Man, did I love Breaking Bad. I didn’t watch it on AMC. For two weeks in October, I shunned family and friends (I only have one friend so I shunned him) and I shunned Riley, my dog, and watched all six seasons on my iPad. In fact, for one of those two weeks, I was on trial in Atlantic City and asked the Judge to end court early one day because I couldn’t bear to be away from Walt and Jesse and Hank and Michael and Gustavo. But my favorite character on the show was the lawyer Saul Goodman.
I can hear my detractors already. What?! You like Saul? The sleazy ambulance chasing, no good son-of-a-bitch lawyer? You only like him because he’s a member of your tribe. You’re always partial to the Jewish guy.
Saul Goodman Jewish? Wow. I didn’t realize it. Now I like him even more. But that’s not the reason he’s my favorite character on the show. Here’s what I liked about Saul:
- Saul refused to take a $10,000 bribe from Walt to keep Badger from cutting a deal with the DEA to reveal the name of his Meth cook (Heisenberg).
- Saul masterfully negotiates on behalf of his client Jesse the purchase of Jesse’s parent’s house. He got the purchase price down from $850,000 to $400,000.
- Saul obeyed the attorney-client privilege and refused to tell Mike Ermantraut where Jesse was hiding.
- Saul provided his clients Walt and Skyler with excellent financial advice by recommending the purchase of a laser tag business in order to launder their money (It’s not Saul’s fault that they ended up buying the car wash).
- Saul patriotically hires Huell and Kuby to force Ted to pay his back taxes.
- Saul held in trust Jesse’s money while he got clean.
Isn’t this the type of lawyer you want representing you?
