Better Call Saul: Easter Eggs

Now that I'm feeling the flow of Better Call Saul I'd like to go back and write about some of the easter eggs in the opening episode. Here are three:

The pilot starts with a flash-forward to sometime after the finale of Breaking Bad. Saul has a new look with a bushy mustache and is working as a manager at a Cinnabon restaurant in a mall. This is an homage to a throwaway comment Saul made near the end of Breaking Bad, when he and Walter White were both paying "the disappearer" to manufacture new identities for them. "By this time next year I'll be lucky if I'm managing a Cinnabon in Omaha," Saul laments to Walter. At the Cinnabon Saul is scared by an intense-looking customer who he fears might be a person hunting him for his former identity. That night he goes home to his nondescript apartment and watches old videotapes of his "Better Call Saul" TV ads.

The next scene is in the present day, where Saul Goodman is still Jimmy McGill, struggling young lawyer. He's working public defender cases to get by because that's all the work he can get. After one case where his clients are convicted he walks out to the parking lot. We see him approach a Cadillac similar to what he drove in Breaking Bad... except his key unlocks the car next to it, a beat-up shitty old economy car, a Suzuki Esteem.

As Jimmy drives out of the parking lot we see the first of many run-on gag scenes with Mike Ehrmantraut as the parking lot attendant. As I noted before, viewers unfamiliar with Breaking Bad wouldn't know that in the future Mike is a fixer and hit-man working for a powerful drug lord. There are several scenes of Jimmy trying to coax Mike to accept a parking stub with an insufficient number of validation stickers. It's funny as a running gag... but it's also intriguing because it has most of us in the audience wondering, "Okay, when does Mike go from parking lot attendant to gangster?" (BTW, the answer to when is Mike's back-story is episode 1.06. And Mike's move into thug life is in 1.09.)

BCS 1.04: Jimmy's Heroic Billboard Rescue

One of the story arcs in the first season of Better Call Saul is how Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) hate the law firm of Hamlin, Hamlin, and McGill ("HHM"), and especially its managing partner, Howard Hamlin. Yes, Jimmy's family name is in the firm's name. His older brother,  Charles, is one of the senior partners. Jimmy hates Howard because he sees Howard trying to screw Charles out of his share of the partnership. We also learn in a later episode, via flashback, that a few years earlier Jimmy was working in HHM's mailroom and earned his law degree and passed the bar exam, Howard refused to hire him as an attorney.

In episode 1.04, "Hero", Jimmy comes into some money from criminal defendants who pay him $20k. It's stolen money— a fact Jimmy is well aware of— and it's a bribe, not a legal fee, but that's another (humorous) story arc. Jimmy carefully sets aside most of the money for expenses. Seeing a few thousand left, he hatches a plan.

The Billboard

Jimmy visits a tailor to have a bespoke suit just like Howard Hamlin's made, then pays the ladies at the salon— the one his office is in the back room of— to dye and style his hair, also just like Howard's look. What he does next we see from Howard's reaction to it. Jimmy has rented a billboard with his name and (new) likeness on, closely copying Howard's look on HHM billboard.

Howard is outraged and sues Jimmy for trademark infringement. Jimmy defends himself in front of a judge, but the judge sides with Howard and HHM. Jimmy is ordered to take the billboard down. But something goes wrong when he does.



Jimmy first tries to get local news media to cover his "David v. Goliath" story of a struggling young lawyer being sued out of existence by a big firm. When none care to take the story— and we see Jimmy calling down a list of at least 6 local papers and TV news stations— Jimmy hires a makeshift TV crew from a local university to record a commercial with him in front of the billboard as it's being taken down. And that's where something goes wrong. The construction worker who is removing the billboard (the ad is a vinyl sheet over an aluminum frame) slips off the catwalk and is left hanging by his safety harness 65' in the air!

Jimmy's Heroic Rescue

While the makeshift TV crew's cameras are still recording, Jimmy does something that seems a bit uncharacteristic for him. Rather than wait for emergency crews to arrive— though he does call 911 first or ask one of the college TV students to do it— he climbs the ladder to the billboard and pulls the stranded construction worker back up. Local news media care about this story. Jimmy gets coverage on TV news that night and a front page story the next morning— well, front page of the local news section of the paper— lauding him as a hero.

At the HHM offices Howard is pissed. He shut down Jimmy's ad not only because it's harmful to his business but because he finds Jimmy to be a personal nuisance— a fly buzzing in his ear that just won't go away no matter how many times he swats at it. The partners are all gathered around a TV, watching. Howard is in a fit of pique. While the other lawyers are generally impressed and there seems to be a murmur of, "We totally should hire this guy!", Howard angrily charges that Jimmy faked it. That the accident and the rescue are a con, a scam.

Was it a Scam?

In the moment, the accident on the billboard seemed... well, accidental. And Jimmy's precarious climb up the ladder plus hand-to-hand rescue of the dangling construction worker all seemed earnest. Howard angrily snapping "FAKE!" in front of a room full of impressed colleagues seemed the height of pettiness. But was Howard right? Did Jimmy stage the accident and rescue for publicity?

To be continued....

BCS 1.04: Did Jimmy Stage the Billboard Rescue?

Recently I wrote about Better Call Saul episode 1.04, where Jimmy rescues a construction worker from a billboard and makes the local news as a hero. While most characters in the episode take the story at face value, Jimmy's rival, Howard Hamlin, sneers that it was staged. That it's a fake, a scam, from a known con artist.



In the moment Howard seems like a total asshat for calling Jimmy a scammer when everyone else is lauding him as a hero. But was Howard right? Did Jimmy stage the accident and rescue for publicity?

Some fan sites treat it like it's not even a question. Jimmy staged the billboard accident, they state. But does their matter-of-factness  come from a reveal in a later episode where Jimmy outright admits it was a con (note: I'm posing this as a hypothetical, not a spoiler!), or is there enough evidence right there in episode 1.04 to support a firm conclusion?

Showrunner Vince Gilligan and his team are sneaky at the craft of writing scenes that appear one way when watched initially but are revealed to be the opposite on further consideration. I'd say they're even too sneaky. Consider their ham-fisted post-facto evidence that Walt poisoned a child in Breaking Bad. Plus, American TV audiences are not accustomed to having to figure things out. We're (sadly) used to morality plays written in such heavy-handed fashion the villains practically walk around with lighted "BAD GUY 👇" signs flashing over their heads. 😅

That said, I believe there's enough evidence in episode 1.04 to conclude Jimmy's daring rescue was a scam. It's not beyond-the-shadow-of-a-doubt level proof, but it's fairly convincing. Five Things:

• We know Jimmy's a scammer. This was part of his character introduction in the pilot, where he catches a pair of young men trying to scam him and invites them to work with him to up their game.


• Jimmy's been a scammer for years. In a flashback at the start of this episode we see him in his "Slippin' Jimmy" mode years earlier scamming bar patrons in Chicago. Running scams was how he supported himself for years.


• The construction worker was up on the billboard catwalk for quite a while. He made a show of starting to tear down the vinyl multiple times, stopping each time as if waiting for a cue from Jimmy, who was having trouble getting the makeshift camera crew to set up the shot correctly. Clearly there was some level of coordination between Jimmy and the guy on the catwalk to stage a scene for the cameras.


• When Jimmy pulled the worker to safety, the man scoffed, "It took you long enough!" That points heavily to it being planned. A construction worker in a real emergency would probably be effusive in praising the person who rescued him, especially if it was a Good Samaritan who rushed in at risk to himself before emergency responders with training and equipment like the fire department arrived.


• Jimmy hid the newspaper with his front-page hero story from his brother, Chuck. While it could be that he didn't want Chuck to think he earned success from anything other than his legal acumen, Chuck is also well aware of Jimmy's "Slippin' Jimmy" con-man days. Chuck rescued him from a con gone wrong, and his requirement for helping was that Jimmy go straight. Jimmy seems afraid that Chuck would see the rescue a new "Slippin' Jimmy" scam.