Jimmy McGill / Saul Goodman

Jimmy is the hard case of the group, because he has everything Wayfarism asks for except one thing: what he steers by is not a Bearing, and he half knows it.

He has extraordinary mastery — of language, of people, of legal manoeuvre, of improvisation. He has levity in abundance, perhaps the most naturally levitous character in the group; his humour is genuine, his lightness is real, his ability to find the comedy in his situation is almost heroic. He has transmission — he cares about people, genuinely, including Chuck, including Kim, including his clients whom no one else will represent.

But his bearing points at himself. He chooses the path of least resistance repeatedly, framing each choice as pragmatism, until pragmatism has accumulated into something he can no longer look at directly. His tragedy is not that he lacks the Wayfarist virtues — he has them in abundance — but that he points them inward and then cannot turn back.

Jimmy is what happens when the chosen cause is oneself. Not narcissism exactly — something more sympathetic and more sad. He wanted to be recognised, to matter, to be the equal of the brother who dismissed him. This is a human want. It is not a Bearing.

He also crosses the one line Wayfarism holds. His method is fraud.

The show traces, with painful precision, the moments where he could have turned back and didn't. Each one is small. Each one is understandable. And each one moves him further from the person he could have been. By the time he is Saul Goodman, the levity has curdled into performance, the transmission has narrowed to transaction, and the mastery serves nothing but survival.

He is a cautionary figure, but a sympathetic one. The show never suggests that his fate was inevitable, only that his choices accumulated. A Wayfarer with all the materials, and no road.

Saul Goodman is the Motion that remains when the Bearing has been surrendered.