How Better Call Saul Made Us Question the Definition of Justice and Rethink Legal Morality
Better Call Saul has consistently blurred the lines between right and wrong, pushing viewers to reconsider what true justice actually means. Throughout six seasons, audiences watch as Jimmy McGill, later known as Saul Goodman, navigates a world where the law and morality often stand at odds. By the series finale, the show forces viewers to confront uncomfortable questions about personal accountability, legal consequences, and the gray areas between guilt and redemption.
The character arcs in Better Call Saul challenge the idea that justice is always clear or absolute. Jimmy’s journey, especially through his complicated relationships with Chuck, Kim, and the law itself, highlights how motivations and intentions can shift how justice is perceived. The show avoids simple answers, instead presenting justice as a complex, evolving concept shaped by human flaws and circumstances.
Viewers are left pondering whether the legal system delivers true justice or if it simply enforces rules that don’t always address deeper wrongs. This tension keeps Better Call Saul resonant and relevant, prompting ongoing reflection about justice, morality, and the space in between.
Redefining Justice in Better Call Saul
Better Call Saul interrogates the boundaries between law and justice, showing that legal frameworks do not always align with moral responsibility. Through its characters and storylines, the series highlights the tension and fallout that result when ethics clash with the criminal justice system.
Justice Versus the Law
In Better Call Saul, the distinction between justice and law is a recurring conflict. Jimmy McGill often exposes legal loopholes and manipulates technicalities, demonstrating that lawful actions are not always just.
The show depicts attorneys who strictly follow rules but ignore the underlying spirit of justice. For example, Jimmy uses legal means to help clients who genuinely need support, even if it means bending ethics.
However, these actions come at a price. The series reveals how the criminal justice system’s rigidity can produce unfair results, especially for those without resources. Better Call Saul challenges viewers to consider whether justice achieved by technicality or deceit is truly justice at all.
Morality and Consequences
Morality in Better Call Saul is blurred by the characters’ choices and the consequences they face. Jimmy starts as a sympathetic figure, trying to do good within an unforgiving system, but gradually succumbs to shortcuts and deception.
The show closely examines how seemingly minor moral lapses can escalate into larger transgressions. Dire consequences often follow decisions made with good intentions, questioning whether the end justifies the means.
Kim Wexler’s story arc serves as a clear example. Her initial desire to fight for the underdog slowly leads her to compromise her values, highlighting the slippery slope between advocating for justice and enabling wrongdoing.
Transformation of Justice Across Episodes
Justice evolves throughout Better Call Saul’s episodes, reflecting changes in each character's outlook and circumstances. Early seasons focus on Jimmy’s attempts to legitimately navigate the law, but later episodes show a shift toward survival and self-interest.
Patterns emerge in the way justice is handled—sometimes it’s about retribution, other times about redemption. The criminal justice system is shown as both a shield and a weapon, depending on who wields it.
By the series finale, the definition of justice is deeply personal for each character. Whether facing prosecution, personal guilt, or public shame, the consequences of their actions reshape their understanding of right and wrong.
Jimmy McGill and the Fluidity of Morality
Jimmy McGill’s journey spotlights how personal ambition and circumstance can shift a person’s moral compass. His choices force the viewer to reconsider the boundary between right and wrong through the lens of regret, transformation, and attempts at redemption.
From Jimmy McGill to Saul Goodman
Jimmy begins as a struggling public defender, often taking shortcuts but initially seeking to help clients who cannot afford legal representation. His resourcefulness turns into manipulation as Jimmy faces repeated setbacks and betrayals, especially from his brother Chuck. Personal frustrations and professional barriers push him to embrace a new identity: Saul Goodman.
Saul Goodman represents the culmination of Jimmy’s moral compromises. The ethical lines become blurred as he starts bending and eventually breaking the law, often justifying his actions as a response to an unfair system. Jimmy’s transformation is gradual, highlighting the incremental nature of ethical erosion. A table below contrasts these two identities:
Aspect Jimmy McGill Saul Goodman Primary Motive Help, approval Profit, self-interest Ethics Flexible, hopeful Pragmatic, self-serving Methods Bends rules Breaks laws
The transition is not sudden but involves a series of rationalized choices, each eroding Jimmy’s boundaries a bit more until Saul emerges.
Choices, Regrets, and Redemption
Jimmy’s actions often lead to unintended consequences, causing harm he never intended. Episodes across the series reveal moments where regret clouds his bravado, especially in his relationships with Kim Wexler and his clients. These regrets highlight his ongoing inner conflict.
Lists of pivotal moments where regret and the search for redemption emerge include:
Betraying Chuck and later expressing sorrow for how their relationship ended.
Manipulating legal proceedings but later being visibly affected by the damage done.
Repeated attempts at genuine goodwill, which often backfire.
Redemption is an ongoing theme, especially in the final season. Jimmy’s struggle is not just about legal guilt but personal responsibility. His attempts at making amends, while sometimes flawed, show he is not immune to conscience. The gradual recognition of his mistakes sets him apart from typical TV antiheroes who remain unrepentant.
The Complexities of Legal Ethics and the Legal System
Better Call Saul exposes hidden tensions in the legal system, highlighting the conflict between ethical codes and real-world demands. The show uses both defense attorneys and prosecutors to illustrate how justice can be interpreted differently depending on the circumstances.
Lawyers as Agents of Justice
Lawyers, including both public defenders and prosecutors, play crucial roles in shaping legal outcomes. In Better Call Saul, Jimmy McGill navigates professional responsibilities and personal ambition, often finding himself at odds with established ethical rules. The series raises questions about how far an attorney can go to serve a client's interests without crossing ethical boundaries.
Key ethical issues depicted:
Confidentiality: Discussions of client secrets and the lawyer’s duty to protect them.
Zealous Representation vs. Truth: Navigating the line between advocating for a client and seeking justice.
Professional Misconduct: Instances where bending the rules becomes a slippery slope.
The show portrays courtrooms and legal offices as arenas where the pressure to win or survive sometimes overshadows the pursuit of justice. This invites viewers to reconsider what "doing the right thing" actually means within the framework of the law.
The Public Defender Experience
Public defenders in the series face overwhelming caseloads, limited resources, and systemic barriers. Kim Wexler’s work highlights these realities, showing her juggling mountains of cases and experiencing burnout—a reflection of real-life challenges in the public defense system.
Notable challenges faced by public defenders:
Challenge Description High Caseloads Handling dozens of clients at once Limited Time per Case Balancing depth of defense with time constraints Low Pay & Recognition Often underpaid and undervalued
Despite these obstacles, public defenders play a critical role in ensuring every defendant receives a fair trial. The portrayal underscores the ideal of equal justice but also the practical limitations, as attorneys must often make hard choices about where to focus their efforts.
Personal Relationships and Their Influence on Justice
Better Call Saul demonstrates how justice is shaped not just in courtrooms, but by tangled, personal bonds. Trust, ego, and respect drive decisions as much as formal rules, pulling lines of right and wrong into sharp, sometimes painful relief.
Chuck and Jimmy: Brothers Divided by Principles
Chuck and Jimmy McGill’s relationship is both intimate and adversarial, directly impacting their concepts of justice. Chuck, the older brother, views himself as a guardian of legal ethics. He distrusts Jimmy’s methods and intentions, seeing them as threats to the legal profession’s integrity.
Jimmy craves Chuck’s respect, but his brother’s disdain pushes him to subvert rules. As their rivalry deepens, justice becomes less about fairness and more about ego and revenge. Their personal grievances spill into legal battles, where subjective motives distort objective outcomes.
This fraternal struggle shows how deeply personal wounds can undermine trust and reshape the meaning of justice. Legal decisions become tools in a fight for validation and dominance, rather than sincere efforts to achieve fair outcomes.
Kim Wexler’s Moral Dilemmas
Kim Wexler operates in a constant tension between professional duty and personal loyalty. Her partnership with Jimmy tests her sense of right and wrong. Unlike Chuck, Kim is not rigid—she bends rules, sometimes stepping into ethical gray areas to help Jimmy or their clients.
These choices often arise from empathy but are clouded by her growing trust in Jimmy and the influence of his persuasive ego. Kim’s actions reveal how personal bonds can override institutional expectations, making justice feel subjective and situational.
Kim’s journey illustrates the conflict between external respectability and internal conviction. She becomes a case study in how relationships challenge the legal system’s black-and-white standards by introducing empathy, risk, and personal responsibility into the equation.
Crime, Punishment, and Rehabilitation
Better Call Saul explores the legal and moral consequences of crime, focusing on how punishment and the possibility of rehabilitation shape the fate of its characters. The series presents a nuanced look at justice, showing how both legal outcomes and personal growth are intertwined.
The Pursuit of Peace After Crime
In Better Call Saul, characters rarely escape the consequences of their actions, even if the law does not always catch up to them immediately. Jimmy McGill, also known as Saul Goodman, uses loopholes and clever tactics to defend his clients, sometimes stepping into ethically questionable territory.
Despite legal victories, many characters—especially Jimmy—struggle to find inner peace after committing crimes. The emotional and psychological toll shows that punishment is not limited to years in prison; guilt and regret weigh heavily, often leading characters to seek closure in unconventional ways.
Kim Wexler’s journey demonstrates how someone involved in crime may attempt to make amends. Her confession and willingness to accept personal responsibility highlight the possibility of moral rehabilitation beyond legal punishment. This pursuit of peace becomes part of her own form of justice, separate from what the courts decide.
Punishment and the Series Finale
The finale brings the theme of punishment to the forefront. Saul Goodman, confronted with his criminal past, finally admits his wrongdoing in court. His detailed confession not only acknowledges his crimes but also rejects the manipulative tactics that defined much of his career.
He receives a long prison sentence, a clear answer to the question of whether crime pays. The show, however, suggests that acknowledging wrongdoing and taking responsibility is itself a form of redemption, even if legal punishment is severe.
The relationship between Saul and Kim in the finale also underlines that punishment is not just about incarceration. Their actions show that facing the truth and accepting the consequences can create an opportunity for personal growth, underscoring the show's complex view of justice, crime, and rehabilitation.
Comparisons to Breaking Bad and the Larger Universe
Both Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad, set against the backdrop of Albuquerque, explore different sides of justice and morality. Their connections, shared characters, and contrasting storylines provide a broader context for how viewers interpret right, wrong, and responsibility.
Parallel Justice Arcs: Jimmy and Walter White
Jimmy McGill and Walter White walk strikingly similar paths from ordinary professionals to figures operating outside the law. Each man’s choices force the audience to confront the limits and flexibility of justice.
Walter White, the chemistry teacher turned meth manufacturer, makes his decisions in the face of desperation and pride. Jimmy McGill, later known as Saul Goodman, shifts from underdog attorney to criminal lawyer through a mix of hardship, personal ambition, and moral compromise.
Their stories on AMC highlight how individuals justify unethical actions when legal systems fail or personal circumstances demand unconventional answers. In both cases, viewers not only witness criminal acts but also grapple with whether “justice” can mean more than merely following the law.
Shared Themes Across Both Series
Themes of justice, deception, and self-justification run through both series. Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul each question whether justice always aligns with legality, or if sometimes the law itself is just another obstacle.
Both series examine the use of manipulation and PR to shape reputations. Public perception—whether of Walter as a family man or Jimmy as a well-meaning lawyer—becomes as important as legal outcomes.
Ultimately, the Albuquerque universe created by AMC presents justice as complex and often contradictory, shaped by power, circumstance, and public narratives as much as courts and police. By focusing on morally ambiguous choices, the series challenge traditional expectations of what justice actually means.
The Creative Influence Behind the Reinterpretation of Justice
Better Call Saul challenged viewers by presenting justice not as a single fixed code, but as a complex negotiation between personal motives and flawed systems. The creative team behind the series guided this nuanced approach and sparked significant discussion among critics and audiences.
Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s Vision
Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, as co-creators, steered Better Call Saul away from straightforward depictions of good versus evil. Their writing emphasized Jimmy McGill’s transformation, focusing on how personal and institutional failures shape his choices.
They deliberately blurred the boundaries between legality and morality. Jimmy’s actions often took place in the grey areas of the law, making audiences reconsider who deserves sympathy and who bears responsibility.
Both creators worked closely on the storytelling until the 2022 series finale, ensuring that every character’s journey raised questions about the justice system’s effectiveness and limitations. Gilligan and Gould avoided simple resolutions, reinforcing the idea that justice can rarely be defined in absolute terms.
Critical Reception and Cultural Impact
Critics widely recognized the show’s sophisticated take on the concept of justice. Reviews noted how Better Call Saul depicted the law as both a set of rules and a tool vulnerable to manipulation.
The subplot involving Jimmy’s use of legal loopholes highlighted the flaws within formal systems, prompting ongoing public debate. Many reviewers saw the series finale as a bold examination of institutional accountability, with audiences left to reflect on what constitutes true justice.
The discussion extended beyond the screen, with legal professionals and cultural commentators referencing the show in analyses of real-world ethical dilemmas. Better Call Saul influenced popular perceptions of justice, demonstrating the impact of storytelling shaped by careful creative vision.
