10 Better Call Saul Moments That Are Crucial to Appreciating Breaking Bad

Exhibit B: Chuck Dresses Jimmy Down

Oh brother, indeed. After working hard to pin down a crooked retirement home on behalf of its elderly patients, Jimmy brings the case to his elder brother Chuck’s (Michael McKean’s) law firm, HHM. But the partners essentially opt to buy Jimmy off the case because, as we discover, Chuck refused to grease the wheels for his snot-nosed little brother to go legit. “You’re not a real lawyer,” Chuck barks. “You don’t slide into it like a cheap pair of slippers.” Ouch. Jimmy knows that Chuck — confined to his home due to a debilitating, presumably psychosomatic allergy to electric currents — is bitter and alone, but big brother’s act of Shakespearian betrayal sets Jimmy on a course toward ultimate corruption.

Exhibit C: Jimmy and Kim Swindle Ken

Exhibit D: Tuco Beats the Crap Out of Mike

If you thought Tuco’s Breaking Bad beatdown of his own henchman, No-Doze (Cesar Garcia), was wildly impulsive, then wait till you see how he flies off the handle with Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) — who, to the best of his knowledge, is merely a prideful old man — in this brutal BCS assault. Granted, Mike, who’d been paid handsomely by Nacho, was baiting Tuco into a trap, leading to time in the slammer. Nevertheless, this is the incident that truly animates the Tuco who eventually terrorizes Walt and Jesse and puts Mike on the collision course with Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) that alters his life forever.

Exhibit E: Jimmy Self-Sabotages

As mentioned, the seeds for Jimmy’s mischief were planted when Chuck undermined his efforts to go the straight-and-narrow with HHM. So much so that when Jimmy lands a plum position with prestigious firm Davis & Main, he finds himself so boxed in and bored that he stages one flagrant misconduct after another — as depicted via the episode’s now-classic comedic montage — until his otherwise benevolent boss Cliff Main (Ed Begley, Jr.) goes apoplectic and cans his ass. However, Jimmy’s loss of orientation is our gain, as we get our first gander at the blinding suit colors that would soon become Saul’s signature.

Exhibit F: Hector Steps in Mierda

If you’re itching to know what made Gus so spiteful toward Hector Salamanca (Mark Margolis), then it might have to do with how the elder cartel captain scratched and scraped excrement off the soles of his alligator-skin shoes onto Gus’s desk in the back of Los Pollos Hermanos. And this was only after Hector and his men hijacked the restaurant — during the day and with customers and staff inside — in order to strong arm Gus into carrying extra drug weight on his trucks. Hector’s desperation is as palpable as his unforgivable offense. Upon the Salamancas’ departure, Gus merely goes about cleaning up detritus inside the dining room, balling up a piece of foil and lobbing it long-distance directly into a garbage pail. He smiles. The world is his.

Exhibit G: Jimmy Eviscerates Chuck

At a bar hearing determining Jimmy’s future, Chuck is set to testify against his own brother. This is when Jimmy brings in the big guns — specifically his pickpocketing pal Huell Babineaux (Lavell Crawford) — to plant a cell phone on Chuck so he can humiliate him and out him as mentally unstable. It works. It also crosses a red line Jimmy never comes back from, particularly given what happens five episodes later.

Exhibit H: Gus and the Killer Coati

Want to know what motivates Gus Fring? Start with this scene from last season, in which the vindictive chicken mogul/meth distributor leans into his comatose nemesis, Hector, and delivers a monologue worthy of multiple re-listens. The short version? Gus was a poor kid in Chile who prized his lúcuma tree. A wily coati tried to pillage the tree, at which point young Gus battled the feral creature and held it captive rather than killing it, a metaphor for how he planned to torment his enemies and enslave his employees. Hard to say if Hector got the message (though he did eventually snag the final snortle), but we all saw what happened when Walter and Jesse didn’t.

Exhibit I:  Lalo Rings Hector’s Bell

Just when Nacho thinks things are getting easier with Hector laid up, in comes his homicidal nephew Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton), who’s intent on righting the ship and shaking things up. And that starts with Lalo visiting Hector in his nursing home and giving him a gift to help tame the old man’s twitching index finger. Lalo whispers a reminiscence in his uncle’s ear, revisiting one of their greatest triumphs: the burning down of Hotel Tulipan and murder of its proprietor. Lalo just so happened to keep a totem from the occasion: a concierge bell. He fastens it to Hector’s wheelchair arm, none the wiser that it would one day play a part in blowing their nemesis, Gus, to smithereens. Or that, several years later, his aura would strike fear in the heart of an adversarial attorney named Saul Goodman.

Exhibit J: Jimmy Introduces Kim to Saul Goodman

As we segue into season five, any pretense of Jimmy straddling the line of civility has been cast aside. His utterly acquiesces to the winner-takes-all ethos that had thus far held him back, typified by an insincere speech to the bar about grieving Chuck’s passing that earns him reinstatement. It is, in effect, his time to break bad, a message he clarifies for Kim — who’s stunned despite his gradual slide into misanthropy — by assuring her (and winking to the audience) that from now on, “It’s all good, man.” Sounds great.

Watch AMC’s two-night Better Call Saul Season Five premiere event, starting with the season premiere on February 23 at 10 p.m. ET and followed by episode two on February 24 in the show’s regular time slot of Mondays at 9 p.m. ET.