Better Call Saul Season 5, Episode 7, “JMM”

Midway through “JMM,” Lalo, who has hired Jimmy/Saul to defend him in the Fred Whalen murder case, suggests that the monogram on Jimmy’s briefcase should stand for “Just make money,” rather than what Jimmy tells him it means, “Justice matters most.” The dueling mottos are emblematic of the difference between Jimmy’s and what will become Saul’s priorities as attorneys.


Jimmy really is interested in justice, even if he is willing to bend the rules to obtain it, and even if he relishes sticking it to businesses like Mesa Verde or Sandpiper as much as (or more than) any justice he might win for his clients. The Saul we come to know on Breaking Bad, however, doesn’t care at all about justice. Instead he cares mostly about how he can wet his whistle. He’ll gladly take on criminals as clients, the larger the better, because he can charge a larger fee or even get a percentage of their business as compensation (like he did for assisting Walt and Jesse with money laundering). Of course, “JMM” really stands for “James Morgan McGill,” but what’s left of Jimmy seems to be dwindling by the episode, which we see most emphatically in the episode’s wonderful, concluding scene.

However, as “JMM” shows us throughout, Jimmy’s not quite Saul yet. For one, Jimmy is still apprehensive about representing Lalo. Jimmy has never had such a high profile client, both in terms of the client’s criminal stature, and in terms of the charge against which he’s defending: first degree murder. Lalo sets what seems to be an impossible goal for Jimmy – release on bail – and Jimmy seems terrified of failing. Lalo entices him with becoming “a friend of the cartel,” but as Jimmy will later tell Kim, that’s not what he wants, even if it means a lot of money.

Later, we see the tatters of Jimmy’s fraying morality tug further at his conscience. While defending Lalo, Fred Whalen’s bereaved family files into the courtroom. Their visible grief shakes Jimmy. Not only is the moment where he recognizes them marked by a pronounced slow-motion shot where Jimmy looks disgusted with himself, but he also keeps glancing at the Whalen family as he half-heartedly goes through the motions of his defense: using evidence Mike provided to accuse the prosecution of witness tampering, and – in a very Saul-esque maneuver – convincing the judge that Lalo isn’t a flight risk by hiring people to pose as Lalo’s family (a fake one to contrast the real Whalen one).

Jimmy’s ploy works, but Jimmy’s guilty conscience still weighs heavily on him. After court is adjourned, he spies on the prosecutor consoling the Whalen family, and we’re treated to the episode’s most marvelous image: Jimmy’s peaks out from around the corner of the courthouse hallway, half of his face creating a jagged reflection on the wall beside him. The image is wonderfully suggestive of the dichotomy between Jimmy and Saul. Saul would have no problems with sandbagging a prosecutor’s case to defend a murderer, but Jimmy still hasn’t crossed that moral Rubicon. Or at least, he hadn’t, until the previous scene. It might still bother him at this point, but it marks yet one more irrevocable step on the path toward his becoming the Saul we know from Breaking Bad.

Jimmy’s attitude changes in the episode’s final scene, where he sweeps aside his dwindling conscience to perform one of the most full-throated versions of Saul we’ve seen yet. Howard sneaks up on Jimmy and asks him once again about working at HHM, and when Jimmy gives him the runaround, Howard rescinds the offer, apologizes for upsetting Jimmy, and then makes the mistake of pitying what he assumes is Jimmy’s pain. While Jimmy is indeed upset, he’ll be damned if he’s going to let Howard see his vulnerability, so Jimmy reacts by weaponizing his fear and guilt, wrapping himself in a cloak of overbearing false confidence and ruthlessly belittling Howard and HHM.

Jimmy/Saul’s tirade reminded me a lot of Walt. In fact, it’s like Walt’s “the one who knocks” speech: an overcompensated projection of self-confidence, meant to realign how others see him. The only difference is that Walt really did see himself as “the one who knocks,” whereas Jimmy is more self-aware. After he’s finished shouting, he seems to realize that he was projecting his feelings of self-loathing onto Howard. He doesn't regret it (Jimmy considers Howard an appropriate vessel for his vitriol, given their past), but he realizes his speech for what it is: a lie meant to excuse his immorality and make himself feel powerful. And yet, even if nothing in this episode has actually made Jimmy feel as powerful as he claims to be when shouting at Howard, there’s truth in what Jimmy said, particularly the line: “You can’t conceive of what I’m capable of!” Not only can the line apply to Howard, Kim, and the rest of the characters who know him, but it's likely even true of Jimmy himself. It's only a matter of time before he becomes the kind of person who is perfectly comfortable being a friend of the cartel. What remains open to question is the number of lives and relationships he destroys along the way.

Footnotes for the rest of this one:

- The one character who could conceive of what Jimmy is capable of: Chuck.

- We get a little more insight into Mike agreeing to work for Gus in his scene with Stacey: it’s a matter of acceptance. He’s resigned to being a cog in Gus’s machine.

- Less insightful: whatever Gus’s plan is for Lalo. It’s unclear how getting Lalo out of jail is a solution to his Salamanca problem, especially considering that Mike went to the trouble of putting him in jail in the first place. To be continued.

- Gus has a scene with Peter Schuler the Madrigal executive, which I suppose is interesting because A) it shows Peter as hopeful, rather than miserably suicidal, and B) it showcases another side of Gus we haven’t seen in a while. Rather than ruthless, here he’s congenial, and we’re reminded of the financial pressure he’s under. The scene also hints at more of Gus’s back story: evidently Peter was instrumental in helping Gus leave Chile, although what Gus did in Chile remains a mystery.

- Lydia also makes an appearance in the Gus/Peter scene, asking why Lalo can’t just be murdered in prison. She’ll advocate for this line of action again in the future, and Walt will be much more sympathetic to it.

- The episode begins with Jimmy and Kim unceremoniously marrying at the courthouse. It turns out there was more than just an emotional component to Kim’s marriage proposal in “Wexler v. Goodman”: it’s also a matter of Kim protecting herself. She can no longer abide Jimmy keeping things from her – she never wants to be the “sucker” again – but she doesn’t want to have to testify against him should he get into trouble. Marriage solves that problem. It also swerves around – yet again – the problem Breaking Bad ran into with Skyler, where Skyler’s story became one in which she was slowly corrupted and emotionally imprisoned by Walt, and where her constant disapproval of Walt’s business made some viewers (wrongly) judge her negatively. Kim gets to be both a stronger character, and one that can’t be accused of raining on Saul’s law-bending parade.

- Kim and Jimmy negotiating for total honesty in their marriage couldn’t be timed more perfectly, because it provides Jimmy with an outlet for voicing his concerns, and potentially lets us better track his transformation into Saul. In “JMM,” it provides the opportunity for him to explicitly state that he doesn’t want to be “a friend of the cartel,” which contrasts with how Saul will later behave in similar situations.

- Better Call Saul’s prequel status continues to create interesting cognitive effects. The scene where Saul first councils Lalo set my mind spinning with hypotheses, all of which were influenced by my Breaking Bad-derived foreknowledge of where this story is heading. At first I thought Saul would somehow badly screw up his defense of Lalo, or not perform to Lalo’s satisfaction, and that’s why Saul is so terrified at the thought of Lalo having sent Walt and Jesse to kill him when he first meets the duo on Breaking Bad. Then, another hypothesis arose: perhaps defending Lalo from first degree murder is impossible without some serious rule-breaking, and he goes too far for Kim to stomach, and that explains why she doesn’t appear to be a part of his life on Breaking Bad. Both hypotheses are negated by the end of “JMM”  (for now), but in each case, they were inspired by my knowledge of Saul’s circumstances in Breaking Bad. Better Call Saul has become adept at using foreknowledge like this to enliven what might otherwise be perfunctory scenes.

- Costuming nicely compliments the narrative action in this episode: Jimmy isn’t wearing any of his flashy Saul wardrobe options when meeting with or defending Lalo. He wears grey suits, blue or white shirts, and relatively subdued tie patterns. The blue shirt pops a little, thus it’s appropriate that he wears it for his courtroom defense and his tirade with Howard, where he acts more Saul-like than he does elsewhere in the episode. I expect no less of a series this in command of its creative powers, especially considering that Breaking Bad paid similar attention to costuming.

- Another nice touch: in shots of Jimmy, we can clearly a stain or water damage on the ceiling of the courtroom. If you want to get symbolic, you could argue that this is like the immoral blight that is gradually tainting Jimmy’s soul.

- The image of Jimmy and his reflection is almost expressionist, as if existing in an abstract space – the reflection is meant to be the product of the stone hallway’s polished surface, but it almost seems too transparent for a wall, given how reflective it is. It’s like we’re peering into Jimmy’s soul.

- I liked the scene where Kim confronts Kevin. He blames her for his own foolishness, thus I was happy she returned to the meeting to set him straight. What’s more, it worked! Kevin is a bully, but at least he's an honest one.

- Jimmy isn’t the only one to unleash some anger in this episode: Nacho goes nuts trashing Gus’s Los Pollos Hermanos restaurant before Gus burns it down. It must be all of the pent up frustration over Nacho’s inability to get Mike to help him escape from the pressure Gus is placing him under.