- Struggling public defender Jimmy McGill constructs an elaborate yet questionable plan for winning back a pair of wealthy potential clients.
- Lawyer Jimmy McGill is having a hard time making a go of his law practice. He works mostly as a public defender, out of a nail salon's backroom and meets clients in coffee shops. He's nowhere near as successful as his brother Chuck, a name partner in a major law firm who currently lives at home dealing with personal issues. After two young skateboarders try to scam Jimmy in a set-up accident, he thinks he's found the perfect way to sign on to defend a possibly-rich prospective client, but nothing quite goes as planned.—garykmcd
- To the old-timey song "Address Unknown," we see a black-and-white scene of people working at Cinnabon in an Omaha, Nebraska shopping mall. The middle-aged manager, Gene (Bob Odenkirk), notices a young, tough-looking guy (Michael Perez) staring at him. Gene appears petrified, but then it turns out the man wasn't looking at him at all, and Gene is obviously relieved. After the mall closes, Gene goes home in the snowy darkness to his modest apartment and sips a stiff drink alone in front of the TV. Then he carefully closes the blinds, pulls a videotape from a hidden compartment in his closet, puts it in his VCR, and starts watching. It's a demo tape of "better call Saul" ads, and we realize that "Gene" is actually Saul Goodman (of Breaking Bad), now living under a new alias.
Flashback to many years before, now in full color. A small New Mexico courtroom full of people is impatiently waiting for Goodman -- at this point in his life named Jimmy McGill -- to appear. The bailiff (Lonnie Lane) finds Jimmy in the bathroom practicing his argument in front of a urinal. Jimmy enters the courtroom and delivers his closing argument to the jury, defending three teenage boys (Grant Barker, Clay Space, and David Said) for some unspecified crime. Then the prosecutor (Sanford Kelley) plays a videotape of the accused laughing while they abuse a corpse in a mortuary.
After the trial, Jimmy is paid $700, argues unsuccessfully with the pay-window clerk (Nadine Marissa) that he should get $700 per defendant, and swears he won't do this work again. In the parking lot, Jimmy answers a cellphone call from a potential client, and uses a falsetto voice to pretend to be his own (non-existent) secretary, while making excuses why he can't meet the prospective client at his own office, offering instead to meet at a cafe. He drives his yellow clunker sedan to the exit gate, and we see that Mike (Jonathan Banks) (also of Breaking Bad) is running the parking lot booth. (They apparently do not know each other at this point.) Mike insists that Jimmy pay $3 or get an additional validation sticker. Jimmy rants and raves with angry sarcasm as he goes back to the building to get the additional sticker, rather than pay $3.
At the cafe, a nice, youngish couple talks with Jimmy about their case. The man (Jeremy Shamos) is going to be tried for embezzling $1.6 million while working as county treasurer; Jimmy has heard about it in the news. The man is just about to sign an employment agreement making Jimmy his lawyer, when his wife (Julie Ann Emery) stops him and says they need to think about it. Jimmy is disappointed.
Driving while talking on the phone, Jimmy runs into a skateboarder, cracking his windshield. In a panic, he runs over to the injured skateboarder, whose twin brother is freaking out. When the brothers (Daniel Spenser Levine and Steven Levine) ask for an out-of-court settlement of $500, Jimmy suddenly realizes it's a scam. He kicks the supposedly injured skateboarder who turns out not to be injured at all. Jimmy castigates them for trying to con a lawyer, or anyone driving such a crappy car as his. The pair run away when Jimmy demands money for his broken windshield.
Jimmy walks into a nail salon and chats with the asian owner (Eileen Fogarty) while collecting his mail. She is dismayed that he defended the corpse-abusing teens (she saw it in the paper). Jimmy walks to the back of the store where his extremely meager office is located (apparently in a utility closet). His answering machine has "zero messages." He looks through his mail and is interested to find a letter from the law firm HHM -- Hamlin Hamlin & McGill. It's a check for $26,000. He tears it up.
Jimmy goes to HHM and theatrically confronts Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian) in front of other HHM employees, dumping the torn-up check on the table and asking what it was for. Howard says it's "for Chuck." Jimmy says it's not enough; Chuck did a lot for HHM and should get more. In fact, says Jimmy, Chuck owns 1/3 of HHM. Jimmy wants $17 million, and tells Howard to stop pretending Chuck still works there; Chuck's cashing out. Howard says he wants to hear that from Chuck.
On his way out of HHM, Jimmy spies the couple from the cafe being introduced to Howard. Jimmy becomes so upset that he has a kicking fit with the trash can in the parking garage. But in the garage, he is met by Kim (Rhea Seehorn), a lawyer who was in the conference room when Jimmy confronted Howard. They share her cigarette; apparently they know each other.
It's night, and Jimmy drives up to Chuck's house. He stashes all his portable electronics in the streetside mailbox before entering the dark interior. Chuck (Michael McKean), Jimmy's considerably older brother, has been away from HHM for a year because he now suffers from extreme sensitivity to electromagnetic fields. He's housebound, and lives without electricity. Jimmy helps him by bringing supplies and newspapers.
Jimmy tries to talk Chuck into cashing out, but Chuck insists that he will recover from EM sensitivity and resume his work, plus Chuck knows HHM can't afford to pay that kind of money. Jimmy says that Chuck is broke and soon will be on the street, but it turns out HHM is paying Chuck a stipend so he can keep on living the way he is. The argument escalates to shouting, then Jimmy apologizes for getting angry.
Chuck shows Jimmy one of Jimmy's own matchbooks with his name as a lawyer "James McGill", and says that Howard wants Jimmy to stop using that name, because it could be confused with HHM. Chuck tries to persuade him, but Jimmy's flabbergasted that he's being asked to stop using his own name.
Jimmy hunts down the twin skateboarders at a skatepark, and tells them the story of how, when he was a younger man in Cicero, Illinois, he was a slip-and-fall con artist known as Slippin' Jimmy. He offers the twins $2,000 to team up with him on a new scam. Soon the three of them are casing their target, Betsy Kettleman (the wife of the accused county embezzler). The plan is to do the same thing the twins did to Jimmy, but with Jimmy showing up after the accident and pretending to be on Betsy's side.
They execute: The fake accident with Betsy's car works great, and witnesses dining outside are totally convinced. But Betsy doesn't get out of her car; instead she suddenly drives away. The twins call Jimmy, who's waiting a few blocks away in his car, and tell him what happened. They're hanging onto a pickup truck and following her car on their skateboards. Jimmy tells them that they're going to make even more money from a hit-and-run, then the twins decide they don't need Jimmy at all and hang up the phone.
Betsy pulls into her driveway and the twins skateboard up and confront her, one of them pretending to have an injured leg. But it's not Betsy at all; it's another woman (Miriam Colon) who speaks only Spanish. Not realizing it's the wrong person, the twins manage to make her realize they want money. She goes into the house, and the twins follow. Jimmy drives up, sees the damaged car, and knocks on the house door.
When the door opens, it is Tuco Salamanca (Raymond Cruz) (from Breaking Bad) pointing a gun in Jimmy's face. Tuco pulls Jimmy into the house, looks around to make sure no one outside saw anything, then closes the door.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content