speech to Walt. He said that he got a domestically abused wife killed because he took a "half-measure" (threatened the abuser) instead of a "full measure" (kill the abuser). It's the same logic that can be applied to the truck heist: an innocent bystander is dead because Mike took a "half-measure" (spare the driver) instead of a "full measure" (kill the driver). The fact that Hector had the driver killed anyways later doesn't help it either.
  • In the Breaking Bad episode "Dead Freight," when Team Heisenberg robbed the freight train of methylamine, Mike said beforehand "there are two kinds of heists: those where the guys get away with it, and those that leave witnesses." In the context of the episode itself, it foreshadows Todd Alquist gunning down Drew Sharp for stumbling upon the train heist. Knowing about Mike's truck heist, you suddenly realize that Mike must have been drawing from his experience.
• Something that's only noticeable when you consider that each BCS character is an analogue of a Breaking Bad character. In this case, Jimmy is a milder version of Walter White. Consider that Walt transformed into a power hungry bastard who killed people and destroyed the bonds he had with his family. It made me realize that in the time between BCS and Breaking Bad, Jimmy may not have killed anyone directly, but could have developed attributes that end up making everyone resent him in the end. Consider that with the exception of Mike, literally no one from the cast appears in Breaking Bad with Jimmy. That tells me that Jimmy must've burnt every bridge he had by his own volition.
• Once Mike realizes that there's a tracker on his car, a couple moments in season 2 start to make more sense: it explains how the Cousins were able to find Mike at the motel, or how Hector was able to find his house to begin with.
• In episode two of Breaking Bad's third season, "Caballo Sin Nombre", when Saul comes to visit Walt at the Beachcomber (where Walt is staying after Skyler kicked him out), Saul tells him that there's no way Skyler tells the police that he's a meth cook. Walt tells him that's not the point. But this exchange happens that has some added meaning when you consider the deterioration of Jimmy's relationship with Chuck and the end of "Witness", as well as his marriage to Kim falling apart after Howard's death:
  Walt: She's out of my life. Do you understand? I've lost my family. Everything that I care about.
  Saul: Hey, buddy. It's bad. It's a calamity. Oh, my God. But we live to fight another day.
  • There's a look, the tiniest look of regret on Saul's face after Walt admits this, that he lost his family. That look registers something - if only for a second - as if Walt's words remind him of Chuck and Kim.
• During the group meetings, Mike makes clear that he hates the idea of somebody disappearing without his loved ones knowing anything about it. It's hinted at with his explanation of why he wanted to avenge the murder of the good Samaritan, and moreso with his conversations with Anita in "Expenses". This draws two parallels to Breaking Bad. The first is that Mike hesitated when Lydia asked him to not bury her so that her daughter could find her body. And what happened to the Good Samaritan and Anita's husband is exactly the fate that befalls Mike: he disappeared and no one knew what happened to him.
• The first few episodes of season 3 reveal that Gus tracks all "persons of interest" around him, and how he does it. This explains a lot of things in Breaking Bad: it explains how Gus knew where Walt was all the time, including when Walt showed up at his house to kill him. The fact that he had intentionally wrecked his Aztec, to avoid showing the laundry to Hank, and he ended up driving a rental car (the white Toyota Yaris), is the only reason that Gus was not able to track him in those final, crucial moments, when Walt was collaborating with Hector.
• It's revealed, in season 3, that Gus refuses to allow Hector to die under any circumstances. In Breaking Bad, Gus forces Hector to see the downfall of the cartel and his entire family, still refusing to let him die. That's one of the cruelest things that can happen to a person.
  Gus: A bullet to the head would have been far too humane.
• In season 4, ADA Ericsen throws the book at Huell for relatively minor crime (hitting a cop with a grocery bag, not realizing he's a cop because he had headphones on). When confronted by Kim about it, Ericsen makes reference to Huell being a thug working for a "scumbag disbarred lawyer". Ericsen was the same ADA who was trying to prosecute Tuco, and Jimmy was the one representing Mike when he recanted his original testimony. It makes sense that she'd assume he was a corrupt and unethical lawyer, and when she learned his license was suspended and he wound up selling drop phones to criminals, her suspicions were confirmed. Every dodgy thing Jimmy's done seems to come back to haunt him eventually. One wonders if Kim's big scam was a way of getting back at Ericsen for the insults.
• One of Nacho's girls, Nikki, disappears after her first appearance. While hopefully she cleaned up and left him, how more likely is it that she overdosed offscreen and died?
• There are many hints that Jimmy still thinks of Chuck throughout Season 4 and Season 5.
  • Jimmy applying for a job at certain businesses could be influenced by the instances of him gaslighting Chuck. While he could have taken a job at any other business, he first tries to land a job at Neff Copiers, recalling the role a copy shop had with his forging of Chuck's Mesa Verde documents. Later, Jimmy fixates on CC Mobile and makes a business selling burners, possibly from a subconscious recollection of Chuck's meltdown over a cellphone and its battery during the Bar Association hearing.
  • In "Coushatta," part of Jimmy's scheme to get Huell a better deal is to make him out to be a local hero in his community. One of his improvised stories to ADA Ericson is that, one night, Huell managed to save several congregants from a sudden fire. Given season 4's theme of dealing with grief, it's likely that Jimmy conceived that story from a place of mourning or regret over Chuck's fate.
  • Happens again in "Winner," where he tries to take his mind off of Chuck and anything that could be attributed to him when trying to win the Bar Association's favor. He dislikes the library made honoring Chuck and pitches trying to save Judge Papadoumian from a fire, likely carrying the same implied meaning as the church fire story.
  • "Winner" also has him recite the last thing Chuck ever said to him when discussing how he and Christy Esposito will never be looked at in a good light because their past mistakes will follow them forever: "You never really mattered all that much to me/them."
  • In "JMM," his long and angry rant at Howard starts with him trying to pile more guilt on about Chuck's death and ends with him yelling that lightning bolts shoot from his fingertips. He could be subconsciously labeling himself as Chuck's worst enemy in referencing his supposed electromagnetic hypersensitivity.
  • The most obvious one is in "Bagman," in which he refuses to take a space blanket from Mike to keep himself warm in the desert, since he associates the space blanket with Chuck's illness. When he eventually takes one, it's to use it to his advantage, and he sheds it once it's no longer of any use in that moment.
• In the opening to season 5, Gene finds out he's been made and makes a call to get relocated again, only to find the price is doubled. Several reasons for the hike include:
  • Given how difficult and pricey it was to make Saul disappear, it's going to take another round to do it again, AND a new disappearance for Gene.
  • Gene's been put in a dull life, where most people wouldn't even bother to look at him for long. And still, he's been made.
  • After Walter White broke his new character to return to Albuquerque and make a spectacular death. Presumably, the fixer had to work to cover his own involvement in Walt's flight from authorities. As Saul is the one who introduced White to the fixer, Saul is partly responsible for any troubles the fixer had due to Walt.
  • Saul complained that he had to spend all his money to disappear. While this turns out not to be true, everything we see still shows that it was expensive. Since Gene's calling on the fixer again, he's tipping the fixer off that he still has at least as much money as before. Oops.
  • Jesse inconvenienced him pretty badly during El Camino, and this is Ed's way of getting back at Saul for connecting him to Walt and Jesse in the first place.
• Imagine how betrayed Saul must feel when Mike violently threatens him in Breaking Bad Season 3. After all that they have been through together in this series, Saul would definitely think of Mike as someone he can fully trust. Imagine thinking of someone as your close friend, only for it to turn out that you no longer matter much to them and they will seriously hurt you to get what they want.
  • It can be observed that Jimmy and Mike's relationship deteriorates throughout the series. Mike sees their situation as professional honorable criminals, but Jimmy tends to think of him as a friend more, much like he will with Walt. As Mike gets closer into becoming Gus' right-hand man, he separates from Jimmy's job offers more while Jimmy also shapes up into a proper Amoral Attorney. With there being a four-year gap between Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad, one wonders if their constant drifting apart seriously worsened when both of them delved deeper into the game with further unseen ventures. Maybe more years of "Saul's" various, constant antics would sour Mike's view of him.
• The April Fools' Day Mockumentary video released by CNBC features several characters being interviewed about their pasts with Jimmy, including ADA Oakley, ADA Ericsen, Rich Schweikart, and Craig and Betsy Kettleman. Since they apparently took to great pains to get the actors together and get the continuity right, we can infer that this is meant to be canon. Among other things mentioned is Jimmy's beginnings with HHM and his brief career with Davis & Main, but notably Kim (Jimmy's wife), Howard (Jimmy's boss at HHM) and Cliff Main (Jimmy's boss at Davis & Main, who appears in the Season 6 trailer) are absent. This implies that each of these characters are either ruined thanks to their ties to Jimmy or have met a rather sticky end. Certainly not a good development for fans concerned about whether Kim will survive, especially given what happened to Howard.
• In "Fun and Games" Schweikart tells Kim and Jimmy that HHM is downsizing, moving locations and changing its name. That means that Cary, the nervous new intern that Howard showed Chuck's can rotating trick to on his last day on Earth was definitely let go.

---