TV Friendships: On ‘Better Call Saul’ season 3 and our hopes for Mike, Jimmy McGill
It feels like it’s been impossibly long since we’ve written about “Better Call Saul” here at the site, but there is a pretty darn good reason for that: The show’s been off the air! During its hiatus, AMC often doesn’t spend an extreme amount of time going out and announcing various casting or story updates, largely because there is no real reason in order to do. This is a show that knows what it’s doing, and that is taking a slow, methodical approach to fantastic storytelling.
It’s as a result of that we still don’t have nearly as much of our signature TV Friendship for the show as we’d like: Mike Ehrmantraut and Jimmy McGill a.k.a. the future Saul Goodman. The two of them are preoccupied with different things, and that caused much of the second half of the season to be with them veering off in different directions.
How did we end? For Jimmy, it was seeing him try to figure things out with his brother Chuck after he and Kim Wexler attempting to get their own dual legal practices off the ground. Jimmy certainly used some less-than-approved measures to make it happen courtesy of the copy store, but what he failed to recognize in the process is that his brother Chuck also pulled some strings of his own. He planted that recorder, and set up his brother to crash and burn. Sure, we don’t know the full effect of that just yet, but it’s certainly looking bad for him.
Is this where he calls in Mike for some help, at least when he finds out just what Chuck has done? We can’t see Jimmy hiring Mike to kill his brother, that seems far too dark for this character, but we wouldn’t put it past him to bring in Jonathan Banks’ character to handle some shady business that could make Chuck look back in the eyes of HHM. Everyone’s got dirt, and everyone’s got weaknesses to be exploited. Chuck has many.
As for how Jimmy can build his relationship with Mike in terms of Mike’s problems, the mysterious “don’t” message certainly suggests that Gus Fring is on the way. Mike is more of a mastermind of the field, but he certainly can use someone with the legal know-how and hustle like Jimmy to help liaise. Or, it’s certainly possible that Jimmy’s useful in ensuring some guys stay out of trouble. The joy here is that we know we’re building towards more cooperation, and the larger question is how it all comes about and how it pays off.
(Photo: AMC.)