When we first met fan-favorite character Saul Goodman in AMC's Breaking Bad , he was a sleazy lawyer most famous for having his face on bus stop benches around Albuquerque, NM, and for his omnipresent commercials that ended with the garishly-fashioned man pointing at the camera with his catchphrase scrawled across the screen: "Better Call Saul!" Naturally, the spinoff focused around Saul — or Jimmy McGill — took its name from that catchphrase… so it was only appropriate to finally see Jimmy make his first commercial in Better Call Saul Season 2.
Unfortunately, the TV spot may have landed the lawyer in hot water with his firm, Davis & Main. Ironically, the 30-second spot, a black-and-white ad titled "Where's My Nest Egg?" featuring an old lady bemoaning the loss of her savings to a greedy retirement home, was positively classy in comparison to the Saul Goodman promos we all know and love. So why was Jimmy's boss not amused? For once simple reason: Jimmy neglected to tell him about the commercial before he went ahead and aired it on TV.
In Jimmy's defense, it's not like he broadcasted the spot on national television during primetime hours. It aired during a rerun of Murder, She Wrote in the middle afternoon in the small market of Colorado Springs; but that just so happened to be the perfect time for their target demographic of retired seniors. Almost immediately, the calls started rolling in… but Clifford Main was still not amused at his newest employee taking such latitude without asking.
So the episode ended with Jimmy taking a phone call that should have been congratulatory but instead saw the morally ambivalent lawyer get chewed out by his boss. Of course, he lied to Kim; both about having gotten permission for the ad from Clifford in the first place, and then about the content of the phone call afterwards. And during said phone call, Clifford demanded that Jimmy come in for an early meeting with the partners — never a good sign.
Is Jimmy about to get fired from Davis & Main? Obviously we know he'll have to part ways with the company eventually in order to open his own firm. But I'm sure most viewers were expecting a big development like that to take place at the end of the season, not three episodes into it. Maybe Jimmy will skate by this infraction by the skin of his teeth, but even if he does, his days at Davis & Main are obviously numbered.
So why does he keep sabotaging himself? The ad was a great idea and had terrific results; everything would have been fine if he'd just ran it by Clifford first. So why didn't he? And why does he keep lying to Kim, the only person in the world who's truly in his corner? Given how fun of a character Saul Goodman was in Breaking Bad, it's surprising how truly depressing the path that leads Jimmy McGill from his past to that ignominious future is turning out to be.
Images: Ursula Coyote/AMC (2)
