Better Call Kim

The fate of Kim Wexler on AMC’s Breaking Bad spinoff preoccupies fans. As played by Rhea Seehorn, she’s the character they fear for most. A ‘volcanic’ Season 4 could just do them in.

- Mary Kaye Schilling

RHEA SEEHORN HAS JUST TWO LINES OF dialogue in the pilot of Better Call Saul. In her first scene, she’s seated at a conference table at Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill, or HHM, the Albuquerque, New Mexico, law firm where she works. Jimmy McGill, who will become Breaking Bad’s slippery lawyer Saul Goodman (played by Bob Odenkirk), has barged into a meeting with his usual comic bravado—arms raised, quoting Ned Beatty in Network: “You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and I won’t have it!”

He’s there to confront Howard Hamlin about money owed his brother, Chuck, the McGill of HHM. Seehorn’s character, observing impassively, registers only because she’s the only woman at the table.

The meeting does not go well. Jimmy heads down to the parking garage, where he proceeds to treat a metal garbage can like a soccer ball—a can, you note, already bearing numerous dents (clearly things have not gone well before). Pan to a woman leaning against a garage wall, shot noir style, her face hidden in shadow. Jimmy walks over and stands with his shoulder pressed against hers. It’s the woman from the meeting. He reaches over and takes the cigarette from her lips, helps himself to a drag and puts it back. He begins to ask her to intervene. “I just can’t, Jimmy,” she says, dropping the cigarette to the floor and walking to the elevator, where she rights the garbage can and places the lid back on.

Welcome to Saul’s slow-boil magic: With a few deft strokes, the writers of the AMC hit have built enormous intrigue while laying clues for what will become a defining relationship of the series: Jimmy, the irresistible screwup, and Kim Wexler, the cooler head who cleans up his messes.