Jonathan Banks as Mike Ehrmantraut, Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill. It could certainly be chalked up to desperation and frustration, but there feels like there’s something more to it, a moral grey area where Jimmy rather someone else die in order for his survival.
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He knows that person will die (or he will, if Mike misses). That moment feels like that last bit of innocence leaving. The trauma that Jimmy’s witnessed will forever change him now, especially when he decides to make himself a target in the middle of the road. It all feels like an end of an era, this shedding of the last prized possessions of Jimmy McGill, as though McGill goes into the desert and the only one to return will be Saul Goodman. The episode is filled to the brim with callbacks of Jimmy McGill’s life: the Davis and Main bottle (now donning urine), Mike taking the gas cap off Jimmy’s car as a reference to the big gas cap snafu some seasons back, the tarantula on the rock as a callback to the main title sequence, the World’s Best Lawyer mug seeing its last day, and the beloved Suzuki Esteem seeing its final ride. Maybe this is the final moment of Jimmy McGill. Photo Credit: Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
#BETTER CALL SAUL SEASON 1 EPISODE 8 SERIES#
Related Series Nominees For the 26th Annual Critics Choice Awards: 'Ozark,' 'The Crown,' 'Schitt's Creek,' and More Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill – Better Call Saul. But it’s like the survival muscle in Jimmy’s brain finally snapped, and he’s willing to do whatever it takes to get to another day. Mike’s look of incredulity is hard to disagree with, that Jimmy can go from a sad sack covered in money on the ground feeling sorry for himself to becoming an aggressive form of bait. Instead, Jimmy McGill runs into danger again, as he does at the end of the episode. Near-death experiences multiple times over, and a cactus thorn in your toe, are the kinds of things that become infinite learning experiences, especially when losing your prized car, mug, and almost your life. The entire episode is that wake-up call he needs, but as we know from Breaking Bad, Saul Goodman does not take this wake-up call. This will only make him smarter about how he takes on things like this, and to make others do this sort of dirty work.
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The absolute shock of death and destruction around him should be enough to wake Jimmy out of this hellish existence and back into defending small-time criminals, but it won’t be. The exact thing she warns him of comes to pass. But the promise of a massive payday, and the opportunity for more by pulling this off, is too great to turn away from.īut the result is exactly the reason why Kim is worried for him. There’s this uncertainty to the way he explains it, along with the absurd directions to get out to the well, that shows how ludicrous the situation really is.
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Kim is absolutely right that Jimmy is trying to convince her just as much as himself as he tells her of his bagman duties. Bob Odenkirk as Jimmy McGill, Jonathan Banks as Mike Ehrmantraut. But there’s a level of brilliance as it hints back at its sister series and reminds of how much both shows are entwined. These sorts of episodes don’t come often, where everything on the periphery freezes so that all of the work done on the season comes together as a culmination of choices coming back to bite them. For Jimmy, unfortunately, that turns to hell on Better Call Saul Season 5 Episode 8, “Bagman,” the best episode of the season that manages to pit Jimmy and Mike against the elements. Being a bagman has its perks: great views, lots of sun, and lots of cash.