![\"peck_odenkirk\"](\"http:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/peck_odenkirk.jpg\")
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America\u2019s dubious relationship with criminal defense, onscreen and off, has hit an interesting cultural speed bump with AMC\u2019s new hit\u00a0Better Call Saul<\/i>, Vince Gilligan\u2019s innovative prequel to\u2014and, really, moral inversion of\u2014his legendary crime saga\u00a0Breaking Bad<\/i>. The new show seems poised to explore the deep, uncomfortable relationship between our society and its attorneys in a new way\u2014it\u2019s exciting, unexplored territory.<\/p>\n
“You’re the kind of lawyer guilty people hire,” embezzler’s wife Betsey Kettelman tells Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk, who is not yet the “Saul Goodman” from the other show). Her sneering contempt, even in the face of redhanded, conclusive evidence that she fits that description\u2014she is<\/i> guilty\u2014illustrates our strange, willful blindness to the basic tenets of criminal law, and how its objective framework of evidentiary proof has become a much more nebulous and erratic game of images.<\/p>\n
The Constitution guarantees a fair trial, and Americans basically understand and accept this\u2026up to a point. In real life and fiction, heroic lawyers come in two varieties: underdog prosecutors bringing civil lawsuits in David-and-Goliath scenarios\u2014Jan Schlichtmann in Anderson\u00a0v.\u00a0<\/i>Cryovac (the basis for Jonathan Harr\u2019s 1996 bestseller\u00a0A Civil Action<\/i>); Paul Newman in\u00a0The Verdict<\/i>\u00a0(1979)\u2014or criminal defense attorneys struggling to exonerate the innocent\u2014Edmund Randolph clearing Aaron Burr of treason charges, or America\u2019s most famous fictional attorney, Harper Lee\u2019s Atticus Finch (from the Pulitzer-winning\u00a0To Kill A Mockingbird<\/i>), who famously struggles and fails to defend a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman in the Deep South of the 1930s. Gregory Peck, delivering his signature performance in the movie of To Kill A Mockingbird<\/i>, probably best exemplifies the iconic American \u201clawyer as hero\u201d\u2014bookish and cerebral, yet passionately devoted to justice, virtue and the rule of law.<\/p>\n
But when a criminal defendant is guilty (or is viewed as guilty), the picture changes. Now we\u2019re in the realm of Johnnie Cochran and, onscreen, Tom Hagen (the Corleone\u2019s \u201cdespicably loyal\u201d \u2013 in Pauline Kael\u2019s phrase\u2014attorney in the\u00a0Godfather<\/i>\u00a0movies). Idealism gives way to cynicism, bitterness, and a deep anti-institutional mistrust: killers and thieves \u201cget off\u201d on \u201ctechnicalities\u201d while the lawyers who perform this dark magic, we are meant to understand, struggle with deep moral anguish over the ethical sacrifices implicit in defending \u201cthose people.\u201d The exoneration of the guilty is viewed as profound social rot\u2014a \u201csystem\u201d that is \u201cout of order,\u201d as Al Pacino famously screams at the courtroom in the climax of\u00a0\u2026And Justice For All<\/i>\u00a0(1979), one in a series of cinematic monuments to post-Watergate cynicism. (Public defender Pacino\u2019s redemptive triumph is his exposure of his client\u2019s guilt \u2013 the audience cheers as he does literally the worst thing a criminal lawyer can possibly do. As they see it, he\u2019s not betraying the framework of criminal justice, he\u2019s\u00a0saving<\/i>\u00a0it.) Later, in\u00a0The Devil\u2019s Advocate<\/i>\u00a0(1997), Pacino played an attorney who\u2019s literally Satan\u2014and who brags that the law \u201cputs us [the minions of Hell] into everything [\u2026] It\u2019s the new priesthood, baby!\u201d going on to extoll how his demonic works lead to \u201cacquittal after acquittal after acquittal until the stench of it reaches\u2026high and far into Heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which brings us to Jimmy McGill, the \u201ccriminal<\/i>\u00a0lawyer\u201d who turns out to be not nearly as trivial or satiric a figure as he seemed (in his comic-relief appearances on\u00a0Breaking Bad<\/i>). To the surprise of many, McGill not only has a strong moral center but (in a deft reversal of Walter White\u2019s descent) seems to be consistently gravitating towards good rather than evil. So far, he\u2019s had many opportunities to do the wrong thing, and he\u2019s avoided every one of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What\u2019s especially interesting \u2013 and thrilling \u2013 about Gilligan\u2019s (and Odenkirk\u2019s) new work is how it betrays the\u00a0Breaking Bad<\/i>\u00a0formula. Walter White\u2019s descent into evil (portrayed on an operatic scale rivaling those of Michael Corleone or even Macbeth) isn\u2019t being mechanically reproduced (which many expected), it\u2019s being inverted. White and McGill both begin as losers, but while White finds Nietszchian redemption in darkness and corruption, McGill is already moving towards the light. Yes, he\u2019s an irredeemable sleaze (with a business profile that\u2019s a hilarious, dead-on parody of the worst ambulance chasers ever to advertise on matchbooks); yes, his story is interwoven with Vince Gilligan\u2019s gloriously lurid Albuquerque criminal underworld (where his and White\u2019s fates will entwine). But already, his passions are stirred. Watch him furiously chastise his bored courthouse adversary (in one of a series of sardonically-presented men\u2019s room confrontations) for not even bothering to keep the defendants straight; watch his panicked self-preservation transform into a genuine selfless need to enlist his crazy Clarence-Darrow-with-Tourettes oratorical gifts in the rescue and protection of his lowlife partners-turned-clients.<\/p>\n
McGill\u2019s transformation into to Goodman promises to be as thrilling and engrossing as White\u2019s transformation into Heisenberg, but the boldness and daring of Gilligan\u2019s apparent intention to tell the\u00a0opposite<\/i>\u00a0story \u2013 to alchemize damnation into salvation \u2013 attempts to rewrite the rules of our literary and cinematic fascination with criminal law: the moral shadings are under a kind of microscope that hasn’t been employed before. And in post-9\/11, post-John-Woo America, as our growing impatience and fatigue with the obligations of providing a best defense have created a troubling, mob-like, vindictive \u201cvictim\u2019s rights\u201d mentality so pervasive that Habeas Corpus itself seems threatened and terror suspects are routinely imprisoned without criminal charges or representation (or subjected to punishments cloaked in Orwellian terms like \u201crendition\u201d and \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d), the Albuquerque ambulance-chaser with the pocketful of customized matchbooks may provide a crucial allegory. Saul Goodman (to paraphrase Gotham City\u2019s literally two-faced DA) may not be the lawyer we want, but he\u2019s the lawyer we need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
America\u2019s dubious relationship with criminal defense, onscreen and off, has hit an interesting cultural speed bump with AMC\u2019s new hit\u00a0Better Call Saul, Vince Gilligan\u2019s innovative prequel to\u2014and, really, moral inversion of\u2014his legendary crime saga\u00a0Breaking Bad. The new show seems poised to explore the deep, uncomfortable relationship between our society and its attorneys in a new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43440"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43440"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43446,"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43440\/revisions\/43446"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jordanorlando.com\/ns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}