Mike Ehrmantraut for me. He’s seen it all, done it all, loves his family and wants them to be safe. He always wants to use the minimum necessary effort to achieve the desired outcome, and wants to keep collateral damage to a minimum. He’s world weary but still in the game because it’s necessary.
And he knows how to handle a microwave in a crisis!
[sub]About two more minutes, chief![/sub]
Mike.
To me, he’s also the star of Better Call Saul.
Huell. As far as I know he’s still sitting there, waiting.
No votes for Gale Boetticher?
Gale isn’t my favorite character but he is a really really awesome character. He’s not even in the show very much at all, but he has SO much personality and character, he’s like, the coolest guy in the world who you would want to be your best friend…Walt and Jesse’s scheme to replace him was so clever that you have to give them credit for the strategy, but the death of Gale was pretty sad just because he was so full of life and quirkiness and you got the sense that he was a lifelong adventurer who would have the coolest stories ever to tell.
Gus.
Hank is my favorite.
Couldn’t stand Jesse. “Stop whining, bitch” is essentially my reaction to him on my screen.
"And stop saying ‘yo!’ "
Another vote for Mike. It’s hard to argue against him as a character. Plus, best last words.
One of my favorite scenes ever. I damn near facepalmed myself when Walt tells the dying man whom he just shot (in essence) “oh, damn, sorry about that, man. I could’ve gotten the list from Lydia. My bad.”
I did NOT like Skylar or Walt Jr. When that cartel guy told Walt he could get a new wife and family in Mexico, part of me was hoping he’d go for it. More than once I wanted to take Walt Jr. aside and say “Bless your heart, you have the moral complexity of a MUCH younger person!” And Skylar won my enmity with the 50th birthday hand job. Which, I gather, was the intention all along.
Jesse stands up as a wonderful character. The scene in the gas station with the Indian cashier highlighted just how good he was at sizing people up. And the episode where he covered for his pot-smoking brother made him the moral center of the series.
There’s a minor character who intrigues me: The gun dealer guy.
He only appears once or twice on BB, then again on Better Call Saul. The first time we see him he’s selling Walt a highly illegal handgun for “protection”.
I find the character interesting because he’s a very calm, low key, very smart businessman who happens to be a criminal. He knows his trade, and is able to pass on the quick buck for better reward down the road. We see that in Better Call Saul when Mike offers him a tip for his time when he decides not to buy. The guy waves it off, saying he makes his living on return business and to simply call him when he’s ready.
How did he get to that place? He’s like a Robert Heinlein character - very competent, able to act intelligently in his own interest. What’s in his past? Why isn’t he thriving as a businessman in a legit field? How did he become the go-to guy when you need to select from a group of seriously illegal firearms?
I’m glad we only see the tip of the iceberg with him. It’s more fun to speculate about his origins. But I would like to see him again occasionally.
Honestly, there are so many first rate characters I don’t know how you choose. They all need each other.
Why people hate Skylar I don’t get. She’s a fabulous character, brilliantly played.
I would agree that Marie (Hank’s wife, in case anyone forgot) is an odd and largely unnecessary character. She is well played by Betsy Brandt, but her purpose in the show is a bit “just Hank’s wife” and a lot of it feels extraneous.
Mike!!!
I’ve been a Johnathan Banks fan going back to at least WISE GUY.
He’s definitely up there with the Italian gunsmith in Day of the Jackal in the canon of badass weapons-purveyors in pop culture (a relatively small canon - or should it be ‘cannon’?)
Contrast that with the other weapons dealer we see in BB who sells bulletproof vests to the Salamanca twins. That guy was an obnoxious douchebag and he got (non-fatally) shot for his big mouth. I have to think that the show runners deliberately wanted him to be a contrast to the other weapons dealer, since most characters on BB have some kind of “counterpart” character.
I have to assume the smart gun dealer is doing that as a side hustle…it’s probably only one element of a larger business in contraband goods.
I feel like I have to bring up something about Mike. He’s frequently cited as a character who has integrity and a form of moral code, at least higher than most of his colleagues. Yet it bears mentioning that there are some inconsistencies in Mike’s character.
He acts like a paternal figure and mentor towards Jesse. And Jesse clearly respects Mike. Mike consistently claims to be looking out for Jesse’s best interests, more so than Walter who manipulates him callously, yet Mike laments the death of Gus Fring, repeatedly idealizing him as being a better boss and better businessman than Walter, even in his final scene going as far as to claim that they “had a good thing going with Gus,” until Walter “had to fuck it up with his pride and his ego.” Uh…Gus wanted to kill Jesse. Remember, Mike? What’s up with that? You claim to be looking out for “the kid”, but your boss Gus wanted to kill the kid and you were going along with that plan and didn’t raise any objection.
Seems to me that Mike’s moral high ground is a bit compromised.
Played by Jim Beaver, who was briefly a Doper and member of the SDSAB under the name of jumblejim (last active in 2006).
:eek:
I agree, Hank’s transformation (or reveal really, I don’t think his character actually changed) from loudmouth jerk to the moral center of the show was really well done.
My favorite character though, would probably be Gus, both because of the actor and the way the character was written. When Gus became active on the show is when I went from merely enjoying BB to thinking the show was genius.
Isn’t that the brilliance of the writing, though? Many - most - of the characters have some sort of moral character that comes out in their behavior that reveals their flaws. Fring, Mike, and the rest all do live by some sort of code they’ve developed over time. It’s stable and it works for them. When someone comes along who doesn’t have one - Walt - it disrupts their entire way of life and ultimately leads to disaster for them.
The ones who don’t have such a thing are not necessarily shown as succeeding. Tuco, for example, is a successful, smaller-time distributor. But he uses his own product and is clearly on a downward path that will end, sooner or later, is his own destruction.