Hey, everybody. Better Call Saul season five is
here, which means it's time for another round of Basement Breakdowns.
I'm John Teti. Look, we got a new basement!
We got a new screen, we got a giant microphone. All new.
One of my colleagues said it looks almost professional in here.
So that's new. It's gonna be the same old breakdowns,
though. We're just gonna dig deep into the
images, the key lines, the key filmmaking choices
in Better Call Saul—just one of the most beautifully made,
emotionally rich shows on TV right now.
Let's get to it. Join me as I have
another Basement Breakdown.
All right, I've got the title sequence up behind me because I want to get
right into it by talking about something that I mentioned last year,
which is that the title sequence, over time, every season,
has gotten a little more degraded. You don't really notice.
It's almost imperceptible as a viewer
watching it over the seasons. But when we put them all side-by-side,
you can see that every year, this title sequence
gets a little choppier. The images get a little messier.
So this change over time in the title sequence really
encapsulates so much of the story of Better Call Saul.
To evoke the—
the many visions of Jimmy.
Piled all on top of each other. Because it's key here to
see that the effect is this VHS effect, right?
And it's almost as if, every year, the title sequence gets
taped over with itself. Right?
This is what happens to a tape, a VHS tape. If you've
never worked with with VHS—I imagine there's a lot of you who haven't—
when you tape over it, the image degrades
over time. And sometimes it doesn't record over
all the way, and ghosts of the old images that were
on the tape come through. You can still see them
even though you've taped over them. And that is really
a technological evocation of
Jimmy's life. So VHS is this sneaky important
technology in Better Call Saul. We see
Jimmy making tapes of himself for TV.
(SAUL) It's you, small business owner!
We see Gene watching old tapes
of himself as Saul.
(SAUL) (ON T.V.) I'm Saul Goodman, and I will do the fighting for you!
VHS comes up a lot because it really does embody this quality of Jimmy
in that he thinks he can tape over himself.
And whenever he tapes over himself, invents this new
identity, re-records a story over the old
story of Jimmy, or Saul, or whoever, what happens is
ghosts of the old images peek through. He can never
really re-record to his satisfaction.
And this Gene effort represents
the most vigorous re-recording yet, right?
He thinks he's totally erased his old life.
And then, the moment that sets this season
into motion is that, no, he can't
re-record entirely. The old ghosts are still there.
That's sort of the grand arc that this
Gene flash-forward sets up. So let's pick this cold open apart a little bit.
I love the choice of song.
(SINGER) Welcome to my world…
"Welcome to my world." Because after all the—
Gene's sort of staging this mini-escape.
He sort of dips his toe into the outside world
beyond this insular life he's set up for himself.
He drives away as if he's going to end the life of "Gene."
And he finds that nobody's really chasing him.
This companion that he thought he had
over his shoulder—you know, he's always looking over his shoulder as Gene—
this companion that he thought was there—
finally, he undertakes the effort to draw that companion out.
He's got the police scanner on the seat next to him, right?
Are the authorities going to come after me? And
what happens is, nothing. Nobody comes after him.
That companion he thought was there, isn't there anymore.
If they ever were. So,
"Welcome to My World." It creates this sense that Gene
now inhabits a universe of one. He has a
world all to himself. But as we soon realize, the irony
of this song is that he has to welcome someone into
his world. And this guy, Jeff, could not
be less welcome. And you can feel him
invading Gene's space. Let's look at the composition here
of this scene. So, look at how they compose this scene
and a lot of times I advise you to de-focus your eyes
when you're really trying to focus on composition. It sounds
counterintuitive, but to focus on composition,
defocus your eyes. And when you do that, what you see
is that Jeff here—look how much he pops.
In his really dark outfit, he's got
these stripes, these black and white stripes. He's about as vivid
as you can get in this muted,
black-and-white color scheme. When you defocus your eyes, Gene
almost disappears, right? Which is exactly what he
wants to do. Gene is just looking to blend into the background.
Maybe forever. And here's Jeff in his bold
white stripes, drawing attention to the scene. Encroaching
on Gene's space. Look at him bend in.
The angle, here, of the staging. With this
encroachment from every angle, we can really feel
Gene's desperation. So when he's on the phone later
with the guy who's going to evacuate him out—we remember the
vacuum repair guy, right? From the end of Breaking Bad.
This is the guy that basically erased Saul Goodman
and created Gene, and put him here. And
Gene says, we gotta do it again. But by the end of the call…
(GENE) I'm going to fix it myself.
He decides he's gonna take care of it himself. And I think that the—
we can feel the trauma in this episode with Jeff,
and because we can feel it so keenly,
we can also feel that maybe something has snapped in Gene.
And, no, he's not going to run away and destroy himself again. I think
there's this ominous sense that Gene is
going to—what's he gonna go? Is he gonna kill Jeff? Is he gonna
disappear the guy? We don't really know. But there's this feeling
that maybe whatever he chooses to undertake,
it could be the final death of whatever little vestige
of decent Jimmy McGill—of that soul—
is left in Gene.
So that line, "I'm going to take care of it myself," also,
in a weird way, sets up the main story
of the episode in the Jimmy/Saul timeline,
where we see Jimmy not taking care of it
himself at all. In fact, Jimmy is letting Saul Goodman
come in and solve all his problems.
And we see this quite beautifully in the gift-exchange scene.
(JIMMY) This is old-school beautiful.
We saw these two gifts that Kim had bought for Jimmy at the end of
last season, and I love that they pay them off here and bring them back.
Because it really brings out the distance between Kim and Jimmy in this moment.
Jimmy has decided he's going to bring Saul Goodman in to
reshape his whole life. "I can see it," he keeps saying
(JIMMY) I can see it!
Right? He keeps telling Kim, "I can see it." When he looks at Saul,
he sees glory and success for himself. Something that
he's never really seen when he look at himself
as Jimmy McGill—as much as he might have tried.
It comes down to a question that really fuels a lot of the character
development in this episode, which is, the characters are asking themselves:
"How much am I worth?" They look at themselves, and they're sort of
assessing their own value. And Jimmy just feels like
he's worth a lot more as Saul than as Jimmy.
Of course, Kim disagrees, right? She gives him
this briefcase that seems, like, totally inappropriate now.
It's monogrammed "JMM." "I bought it
for Jimmy." And with a little bit of an edge
in Bob Odenkirk's delivery, he says:
(JIMMY) Yeah, well, Jimmy loves it.
But he doesn't want to be Jimmy anymore, right?
It's this high-status, upstanding, classy briefcase that someone
at Schweikart & Cokley, or one of these high-powered Albuquerque law firms, would carry.
And that's not who Jimmy's trying to be.
That's Kim's picture of Jimmy's path. That's not
Jimmy's picture. And then the mug.
I love this mug. We've seen it throughout the series.
(JIMMY) "World's 2nd Best Lawyer, Again."
It's a cute joke to her. Not to him. Right?
They have always seen this mug very differently, and
for him, the mug, consciously or not,
has symbolized the fact that he just
cannot see himself in—
having legitimate success in the high-status
parts of society. I always go back to that crucial shot, in
the second season, of Jimmy trying to jam that mug in the cupholder of his new, luxury car
that he got with his high-powered classy lawyer job. And it just won't fit.
And it just symbolizes how Jimmy doesn't fit in
that world. At least in his own eyes, right? Now he gets this
mug again. He's not too happy to receive it.
Really look closely at his reaction. He sort of gives it a
cursory chuckle, but he immediately says,
(JIMMY) That's the real mistake, "World's 2nd Best Lawyer," because
Saul Goodman is gonna give you a run for your money.
This mug, to him, doesn't apply to his world because now he's number one.
You know, there's so much at work in this mug, because there's a little bit of Jimmy
starting to resent Kim for the way that she makes him feel second-best.
The way he always felt toward Chuck all his life, right?
Now a little bit of that emotion is starting to spill over to Kim. She has this knack for
making him feel less than her. Because,
frankly, she generally behaves as a better person, right?
She generally tries to stay more within the bounds of the law.
He's always trying to bring her to his level.
Because he doesn't like feeling second-best to her.
(KIM) I just can't see it.
(JIMMY) It's okay.
You will.
So, let's go to the tent sequence. And I want to say one more thing about
"I can see it" versus "I can't see it."
Jimmy—"I can see it." I can see Saul. And Kim can't.
If you've watched the Breakdowns before, you know by now
how the show uses cool and warm colors.
Specifically blue and gold, but
cool and warm. Blue tends to dominate when
the storytelling pertains to the lawful,
decent side of society. And you'll see more
gold when we're in the seamier underside,
amoral side of life. Life beyond the pale
of law and order, right? You see this on the screen constantly.
Blue and gold. It's a really fundamental part of the show's visual language,
and you're gonna hear me talk about color again and again because the show keeps finding
beautiful and inventive ways to use this palette.
So I said "cool and warm"
because I wanted to leave a little room for red. The show brings red in
when it wants something even deeper than gold.
When it wants to show that we are neck-deep in this
underworld. Totally detached from any moral grounding.
So when we have this big reveal here, of Saul Goodman
in his circus tent,
it's pretty significant that he's bathed in red.
Red suit. Red shirt. Red striped tent.
He's not just skirting the fringes of society here.
That would be more gold. He is
immersing himself in the fringes. In just the outer reaches of society.
And this image of Saul with a big grin,
the ringmaster welcoming one sideshow act after another into his sort-of
makeshift circus tent-slash-law office
How perfect an image is that? Circus tent-slash-law office.
This is how Jimmy sees himself as Saul, right?
Compare that to — I want to jump back a little bit
to the first shot we see after the title sequence.
We see Kim—it's really blurry, out of focus, right?
Kim's coming down the hall. She's pursuing Jimmy.
She's really pursuing Saul, though she might not know it yet.
And there's this blur of orange and red
on the screen. Now, to me, this is how
Kim sees Saul. It's just indistinct.
She doesn't have the vision that Jimmy does. It just looks like
a mess. And it looks like a whole lot of trouble.
Although note, there is that little whisper of blue in there.
It looks like there's one guy in a blue shirt. And
that's perfect, because even now,
Kim feels that there's some part of Jimmy/Saul
that can be rescued. That whisper of blue
is the decency, the potential for
upstanding succcess that Kim sees in
Jimmy, that she still sees in Saul.
These are two very different shots that I think define two very different points of view
that our characters have on Jimmy.
So Jimmy's vision of Saul is sharp, it's vivid.
It's exciting. And, most important of all,
it's number one.
(SAUL) Say hello to my little friend.
Because what's the line we hear over and over in this montage in the tent?
(SAUL) Number one on the speed dial goes directly to me.
You press that, and poof! I'm there.
Press number one, and poof! Saul Goodman is there.
Which is really the story that Jimmy decided to tell
himself here. He wants to be number one? Okay!
Poof! There it is. But—contrast that
to the end of this sequence.
Now, Jimmy's not repeating "number one." He's desperate. He's run out of
free cell phones to give away.
He so desperately needs to feel some sensation of
success, of momentum, with Saul,
that he resorts to that 50%-off deal
that he had discussed with Kim, and even he
had admitted—maybe half-heartedly, but—he had admitted,
wow, that is really low.
(SAUL) Non-violent felonies…
50% off. Yeah.
I like that it's "non-violent," so he saves
that shred of decency. But "50% off."
Contrast that to "number one." Look how quickly
Saul goes from "I'm number one" to
"I'll give you half off."
That's sort of his magic trick here, right? That's the irony in Huell
calling him the "magic man"—and him calling himself "magic man."
In his idea, the magic is
Poof! I'm Saul! I've appeared! But really the magic
trick he's playing is that he's making himself disappear.
Fifty percent off. He devalues himself 50% in an instant.
(SAUL) Fifty percent off. Remember, 50% off!
As soon as he gets a whiff of failure, he debases himself.
Before the scum of society, no less.
This is how badly he needs that Saul Goodman story to succeed.
(HUELL) Well done, magic man.
It's a painful scene, and the gloom really plays out so poignantly
in contrast to that first shot of grinning, glowing Saul.
So this public act of devaluation we see from Saul sets up the last scene with
Kim at the courthouse. Okay, first, let's look at
Saul in this scene. He's not in red here. Look, he's clad in
blue and gold. This is significant because fittingly, here,
we see Saul playing both sides of
the line. Legal, illegal. Illegitimate, legitimate.
And that is really Saul Goodman at his most powerful, right?
He's playing off his old sparring partner in the DA office. The guy on the "blue team." But it's really
all for the benefit of the shadier characters hanging out
in the halls. The people on the "gold team," the underworld team.
So he really feels like he's at the top of
his game when he encounters Kim. Because he's working both
sides of the line perfectly.
He comes up with a lie that Kim can tell her client to basically trick him
into accepting a deal. A deal that would be for his own benefit. Okay?
And this is sort of Kim's escape hatch. Because the question is,
why does she say no, no, no, no, no, and then she goes back
and tells the lie? Well, I think she gets back
and she looks at this picture
of this doe-eyed—couldn't be more innocent—young mom.
And this kid, her boyfriend, who really doesn't know how to make good life decisions.
And what happens, basically, is, the lie is too good!
She can get what she wants. She can get what she wants for the good of this kid
if she simply tells the lie.
This visual contrast that we see in the wake of this exchange
with the client—when she does get him to accept the deal, she dupes him into it—
there's a visual contrast that really punctuates
the effect of this decision on Kim. As she walks away,
the shot really is warm. Warm to neutral.
Right? And it's a great performance, subtle performance by Rhea Seehorn here.
We can see her holding back the internal recriminations.
She's holding her head up, almost as if she's made the right decision,
despite how bad it felt.
But then we cut to the stairwell, and it has this harsh, deep cold blue cast.
Kim will always come back to this place.
I don't mean literally this place, although she has been here before.
What I mean is, she comes back to this stark
blue realm of law and order. And that is where
she assesses herself. And right now, when she looks at Kim Wexler
in this light, she sees less of herself.
She bends down, shrinking under the emotional weight
of this loss that she feels.
Look at the labor it takes for her to just stand up and feel
like a human being again. You know, when last season ended,
we saw Kim experiencing the pain of feeling
like she had just been duped by Jimmy. And you
can go back and check out my breakdown for that episode, called "Winner,"
if you want to hear more about that. But the moment that ends
this episode has such a different feel because
Kim wasn't duped here. She made a calculated
choice. She knew what she was doing,
and she chose to basically sacrifice
a little bit of herself—let a little bit of herself die—
to help the people in her care. In her stead.
Jimmy's story was simply too good to resist
in terms of the goal that was right in front of her. The kind-hearted,
sensible goal that she had.
The problem for Kim is that Jimmy's always going to have another story.
Right? He's always going to provide her
another opportunity to sell a little piece of herself
to help someone else. It's this toxic interaction between his storytelling talents
and her compassion. Her deep-set compassion, right?
Whenever these two things mix, some piece of Kim ends up being destroyed.
We've seen it again and again. And at some point,
Kim's going to have to choose between the blue and gold worlds, right?
Which, in essence, means choosing between Jimmy and her
vision of herself. The longer she keeps trying to have it both ways,
to use the blue and the gold together,
for the greater good, the more she's going to keep wasting away.
So that's where we are with Kim and Jimmy as we begin this season of Better Call Saul.
That'll do it for this installment of Basement Breakdown.
But wait, you might be saying—what about Mike? What about Lalo?
We've got to talk about Lalo, don't we? I love Lalo!
So, what we're going to do, I'm going to have a whole
add-on, bonus Basement Breakdown for the season premiere.
We're going to cover the Lalo storyline. I've got a lot to say about Lalo.
It's gonna be Lalo-palooza here on the Basement Breakdown!
So stay tuned for that. We'll get to all of it.
Wanted to focus on Kimmy and Jim—
F—
Wanted to focus on Kim and Jimmy
this week—I'm gonna do that a lot on the Basement Breakdown this season,
so get used to it. Before I go—here's a reminder.
I don't see everything in the show. And maybe you disagree with what I did see.
Great. I want to know what you saw. That's the great thing about
Better Call Saul. It's such a rich show, it gives us
so much to talk about.
So, tell me down in the comments what you saw. You can also email me,
breakdowns at ological dot net. Maybe
your brilliant insights will make it on to a future breakdown.
Remember to be back, and I'll be back real soon.
See you there! Bye for now.