The Messy Morality of Mike Ehrmantraut (Better Call Saul & Breaking Bad)

her son made some mistakes he fell in with bad people but he was never like them not really this scene illustrates an interesting distinction that exists in mike's head he describes nacho's criminal activity as mistakes placing the blame on the people he fell in with and then says he was never like them this is how mike likes to view himself that whether it was in philadelphia or new mexico he fell in with some bad people by mistake and this put him on a road but he's not like them he's better on the surface he may seem like someone who plays ball with the cartel but deep down he's a good guy he then tries to reassure nacho's father that there will be justice against the salamancas speaking the language of revenge and retribution expecting that this is what he'll want to hear the same way he did when his son was killed but nacho's father distinguishes himself from mike stating what you talk of is not justice what you talk of is revenge it never ends my boy is gone you gangsters and your justice you're all the same this serves as an interesting reality check for mike that despite what he likes to think his instincts are no different from the people he likes to blame for his choices that real honest good people don't want more bloodshed in this world to help them mask their grief they want less grief for everyone including themselves however for viewers of better call saw on breaking bad there is something about mike that feels different from other sinister characters in the series but is mike really any different to say walter white the person he grows to loathe the most and do those differences make him a more immoral actor in the grand scheme of things essentially let's examine whether or not mike hermantrout is a good person [Music] now the obvious answer to this question is no mike is a murderer who works for a violent organization that sells highly addictive and unhealthy narcotics when i asked the same question regarding tony soprano a lot of people commented that tony is pure evil but the question is not is this character moral and decent by normal standards as that answer is clearly no as most people would never do what mike or tony does rather we're engaging in moral relativism investigating if in the world this character inhabits do they make that world a better or worse place would gus's organization or tony's family be worse without them in it and what even is our definition of worse or what makes a person good or bad is it their intentions their motivations the consequences of their actions the code they personally live by the regret they carry or through a utilitarian lens is it that on balance they do more good than they do bad in the early seasons of better call saul mike's philosophy is centered around reciprocity if you do something to help me then i must do something to help you back this makes them all square am i correct and assuming we're now square square which shows us that mike is a fair person he doesn't believe in just taking whatever suits him he appreciates the risks others take for him and treats people the way he expects to be treated this establishes a mutually beneficial dynamic built on respect however mike seems to focus on ensuring that his relationship with this individual he's doing a deal with is ethical but doesn't mind if the actions they do for one another are not for instance mike wants jimmy to spill coffee on a police officer's coat so he can steal their notebook to see what they know about him and the case he's a suspect in now knowing mike is technically guilty but that the cops were crooked and killed his son makes us feel that mike is in the right but in exchange for this acceptable act he makes it up to jimmy by stealing millions of dollars from the kettleman's home this money was earned unethically but mike doesn't really know that he just had a sense of duty and obligation to jimmy and once he's not directing the order he washes his hands of all moral responsibility writers vince gilligan and peter gould do a great job of consistently muddying the waters so that we stay on their character's side for instance stealing is bad but is stealing as bad if you're taking stolen money and is it better if you then give that money to a lawyer to hand over to the state so the family can get a more lenient sentence when they go to jail two wrongs don't necessarily make a right but if two wrongs lead to the best outcome for all involved then maybe it does however mike doesn't know or care what jimmy is stealing the money for and is surprised when he gives it back as he expected him to act out of pure self-interest what are you doing which is another aspect that makes mike sympathetic and in many respects good mike sticks to his word and doesn't get tempted to break his social contracts if he steals money for jimmy he would never steal that money for himself even though he could easily get away with it i was hired to do a job i did it it's as far as it goes he honors his word and by doing so earns the respect of the characters in the show and the viewers at home this makes mike overall someone that acts in service of others not purely out of self-interest mike doesn't have an ego he needs to satisfy like walt nor does he want to live a flashy lifestyle like jimmy he makes his money to pay for his granddaughter kaylee after his son was murdered in fact he leaves all the money he ever made to her so that she can have a wonderful life after he's gone because he blames himself for his son's demise and now wants to use his own established moral corruption to do something good that will make them all square these features make us feel that mike is a good person but the logic doesn't really transfer to other situations when it comes to keeping his word and not breaking his social contracts it entirely depends on what he's being asked to do if jimmy asked mike to rob a charity and he did it just to not break his social contract we would not view that as nearly as acceptable as robbing the kettlemans similarly we wouldn't say that a bank robber is an ethical individual just because they didn't steal their partners half of the loot rather we would consider this individual not ethical but more ethical than they could be given the risks they're taking and due to the life and death stakes of the situation those standards mean more but although working to make his granddaughter's life better makes mike an endearing character we don't normally excuse destructive behavior just because they did it to help someone innocent if ed gein had said he was only killing and skinning all those people to make an amazing halloween costume for his niece we wouldn't let that target our heartstrings we would also note that she didn't ask you to do this you chose to and that's another angle on it when kaylee has grown up would she really be happy that her grandfather made all these choices just so she could live a financially comfortable life with his own son matty who was the personification of good even want his daughter's life paid for this way but simply understanding why mike does what he does makes us feel like it's moral this is because generally speaking morality is largely about empathy and the more we understand why someone makes the decisions they make the more empathy we develop and the more justifiable their actions become which makes it feel more immoral as long as they do something bad in order to do something good then we can see a way that they are a force for good which places them in a moral grey area all of what i just said is talking about the actions mike takes the act of stealing the act of killing but a real reason we think what he's doing is okay is who he's doing it to mike doesn't intentionally harm innocent people who aren't in the game only people that have actively decided to play dirty or get involved with unethical people including himself this is what makes us feel that it's totally fine for mike to show up and murder a bunch of cartel guys to protect jimmy even though they're just following orders no different than him but his code seems to be that if you chose to get involved with bad people you yourself become bad and therefore forfeit your life to the rules of the game except mike actually contradicts this by saying that nacho was good and not like the bad people he fell in with so he seems to accept that we're not all fully responsible for the road we end up on but yet the entire desert could be filled with nachos all just there because they made mistakes or fell in with the wrong people yet mike decompartmentalizes and is willing to shoot to kill because as he later says to jimmy it was them or it was us cut and dried so he's making a self-defense argument but it's only self-defense because he got involved in the first place if he had never gone yes jimmy would die but the rest of them would be alive so is jimmy's one life really worth more than the other 12 cartel members lives technically they're all equally in the game at this moment in time but because we just like mike know jimmy this decision seems more moral than the alternative if we look to mike's first kills in the series he's taking revenge on the two police officers that murdered his son this situation is emotionally justified but morally ambiguous he's not certain they killed him but his instinct is guiding him and when he tells them both that he knows they did it and he will make sure they go down for it he lets them prove they're bad guys by taking him out to the middle of nowhere to shoot him this makes mike's actions a mixture of self-defense murder and revenge it's murder because he's perfectly orchestrated everything to expose their corruption and willingness to kill but he's arranged it in such a way that he was never in danger so he can kill them first and the fact that they try to kill him at all even if you don't believe in revenge like nacho's father most of us morally agree with self-defense but then we come to mike's next major kill werner ziegler gus's engineer that breaks out of their construction community to go see his wife margarith mike does everything to try save werner's life he tracks him down before he can meet his wife knowing that if he does make physical contact with her gus's man will slaughter both of them he even talks back to gus warning him that killing werner would be a mistake but once he realizes there's no way to change his mind he accepts his role and takes on the responsibility of doing it himself now on paper this is a morally challenging situation mike has several options but most of them are pretty bad he could let werner go and make a run for it but that would likely be futile and they'd all be killed not ideal or he could let gus's men kill him instead but they would do it in a much more cruel and brutal fashion and likely go after his wife so instead mike decides he'll be the one to physically perform the act this way he can let werner call his wife and send her home immediately so her life is spared and he'll kill him in the most humane way possible letting werner look up at the stars in peace before he shoots him in the back of the head technically mike has just done something awful he's taken a life but of the options available he did the least harm to everyone involved werner broke his social contract and now essentially left mike to clean up his mess i'm not making you do anything those are the rules while just following orders does not absolve you of responsibility it's all the extra steps mike takes to minimize harm that tell us his true intentions however as much as mike tries to do the humane thing we cannot forget that he is ultimately fine with carrying out gus's orders in exchange for money he could just quit working for him and leave it there but he doesn't he was fine with wiping out walt and there's nothing to suggest he wouldn't be fine with wiping out jesse if he was ordered to as he did encourage walt to get rid of jessie many times already to not take a half-measure and even though he likes jessie he liked werner and nacho too but that didn't save them it seems as if the original werner situation allowed mike to cast himself as the most moral murderer on the roster it might be nicer to have someone you know be the one to kill you in a slightly kinder way but it's also more disturbing as he becomes more and more okay with killing his own friends once gus is out of the picture now mike is morally free and we see that when he has power he does actively try to minimize harm again for example when lydia wants to wipe out the 11 inmates who are paid to keep quiet mike refuses i don't know what kind of movies you've been watching but here in the real world we don't kill 11 people as some kind of prophylactic measure when he then has to defend them again to walt he sticks to his code that they made a deal that they would stay quiet as long as they're paid and they're still being quiet therefore they should still be paid as mike doesn't want any unnecessary lives taken that even though he's capable of murder it's never his goal when he's taking orders from gus or working with walt he still tries to tame their darkest impulses always looking for another solution than simply wiping the person out when all is said and done the kid deserves your respect this way he provides real value and use for everyone involved so that ideally the whole team can go home happy and healthy this indicates that mike is actually a force for good and by good i mean harm minimization in whatever organization he's a part of as the important question to ask is if mike was not in this world would it be more violent or less violent and that's hard to answer on the one hand he enables violence by choosing to be the one to do it and not just turning gus over to the police on the other hand being the one in charge of it makes him have some say in how it goes down or if it happens at all as we've established mike doesn't like self-interest he likes social contracts and duty because he knows there's more than enough money to go around and we can all make it work nicely if we don't get greedy this is why walt is such a concern to him from the very start he viewed him as a ticking time bomb with an appetite to take over just like the crooked cops on the force he played ball with it's never enough for him and in his final showdown with walt mike expresses these frustrations which speak to his philosophy that they had a good thing they had everything they needed it all ran like clockwork but walt's pride and ego destroyed it all stating if you'd just done your job and known your place we'd all be fine right now this makes sense from mike's utilitarian perspective that gus remaining in place would be best for everyone in their tribe if they just didn't get greedy kept everything simple and obeyed his orders they would all get rich and not get caught but instead now he has to abandon his loved ones they all lose money and will probably end up in jail but you could argue that mike is only bitter because they set up with gus really just worked for him as his life was never in danger whereas walt and jessie's were and let's not forget that if he was still working for gus he'd have to kill more people whereas now he has more influence in how this operation runs and can make it less violent but he would rather be gus's hitman than walter's partner which means he truly just values the safest most efficient way of making money that as long as the money comes in he literally doesn't care what he has to do he sold his soul to the devil but not for himself for someone else while that sounds like a very loving sentiment it's also high risk and irresponsible as the money he made with gus ends up being confiscated by the government after walt kills him rendering all of mike's sacrifices pointless most of mike's morality is based around his intentions and his motivation but now all that's left behind is what he actually did not why he did it he's killed dozens of men stolen money helped shady characters destroyed lives and it was all for nothing this is why it's so hard to paint a portrait of who mike ehrmanntrout really is is he just a low-life criminal a soldier following orders an angel of death a caring grandfather a good man operating in a bad world or a murderous psychopath that somehow still manages to convince himself that his sins are justified throughout the series he consistently expresses regret for the road that led him here but does feeling regret or having an awareness of your wrongdoings really make you a better person or does it make you even worse because once you're aware what you're doing is wrong you should probably stop but you're choosing not to whereas having a moral blind spot means you could perhaps be forgiven for your ignorance it's hard to say what truly makes a person good or evil mike seems to have defined himself as someone that was good because he was less evil than the people around him but whether it was in the police force or the cartel despite his intentions he always ends up working alongside them enabling them to function even better than they ever could without him so when it comes down to it should a person be judged for how good they actually were or under their specific circumstances how much worse they could have been if you enjoy content like this and want to see more of it please do consider supporting me on patreon as it really does make a difference to how much content i can pump out or if you can't afford that then simply like the video subscribe and leave a comment down below to help the algorithm do its thing

Channel: Just an Observation

Views: 677,179

Keywords: mike morality better call saul, mike morality breaking bad, mike ehrmantraut, is mike a good person, breaking bad morality, better call saul morality, mike character study, mike video essay, mike analysis, breaking bad, better call saul, the morality of mike, mike ethics, jonathan banks, vince gilligan, moral compass, mike philosophy, just an observation, mike better call saul, mike breaking bad

Id: DOEzpSnDA_0

Length: 19min 13sec (1153 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 07 2022