‘Better Call Saul’: Mike Hits a Low Point, and Fans Are Weighing In

It was clear by the end of last night’s Season 5 premiere of Better Call Saul that Mike (Jonathan Banks) wasn’t happy with his current workplace arrangement. After telling his boss, Gus (Giancarlo Esposito), to keep his “goddamn retainer,” he seems to be a little worse for the wear. Then thing get worse when he loses his temper at his granddaughter, Kaylee (Abigail Zoe Lewis) for asking about her dead father.

Mike’s current temperament stems from last season when a half-dozen engineers were brought over from Germany to construct the top-secret lab underneath the industrial laundromat, which Breaking Bad fans know all too well. When the project’s foreman, Werner (Rainer Bock), decided to skip town for a weekend getaway with his life, Mike tracked him down and, despite his best efforts otherwise, had to kill him on Gus’s orders.

While Mike was known as the no-nonsense, stone-faced fixer on Breaking Bad, his time on Better Call Saul has shown him to be much more caring and compassionate than was previously let on. Now, fans have weighed in on his shocking outburst, and how it’s tied into his still-unresolved feelings about his dead son.

“My heart hurts for pop-pop,” tweeted one fan. “‘That scene…’ yeah, the girl got yelled at, but my heart was obliterated by how much Mike hurt. Incredible, Jonathan Banks.”

“It’s so sweet that Kaylee wants to know about her dad,” wrote another. “It’s sad that Mike has such pain still about him.

“Mike teaching Kaylee Ehrmantraut her ‘seven’ times table is everything,” added a third. “Oh, shucks! I spoke too soon and now he is going ballistic on her for inquiring about her father? Gee whiz! Talking about going from seven to 100…”

Of course, Mike’s not the only character wrestling with some big changes. Sunday’s premiere also saw Jimmy, (Bob Odenkirk), shed his birth name in favor of the Saul Goodman moniker, which indicates his transformation from the morally flexible underdog to the morally vacuous lawyer is well underway.

Last night’s premiere also saw the return of Ed (the late Robert Forster), the ‘disappearer’ who provided Saul with his new identity as Gene in Breaking Bad’s penultimate episode. Although co-creator Vince Gilligan has teased that he won’t be the only familiar character to return in the coming weeks.

Better Call Saul airs Monday nights at 10 p.m. ET on AMC.