Better Call Saul is one of the funniest (and best) drama series on the air. This is largely in part due to Bob Odenkirk's magnetic performance as the quick-witted lawyer Jimmy McGill (aka Saul Goodman). Every other line out of his mouth is comedy gold, but he isn't the only person that makes up the show's comedic backbone.
A lot of the humor on the show is fairly straightforward, but Better Call Saul often pushes the limits and delivers some out-there comedy scenes. Thanks to Odenkirk's and the ensemble cast's performances, the series has delivered some moments that are hard to believe that they aired on TV.
Daniel Wormald and Squat Cobbling
Better Call Saul has plenty of crooks and criminals, but none are as incompetent as Daniel "Pryce" Wormald (Mark Proksch). Daniel is an IT guy at a major pharmaceutical company that sells their pills on the street, but his milquetoast keister is unfit for the streets of Albuquerque.
To hide his pill-slinging side gig, his lawyer, Jimmy concocts an extremely elaborate lie for Daniel. Rather than stashing pills at his house, Daniel has hidden a series of "erotic" tapes of him "squat cobbling." It's not an explicit act, per se, but it's very, very weird. Daniel sits himself down in a variety of pies, wiggles in them, and puts on the waterworks. Jimmy lays out the intricacies of the act to the investigating officers in a 5-minute scene that's enthralling, disgusting, and hilarious.
A Man and His Horse
Season 5 of the show introduced the crotchety Evertt Acker (Barry Corbin) to the cast. He's occupying the same property that the Mesa Verda bank intends to bulldoze to make way for a call center, and he's not inclined to cooperate with their lawyers, whether they're litigating for or against him.
Enter Jimmy McGill (now practicing as Saul Goodman). He trespasses on Mr. Acker's property to show him a proposal of what he intends to do to the bank to get them off his back. What was the proposal? A picture ripped straight from the grungy, early 2000's internet of a man having "relations" with a horse. In this instance, Jimmy likens himself to said man, willing to do anything to stick it to the horse, or Mesa Verde, in this case. Naturally, Mr. Acker is impressed by Jimmy's gusto and hires him on the spot. Far and away, this exchange is one of the funniest and grossest in the entire series.
Howie's Business Lunch
By Season 5 Jimmy has slipped nicely into his role as the mischievous legal dynamo, Saul Goodman. He's made connections with plenty of people on society's margins: drug peddlers, career criminals, weapons dealers, repeat offenders, and sex workers. He enlists the services of the former to play a little joke on his past employer, Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian).
Howard did Jimmy wrong in the show's early seasons by stifling his career but has grown a lot since then. Jimmy, meanwhile has developed a searing grudge and wants to humiliate Howard at every turn. He sends these workers to one of Howard's business lunches to loudly and publicly demand payment for their services after "Howie" allegedly stiffed them. The scene is teeth-gratingly cringeworthy as it is gut-bustlingly funny.
The Chicago Sunroof
Before Jimmy was even a lawyer, he was just some scam artist from Cicero, Illinois. His talents are highlighted in the Season 1 finale, "Marco," as well as revealing how he came to live in Albuquerque. The reason is less than dignified, to say the least.
Jimmy's at a low point in this episode, regretting ever coming out to New Mexico. While volunteering as a bingo announcer at a nursing home, he suddenly vents to the crowd of baffled seniors. He reveals that he had a wife and she was cheating on him. To get back at the man that destroyed his marriage, in a drunken rage, Jimmy decides the best thing to do would be to defecate through the open sunroof of the man's car while he was grabbing some ice cream. If that wasn't bad and embarrassing enough, the guy's kids happened to be in the back seat. Jimmy's brother, Chuck, had to bail him out on the condition that he works with him at his New Mexican law firm. In Jimmy's words, "Guy wanted some soft serve. I gave him some soft serve."
Free Huell Babineaux!
Jimmy pulls off a lot of scams throughout Better Call Saul. Whether he's spinning elaborate yarns to have someone pay for his dinner, or doing classic slip-and-fall schemes, Jimmy's done it all. However, his most impressive and funniest con would have to be his plot to free his bodyguard, Huell Babineaux (Lavell Crawford).
Huell does his job well, but this time he did it a little too well. He accidentally decks a plainclothes cop who's hassling Jimmy. Subsequently, Huell is threatened with jail and considers going on the lam, but Jimmy and his friend, lover, and law partner Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) hatches a scheme to stop that from happening. Jimmy travels out to Huell's hometown in Lousiana and generates hundreds of fraudulent letters protesting Huell's arrest and deifying him, while Kim stays at home and puts pressure on the prosecution. It's an audacious scheme, but the pair pull it off flawlessly, and Huell walks away with just a slap on the wrist.
Tony the Toilet Buddy
After Jimmy receives a significant amount of local attention after a manufactured publicity stunt, he gets all kinds of people wanting to enlist his services. One of them happens to be a fledgling inventor with a strange invention: a talking toilet.
On paper, it's not that bad of an idea. You hook up the device to your toilet, and it's supposed to help kids potty train by encouraging them when nature calls. While the idea is a little niche and corny, it isn't terrible. The execution, however, is far, far worse. Rather than sounding positive or encouraging, the toilet just sounds suggestive. If a parent were to hook that thing up to their toilet, their kid would need therapy for the rest of their life. Jimmy tries to steer the inventor to sell it to a different audience, but the guy is just too navïe to realize he made a "sex toilet."
"What Is Mesa Verde Hiding?"
Season 5 contains some of Jimmy's most daring pranks, tricks, and scams: they make for an excellent lead-in for the final season. Jimmy pulls out all the stops when he's going head to head with Mesa Verde. To acquire a lofty settlement for his client, Mr. Acker, Jimmy produces a series of libelous commercials to use as leverage against the bank.
The commercials are barely tethered in reality and have the production value of a skit from Bob Odenkirk's Mr. Show days. Jimmy and a few paid actors prance about in front of a green screen, lying about a litany of abuses Mesa Verde has committed. At first, they're fairly minor but serious fibs about the bank taking their home over a technicality or being exposed to black mold via their ATMs. However, Jimmy quickly dives into the absurd, accusing the bank's founder Don Wachtell of exposing himself to unsuspecting clients or the bank using their fees to fund international terrorism. On one hand, the commercials are kind of shocking, showing just how far Jimmy has fallen: on the other hand, the brazen lies are just hilarious.
Tuco, Jimmy, and The Twins
Better Call Saul put its best foot forward with its first two episodes, "Uno" and "Mijo." We are perfectly introduced to Jimmy: his motivations and character are made clear, and we have him pitted against one of the deadliest and unpredictable characters in the series, Tuco Salamanca (Raymond Cruz).
Jimmy attempts to draw in a client by pulling a scam on them with skateboarding twins (Steven Levine and Daniel Spenser Levine). However, they accidentally get the wrong mark and all three wind up in the clutches of Tuco. Tuco takes the three out into the desert to deal with them, and Jimmy is left to bargain with their lives. Jimmy talks Tuco from blinding the twins to giving them Columbian neckties, to cutting off their legs, then just settling on breaking a leg each. The scene is tense, but Jimmy's attempts at bargaining and Tuco's inability to think of a proportionate punishment make for some pitch-black comedy.