Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are both known for being high quality TV dramas and complex character studies, and both shows have a penchant for style as well. Throughout the 14-year run of both series, we’ve seen more than a handful of beautifully shot musical montages. Now that the final season of Better Call Saul has come to a close, it’s finally time to take a look back at all those lovely montages and rank them from worst to best.
Do be warned that this article contains spoilers for the entirety of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.
11. Kim Wexler’s Routine
If you ever need a quick breakdown of what Kim Wexler is like, this montage will get the job done. Within less than two minutes, we get to see just how meticulous Kim is as a person, and how disciplined she is when it comes to getting ready for work.
She wakes up at the crack of dawn, goes straight to the gym to work out and shower, unpacks her clothes neatly from her gym bag, then goes to work. Oh, and don’t miss the little details either, like how she carefully adjusts her earrings so they look just right. She’s lowkey a mess of a human being, as we’ll soon learn later in the series, but on the surface, she’s perfectly put together.
10. Slippin’ Jimmy and Marco
Can you keep a secret? This is Slippin’ Jimmy at his peak. The season 1 finale takes Jimmy back to Chicago where he reunites with fellow scammer Marco, and the two go on a week-long streak of sweet-talking tourists and getting them to part with their cash.
The scams get increasingly ridiculous too, to the point where the duo graduate from faking lottery numbers to lying about Saudi princes. I only wish we could’ve seen them actively scamming their victims, but the montage opts for a more abstract vibe, only showing us Jimmy and Marco switching costumes and all the crazy lines they feed to their victims.
9. 1216 or 1261
“I am not crazy! I know he swapped those numbers! I knew it was 1216. One after Magna Carta. As if I could ever make such a mistake. Never. Never! I just, I just couldn’t prove it. He covered his tracks, he got that idiot at the copy shop to lie for him. You think this is something? You think this is bad? This, this chicanery? He’s done worse. That billboard! Are you telling me that a man just happens to fall like that? No! He orchestrated it! Jimmy! He defecated through a sunroof! And I saved him! And I shouldn’t have. I took him into my own firm! What was I thinking? He’ll never change. He’ll never change! Ever since he was nine, always the same! Couldn’t keep his hands out of the cash drawer. But not our Jimmy! Couldn’t be precious Jimmy! Stealing them blind! And HE gets to be a lawyer? What a sick joke! I should’ve stopped him when I had the chance! And you, you have to stop him! You-“
The Chicanery speech might very well be the most iconic bit from Better Call Saul, and this is the montage that started it all. It’s a perfect showcase of how far Jimmy will go for the scam, accompanied by the smooth guitar riff of Little Barrie’s “Why Don’t You Do It”. It’s a joy to watch Slippin’ Jimmy at work… until you reach this scene on a rewatch, and you realize what kind of trauma it’ll eventually bring down on Chuck.
8. Windy
Quite possibly one of the best cold opens in Breaking Bad, the Wendy/Windy montage is a cruel, realistic portrayal of the struggles of a meth head trying to make enough money for their next hit.
The sequence cuts between Wendy’s clients, her breaks in between each client, and her downtime where she’s drinking, counting her money, and trying to figure out when she’ll be able to buy her next stash of meth. It’s a depiction of the kind of ruin Walt and Jesse are inflicting on their buyers, and provides some much-needed perspective on the stories of the minor characters.
7. Street Life
It takes a long time for Jimmy to finally become Saul Goodman, but we do see glimpses of Saul sprinkled all throughout the series. It’s especially pronounced in Better Call Saul’s Street Life montage, where Jimmy finally hits his stride by tapping into the burner phone business.
He gets his tracksuit out, hangs around the Dog House, and spends his entire night hustling and socializing with Albuquerque’s undesirables. He charms them easily and starts raking in the money as he successfully sells the value of the burner phones to them.
6. The Cinnabon Montage
After the heartbreaking Fun and Games episode, I definitely wasn’t expecting another fun, somewhat lighthearted musical montage from Better Call Saul, but there it is. In Nippy, we see Gene rope in Jeff and Buddy into an elaborate mall scam where he spends days cozying up to the guards in the security room just to create a small opening for Jeff to run in and start robbing the mall.
Gene finally comes to life in this episode, after having lived a quiet, unassuming life in his personal Cinnabon hell. He puts in the work each week to make sure he’s caught up on the latest happenings in the sports world, and the development of his relationship with the guards is incredibly entertaining and enjoyable to watch. It’s also the greatest Cinnabon commercial ever.
5. Inflatable
Back when Better Call Saul was still kind of a comedy and the stakes were still somewhat low, we got all sorts of fun montages, like the one where Jimmy tries to get himself fired from Davis and Main.