Better Call Saul (2015 — 2022)

Better Call Saul follows the transformation of James “Jimmy” McGill, a former con artist who is trying to become a respectable lawyer, into the personality of the flamboyant criminal lawyer Saul Goodman (a play on the phrase “[it]’s all good, man!”), over the six-year period prior to the events of Breaking Bad, spanning from approximately 2002 to 2008. Jimmy is inspired by his older brother Chuck McGill to leave his Chicago-area conman past, when he was known as “Slippin’ Jimmy”. He initially works in the mailroom at his brother’s Albuquerque law firm, Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill (HHM), where managing partner Howard Hamlin becomes his nemesis. While at HHM Jimmy befriends Kim Wexler, a fellow mailroom employee who completes law school and becomes one of the firm’s associates, and their friendship later turns romantic. Jimmy is motivated by Chuck’s success to finish college and complete a Juris Doctor degree through a correspondence law school, The University of American Samoa. After attaining admission to the bar but being denied employment at HHM, Jimmy’s pursuits focus on public defender work and earnest attempts to fight for justice. His life and career begin to intersect with the illegal narcotics trade and feature characters and story arcs that continue into Breaking Bad.

These arcs include the uneasy truce between the Salamanca family that serves the Juárez Cartel drug interest, led first by Hector Salamanca and later by his nephew Lalo, and Gus Fring, a fried chicken entrepreneur whose restaurant chain is a front for the drug trade. Those caught up in the ensuing turmoil include Ignacio “Nacho” Varga, a Salamanca associate who wants to protect his father from harm, and Mike Ehrmantraut, a former Philadelphia police officer who becomes a fixer for Gus. As his interactions with criminals continue, Jimmy takes on the persona of the flamboyant, colorful Saul Goodman, and he starts to draw on his conman past while his work as an attorney goes from questionable to unethical to illegal. The show includes flashforwards to events following or during Breaking Bad at the start of each season’s premiere (with the exception of season six.) These scenes show Jimmy living as a fugitive under the identity Gene Takavic, the manager of a Cinnabon store in Omaha, Nebraska.