Legal noir is a subgenre of classic noir, populated by morally ambiguous characters and dark, gritty storylines in which the law is twisted, manipulated, or exploited to serve someone’s sinister needs. The purest example is AMC’s Better Call Saul. Saul Goodman, played perfectly by Bob Odenkirk, is not just a criminal lawyer—he is a criminal lawyer. He uses his legal skills to manipulate the system for the benefit of criminals who also happen to be his clients. The character of Saul Goodman was born in AMC’s Breaking Bad, where he became the lawyer who taught an aspiring drug manufacturer how to launder money.
Better Call Saul is a prequel to Breaking Bad. It shows how small-time hustler Jimmy “Slippin’ Jimmy” McGill transforms into Saul Goodman—the criminal lawyer. Over six seasons and 63 episodes, we watch Jimmy’s gradual transformation from struggling attorney to the morally compromised Saul Goodman. Before becoming a lawyer, Jimmy works in the mailroom at his brother’s firm while earning his law degree through a correspondence program at the University of American Samoa. After passing the bar, Jimmy does whatever he can to build a law practice from scratch. Eventually, “Slippin’ Jimmy” resurfaces, and Jimmy begins applying his skills as a con artist to the practice of law.
Jimmy is counterbalanced by his older brother, Chuck McGill. Chuck helped Jimmy leave his troubled past in Illinois behind and brought him to New Mexico, where Jimmy went to work in the mailroom at Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill. Chuck considers the law sacred—something that should never be manipulated for illegal or nefarious purposes. To Chuck, giving Jimmy a law license is the equivalent of giving a chimpanzee a machine gun: eventually, someone is going to get hurt. That conflict is at the heart of the show’s legal noir. Jimmy sees the law as something flexible—a system whose rules can be bent to achieve a desired result. Chuck sees those same rules as the only thing standing between order and chaos.
Kim Wexler, played by Rhea Seehorn, is Jimmy’s love interest and, eventually, his wife. She supports Jimmy but is also increasingly drawn to the games he plays. Although Kim understands that their cons can eventually hurt someone, she is repeatedly drawn back by the thrill of the deception. In one memorable scheme, Jimmy and Kim pose as wealthy siblings and trick an obnoxious investment manager into paying for an extraordinarily expensive bottle of tequila. Kim vows that it will not happen again—but it does. The deeper she enters Jimmy’s world, the more difficult it becomes for her to distinguish between bending the rules for fun and destroying someone else’s life.
What makes Better Call Saul exceptional is not merely its acting or writing, both of which are outstanding. It is the show’s willingness to ask what happens when a talented lawyer stops viewing the law as a set of boundaries and starts viewing it as a set of tools. Co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould take the world of Breaking Bad and turn it into something more than a prequel. For me, Better Call Saul is legal noir at its finest: a story about ambition, deception, morality, and what can happen when a clever lawyer discovers that knowing the rules also means knowing exactly how to break them. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing one of television’s great legal dramas.
TF’s Notes – One of my favorite aspects of Better Call Saul is watching Jimmy try to develop a practice with no money and no clients. His one-room law office is also his bedroom, an old storage room in the back of a nail salon. When he gets a potential client on the phone, he disguises his voice so the caller believes he has a secretary. In another scene, he watches the television show Matlock and takes notes; soon afterward, he dresses like Matlock and heads to a retirement home looking for potential elder-law clients.
I know many lawyers who began as solo practitioners, including me. When I started my own practice, I owned one suit. I wore it to retirement homes hoping to pick up probate cases, and I handed out business cards at criminal court to just about anyone willing to take one. I even knew a lawyer who would read the police blotter, look up the phone numbers of people who had been arrested the night before, and call them looking for business. So when I watch Jimmy McGill desperately hustle for his first clients, I laugh—but not because it’s completely ridiculous. I laugh because parts of it aren’t that far from the truth.