Mike Ehrmantraut was a charismatic supporting character in Breaking Bad that audiences naturally gravitated towards. He was the uncommunicative, grumpy old man who never met a problem he couldn’t handle; he always fixed things in a very clean way. However, he was always something of a mystery, a factor that worked in his favor.

#Origin Story

‘Five-O’ episode was Mike’s origin story. The episode tells incredibly tight story around Mike’s reasons for being in Albuquerque and the circumstances that have him sitting outside his daughter-in-law’s house. There are parallels to Mike and Jimmy’s story just as there have been parallels to Jimmy and Walt’s story. Both men are on the run from their past, but the only difference is that Mike, the ultimate fixer, is running from an unfixable situation.

#Confessions

The episode was a blend of weaving the narrative back and forth between his interactions with Stacey (Kerry Condon) that eventually lead to a tearful, guilt laden confession about why his son died and the secret shame that comes along with it. In the end, Mike did that made his son vulnerable, he encouraged him to take a pay off, because that’s what everyone in his situation did. And the truth about his son’s death and the tangential morally bankrupt role his father played in it says a lot about the dark worldview of this particular television universe.

#Guilty Father

To be honest, though, the story of a good cop murdered by his partners for not being on the take (even though he eventually was) is fairly simple. It leads to a straightforward, unfussy plot that cuts to the chase and allows for a great actor like Jonathan Banks to swoop in and deliver a crushing scene like the one that brings the episode to a close. The confession that he killed two cops is nothing compared to the admission of what was done to Matt by his own father. The fact that Mike “made him lesser” just days before he was murdered tells the audience everything they need to know about the enigmatic fixer, and why he is the way he is.

#And it was gripping

If anything, ‘Five-O’ proves that Better Call Saul has options when it comes to the kind of story it wants to tell, and that if things need to get dark, then they have the right actor in Jonathan Banks to make sure that can happen.