#bettercallsaul — Public Fediverse posts

Recently rewatched those two episodes and this has been in my head for a week now, I gotta talk about it or my head will explode.

Everyone knows and loves Mike’s famous “half measures” speech. It’s the one where back when Mike was a cop, and the guy was beating his wife regularly. Mike almost kills the guy but decides not to, and then next week the guy ends up killing her. “I took a half measure, when I should have went all the way.” Alright, extrajudicial violence aside, fine.

Now, the situation with Jesse, the reason everyone is in a tizzy. Jesse sees that a couple drug dealers are using kids, and decides to kill them. No half measure in sight. And then Mike stops him, which results in the dealers killing the kid. When the dealers end up dead, Mike is all pissed off. Like, hypocrite much?? Your whole speech was about killing someone before they have a chance to harm an innocent person- WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT JESSE WAS GOING TO DO??!?

And like, fine. Mike is taking orders from Gus so nothing is really his call but Mike acts personally offended by the whole thing. So what, killing to protect an innocent person is the right thing to do, except if your boss says not too?

To be clear I’m criticizing Mike, not the show. It’s too on the nose to have been an accident and is actually great characterization for Mike. He lives by his code, but that code isn’t a shortcut to living a moral life. Jesse on the other hand doesn’t have a “code,” he just acts on impulse. Child-like you could say. But he is able to intuitively cut right to what is right is wrong. There’s no formula to follow, like with Mike. He just knows what’s wrong.

#BreakingBad #BetterCallSaul #WalterWhite #JessePinkman