<em>Better Call Saul</em> "Uno" Recap: Meet Jimmy McGill

AMC

It's been nearly a year and a half since our last visit to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Back then, we were obsessed with ricin cigarettes and and kickass Badfinger songs. And so we pickup the pieces post-Breaking Bad with spinoff Better Call Saul, something that started as a joke, was re-imagined as a thirty minute comedy, and finally comes to life as an hourlong drama (still a funny one). Just as with BB, we'll be reviewing and recapping Better Call Saul this season.

This week on the series premiere of Better Call Saul, Jimmy pulls a scam, Mike craves stickers, and we developed a hankering for Cinnabon. Let's talk about the newest episode, "Uno," below.

The End Is The Beginning Is The End: We are introduced to Better Call Saul with an evocative, haunting black-and-white sequence. It could be the frame through which we'll learn about the life and times of Jimmy McGill. It could be their version of Walter White purchasing a machine gun for his 52nd birthday. It could be the only time we visit with Mr. Cinnabon.

Either way, right off the bat we get a paranoid glimpse of combover-less Saul after Breaking Bad. He's a defeated, mustachioed Cinnabon manager who drinks Dewar's and Drambuie (with lemon juice—aka, a Rusty Nail, thanks Bittinho) to get through the anonymous days of his post-Walter White life in Omaha.

Worst of all, he really is living his best life: "If I'm lucky, in a month from now, best-case scenario, I'm managing a Cinnabon in Omaha," Saul said to Walt in "Granite State", the penultimate episode of BB, as the two contemplated their futures while waiting for the Vacuum Cleaner Repairman to give them new (mundane) lives. That guy clearly was good at his job.

It's an eerie, and almost sour note to start a series on. Who would have thought that a vintage "Better Call Saul" television advertisement could carry the weight of great tragedy.

The into is also a wonderful curveball that takes advantage of the show's unique position as the first spinoff of a 'Golden Age Of Television'™ series; you won't see Paul Kinsey: Undercover Krishna coming anytime soon, sadly. No other show of this era could have started quite like this.

At the same time, I can't quite imagine how someone who has never seen Breaking Bad before might react to it. The rest of the episode (and what I've seen of the series) is much more self-contained, with a slightly zippier pacing than BB. But here, nothing was said in the whole sequence. Total silence. Unless...

Just imagine if we saw a glimpse of a grizzled, droopy-eyed Frasier Crane, splayed out in a spaghetti-stained tank top in front of a TV in Alabama, drinking out of a handle of Goldschlager while watching The Voice. Then we suddenly shift to Frasier in an ill-fitting suit as he first becomes a licensed psychiatrist in Boston. And sure, occasionally he would drink at Cheers, but Sam Malone hadn't had the bright idea of tending a bar full-time to make enough money to leave to his family before he died of a terminal cancer. No other show could have started like this.

Overall, the moods, textures and tones of the show are all readily familiar to BB fans—certainly the setting will immediately bring up memories of stakeouts with Hank (and in episode two, there is a desert sequence that carries the signature blend of horror, tension and humor of the best of BB)—and it's almost easy to take that level of excellence from this chiseled production crew (many of whom worked on BB) for granted. The thing that would make or break the series is whether they could immediately hone in on Saul/Jimmy's character, and convince the audience—both fans and new viewers—to care without being able to rely on the frantic plot-driven engine that so often powered BB.

(As Odenkirk told Vulture, "iI’s gonna take some time for people to adjust to Better Call Saul. It’s more of a novel. Plot is a little bit more secondary to character in this.")

Better Call...Jimmy: The courtroom scene is really the perfect introduction to the character for new viewers. There's our man doing what he does best: bullshitting, performing, hustling. We feel at ease watching him in all his goofy glory. The gallows humor, the theatricality. But this time we get to see him practicing beforehand—we get to see Saul in an embryonic stage. This is the origin story for Saul Goodman; Jimmy McGill hasn't broken bad for real yet.

(For BB fans, it's a boatload of fun finally getting to see him perform his act in an actual courtroom, which we never got in BB. Especially when he's forced to try to smooth-talk a jury into believing some teenage corpse-fornicators were just kids having a laugh)

As for the origin story: the thesis statement for the pilot—both addressing its close ties to BB as well as Jimmy's own journey to become Saul—comes later on in the episode, when Jimmy is asked by his brother, "Wouldn't you rather build your own identity? Why ride on someone else's coattails?"

Practice Makes Perfect: So we know where the story ends (in a Cinnabon in Omaha), but we don't yet know what the show is about. Yes, it's a compelling character study of a beloved sad sack rogue off the bat. It's a love letter to the ABQ and all the different ways someone can wring tension out of unusual but striking camera movements. But Breaking Bad, as with most of the major 'Golden Age' shows, was about ideas as well: growth, decay and transformation. There were layers upon layers of subtext with the stories it was telling. But Jimmy McGill is no Mr. Chip, and Saul Goodman is no Scarface.

So what does Better Call Saul have under its skin: it's about acting. We see scene after scene in the first episodes of the show of Jimmy practicing his speeches, modifying his levels of chameleonic sleaziness, fumbling with lies. This is a Jimmy who has to pretend to be his own secretary; who has to haggle with court officers over checks; who has to make deals with a (somehow) lower class of dumbass small-time scammers. He's working out of the back of a nail clinic while helping take care of his brother, who suffers from a severe malady (more on that below). He's constantly in negotiations, and he's rarely without a role he's playing. On top of that, he's struggling to get clients; just watch the way his eyes hang in the moment as he waits to see if the corrupt treasurer will take his business.

This is also a Jimmy who isn't really a criminal yet. Sure, he's willing to pull petty scams. He's closer to Slippin' Jimmy than Saul Goodman. But this is a guy who wants to drum up legit business for himself, not someone who wants to be the consigliere of a suburban drug dealer. "I don't go looking for guilty people to represent," he says.

He's the guy kicking garbage cans and straightening his face in mirrors. And as we learned with BB, adversity shows one's true character.

On top of all that, we get that pivotal scene 2/3 of the way through the episode when Chuck tells Jimmy he can't use his own name for his practice and delivers the coattails quote. Walter White was handed a death sentence in the pilot of BB; Jimmy is given two weeks notice about his identity.

And now, The Honorary Huell Babineaux 'What The Huell Else' Section:

• The meet-cute with Mike. We're sure we'll see more of him in the future. For now, we're happy to learn that Mike started out as exasperated and unimpressed with Jimmy as he was with Saul.

• The big emotional tether in this episode—the thing Saul never really had on BB—is his brother Chuck. Since it was confusing to me at first, here it is: Chuck left his firm because he's mentally ill (apparently, he thinks electronics can harm him). He doesn't seem to have any physical disease. It really hammers home how shitty it is that the law firm refuses to acknowledge that he won't be able to work again.
• One gets the feeling that older brother Chuck has long been Jimmy's mentor, maybe a parental figure, and definitely the one bailing him out of trouble. Being thrust into a position of responsibility because of the illness is driving Jimmy to come up with schemes for quick money.
• Another emotional tether: the woman from the law firm who shares a cigarette with Jimmy. It's also one of the moments when his mask comes off completely, and Jimmy sounds like a vulnerable boy.
• Tuco! We only get a quick glimpse at the end of the episode, but there's more to come from our favorite unhinged ABQ gangster. Shit gets tight. Tight tight tight.

FYI: After tonight, new episodes of Better Call Saul will be on Monday nights at 9 p.m. (including tomorrow).