It’s summer, which means time to hole up inside your apartment, crank the A/C up, and grab your laptop for some quality Netflix binge-watching. In that spirit, we present our streaming-friendly Network Jews summer installment, Netflix Jews. And what better show to start than with AMC’s addictive, critically-acclaimed crime drama Breaking Bad, which nabbed 13 Emmy nominations this morning?

When the final eight episodes of Breaking Bad begin airing on Aug. 11, all eyes will be on the cancer-ridden chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin Walter White (Bryan Cranston), his former partner Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), and Hank, the DEA agent brother in law (Dean Norris) who SPOILER just figured everything out. But the show has taken on an increasing number of supporting characters as Walt’s business expands. The first and longest-lived of these adjunct members of the White empire is lawyer Saul Goodman. Played with delightful smarm by Mr. Show star Bob Odenkirk, Saul has provided Walter with much-needed extra-legal advice (helping set up Walt’s former employer as a money laundering front), assistance in sticky situations (using his secretary to throw Hank off the trail of Walt’s RV), and most importantly for viewers, a stable source of comedy on a show that is usually deadly serious.

Breaking Bad may be on its last eight episodes, but a Goodman-based spinoff now seems to be in “full speed ahead” development—good news for some fans, aggravating for others, and as good a reason as any to catch up on the show.

OK, fine. Saul Goodman is definitely not Jewish. He’s Irish (his real last name is McGill), and he changed his name because he wanted to attract clients interested in hiring a Jewish lawyer. His family life isn’t particularly kosher, either—he claims to have caught one of his ex-wives having an affair with his stepfather. But that’s not to say Saul doesn’t have Jewish qualities. In trying to present himself as a Jewish stereotype, Saul becomes a dark reflection of those same stereotypes—a conniving lawyer obsessed with his own bottom line.

Saul debuts in the appropriately titled Season 2 episode “Better Call Saul” as a so-called criminal lawyer rather than a criminal lawyer called in to counsel Walt’s snatched dealer Badger (Matt L. Jones). Saul is a cheesy lawyer prominent enough that his ads are displayed on the bench Badger gets arrested on, right before he’s properly introduced in this horrifying ad showcasing his lack of ethics and Constitution-draped office.

After Walt and Jesse kidnap him to ensure Badger doesn’t rat them out, Saul becomes Walter’s consigliere (Saul makes the Godfather reference explicit). Using his extensive criminal connections, Saul spends the next few seasons helping Walt’s business with increasingly difficult situations from money laundering to attempted assassination attempts.

Saul does demonstrate some moral awareness beyond his desire to save his own skin. In the most involved Saul ever gets directly in Walt’s scheming, he has his assistant/bodyguard Huell (Lavell Crawford) pickpocket Jesse to trick him into believing Gus had taken his ricin-laced cigarette and poisoned Brock, his girlfriend’s son. At the beginning of the fifth season, Saul realizes he’d been duped into helping with Walt’s plan to poison Brock and attempts to quit in protest, only to be intimidated into staying on.

Breaking Bad’s premise entails the continual moral growth and decay of its characters—Vince Gilligan famously describes the show’s arc as transforming Walter from “Mr. Chips to Scarface.” Jesse begins the show as a criminal addict, but nurtures his inherent talent and matures into one of the most compelling, sympathetic characters in television history. Walt’s wife Skyler goes from a frustrated housewife to a steely, money-laundering schemer.

In this very uncharacteristic televised universe built on the concept of change, Saul Goodman is the one constant. Though his circumstances change slightly over the course of the show (particularly when he prepares to go on the run), his own moral character, founded on an intense focus on his own survival, does not. Considering the adage that drama is about change (nominally) and comedy about stasis, it makes perfect sense that Saul has largely usurped Jesse as Breaking Bad’s biggest source of comic relief

Not only does Saul’s ingratiating tone and ability to profit from any situation (he gets Walt and Jesse to pay him to become clients when they kidnap him), his horrific, clash-heavy fashion sense and love of excess never changes. “Garish” might be an understatement for a character whose subtler outfits consist of yellow shirts and purple ties. Even Breaking Bad costume designer Jennifer Bryan had to “throw out every rule of coordination.” And one of his pet projects is a laser tag arena he first attempts to convince Walt to use as a money-laundering front, then uses as a hideout for Jesse.

Most notably, Saul seems like the only character certain to survive the events of the final season of Breaking Bad. Not only is he a slippery enough operator that it’s hard to see him getting either caught by the law or killed, Saul now seems likely to wriggle out of even the more serious, real textual ending of the show itself. It’s still unclear whether the Saul spinoff in development will be more comedic or dramatic, half an hour or an hour. Hopefully, the new show will find a distinct tone from Breaking Bad while still maintaining the mother series’ fingerprints, mixing Saul’s lighter nature with the darkness of what he does for a living. Regardless, escaping the boundaries of the series to find a completely new life as the protagonist of his own story is … well, s’all good, man.

Previously on Network Jews: David Rosen, the unlucky mensch on ABC’s Scandal

Agent Mulder, Supernatural Expert and Conspiracy Theorist on 1990s sci-fi hit The X-Files

Michael Ginsberg, the Smartass Ad Man on Mad Men

***

Like this post? Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new Jewcy stories in your inbox every Friday.

The post Netflix Jews: Saul Goodman, Breaking Bad’s Scheming Lawyer appeared first on Jewcy.

Most people remember The X-Files as a venue for exploring an especially 1990s brand of paranoia and fascination with American weirdness. The series explored everything from government-run alien conspiracy to Satanic cults, but the delivery system for the monsters through those years was almost always one man: Special Agent Fox Mulder.

Mulder, played by David Duchovny, is introduced in the pilot episode, 20 years ago this September, as bespectacled and hunched over a desk, surrounded by images of skulls, countless folders, and stacks of papers, a creature that simply wants to be left in his own habitat to pursue his “weird science.” As the FBI’s resident supernatural expert and conspiracy theorist, Mulder is already steeped in the paranormal far more than an average television viewer who hadn’t spent years sniffing out demons. Though Mulder was the hero of the show, Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), Mulder’s partner and the audience identification character, was if anything more important as someone who could ease us into Mulder’s insanity. Though Scully was originally our interpreter, we were immersed in Mulder’s brain over the course of nine seasons to the point where Scully, though still necessary to the show, didn’t have to play the skeptic.

The rest of the paranormal happenings in The X-Files wound up secondary when compared with the real heart of the show: the relationship between Mulder and Scully. Somehow, The X-Files managed to transcend some aspects the “will they/won’t they” problem that has plagued many other shows by depicting an emotional connection founded primarily on mutual respect and professional admiration. Though many fans longed for them to get together, it’s easy to watch The X-Files without being invested in Mulder and Scully’s romantic pairing. In some sense, it’s impossible to understand or define Mulder absent his relationship with Scully.

Though his partnership with Scully has been picked apart repeatedly, Mulder’s Jewish qualities are one of the less examined, but still critical, aspects of his character. His Judaism is only hinted at in a few places, most notably Season 6’s “Drive.” Violent anti-Semite Patrick Crump (played by TV’s Bryan Cranston, in the role that convinced Vince Gilligan he could play Walter White) accuses Mulder of being Jewish based on his last name and rails against supposed Jewish control of the FBI. Mulder takes offense at Crump’s anti-Semitism and sarcastically apologizes for the “international Jewish conspiracy.” Though “Drive” doesn’t confirm Mulder’s Judaism, the hints are in line with The X-Files relatively subtle early approach to doling out information, like the early appearance of crucial alien “black oil” in the first-season classic “Ice.”

Even the X-Files episode that treats Judaism most thoroughly, Season 4’s “Kaddish,” like the similar Homicide episode, never mentions the possibility of Mulder being Jewish. The episode’s treatment of the Jewish community is a little silly, to be honest, complete with Yiddish accents. But “Kaddish” does explore Mulder’s relationship to Judaism. Though Mulder claims not to know Hebrew or understand a Talmudic text, he is again confronted with anti-Semitism. Curt Brunjes, an anti-Semite Mulder and Scully interrogate, tells Mulder “you look like you might be one yourself,” provoking a reaction similar to Mulder’s ire at Crump in “Drive.”

It’s worth noting that most of the moments that make Mulder’s Judaism (partial or not) explicit are adversarial in nature, emerging from other characters defining Mulder by attacking him. Considering that Mulder’s entire character is based on his antagonistic relationships with the government and those attempting to dissuade him from his quest for the truth, there’s something that connects Mulder even more to Judaism than whatever religious rituals he happens to participate in.

That antagonism is crucial to understanding Mulder’s often hidden innate Judaism. Mulder may have been raised Protestant—in an episode where Mulder appears to die, a Protestant minister presides over his funeral, though it may not have been in keeping with his wishes—but more important than whether or not he attends services, Mulder is essentially a Jewish action hero. Considering long-standing stereotypes about Jews that were still in wide use in pop culture through the early 1990s (something “Kaddish” did nothing to help with), Mulder’s portrayal as someone who happens to be Jewish, but is not defined by that Judaism, bucks stereotypes. Fox Mulder endured body switching, abductions, and alien super soldiers, and kept it Semitic in the process.

Previously on Network Jews:

Michael Ginsberg, the Smartass Ad Man on Mad Men

Dr. James Wilson on Fox’s Dark Medical Procedural House

Ari Gold, the Jewish Hollywood Agent on HBO’s Entourage

***

Like this post? Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new Jewcy stories in your inbox every Thursday.

The post Network Jews: Special Agent Fox Mulder on 1990s Sci-Fi Drama ‘The X-Files’ appeared first on Jewcy.