In Episode 4.5 of Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad spin-off starring Bob Odenkirk as a sleazy lawyer, a flashback to 2003 shows the young Saul/Jimmy McGill working in a cell phone store. He starts a side-business selling stolen burner phones (popular with drug dealers, gang members, cheating husbands, and so on).
While scoping out customers at the Dog House sleazoid-favored hot dog stand, he approaches teen thugs Peewee, Skipper, and Scooter. They don't need any phones, but they'll wait until he's done for the evening and beat him up his profits. Jimmy kicks himself for not being able to foresee that the interaction would go bad.
In the next episode, Jimmy approaches the guys at their laudromat-hangout and offers to give them a cut if they let him sell without harassment: a more reliable dividend stream than robbing him just once. They decide that they prefer robbery, and chase him -- into a trap!
The thugs are so terrified that they promise not to bother Jimmy anymore, and to tell all the other thugs to leave him alone. He calls off the smashing, but his goons pretend not to hear him until the bat comes withn inches of Peewee's face. "You get one warning," he tells them as they whimper. "And that was it."
Other than the gay-subtext potential of the three guys hanging out without chatting up girls, I was interested in this scene because I have posts on two of the actors: Tommy Nelson, left, and Cory Chapman, center.
Both would go on to roles in The Righteous Gemstones, but in different seasons, and both have a substantial amount of gay and gay-subtext work.
So what about the third thug, Scooter?
He's played by Carlin James, a Filipino-American actor from Long Beach. His on-screen career begins in 2009-11, playing college students in dramatic shorts and guys who get killed in thrillers.
His first mainstream role was in a 2016 episode of How to Get Away with Murder: he plays Martin, one of the guys that main character Connor, played by Jack Falahee, invites home for a three-way.
More Carlin after the break
