A changed man
AMC
“Seeing him with Mike and with Walt and then with Chuck, it’s an interesting structure,” Gould explains. “In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge gets visited by three ghosts who change his perspective on life. And so in a weird way, maybe there’s an echo of that in this episode where there are these three ghosts of three dead men who all made a huge impact on Jimmy’s life in one way or another.” In the episode, Jimmy asks two of the men what they would do if they could time travel, giving his own answers that ring false.
The third, his brother Chuck, gives him the words of wisdom that carry him through to his moment on the stand years later: “There’s no shame in going back and changing your path.” It echoes the spirit of a wordier line from Dickens’ famous tale: “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses are departed from, the ends will change.” Like Scrooge, Jimmy did change his path, albeit later and more poignantly than any of us could have imagined. “That’s the moment where he becomes Jimmy McGill again,” Gould tells AMC Talk about Jimmy’s confession on the stand. “That’s the last moment of Saul Goodman. When he walks into that courtroom, he walks in as Saul Goodman and he walks out as Jimmy McGill.”
The final episode of the series was already a masterpiece, but in the context of this indelible Dickens story, its ability to turn a cartoonish villain’s origin into an apologetic man’s redemption arc is all the more profound. It’s also proof that “Better Call Saul” is something we never expected it to be: a new Christmas classic.
AMC
By Valerie Ettenhofer/Aug. 16, 2022 6:54 pm EST
This is why the show’s beautiful, subtle, thrilling series finale came as such a surprise. For a while, writer-director Peter Gould let viewers think that Jimmy was gone for good, replaced by the kind of heartless coward who would try to convince a grieving widow he was innocent, only to callously yank the rug out from under her in public for his own gain. Hell, Jimmy was the person who did that, reeling in Marie Schrader (Betsy Brandt) in a sickening stunt to get a reduced sentence. But once he heard that Kim had turned herself in only moments after getting his deal, Jimmy seemed to remember himself again for the first time in years.
As with many of the show’s best tricks, audiences weren’t in on this transformation until much later, when he spoke plaintively under oath about his misdeeds, reclaiming his name and apologizing to Kim in the process.
Three ghosts
It’s a story that’s so familiar that watching an on-screen or stage adaptation can often feel more like a comforting holiday ritual than a genuinely heartfelt experience. But with years of commitment to its story, “Better Call Saul” breaks down the raw emotional power of Dickens’ structure of atonement and contemplation, recontextualizing it for modern viewers in a way that hits us square in the heart.
A changed man
“Seeing him with Mike and with Walt and then with Chuck, it’s an interesting structure,” Gould explains. “In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge gets visited by three ghosts who change his perspective on life. And so in a weird way, maybe there’s an echo of that in this episode where there are these three ghosts of three dead men who all made a huge impact on Jimmy’s life in one way or another.” In the episode, Jimmy asks two of the men what they would do if they could time travel, giving his own answers that ring false.
The third, his brother Chuck, gives him the words of wisdom that carry him through to his moment on the stand years later: “There’s no shame in going back and changing your path.” It echoes the spirit of a wordier line from Dickens’ famous tale: “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses are departed from, the ends will change.” Like Scrooge, Jimmy did change his path, albeit later and more poignantly than any of us could have imagined. “That’s the moment where he becomes Jimmy McGill again,” Gould tells AMC Talk about Jimmy’s confession on the stand. “That’s the last moment of Saul Goodman. When he walks into that courtroom, he walks in as Saul Goodman and he walks out as Jimmy McGill.”
The final episode of the series was already a masterpiece, but in the context of this indelible Dickens story, its ability to turn a cartoonish villain’s origin into an apologetic man’s redemption arc is all the more profound. It’s also proof that “Better Call Saul” is something we never expected it to be: a new Christmas classic.
The third, his brother Chuck, gives him the words of wisdom that carry him through to his moment on the stand years later: “There’s no shame in going back and changing your path.” It echoes the spirit of a wordier line from Dickens’ famous tale: “Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses are departed from, the ends will change.”
Like Scrooge, Jimmy did change his path, albeit later and more poignantly than any of us could have imagined. “That’s the moment where he becomes Jimmy McGill again,” Gould tells AMC Talk about Jimmy’s confession on the stand. “That’s the last moment of Saul Goodman. When he walks into that courtroom, he walks in as Saul Goodman and he walks out as Jimmy McGill.”
The final episode of the series was already a masterpiece, but in the context of this indelible Dickens story, its ability to turn a cartoonish villain’s origin into an apologetic man’s redemption arc is all the more profound. It’s also proof that “Better Call Saul” is something we never expected it to be: a new Christmas classic.
