Bagman (Better Call Saul)

The Cousins arrive at a Mexican cartel site to pick up Lalo Salamanca's bail money. As they depart, an informant makes a telephone call to report their presence. Lalo gives Jimmy McGill directions to a remote desert pickup site. Jimmy reluctantly agrees to pick up the money in exchange for a $100,000 payment. Kim Wexler begs Jimmy not to go, saying he is an attorney, not a "bagman" for drug dealers, but he says he will do it because it will be easy and no one will suspect him of being the courier. The next morning, the Cousins deliver two duffel bags of cash to Jimmy at the pickup site.

Soon after Jimmy starts his return trip, several vehicles cut him off. Numerous gunmen exit, take the money, and prepare to kill him. The gunmen are suddenly attacked by an unknown shooter. All but one are killed, and their vehicles are disabled. The surviving gunman escapes in the only drivable vehicle. The unseen shooter was Mike Ehrmantraut, who was tracking Jimmy for Gus Fring. Mike finds his truck was also disabled in the shootout, so he places a still-shaken Jimmy and the money in Jimmy's car and begins driving back to Albuquerque. Jimmy's car soon breaks down. With no cell phone coverage and no vehicle, they push the car over the edge of the road and walk cross-country with the money in order to avoid the surviving gunman. As they camp overnight, Jimmy tells Mike that Kim knows of his work for Lalo; Mike warns Jimmy that if she knows details about the Salamancas, Kim is now "in the game." Jimmy and Mike resume their trek the following morning.

When Jimmy fails to return, Kim poses as Lalo's attorney to visit him in prison. She tells him she is Jimmy's wife and asks for Jimmy's location so she can search. Lalo refuses and tells her Jimmy will be fine because he is a survivor. A dehydrated and sunburned Jimmy reaches his limit and collapses. Mike spots the surviving gunman, but rather than hide as Mike directs, Jimmy regains his motivation and walks onto the road to attract the gunman's attention. When the gunman is close enough, Mike shoots and kills him. The gunman's vehicle flips and is destroyed. Jimmy and Mike resume walking, this time on the road.

"Bagman" was directed by series co-creator Vince Gilligan, who considered the episode one of the most challenging episodes he had to direct in his career.^[1] Gilligan had made arrangements to direct one episode in the fifth season after completing post-production of El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie. Both co-showrunner Peter Gould and writer Gordon Smith, knowing this would be Gilligan's episode, planned for his directorial skills and continually teased Gilligan that the episode was well-suited for him in the weeks prior to filming.^[2] They had compared the episode to Lawrence of Arabia in terms of how they wanted it to look, and even had considered renting out the lens used to film that movie, but were worried about the liability if they had damaged it.^[1]

The episode took 18 days to shoot, compared to the average of nine days for most other episodes.^[3] Most of the filming locations were on the To'hajiilee Indian Reservation, about an hour outside of Albuquerque by car, though the pickup location where Jimmy meets the Cousins was only about 15 minutes away from the Albuquerque studios. Gilligan credited his production team for making sure the cast and crew were protected from heat and had plenty of water to assure the shoot went on without any issues, despite temperatures over 100°F. Bob Odenkirk made an effort to carry realistically heavy tote bags during filming, although not the full 150 pounds—75 pounds per bag—that they likely would have weighed in reality. Gilligan praised the script from Smith, which he felt established the bond between Mike and Jimmy that was seen in Breaking Bad but otherwise absent in Better Call Saul previously. Gilligan's associate producer Jenn Carroll and assistant Melissa Ng helped to identify elements to add to Smith's script to further connect the relationship between Mike and Jimmy to what was seen in Breaking Bad.^[1][2]

The shootout scene between Mike and the gunmen was a challenge for Gilligan, and he considered it "the most complicated single scene I've ever directed".^[1] He wanted to have Odenkirk visible in all shots, even while the stuntmen and practical effects were going off around him, as to show the shootout from Jimmy's point of view as much as possible. The overall sequence took about four to five days to complete.^[1] To film the scene with the flipping truck while Jimmy was in-shot, a temporary green screen was placed on site. Odenkirk's reaction in front of the screen was filmed first, followed by the truck flip without changing the camera's location after Odenkirk and the screen were removed.^[4] The Suzuki Esteem that had been shot up and pushed into a gully was a duplicate of the one they normally used in filming; the original was still kept at the local studios, allowing them to reuse it for any later flashback scenes as needed.^[5]