Mike Ehrmantraut was one of Breaking Bad’s most dynamic characters. We knew him as a private investigator, we saw him as a henchman for Gustavo Fring’s meth empire, and we watched him act as one of two criminal mentors to Jesse Pinkman. During one of Breaking Bad’s more memorable monologues, Mike tells the audience and Walter White that he was a beat cop in Philadelphia and that his life in law enforcement did not end on a high note. The details of how Mike went from beat cop who answered domestic violence, calls to criminal enforcer expertly combatting members of the cartel, are not disclosed. It’s only hinted that at some point, this man lost a piece of who he was, his moral compass and his soul were stolen from him and what remained was the stone faced, dry witted, matter-of-fact soldier featured in both Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad. “Five-O” is about Mike’s backstory.
“Five-O” begins with a flashback of Mike getting off the train in New Mexico. He meets his widowed daughter in law in the train station but not before he walks into the woman’s bathroom to find a tampon of all things. After first making sure the restroom is unoccupied, he deposits 25 cents into the vending machine before grabbing the tampon and walking into a stall in the nearby men’s room. Mike opens the package and removes his shirt to reveal a bandaged gunshot wound which he uses the tampon to nurse. We fast forward shortly to Mike and his daughter-in-law in the yard as Mike plays with Kaylee (add her to the list of returning characters from Breaking Bad). The two make small talk about Albuquerque and Mike’s alcoholic tendencies back in Philadelphia as Mike explains that he’s not the same as he was, and that he’s left that behind. Mike and his daughter-in-law eventually address the elephant in the room, Matty.
We learn that Matty was a beat cop in Philly himself when he was murdered, his killer remains at large. Stacey (as her name is revealed) reflects on a stark change in his demeanor just prior to his death. Mike tries to write it off as cops not being “touchy feely” but she says this was something different from the usual bravado she saw in her husband. She mentions a phone call that took place in the early hours of the morning just prior to Matty’s death and how “he’d be screaming if he weren’t whispering.” She was unable to make out the details of his conversations but when she confronted her husband the next morning he wouldn’t indulge her. She briefly brings up the idea of him being unfaithful but both she and Mike shoot that possibility down before it gains any traction. Then Stacey reveals what she really thinks. She knew her husband the way any wife would and from his demeanor, she thinks the conversation was with Mike. Mike denies having any “heart to heart” with his son at the time but Stacey isn’t buying what Mike is selling. Instead, Mike talks about how he wishes he could go back and help his son and that he beats himself up with the “what ifs.”
Before leaving, Mike tells his emotionally shattered daughter-in-law to call if she needs someone to babysit or take care of young Kaylee. “I want to help,” he says before departing in a cab. Mike notices his wound bleeding before he asks the cab driver just how well he “knows this town.” At a kennel, Mike is stitched up by a curious but ultimately smart enough not to ask too much veterinarian. The vet seems to be well connected around town, asking Mike if he’s in need of “work” to which Mike responds he’s not interested. It definitely feels as if that offer may be revisited at some point in the not so distant future.
We flash forward to the present, we see the contingent of Philly cops who showed up at Mike’s house at the end of last week’s episode asking Mr. Ehrmantraut for information regarding the murder of two officers who knew Matty back in Philadelphia. Mike only has one word for them, “Lawyer.” Cue Jimmy making his first appearance of the episode. As Mike and Jimmy confer, Mike explains his Jason Kidd-like scheme to have Jimmy spill his coffee on one of the officers in an attempt to lift his notepad off of him. Jimmy finds the scheme ridiculous and tells Mike he’ll represent him as an aboveboard attorney and nothing more. As the Philly officers make their way into the interview room, Jimmy has them go over every detail from the beginning. They explain that Mike was with the Philly PD for about 30 years and that Matt was two years into his stint on the job. Nine months earlier, Matt was called into a drug den with reports of shots fired. He entered with his partner and another officer. The report states that the trio was ambushed and Matt was killed in the ensuing exchange of fire but his killer escaped. The officer interviewing Mike states that Hoffman and Fenske, the officers backing Matty up, were found dead several months prior, apparently ambushed themselves. The officers note that Mike did not attend the funeral of either cop, even though they worked closely with Matty, implying Mike had some involvement in their deaths. As the Philly officers are ready to leave, Jimmy follows through on the coffee spilling scheme and Mike, while pretending to clean the officer, manages to lift the notepad as originally planned.
Later that night, Mike skims the stolen notepad. Tearfully, he calls Stacey and tells her they need to talk. Arriving at her house in a mixture of anger and grief, he asks why she called the cops. He scolds her for daring to think that her husband could have been dirty, but she only tells him that she found money which prompted her to call the cops in Philadelphia in hopes a Hail Mairy attempt to get some closure on the loss of her husband. She claims that following Matty’s death, Mike was a drunken shell of himself as if the loss only belonged to him. She tells him that she doesn’t care if he was a dirty cop or not.
“All I want is for whoever killed Matty to rot in a cell for the rest of their life and then I want whatever’s left them just dumped in the trash – that’s what I want,” Stacey says.
Mike responds angrily that Matt was not dirty and finally admits that it was him on the other end of the phone call they previously discussed but only saying that what they discussed was between the two of them. “MY SON WASN’T DIRTY,” Mike yells as he leaves and the seamlessly transitions back to one of Mike’s drunken nights in Philadelphia.
We see him stumble into a cop bar and whittle time away by nursing his drink and glaring at the smug duo of Hoffman and Fenske. He eventually gets up in a drunken stupor and stumbles over to their table, feigning affection he puts his arm around them and mutters the words – “I know…I know it was you.”
Their facial expression changes as Mike walks away. As closing time forces Mike out of the bar, he tells the bartender he’s leaving for New Mexico soon. Mike leaves and drunkenly stumbles along an icy street outside of the bar before Hoffman and Fenske pull up in their squad car. After placing him in the back, Mike feigns drunken exhaustion and the cop duo questions him as to what he meant by “I know it was you.”
“You killed Matty, and you killed him for nothing, you killed him because you were scared, of what you thought he might do. You got him in that crack house and you staged it. You made it look like a junkie with a gun…but it was you, and I know it was you. And I’m gonna prove it,” Mike says. Hoffman and Fenske don’t respond but their facial expressions turn grim and they drive him somewhere to decide his fate.
As Hoffman and Fenske exit the vehicle, Mike grabs the gun he has stashed but resumes his drunk-act as they let him out of the car. The two officers begin to discuss how they’ll rationalize Mike’s “suicide.”
“It was too much for the old man, he was drinking himself to death, we’re doing him a favor.” At this point, the Mike Ehrmantraut who outmaneuvered everybody in Breaking Bad makes his first appearance. He stands straight with his gun aimed at the two officers and his drunken slur fades away. “Smart, it’s what I would have done if I were you,” says Mike.
Both officers turn white with fear realizing the fatal mistake they’ve made. Mike eliminates the two coldly, avenging his son’s life but he’s winged leading to the bullet wound he nurses earlier in the episode.
Mike recalls how he learned to be a dirty cop, taking a "taste" of a drug dealer’s cash now and again, saying it was like “killing Caesar, everyone’s guilty, Matt wasn’t dirty, I was, everyone in that precinct was. Everyone except Matt."
Stacey listens intently as she learns that Matty was distraught when he learned his partners were guilty. He came to Mike for advice who encouraged him go along with the status quo. Mike didn’t want his son to endanger his life instead encouraging him to think of his wife and daughter. The fight Stacey heard them have over the phone that night was about Matt being furious at his father for falling short of his expectations.
“Down in the gutter with the rest of ‘em,” as Mike described himself. Matt finally conceded to go along with Hoffman, but he hesitated and his hesitation led to him dying two days later. "I made him lesser, I made him like me, and the bastards killed him anyway," Mike recounts tearfully. As Stacey comes to terms with her husband’s fate, she asks what happened to Fenske and Hoffman. Mike responds that she knows what happened. “The question is, can you live with it?”
This was the first episode of Better Call Saul that really dove into character development. While the rest of the series has hinted at Jimmy becoming Saul Goodman, we already had bits and pieces of Mike’s dark past. To be fully enjoyed from the cinematic opening shot above the train station to Mike’s possum routine in the back of the squad car, it’s necessary to be a fan of Breaking Bad. Because we know of Mike’s ultimate fate, it makes the events of “Five-O” all the more tragic. Jonathan Banks takes an old character and teaches him new tricks as we see a side of him we always wondered about but never thought we’d see, while Bob Odenkirk is mostly sidelined. We now know who Mike Ehrmantraut is and Better Call Saul’s next step is to show us how he’ll help transform Jimmy in the years to come.
