Better Call Saul

I’ve exhausted the Christmas topic, and don’t want to address – or spoil – any Star Wars “The Force Awakens” – issues, so I’ll tackle this one: “Better Call Saul”.   Season One is complete, and received sufficient ratings and applause to merit a second season, due out in 2016.  As an attorney myself, I found the subject matter extremely interesting, relevant, and relatable.  See below.

Background.  If you’re a “Breaking Bad” fan, you know who Saul Goodman is.  If you’re not…. Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) was the attorney who represented Walter White (Bryan Cranston) in his crystal meth business.  Because Walt’s business was not legal, he got a shady lawyer to represent him.  Saul wore double-breasted suits, had a flashy office in a non-flashy location (a decrepit strip mall), and advertised aggressively.  He had an arrogant and flamboyant style and no issue with not merely defending criminals such as Walt but also helping them perpetrate their criminal activities…for an appropriate fee. 

“Breaking Bad” is over, but Saul lives on.  Part of the charm of “Breaking Bad” was the host of fascinating characters:  not only Walt, but Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), Walt’s brother-in-law, DEA Agent Hank Schrader (Dean Norris), Gus Frings (Giancarlo Esposito), Mike Ehrmentraut (Jonathan Banks), and many more.  If it were just Walt, we’d have lost interest long ago.

Fans of “Breaking Bad” will recognize Mike (Banks), whose background gets far more attention now that we have the luxury of not dealing with Walt or Jesse, neither of whom seem to show up here.  (Maybe they’ll show Walt teaching Jesse chemistry in high school…in Season 2). 

This show takes place a few years before “Breaking Bad”, but still in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  It has a habit of going to flashbacks without warning, leaving you to guess the time frame from context.  It seems that Saul, who isn’t even Jewish, used to be James “Jimmy” McGill, originally from Chicago, Illinois.  His older brother Chuck (Michael McKean) is a former partner in a prestigious firm, Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill (aka “HHM”) but is now semi-retired due to a bizarre allergy to electricity.   Jimmy used to be a scam artist back in Chicago and only moved to New Mexico to start a new life, starting in the mail room at Chuck’s firm.  

As yet, he’s still Jimmy.  Since this takes place before “Breaking Bad”, we know that both Saul and Mike survive whatever challenges and dangers they face, but it’s still entertaining to see how they do it – Saul/Jimmy through fast talking, Mike through general bad-ass-ness, a former cop from Philadelphia who had to move west under questionable circumstances. 

Inspired by Chuck, Jimmy finished his college online and managed to get a Juris Doctor from an online law school, the University of American Samoa.  On his third try he managed to pass the New Mexico bar exam (I have to wonder what the State Bar of New Mexico thinks of the show).  With no help or support from Chuck, he started his own practice, with an office tucked away in a Vietnamese nail salon.  He drives a used, beaten Suzuki Esteem with mismatched doors.   Still “James McGill”, most of his cases are flat-rate court-appointed criminal cases, representing mostly guilty and unsympathetic defendants. 

For the meantime, he’s trying to build a practice as a sole practitioner.  Normally you would expect he could get into his brother’s firm on the ground floor – he started off in the mail room – but alas, it’s not that simple, for reasons which become clear by the end of the season.  Aside from court appointed work, he’s also trying to do wills for elderly clients, which leads him to a huge class action case – and eventually friction with his brother. 

Usually a lawyer has two paths to stardom.  Either he 4.0’s in college and then gets into a top law school, then does law review and gets hired by the top law firm.  OR… he slogs along either as a sole proprietor or in small firms, hoping to ace a super huge, impressive case which will get him the attention of a big firm (very likely the big firm he won that case against), willing to ignore his lack of pedigree and recognize his talent.  The latter is Saul’s “career track”.

Is he unethical?  That’s the initial impression and one the show enjoys reinforcing – up to a point.   Taking court-appointed criminal cases, representing defendants who are mostly guilty and unsympathetic, inevitably reflects poorly on the attorney himself, even if he’s just doing his job. 

A lawyer with a better pedigree would probably start out as a junior prosecutor and eventually establish a private defense practice after earning the top prosecutor job (District Attorney, or in Virginia, Commonwealth’s Attorney), or possibly US Attorney (federal prosecutor).  My experience has been that even for junior, entry level prosecutor positions, the US Attorneys’ offices only hire Ivy League, law review, law school graduates.  There’s definitely an upper stratosphere of the legal profession which begins in law school and continues throughout the career tracks of attorneys.  Breaking into that upper crust, if you didn’t start out there to begin with, is almost impossible – as Jimmy is finding out.  As of “Breaking Bad” he’s still a sole practitioner, so we’ll have to see what happens in later seasons of this show. 

Myself, I went to George Mason University School of Law, which could be considered a second tier law school.  Even there, I didn’t finish in the top of the class or do law review.  Upon graduating I worked for a sole practitioner until he got hired by a firm, worked for various small firms, and still work for myself, as a sole practitioner with two attorneys working for me as independent contractors.  I never won any big, huge, high publicity cases which would earn me the attention of a big firm.  To that extent I can identify with Jimmy, even though I was never a scam artist; I went to law school directly from college, with that plan as far back as high school.  I was honest prior to being a lawyer and remain honest and ethical as an attorney, whether I’m doing divorces, bankruptcies, criminal defense, or personal injury.  I neither seek out nor attract sleazy clients nor do I associate with meth dealers or corrupt cops.  What I share with Jimmy is surviving in the lower tier of the legal profession with neither glamor nor riches.   At least not yet, but I have no more hope or expectation than Jimmy has of breaking into the top stratosphere of wealthy attorneys.  We’ll see. 

Jimmy’s case is off-kilter because of his colorful past.  The assumption is that “Slippin’ Jimmy” from Cicero, IL will simply be an equally unethical attorney in Albuquerque.  The law office in the nail salon and mismatched Esteem reinforce that.  Sure enough, some of his initial business is shady: he runs a scam with some skaterats, which ends poorly [“You’re a lousy attorney!” “Hey, I got you from down from a death sentence to a broken leg.  I’d say that’s a good deal.”]  

In fact, you may wonder, never mind passing the bar exam on three tries, how the board of bar examiners even let him take the exam at all.  The Bar is highly sensitive to its reputation and diligently screens applicants for background and ethics.  Presumably his “Chicago sunroof” incident may have been the only transgression which made it into the court system.  We can’t give Chuck any credit, as Jimmy did all of this without Chuck’s knowledge.   Chuck probably would have torpedoed Jimmy’s bar application had he known about it – which explains why he was unpleasantly surprised rather than proud to hear that Jimmy passed the bar exam.

Anyhow, notwithstanding the Chicago sunroof, Jimmy is slowly but surely changing his attitude.  He knows he won’t get respect as an attorney – least of all from his prestigious but arrogant brother – until he cleans up his legal act.  He wants to do the right thing.  And ultimately, forced to make a hard choice, he usually decides to do the right thing. 

Or does he?  The last scene of Season One leads us to wonder.   Those of us who know him as Saul Goodman might conclude that he remains in the nether regions of the legal profession because he knows the top lawyers will never accept him as one of their own no matter how hard he works and what brilliant jobs he does for even the most respectable and sympathetic clients.  Stay tuned.

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By the way… 1) I still think of Michael McKean as a) Lenny from “Laverne & Shirley” and b) David St. Hubbins from “Spinal Tap”.  He always has an indelible stamp of arrogance he can’t seem to avoid no matter what the role.  2) If you REALLY like Bob Odenkirk, check out “Mr. Show”, a variety show he did a few years back (before “Breaking Bad”) with David Cross.  I found it funny, if a bit hit-or-miss.