Better Call Saul, S1 Recap: Home Is Where the Nail Salon Is

“Who TF is this?”
– me, every time I start a new season of a TV series.

So I’m going to rewatch and recap the series before the finale in August.

The year is 2002, six years before Breaking Bad, and Saul Goodman is Jimmy McGill

Jimmy’s a struggling lawyer, mostly chasing public defender works for $700. As he notes, the colour of his car’s door is not even the same as the rest of its body. And his law office, also his living quarters, is a tiny room behind the supply closet in a nail salon. We are officially back in the land of Vince Gilligan, in awe with the details of his work.


The Kettlemans

The Kettlemans, who eventually become his clients, describe Jimmy as “the kind of lawyer guilty people hire.” Craig Kettleman is guilty, of course, of embezzling $1.6m of public money. Shopping for lawyers and pursued by Jimmy, they choose Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill (HHM), and the case is handled by Kim Wexler, Jimmy’s longtime best friend.


The skater twins, the con and Tuco Salamanca

If luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, Jimmy is the magnet for the bad ones. On the phone while driving, he accidentally hits one of the skater twins, who are actually conning him and demanding $500 for the injury. But it doesn't take long for Jimmy to sniff it out. “The only way that entire car is worth $500 is that there’s a $300 hooker sitting in it,” he yells. Lmao.

Jimmy’s desperate to get the Kettlemans as his clients, so he goes back to the twins, proposing a collaboration. The plan is for the twins to con Betsy Kettleman with their usual fake accident, then Jimmy will appear during the commotion and help her – and win the Kettlemans over. This essentially launches the chain of events that will span six seasons of BCS, five seasons of BB and one Netflix movie, so far.

The twins get the wrong car and definitely threaten the wrong person. Turns out, the driver of the car is Tuco Salamanca’s grandmother. Jimmy and the twins are brought to the desert for what could only be one thing. And this is the first time we meet Nacho, Tuco’s right-hand man, who reasons with Tuco not to kill Jimmy. Jimmy doesn’t have the heart to leave the screaming twins to be killed by Tuco, so he pleads for the lightest punishment for the twins: a broken leg for each of them.


Chuck, Howard and HHM

Jimmy’s brother Chuck is a partner at HHM. He has not left his house for over a year now and has been living with no electricity since, claiming he’s suffering from ‘electromagnetic hypersensitivity’.

Despite Jimmy’s helping with Chuck’s daily life, Chuck’s condescending towards Jimmy. He takes out Jimmy’s business card that reads "JMM", asking Jimmy to change it to something else because it’s similar to HHM. “Wouldn’t you rather build your own identity? Why ride on someone else’s coattails?” he asks.

Chuck lands himself in the hospital at one point. The doctor treating him advises Jimmy to commit Chuck and says that his condition is psychological. But Jimmy’s loyalty is ultimately towards Chuck. He’ll do whatever Chuck wants him to do, which is to bring Chuck home.

From the flashbacks, we learn that Chuck got Jimmy out of jail a few years earlier and got him a job at HHM’s mail room. When Jimmy eventually passed the bar through the legendary University of American Samoa online law programme, Chuck didn’t look impressed and seemed to be the person behind rejecting Jimmy’s application to be a lawyer at HHM.

This brings us to Howard Hamlin, Chuck’s partner at HHM. Angry at Howard, Jimmy buys a billboard ad, copying images of Howard and HHM. When ordered to bring the ad down, he stages rescuing the worker at the site for publicity. The coverage brings him new clients. Most of the works are not viable, but one opens up a door for him to elder law and, soon, a class action against Sandpiper Crossing Assisted Living for defrauding its residents.

Jimmy gets help from Chuck at first for the Sandpiper case. Then when it gets bigger, they have no choice but to bring it to HHM. Jimmy is offered a decent compensation for his work, but Chuck also makes sure Jimmy’s no longer working on the case. Jimmy eventually takes the deal but says he’ll no longer be looking after Chuck.


Mike Ehrmantraut

The first time Mike’s on screen, he’s the courthouse’s parking attendant. Mike and Jimmy have never been the best of friends since the day they met, often arguing over Jimmy’s always short of cash or free parking stickers.

Mike gets a second job from The Vet to help his daughter-in-law Stacey with money, being a bodyguard to Pryce who sells stolen medicine to Nacho.

But all of that is not the biggest thing we learn about him; it’s his backstory.


Nacho Varga

Pleading for his life to Tuco in the desert, Jimmy blurts out about the Kettlemans' money, which is caught by Nacho. He later wants Jimmy to help him steal the money, which Jimmy refuses. Jimmy worries about the Kettlemans' safety and warns them anonymously. The family goes missing the next day, and Nacho is arrested because his van was seen in the neighbourhood. He asks for Jimmy as his lawyer and threatens Jimmy’s life if Jimmy doesn’t get him out by the end of the day.

On the same day, Jimmy gets into a physical altercation with Mike. The police use that as an excuse to arrest Jimmy and pin Nacho. But Mike drops the charges when he hears Jimmy’s rambling about the Kettlemans kidnapping themselves. Mike later tells Jimmy his theory: the Kettlemans are still in the neighbourhood.

Jimmy tracks the Kettlemans, who are pretending to be camping in the woods with the money. They plead with Jimmy not to turn them in. Jimmy caves and accepts a $30k bribe.

Kim gets Craig a deal with the DA that requires the Kettlemans to return the money and Craig to do some jail time, which the couple refuses, so they fire HHM and go to Jimmy.

Jimmy asks them to go back to Kim at HHM and take the deal, and when they still refuse, Jimmy gets Mike to steal the money and return it to the prosecutor, including the $30k that he’s taken. Losing the money also means Jimmy’s losing the new office he’s been planning to lease.


Mike’s backstory is dark

Mike was a cop in Philly. His son Matt was also a cop and died in an ambush gone wrong a few months earlier. The ambush, however, was only a cover-up.

Matt was offered dirty money by his colleagues Hoffman and Fensky. He hesitated and asked Mike about it. Mike told Matt to take the money. Three months after Matt’s death, Hoffman and Fensky were also murdered. The next day, Mike left Philly for New Mexico, intending to look after Stacey and his granddaughter Kaylee.

Stacey found a stack of cash left by Matt in her suitcase, so she called the cops in Philly, thinking it could help them find Matt’s murderer. And now Mike’s being questioned by two detectives from Philly, implying Mike’s the suspect in Hoffman and Fensky’s murders.

This is still one of my favourite lines on BCS: Jimmy’s talking to the detectives during the questioning, “Look, don’t let Mr Ehrmantraut’s dancing eyes and bubbly bon vivant personality fool you. He’s actually, believe it or not, somewhat taciturn. Shall I fan you gently, so you don’t go into shock?” Lol.

Stacey asks Mike if Matt was a dirty cop. Mike tells Stacey that a lot of cops, including himself, take dirty money, some as a way of self-preservation so their dirty colleagues know they won’t snitch on them. Matt was killed by Hoffman and Fensky anyway because his hesitation meant they could no longer trust him. It was Mike who killed the two cops. He tearfully tells Stacey that Matt was not a dirty cop. He was.


Marco Pasternak

Marco was Jimmy’s con partner back in Cicero, Illinois, before his mailroom days at HHM. After taking the deal from HHM, Jimmy returns to Cicero to visit Marco. They end up going back to running their cons for a week until Jimmy switches his phone on and realizes his clients – the old people who like him – have been looking for him. He tells Marco he has to go back to Albuquerque; he’s a lawyer now, making a living from it.

“A living? All due respect, you’re a lawyer, and if you are not making bank, you’re doing it wrong,” Marco says. That personally hurts me, Marco.

Jimmy agrees to one last Rolex con, and Marco dies of a heart attack while they are on it. In his last words, he tells Jimmy that the week was the greatest week of his life.

HHM partners with Davis & Main when the Sandpiper case gets even bigger. Hearing about Jimmy’s good work, and vouched by Kim and Howard, Davis & Main offers Jimmy to work with them on the case. Jimmy seems to be turning down the offer in the end; his last days with Marco seem to be influencing the decision. He tells Mike he won’t let “doing the right thing” stop him anymore, referring to them returning the $1.6m of the Kettlemans' money.

Image: AMC