The Subtle Kim Wexler Quirk You Might Have Missed In Better Call Saul

With Vince Gilligan's triumphant return to television, the creator of "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" is determined to show everyone just how absurdly talented Rhea Seehorn is. It remains one of the most egregious snubs of the past decade that Seehorn never won an Emmy (and she only got a single nomination), but with "Pluribus," Seehorn is now carrying a whole TV show on her capable shoulders and displaying some incredible acting week after week.

The show is also a great reminder of just how great "Better Call Saul" was — a show that some of us at /Film and even Guillermo del Toro agree is a better show than "Breaking Bad" — and a big part of that show's magic came down to Seehorn's performance as Kim Wexler. Kim was to "Better Call Saul" what Aaron Paul's Jesse Pinkman was in "Breaking Bad," a side character who quickly became an essential mirror, a key counter to the main character.

Seehorn was cast as Kim even before the character had a last name, but the character was already fleshed out, including a subtle quirk most fans may have missed that informed a lot of who this character was. In the first few episodes, you may notice Kim doesn't use contractions. Rather than say "don't," she says "do not" (like Andre Braugher's Holt in "Brooklyn Nine-Nine"). "[I started trying] to figure out who talks like this?' It started to be this thing of 'Who is this controlled person? And why would she be this controlled?'" Seehorn told the L.A. Times. "She became so important to me because I had largely built her out of subtext, and this private part of her that mostly the audience was my biggest confidant."

Part of what makes the character of Kim Wexler so well-written and full of memorable moments is how much of her persona is made up of these little quirks that would go mostly unnoticed in her daily life, but which are very clearly a conscious effort to present herself in a certain way. Take the way she styles her hair, which is so specific to each individual scene. Throughout the show, there is a consistency to the way she styles her ponytail that reflects her state of mind in any one moment. The higher up her ponytail is, the more confident she feels in a particular scenario; the lower it sits, the more worried she feels; the tighter the perfectly curled ponytail is, the more pressured she feels.

On the other hand, whenever Kim is outside the courtroom, particularly if she's with Jimmy "Saul Goodman" McGill (Bob Odenkirk), the ponytail is more loose because she feels more relaxed. Whenever we see her at home, she always has her hair down. This detail is most prominent after Kim has her car accident, which prevents her from being able to do her ponytail, and reflects the chaotic state of mind she is in during those episodes.

Kim is as big to the world of "Better Call Saul" as Bob Odenkirk's Jimmy is, not because she supports or enhances his story, but because his story bounces off hers and makes her story stand out even more. As Gilligan put it in that L.A. Times interview, "What Peter and I saw in her was a potential to take a show that, at the beginning, was about one character and make it a two-hander."

"Better Call Saul" is available to stream on Netflix.