Better Call Saul: Were Mike and Jimmy Friends?

Better Call Saul is a prequel to Breaking Bad, examining the backstories of several side characters from the original show. The most prominent of these characters are Jimmy McGill, who would go on to become the lawyer Saul Goodman, and Mike Ehrmantraut, the chief enforcer of Gus’s meth empire. These two serve as the main characters of Better Call Saul, and their stories of how they became the men that they are in Breaking Bad are intertwined together.

However their relationship in Better Call Saul is much different than the one we see in Breaking Bad. In the prequel, Mike and Jimmy are somewhat close. Despite some initial animosity between the two, we see them work together multiple times in the series, even in life or death situations. You would think that such moments would bond the two together, but in Breaking Bad, their relationship is not nearly as pleasant.

Despite continuing to do private detective work for Saul, Mike doesn’t seem to care for him at all. He threatened to break Jimmy’s legs and even kill him, all for Gus whom Mike seems much more loyal to. And the same goes for Jimmy, who doesn’t want anything to do with Mike after their confrontation and doesn’t even seem upset after Walt kills him.

So how did they end up here? Were they friends whose relationship fell apart over the years? Or were they never friends, and it’s we the audience who projected that relationship onto them? Let’s find out.

Like I said before Better Call Saul introduces us to these two characters and their lives before Breaking Bad. Jimmy McGill is a struggling lawyer trying to balance being an honest person with his natural desire to bend the rules. Working as a public defender at the courthouse, he runs into Mike Ehrmantraut, who is working at the gate collecting parking stickers.

It’s revealed that Mike was a former corrupt cop from Philadelphia. After other dirty cops kill his son Matt, he murders them in revenge and moves to Albuquerque to get away as well as take care of his daughter in law and granddaughter. Though initially trying to go straight as well, he ends up taking odd crime jobs in order to support his family.

Though initially hostile, Mike ends up helping Jimmy out with advice when the Kettleman’s disappear. Jimmy later helps Mike steal the notebook of the detective investigating the murders of those cops. Mike then returns this favor by stealing the Kettlemans’ money to force them to accept the plea deal.

They continue to work together on several projects. Mike hires Jimmy to represent Pryce when he is in danger with the cops, and also has him represent him when he amends his statements to the cops about Tuco Salamanca. Jimmy also helps Mike investigate Los Pollos Hermanos, though he doesn’t end up getting useful information. Later Mike poses as a repairman in order to take pictures of Chuck’s house for Jimmy’s upcoming hearing. After Chuck’s death, Mike declines Jimmy's job to steal a hummel figure, but instead offers his condolences for his brother’s death.

However the critical moment for their partnership is in the Season 5 "Bagman". When Jimmy is ambushed in the desert with Lalo’s money, Mike ends up saving him by taking out all but one of the gangsters. However this leaves them stranded. Together they make their way through the desert, and they even manage to take out the final gangster by working together.

This moment in particular seemed very significant for their relationship. In life or death situations, people tend to bond. And you would think that a situation like this would cement their friendship, with Jimmy owing his life to Mike.

However Jimmy doesn't seem to care about Mike all that much even after this situation. Like I said before, in Breaking Bad he’s scared of Mike after he threatens to break his legs. And he doesn’t seem to care at all that Walt murdered the man who had saved his life before.

Now you could argue that it's because he realizes that he is just a pawn of Mike's much larger game with Gus. Even though Mike saves Jimmy in Badman, he is really only doing it for Gus. After all, it's in his interest to get Lalo free so that he could later kill him in his home in Mexico. Mike is playing with Jimmy and Kim’s life, and he may resent him because of that.

However Mike does go above and beyond with Jimmy, being prepared to kill Lalo to save him, despite this not being Gus’s plan. We could just chalk this up to Mike's personal code of honor or his hatred of the Salamanca family, but he does seem to have some genuine concern for Jimmy's well being.

Later, after Howard is killed, Mike cleans up the mess and advises Jimmy and Kim on how to move past the ordeal. Again, this is part of his job as a fixer to make sure that nothing about Lalo gets out. But his advice does seem to come from the heart, and is based on his own past experiences and mistakes.

So if Mike did have some level of concern for Jimmy, perhaps the issue in their relationship comes from Jimmy himself instead.

One of the theme's of Better Call Saul is Jimmy deciding to cut himself off emotionally. We see him struggle with the conflicting emotions of being tempted to do bad things but then feeling intense guilt over the result. His brother Chuck advises him to stop caring, since he isn't going to change there is reason to torture himself with guilt. This is why he's able to deliver such a powerful performance at the bar review without really meaning any of it.

This might be what Jimmy did to his relationship with Mike. Despite Mike's saving his life, Jimmy at that point only cared about himself and Kim, and cut off any emotional attachment he might have felt for Mike. It’s a part of the overall moral decline he goes through to become Saul Goodman.

This might be why he also disregarded Mike's advice about Walter. In a flashback, we see Mike advise Jimmy not to get involved with Walt's meth business because the man was dangerous. Jimmy disregarded this warning, seeing Walt as an opportunity to make money regardless of the consequences of his actions. And it's this along with his selfish nature that probably made Mike stop caring about Jimmy.

Afterall, we know that straight shooter Mike hates people like Walt who constantly lie to themselves and others. Well Jimmy displays these exact same traits, and after Kim left him and he fully embraced the Saul Goodman persona, Mike probably grew disgusted with him. He would still do small jobs with Saul to earn more money for his family, but by the time Breaking Bad kicks off Mike has given his loyalty to Gus who he views as much more honorable than the selfish Walt and Saul.

We should also consider that the story of Better Call Saul is also the story of Mike’s decline as well. Just like Jimmy, Mike decides to cut off some of his morality in order to do what he has to for his family. In the beginning, he refused to kill even someone like Tuco for money. But over the course of the show, he is forced to let go of this morality in order to become an enforcer for Gus and to protect his family. By the time of Breaking Bad, even the honorable Mike is willing to hurt someone he used to care about in order to protect his interests with Gus.

Both Jimmy and Mike are flawed men. They had a relationship in the past, but because of the choices they made, they both became hardened criminals and any concern they had for each other died as they embraced their worst aspects.

Now that's a nice theory and all to explain the relationship between Mike and Jimmy over the course of the two shows, but we also have to acknowledge the reality of the storytelling. Mike was not originally part of the series. He was written to be a one episode character because Bob Odenkirk wasn't available to film the scene with Jane's overdose. So instead Mike was created, and he was so popular they kept him around and even made him one of the leads of Better Call Saul.

However when he's first introduced, he doesn't have any connection to Gus, instead being the private investigator for Saul. Later the series would establish that he's Gus's right hand man, which sort of makes his relationship with Saul confusing. Like why is this high level enforcer continuing to do small odd jobs for Saul when he has real work with Gus? Even Walt gets confused who Mike really works for.

I bring all of this up to say that the relationship between Mike and Saul wasn't something the writers had planned out from the beginning. They wrote what they needed to for each episode, and then used that as a jumping off point for future storylines like Better Call Saul. But because of this, some aspects of their relationship don't make perfect sense in hindsight.

However I will give credit to the show for making their relationship as consistent as it was. It would have been easy to just forget some of these details. And I’m sure there was a temptation to make the two leads of the show close friends and work together constantly. But the show kept them appropriately separate for most of the series, and their characterization works perfectly for the themes the story is trying to tell.

And whether they were friends or not, they were both fantastic characters who made Better Call Saul what it is. I hope you guys enjoyed this video, and stay tuned for more content, coming soon.