Jimmy McGill is losing his soul and Peter Gould is partly responsible. Though, he doesn’t really have a choice.
Along with Vince Gilligan, Gould co-created Better Call Saul, the prequel (and sometimes grey-toned sequel) to Breaking Bad. On that show, which Gilligan created and Gould produced, Jimmy McGill was known as Saul Goodman, a showy and sleazy lawyer/fixer for the show’s vast array of bad guys. On Saul, we’ve seen Jimmy as a more sympathetic character who occasionally does the right thing. But no matter what happens, we know Jimmy’s destiny, and by all accounts, he’s set to inch closer and closer to that in season four following the death of his older brother, Chuck. (Side note: Better Call Saul has already been greenlit for a fifth season by AMC, one that will surely shed more light on Jimmy’s descent into Saul.)
We spoke to Gould ahead of the season four premiere about the possibility of Chuck returning via flashback, how his death will impact the show, the continued merge of the Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad timelines, and whether he feels a responsibility to slow Jimmy’s fall and keep the show from becoming too bleak too fast.
What’s the benefit of getting that Season 5 renewal this early, as opposed to having to wait for the Season 4 one? In terms of plotting out the story. And are you looking past Season 5?
Peter Gould: That’s an interesting question. We certainly had hopes that we would be picked up. I think we haven’t finished telling the story, but we take nothing for granted. There’s certainly a business side to what we do, and we’re very lucky because people have been watching to keep us going so far. We want to finish telling the story, and how many seasons that consists of is still something we’re thinking about. But I’ll tell you, I think when we open the writers’ room next month (to begin work on season five), one of the things we’re going to be talking about a lot is what is the arc of what we’re looking at ahead of us. How many episodes is it going to be, and how much more story do we have? Because this season is a damn big season for the show. It’s not a conclusion. I don’t want to give anything away, but it’s a really big season for these characters and for the show.
Do you know how the show ends? Is there flexibility there? Could it change?
The thing that I’ve learned is we have ideas about how the show ends, but we really tackle it beat by beat, moment by moment, episode by episode, and you have to be willing to throw all your ideas away. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had scenes or episodes or ideas that we thought were wonderful and exciting and were all ready to go forward, and then we found, looking at the situation honestly, that the characters weren’t ready to do or didn’t want to do the things that we’ve thought that they needed to do in order to get this big payoff. So far, we’ve done our best just to stay honest with these characters and to stay honest with the story, and the day that we stick to our plan in preference to paying attention to who the characters are and what they’re thinking, that’ll be the day that we’ve gone on too long. I really hope that never happens.
Are we going to see the impact of Chuck’s loss on characters besides Jimmy as the season goes on? Is Howard going to fall back a little?
One of the things that fascinates me about this, I think fascinates all of us, is how the death of a person changes everyone around them. There are all sorts of effects that loss has on people, and you’re going to see it. Chuck’s death is like throwing a boulder into a quiet pond. There are waves that go in all sorts of different directions, and a lot of them hit each other in ways that we’re not expecting. It’s a fascinating thing, and it’s also fascinating because Chuck’s effects live on long after the man has died. He’s really very central to the world of our story, and removing him from the story still doesn’t remove his presence, in a strange way. But on the other hand, removing Michael McKean from Albuquerque had an enormous effect on all of us, and we miss him a lot.
Speaking to that, obviously, the show plays around with timelines. Is it possible that he could return in a flashback at some point?
Absolutely. We give ourselves the gift of traveling back and forth in time. The wonderful thing about saying goodbye to an actor on this show is to know that you may be seeing them again. Of course, that’s the whole premise of our show, because very central to our show are many characters who died or went away on Breaking Bad. There’s always a possibility for a joyful reunion.
This season’s trailers point to a darkening world. It seems heavier. There’s a lot of bleakness on TV and in the world right now. Jimmy isn’t a ray of sunshine, but there’s a lightness there as opposed to Saul. When you’re having the conversation about pushing Jimmy toward Saul, the pace of it, do you want to linger a little more on Jimmy because of that?
It’s interesting because we don’t really think in terms of trying to pace… maybe we should… how exactly we parcel these things out. Mostly what we think about is how the hell does Jimmy McGill become Saul Goodman. Why? What possible motivation could you have for a law school graduate, maybe not the best law school, but he is a law school graduate who has accessed all sorts of legitimate ways of doing business… why does he become Saul Goodman? Is it just because he wants money? That wouldn’t seem like a fulfilling explanation for this guy. So we’re really trying to understand the character, and it makes us wonder exactly who Saul Goodman is. Is Saul Goodman just the person who he was at work? We never saw him anywhere but work on Breaking Bad. Having said that, you make another point about bleakness and despair, and I agree, there’s a lot of despair in the world. I think the one thing I would say is that this story is a very different one from Breaking Bad. We knew what the ending was one way or another. That Walt was going to die. I think it would have been one of the greatest cheats or one of the worst cheats in television history if Walter White had a miraculous recovery on Breaking Bad. So there was death at the end of Breaking Bad. We knew that. The question was always what kind of death is Walter White going to have. What is Walter White’s legacy?
Jimmy McGill is a very different guy. Jimmy McGill is someone who was Slippin’ Jimmy, became Jimmy McGill, and becomes Saul Goodman, but we also know that he doesn’t die as Saul Goodman. We know that’s not the end of the story. We know that this man’s journey goes through Saul Goodman, but it doesn’t end at Saul Goodman. So I don’t know. I can’t say for sure that there’s going to be a ray of light, but it seems like… there’s an old phrase, “where there’s light, there’s hope,” and I’m going to cling to that.
It’s interesting, because at the end of Breaking Bad maybe there was some indifference to what his fate was. You’ve reset that with everything you’ve done with Saul. Is there, in your mind, a need to resolve that story with where he is now in the Cinnabon realm?
I don’t know. I don’t know if I can say definitely that we’re going to resolve it, but I can say I’m very intrigued by it. Jimmy, Saul… in some ways [they’re] something we don’t see an awful lot in here. He’s a little bit of a coward, and certainly running away when he does is understandable, I hope, but also it’s an act of cowardice, and we don’t usually see stories of people who run away, people who survive. We tend to see stories of the folks who go off in a blaze of glory one way or the other. I’m very interested in exploring where this story goes, and of course, we have an interesting problem/opportunity here, because we are a prequel, and a lot of what we do is constrained by what happens on Breaking Bad.
I can’t tell you how many times we said, “Wouldn’t it be great if Jimmy met such and such a character,” and we’d realize, “Oh, well, we know they didn’t know each other on Breaking Bad.” For instance, one example, since it’s not going to happen, I can tell you, was Ted Beneke, who Skyler worked for. We kept on thinking, “Does Jimmy meet Ted Beneke?” But they were pretty clearly meeting for the first time on Breaking Bad. So we’re constrained a lot, and some of those constraints are wonderful because, as Orson Welles said, “a lack of limits is the enemy of art.” Having those limitations sometimes is very stimulating. But on the other hand, we know that this story continues on after Breaking Bad, and so that really is an open sky for us.
I can’t promise anything, but I’m fascinated by Gene. I’m fascinated by knowing that underneath that very shy, frightened exterior… he’s a little bit like a Russian nesting doll because you know inside Gene is still Saul Goodman, is still Jimmy McGill, is still Slippin’ Jimmy. Those characters are all alive and still inside this guy, and I’m fascinated by that.
You said before that we only saw Saul at work, we didn’t really see his life and what was going on behind the scenes. Can this show spend a lot of time in the Breaking Bad timeline with Saul?
Nothing is off the table at this point. You asked me if we knew how it was going to end. These are all the questions that we’re going to get into that we talk about all the time. Are we going to run between the raindrops? Are we going to see bits and pieces of what was going on behind the scenes in Breaking Bad? I don’t think there’s a definite answer. I will say this season there are certain assumptions that were made in Breaking Bad, there were certain facts that were presented, accomplishments that happened on Breaking Bad, that we sort of took for granted. And this season we’re going to see how those things came about to some extent. We’re going to get a look behind the curtain and see how things came to be the way they are and to see also the struggle that it took to get things to be the way they were.
But having said that, I think the truth is these are two different shows, and what we really are interested in on this show is the character of Jimmy McGill and Saul Goodman, and what we’re really interested in with this show is the character of Kim Wexler, and of Mike Ehrmantraut. If their journeys overlap with Breaking Bad, then great. Those are wonderful things to happen. We enjoy them as much as anybody. But we try to be disciplined and not just throw things in because we can.
‘Better Call Saul’ returns for its fourth season on Monday, August 6 at 9 pm EST.
