The 16 Best Saul Goodman Moments In Better Call Saul And Breaking Bad

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the series finale of "Better Call Saul."

From his introduction in Season 2 of "Breaking Bad," Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) was an instant fan favorite. With his silver tongue, sharp suits, and canny brain, he is the perfect legal advisor to Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and his expanding drug empire. As Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) puts it, "When the going gets tough, you don't want a criminal lawyer, you want a criminal lawyer."

"Better Call Saul" gave us more insight into Saul, aka Jimmy McGill, and his descent into the seedy criminal lifestyle he inhabits in "Breaking Bad." Ranging from his ace moments in court to his colorful scams, or even just touching personal moments, here is a selection of our favorite moments from Saul Goodman in both series. He's a nuanced, entertaining character, masterfully played by Odenkirk, who perfectly judges each character beat, hitting the broad strokes and the more quietly intimate scenes with equal acuity.

The introduction of Jimmy McGill in "Better Call Saul" is a thing of genius. Discovered in the courthouse toilets, we find Jimmy rehearsing every beat of an impassioned speech before bursting into the courtroom. He gives an evocative, florid speech before launching into his defense of his clients. They were drunk, he says, but nobody was hurt, and while their actions were dumb and distasteful, what harm have they really done? The prosecution's response is simply to wheel out a television set and play the court a surveillance tape of exactly what Jimmy's clients did — namely breaking into a morgue to sexually abuse a corpse.

What this does is perfectly demonstrate Jimmy's ever-changing relationship with the truth, as well as his love of theatrics. He defends his client with an energy and passion that is worlds away from the cynical indifference Saul shows his clients in "Breaking Bad." It's the perfect reintroduction of the character, clearly illustrating to us just who Saul used to be.

When Kim leaves HHM and goes off on her own, she takes her big client Mesa Verde with her, but they are quickly charmed back to HHM thanks to the influence of Jimmy's brother, Chuck (Michael McKean). Taking this as a personal slight against him (and in a misguided attempt to defend her honor), Jimmy begins a personal mission to get Mesa Verde to return to Kim. 

His method is characteristically elaborate and designed to exploit Chuck's biggest weakness: his intellectual vanity. Jimmy steals the Mesa Verde files from Chuck's office and takes them to a photocopy shop, where he painstakingly alters all the references to Mesa Verde's address by one digit. At the subsequent hearing, Chuck pompously refuses to accept that the address is wrong and brushes off the client, leading to them rehiring Kim. 

Beyond serving as a win for Jimmy against his brother and once again showing his ability to read people and (often) predict their actions, the scheme is a great example of something the series did regularly; taking something superficially petty and insignificant and using it as the launch point for a dramatically escalating chain of events. This incident permanently severs the already brittle relationship between Chuck and Jimmy and indirectly leads to Chuck entrapping his brother. This in turn leads to the climactic hearing, which eventually leads to Chuck's death.

Perhaps the only time Jimmy is truly in his element in the early seasons of "Better Call Saul" is when he briefly takes a sabbatical from the law to return to his hometown and run scams with his old friend, Marco (Mel Rodriguez). The two are both adept at performing and taking their marks for all they can, be it via a Kennedy half-dollar con or a fake Rolex.

Both characters clearly revel in the con itself. The montage of their various scams is one of the most purely fun sequences of the entire series. The two characters have a genuinely touching friendship that's cut tragically short when Marco suffers a heart attack in the middle of a con, telling his friend as he dies, "Jimmy, this was the greatest week of my life."

As the series goes on, Jimmy's friends all fall by the wayside, until all he can see are easy marks and fellow con artists, but Marco was a true friend who looked up to Jimmy and wanted nothing more than to run scams with him. Marco is honored by Jimmy throughout the show in the form of the pinky ring Jimmy inherits from him, which he wears for the remainder of the series.

In only the second episode of "Better Call Saul," Jimmy demonstrates his remarkable negotiation skills when convincing the hot-headed, violent Tuco Salamanca (Raymond Cruz) to not only spare his life, but also that of the twin con artists who called his grandmother a "biznatch."

Taken out into the desert for an ad-hoc execution, Jimmy is able to talk Tuco out of killing him fairly easily, but he still seems intent on killing the skateboarding con-men. Jimmy can't bring himself to leave the two to die, so appeals to Tuco's vanity and self-perceived fairness, negotiating with him for their lives. In a colorful bit of haggling, Jimmy talks Tuco down from killing the pair to simply breaking one leg of each of the con artists. The brothers hate Jimmy for it, but as he says himself, "I just talked you down from a death sentence to six months probation. I'm the best lawyer ever."

The relationship between Jimmy and Kim Wexler is both the heart and soul of "Better Call Saul," and the most bittersweet element of the series. For every heartwarming scene between the two, there is also the ever-present knowledge that something has to happen to drive the two apart at some point prior to the events of "Breaking Bad."

Theories abounded about Kim's ultimate fate, so it came with a mixture of relief and sadness when it was revealed that she is the architect of her own downfall in many ways. Starting the series as a serious, ethically-driven lawyer, her fatal flaw is that she loves Jimmy McGill, and finds herself drawn toward the thrill of the scams he runs. What makes her fall from grace all the more tragic is how this starts in a fun, affectionate sequence between the two, as Jimmy demonstrates his skill at hustling pretentious douches in bars.

Jimmy takes Kim to a restaurant where they meet Ken (Kyle Bornheimer), a loathsome stockbroker. They ask his advice on a fictional inheritance and feign interest in consulting with him, while building up a significant tab of drinks, including a bottle of the prohibitively expensive Zafiro Añejo tequila, which Ken then inadvertently pays for. The couple would embark on increasingly elaborate, sometimes dangerous scams, often at Kim's insistence, but this is where it all began.

Saul Goodman is a larger-than-life, cartoonish character in many respects, with his loud, garish suits, an awful comb-over/mullet, and ever-present Bluetooth device. It's a great cover though, obscuring the fact that Saul is actually very good at what he does. One of the most cathartic moments of the entirety of "Breaking Bad," and one of the few categorical wins for one of our heroes, is the way in which Jesse regains his aunt's house, left to him but repossessed by his parents.

Representing an anonymous Jesse, Saul charms the Pinkmans, before offering them a measly $400,000 for the property, assuring them that's the most his client would be prepared to spend on a meth-contaminated property. Saul has them exactly where he wants them, and still retains his slick demeanor, but the look he flashes the Pinkman's lawyer as he says, "How about it counselor? Do you concur?" is pure contempt.

If anyone in the entire world of "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" was destined to be caught by the police, it's the mild-mannered "Pryce" (Mark Proksch), the hapless pharmaceutical employee who tries to make some money on the side by selling pills. He's not exactly subtle about his newfound wealth, wearing loud garish sneakers and buying a Hummer, but it's his love of baseball cards that proves his undoing, when Nacho breaks into his safe and steals them, along with the drugs he was planning to sell. 

Being a naive idiot, Pryce reports the robbery to the police, leading to Mike hiring Jimmy to help. With the cops' suspicions raised by the presence of his secret safe, Jimmy has to play a blinder to pour cold water on their investigation, and he does so in a masterstroke, with three words: Hoboken Squat cobbler. He convinces the cops that the objects Pryce didn't want them to find were compromising photos of himself, sitting naked in a variety of pies. 

The beauty of Jimmy's defense is just how plausible his story is, and it speaks to just how thoroughly he and Mike understand the law and the police. They recognize that it's not enough to prove that Pryce didn't do this one specific crime, they have to allay the cops' suspicions enough so they will abandon the investigation altogether — which they do.

His whole career, Saul is looked down on by the legal community, and even when he runs rings around his opposing counsel he is treated like a shyster. In the final episode of the series, he does this yet again, with a defense portraying himself as the victim in a cynical but very plausible move. He wrangles himself an incredibly generous plea deal, knocking multiple life sentences down to just seven years. But when he learns of Kim's involvement — the one person who can see the good inside him — he makes the conscious decision to do the right thing, even if it means spending the rest of his life in jail. 

Before that, though, he gets one last chance to shine in court, turning up decked out in what looks like a sharkskin suit and with the old Saul Goodman patter. In front of Kim and the court, he throws his deal away, and finally takes responsibility for all of his criminal actions, admitting his pivotal role in Walt's empire and even acknowledging for the first time his culpability in his brother's death. It's his finest hour, and the moment where he finally feels like Jimmy McGill again.