Better Call Saul Season 2 Premiere (Spoilers) · 4:05am Feb 16th, 2016
The prequel to Breaking Bad is back with a long-awaited second season!
Last season, we were introduced to James McGill, a struggling lawyer with a troubled past as a slip-and-fall con artist. He struggled to earn a law degree, finally succeeded, and was snubbed by the firm his successful brother, respected attorney Charles McGill, worked for. Jimmy gets mixed up with some amoral and incredibly stupid embezzlers, and has a brief, tense encounter with Tuco Salamanca and his crew.
While struggling to make a name for himself--and not always doing things on the up-and-up--Jimmy starts doing elder law while busting his ass taking care of his brother, who has retired from active practice after having some sort of breakdown that led to his developing some sort of psychosomatic illness where he becomes violently ill around anything electric or electronic, anything that generates an EM field. Chuck lives in a dark house without power, requiring food, ice, and kerosene to be hauled in every few days, as well as stacks of newspapers.
While visiting clients at a retirement community, Jimmy stumbles upon a massive case of elder fraud being committed by the owners of multiple retirement facilities. With Chuck's help, he assembles what ends up being a multimillion dollar RICO case, which Chuck convinces him to hand over to his old firm.
Meanwhile, we learned the history of Mike Ehrmantraut, whose son was murdered in Philly. He himself shot two cops that killed his son, then fled to New Mexico. Now he works as a parking attendant at the courthouse, while occasionally doing small jobs on the side for a pill-pushing veterinarian.
When Jimmy takes the Sandpiper case to HHM, believing this is his ticket to a seat in the firm, he's shocked and angered to discover that Howard Hamlin wants the case, but doesn't want Jimmy. Jimmy, outraged, goes off on Hamlin, tells him to fuck himself, leaves, and takes the case with him.
Later, Jimmy makes a horrible realization: Howard Hamlin was never the one cockblocking him. His own brother, Chuck, was. Infuriated, shocked by Chuck's outburst about how Jimmy has no business being a lawyer, Jimmy cuts ties with his brother, arranging for HHM to keep up his daily maintenance while he deals with his own business. He then makes the deal with HHM, selling the Sandpiper case, and leaves town for a while to visit his old friend Marco in Chicago.
While pulling his old scams with Marco, Jimmy is present for the fatal heart attack that claims his oldest friend's life. Marco gave Jimmy his prized pinkie ring. After the funeral, Jimmy returns to Albuquerque, where a lucrative job with a law firm other than HHM is waiting for him--a firm assisting HHM with the Sandpiper case. Jimmy is all set to accept the job and build up a brand new reputation as an upstanding lawyer on a fast track to making partner...
...but something holds him back. He realizes that every time he's tried to do things on the up and up, life has fucked him in the ass. He makes a decision to look out for himself before everything else, vowing to not sacrifice his own personal fortunes for his principles. He skips the meeting that would've gotten him a nice, comfortable, respectable job, driving away while humming Marco's anthem, "Smoke on the Water."
That was the story of struggling attorney James McGill, Esquire.
This...is the story of Saul Goodman.
Season one opened with a monochrome flash-forward to Saul's fate after Breaking Bad: living incognito as a Cinnabon manager in Omaha.
Season two begins with another flash-forward to Saul's depressing new life managing a Cinnabon. A darkly amusing scene: While throwing out the Cinnabon's trash after closing, Saul gets trapped in the mall's maintenance bay. He can't risk opening the emergency exit because it'll sound an alarm that'll notify the police, so he opts to sit on a discarded milk crate and wait for someone to open the inside door so he can leave. He's stuck there for about 20 minutes. While he waited, he picked up a random nail that was lying on the floor and scratched his own bit of graffiti into the already heavily-tagged wall behind him:
S.G. WAS HERE
Now we're back to where season one left off, and we get to see a scene we weren't shown at the end of season one.
Jimmy didn't arbitrarily decide to skip out on the partner track offer with Davis & Main. He hinged his entire decision on whether or not he and Kim Wexler would be an item. When she effectively shot him down when put on the spot, he declined the job offer and left.
We see Jimmy go back to the nail salon, and he's pretty obviously flipped his shit.
Meanwhile, Mike is doing Mike stuff. Mike doing Mike stuff is always fun. Today Douchebag picks him up in a hideous flame-painted yellow Humvee with spinning rims. Mike refuses to ride in the damn thing because it's unprofessional. Douchebag Vet decides he doesn't need Mike anymore, acts like a douchebag, and fires him.
Douchebag and his Douchebag hummer and his Douchebag shoes go to meet Nacho alone for his next deal.
Nacho takes interest in Douchebag's hummer--and the fact that Mike isn't there. Douchebag is dumb enough to try to show off and lets Nacho have a look inside. While Douchebag is counting his money, Nacho takes Douchebag's insurance info out of the glove box.
Guess who's about to lose a Hummer. And probably a lot of other shit.
Back to Jimmy:
He's quit his law practice and is lounging in a pool. He calls it "clarity". Kim shows up to try to talk some sense into him.
Jimmy comes clean with Kim: he thinks he got into the law for all the wrong reasons, he's been spending his entire life since moving to Albuquerque bending over backwards to please Chuck, and he's just tired of it.
The whole time they're talking, this jackass stock broker is yammering away at the bar on a Bluetooth. Jimmy gets an idea and decides to show Kim how "Slippin' Jimmy" works by making up a bullshit story about an inheritance and sitting down for a fake stock investment advice session. They scam the guy out of several shots of expensive tequila and a good time is had by all. They sign a phony investment contract with the guy while he takes the check, thinking he's just made a FORTUNE...when really they just scammed him out of hundreds of dollars in booze and food.
They spend the night together after all that.
Meanwhile, Douchebag's home was burglarized. His baseball card collection and all his drug money was stolen. All he cares about is his baseball card collection.
Douchebag is a colossal dumbass. The cops are smart enough to know why his home was broken into and that he's dirty. He's too stupid to realize what's actually going on here. While he's off getting a "printed manifesto" of his entire baseball card collection, the cops case the scene, notice something amiss with the couch, pull it out, and find a crawlspace hidden behind the baseboard.
Someone's going to buttrape city.
Meanwhile, Jimmy's back in the pool lounging, trolling for marks. Kim isn't returning his calls. It's kind of sad, really.
Finally, he comes to his senses, and calls directory assistance for the number for Davis & Main. It's time for Jimmy to get out of Marcoville and go back to work.
Jimmy now has everything he ever wanted: his own office, a company car, an assistant, respect. Everything a lawyer could ever want out of life.
The episode ends on a bit of an...odd scene: There's a power switch on the wall of Jimmy's new office with a piece of tape over it that says "Always leave ON! Do not turn off."
Jimmy goes over to it, uncovers it, and turns it off.
Nothing happens.
He turns it back on and tapes it up.
Fade to black.
Weird. But nothing insignificant happens in a Vince Gilligan show.
Ladies and gentlemen, Better Call Saul is back.
I didn't know Breaking Bad had a prequel.
Is it from the same writers?
~Leonzilla
3757773 Same creator, same team, etc. It's the story of Saul Goodman.
3757805 Oh, it turns out I had already heard about it. Just never before someone refer to it as the prequel to Braking Bad.
You see I was confused because I knew that the creators of Breaking Bad had a new series about a lawyer and then I hear from you that they were having a prequel for BB so I thought "are they producing two series at the same time? If so the writing must be really cracking up the keyboard with so much writing done! " But that was not the case.