You have a show that has two great halves that only rarely intersect the Jimmy half and the Mike half. How hard is that construction and how much of a challenge is it for you guys that Saul in Breaking Bad doesn't know Gus Fring at all? Does that keep the characters separate by necessity or are you guys finding ways to work around it?
Gilligan: We have to abide by the history that was delineated in Breaking Bad and sometimes we don't want to. Sometimes we say to ourselves, "Oh, man! Why can't we have these two characters meet? Why can't we have them hang out?" We wish we could, but to break our rules, it'd be a terrible thing to do. The audience would immediately know we had broken them and they would call us out for it and they'd be right. They'd be right to be angry about it, to feel betrayed by it, so you have to stick to your own rules.
It makes it hard sometimes with what you were just saying. We've got these two characters that we love seeing together. We've got Jimmy McGill and Mike Ehrmantraut and obviously they can spend time together and we know eventually they will, but the other thing we find is we often say to ourselves, "How can we get these two characters together? How can we have them spend more time together?" But as tempting as that is, we've reluctantly come to realize time and time again that that's the wrong question to be asking. The question is, "What do these two characters want at any given moment?" and very often what they want leads them in very different directions and takes them apart more than it brings them together and we have to abide by that. Again, we're being inauthentic if we don't. We have to let them set their own course and follow their own road map. Every now and then it works out that they can come together and we jump at those opportunities and we take them whenever we can, but they have to be earned and they have to be arrived at organically. If they're not, we may get some short-term pleasure, but in the long run we'll feel kind of dirty for having taken it.
Gould: The truth is that Mike doesn't particularly love Jimmy McGill. Mike is gonna call Jimmy if Mike has a Jimmy-sized problem. Jimmy's much more intrigued by Mike than the other way around. A lot of the time the question is, "Why is Mike gonna participate in this or that?" These two guys do have an ongoing favor trade where each one has done a favor for the other. Right now, that's as far as the relationship goes. It's painful, because I have to say that there's nothing I like better than getting Bob and Jonathan together in a scene, because they are just magical together.
I do remember there was a season of Breaking Bad where I had a similar feeling about Walt and Jesse. There were some times on Breaking Bad where there was really no reason for Walt and Jesse to be together. They weren't in business together, like when Jesse was cooking by himself or there were a few other circumstances. I remember all of us in the writers room feeling very frustrated because we just love these two characters together, but sometimes you have to go where the story takes you.
