[MoM] application

〈 PLAYER INFO 〉

NAME: Heather
AGE: 26
JOURNAL: calluna
IM / EMAIL: heather.roleplays@gmail.com
PLURK: heatherberry
RETURNING: Y

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉

CHARACTER NAME: James McGill
CHARACTER AGE: Somewhere in his 30s
SERIES: Better Call Saul
CHRONOLOGY: Episode 1x10, Marco
CLASS: Hero
HOUSING: Heropa

BACKGROUND:

James Morgan McGill, Esq., is a con artist turned inmate turned mail room clerk turned public defender — a series of changes he made in an impressively short amount of time, and now he's regressing.

James, known to his friends, family, and coworkers as Jimmy — also sometimes known as Slippin' Jimmy, Saul Goodman, or any other number of aliases — spent the better portion of his recent years trying his gosh darndest to clean up his act and follow in the footsteps of his very respectable, intelligent, and well-off big brother, Chuck. Chuck is 1/3 of Albuquerque's Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill law firm, home to some of the city's best and brightest lawyers. Chuck is the one who bailed Jimmy out of prison after Jimmy pooped in the open sunroof of a vehicle carrying young children was locked up for performing a "Chicago sunroof," which could have turned out very badly if Chuck were not the lawyer he is. Chuck helped his little brother out on the condition that he turn his life around, so Jimmy took up a position at HHM as one of the mail room employees and spent the next while dutifully delivering letters and packages to everyone above him.

During this time, he decided to pursue a degree in law. He took long-distance courses through the University of American Samoa and passed the bar, much to the shock of himself and pretty much everyone around him. Unfortunately, HHM "wasn't hiring" at the time, and Jimmy was left with the promise that he'd be reconsidered in a few months' time.

That never happened.

After a few years of dealing with his total lack of upward mobility, Jimmy went off to begin his own legal practice. He took up shop in the back of a nail salon and resigned himself to a temporary life of desperation and poverty. We meet Jimmy when things are finally turning around: After working his ass off, he finally makes a series of breaks that promise to Change His Life. He We meet Jimmy when things are finally turning around — and around and around:
After working his ass off, he finally makes a series of breaks that promise to Change His Life. He comes very close to landing a major case, but then that falls through. Then it almost comes back. Then he makes one of his many bad decisions and winds up kidnapped in the desert with two young men he promised to represent in court after conning his way into landing the case he lost. He survives the ordeal with a bloody finger; the two young men wind up with broken legs, though things could have been much worse for them if Jimmy hadn't talked their almost-murderer down. Unfortunately for Jimmy, this puts him on the cartel's radar — specifically on the radar of Nacho Varga, who tries to enlist Jimmy's help in getting some money.

The rest of the season follows Jimmy as he works his ass off and tries to make it big in elder law after recovering from the desert incident. He uncovers what could be a huge fraud case at a local nursing home, Sandpiper Crossing, at which point Chuck wiggles his way in with the promise of Helping a Brother Out. Jimmy sees this as his opportunity to finally get what he's wanted for years: a position at HHM.

That never happens.

Chuck and Jimmy have a massive falling-out in the form of Chuck telling Jimmy he isn't a real lawyer because he didn't work for his law degree the same way Chuck did, and the truth comes out that Chuck is the one who's been preventing Jimmy's success all along. At this point, Jimmy decides to cut ties with his brother and leave him to fend for himself, which is a problem, seeing as how Chuck has a condition called "electromagnetic hypersensitivity." Jimmy's been taking care of Chuck for the past year and a half; Chuck can't leave the house. Chuck has no power running to his house. Chuck is basically helpless, and Jimmy, now that his buttons have all been pushed at once, leaves him that way.

He runs off to his old stomping grounds in Cicero, Illinois. It's there that he meets up with his old friend and partner-in-crime (literally) Marco, and the two fall back into old habits. They conduct a number of cons together, but after a little while, Jimmy decides he has to go back home and try to succeed as the elder law attorney he's trying to become. Marco convinces Jimmy to perform one last con before he leaves again... but, alas, Marco suffers a heart attack during the con and passes away. Opportunity then calls when Jimmy's friend and fellow lawyer (and maybe ex-wife), Kim, tells him to come home because he's being considered as partner for another law firm thanks to all his work on the Sandpiper Crossing case.

So, he goes.

And when he gets there, he decides to back out of the meeting. He thinks Chuck is right, and he thinks the moral path he's been struggling to pursue is only holding him back. He'll arrive in Heropa on the heels of that decision, caught in a tug-of-war between the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other.

PERSONALITY:

The first time we meet Jimmy, he's rehearsing his defense in a men's room while the judge, jury, and even his clients wait for him. He mutters his lines over and over, his hands fly this way and that, his feet take him shuffling around the bathroom. It's a theatrical sort of process, but it's also laden with the anxiety that becomes one of Jimmy's defining characteristics during the course of the season, which is a surprising contrast to the Saul Goodman we first met in Breaking Bad. Saul is everything Jimmy isn't, but will one day become: confident, charismatic, in control.

But it's impossible to treat the two like totally separate people.

Jimmy exhibits dramatic shifts in personality depending on the situation, which helps him eventually settle on a persona he's comfortable with. When he's alone, his anxiety and uncertainty seep through in the form of (occasionally superstitious) rituals like rehearsing future encounters, pumping himself up in front of a mirror, silently casting a hopeful spell on his answering machine; when he's in front of people — especially when he's doing business or working under pressure — he performs. He's a huge movie buff and that shows not only in the many, many pop culture references he makes, but also in how he treats the situations he finds himself in. Jimmy is an actor, basically: He assumes roles every time he's in the public eye, and he knows how to make that work for him. He's almost constantly trying to maintain a facade of success and importance and confidence that sometimes manifests in him seeming delusional, like when he tells Mike the parking attendant (Mike Ehrmantraut, who will later become Saul Goodman's private investigator) that he's "saving people's lives" by defending them in court, and when he fakes an Irish (...I think it's supposed to be Irish?) accent in order to pretend to be his own secretary. (He doesn't make anywhere near enough money to afford a secretary. He can probably barely afford his cell phone bill.) He also pretends to be an officer of the court, an FBI agent, and a local hero.

Saul Goodman is a role he used to play and will play again, because that kind of performance comes very easily to him. This is not to say that Jimmy is a morally corrupt dirtbag — he's just good at playing one. He strives to do the right thing throughout the course of the season (and his life, it looks like, once he's decided to turn that around), but he's not very adept at actually succeeding in doing that. The desire to do good is certainly there in his heart, but the temptation to take morally questionable shortcuts often wins and leads him to trouble.

This constant roleplaying turns into something of an identity crisis for Jimmy, which is the question at the heart of the show. Can he become a good guy when it seems like he's so destined to be a "bad" guy? He wants desperately to follow in his brother's successful footsteps, but in the first episode, Chuck suggests Jimmy try to start his business under a different name to "avoid confusion" with the McGill component of Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill. But:

"That's my name," Jimmy says. "I was born with it. I'm not supposed to use my name?"

Chuck says it's a "matter of professional courtesy," then adds, "Jimmy, wouldn't you rather build your own identity? Why ride on someone else's coattails?"

And so the seed is planted.

Jimmy doesn't exude quite as much (albeit sleazy) charm as he will someday, but he has a cute, almost endearing sort of awkwardness going for him. He also knows how to gain control of situations that seem out of his control at first, usually by way of upping the theatrics of any given situation by running his big mouth. One of his biggest assets, which is sometimes also one of his biggest flaws, is that he rarely stops talking. Communication is his only weapon. He hasn't really figured out how to safely wield it yet, but it has gotten him out of trouble. (It's also what's gotten him into trouble, though.)

His emotions are rarely ever subtle. When he's angry, he's prone to actual temper tantrums (there's a metal garbage can on the basement floor of HHM that's had the shit kicked out of it many, many times); when he's annoyed, he has an attitude; when he's upset and alone, he cries; when he's happy, sometimes, it takes his breath away. He flits back and forth between being serious and being a joker, being responsible and being reckless, wanting stability but craving freedom, and this is all thanks to his relationship with his brother Chuck.

Jimmy's trying to turn his life around because Chuck saved him from prison. Jimmy feels like he owes him, and now that Chuck is sick, he's become an even bigger weak spot for Jimmy. Jimmy is fiercely protective of him, but he's also kind of embarrassed by his big brother's fall from grace, and he also knows that his occasionally bad behavior has something to do with Chuck's "illness." It's not stated outright, but at one point, Jimmy approaches Chuck and points out that any time Jimmy almost gets into trouble, Chuck mysteriously gets sicker. Canon hasn't confirmed or denied that yet, so it's very possible that there's much more going on in that situation. We also don't know much about their lives together as kids yet, either, though it becomes obvious that Chuck is jealous of his brother's ability to charm people with his trickster-like demeanor and be successful even though he's taken shortcuts in life. Their relationship is strained and lacks reciprocation: Jimmy is Chuck's errand boy. Chuck basically just pats Jimmy on the head now and again and tells him to keep up the good work, champ.

It's difficult for Chuck to see Jimmy as anything other than the criminal he was when he was younger. Jimmy's tried so, so hard to make his brother proud, but nothing he does will ever be enough to shake his past away — at least in Chuck's eyes. "I know you," he says. "I know what you were, what you are. People don't change. You're Slippin' Jimmy! And Slippin' Jimmy I can handle just fine, but Slippin' Jimmy with a law degree is like a chimp with a machine gun. The law is sacred; if you abuse that power, people get hurt. This is not a game! You have to know — on some level, I know you know I'm right. You know I'm right!"

And on some level, yes, Jimmy thinks Chuck just might be right.

The other key players in his life aside from Chuck are Howard Hamlin and Kim Wexler. Howard is one of the partners at HHM, and Kim is committed to her goal of eventually becoming a partner. His past with Kim is unclear: They were probably in a relationship, but we don't know if they were just casually dating, seriously dating, or maybe even married. Regardless, they have a very intimate, platonic relationship now. Kim is probably the only person in his life who feels genuinely happy for him when he succeeds, and Jimmy uses her as a source of much-needed support and companionship.

Howard appears to be Jimmy's foil at first, because he's everything Jimmy wants to be. Howard is the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, white-toothed American Dream come true, rolling in dough at HHM's fancy headquarters... which just so happens to be where Kim works, which really pushes Jimmy's jealousy buttons. Howard even has his own trademarked color (seriously: Hamlindigo). In Jimmy's eyes, Howard is the one preventing him from working at HHM and getting what he wants out of life for reasons that are unknown to him (which breeds a lot of frustration in Jimmy), but really, Howard is trying to protect Jimmy from the truth about his brother. Jimmy's hatred of Howard eases after he realizes what's been going on, but the envy definitely remains.

Jimmy is working very, very hard to construct his own narrative. In doing so, he can take control of his life — even if that's a life built on lies. Any time he speaks about his past, it's twisted in service of his future: He tells stories about Slippin' Jimmy, the prince of Cicero, who raked in money with his cons and had friends and girls following him like ducklings. It's pretty unlikely that that wasn't the case. Ever. He may live his life like he's in a movie of his own making, but that might not be such a bad thing. He pays careful attention to detail and takes those factors into account when figuring out how to dress, how to act, who to be when he's around other people, and it's this attention to detail, paired with his hardworking nature and willingness to go the extra mile, that actually makes him an honest-to-God competent lawyer. He studies the characters and settings around him and figures out the best way to wiggle his way in and be successful, which is what he wants more than anything.

POWER:

Jimmy will be able to manipulate electromagnetism. At first, his powers will be very weak and will only manifest while he's emotional. He'll only be able to mess with small electronic devices like cell phones. (Unintentionally.)