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| “ | Kuby: This is about you and me doing our best to keep Huell happy. Ted: Huell? Who's Huell? Kuby: This is Huell. Huell, you happy? Huell: Reasonably. Kuby: What would make you unhappy? Huell: This little motherf-cker not doing what he's told. | „ |
| ~ Patrick Kuby and Huell intimidating Ted Beneke. |
Huell Babineaux is a supporting character in the crime drama series Breaking Bad and its prequel series Better Call Saul. He is the personal bodyguard of Saul Goodman, providing him with a number of services, notably security, intimidation, and his trademark pickpocketing. Along with Patrick Kuby, he is a part of Saul's "A-Team".
He is portrayed by Lavell Crawford.
Contents
- 1 Biography
- 1.1 Background
- 1.2 Better Call Saul
- 1.3 Breaking Bad
- 1.4 Fate
- 2 Trivia
- 3 External Link
- 4 Navigation
Biography[]
Background[]
It remains unknown where Huell was born since New Mexico is listed as his birthplace despite the fact that his social security number begins with 331, which is issued to people born in Illinois. However, he lived in Coushatta, Louisiana before moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2001. The same year, he was arrested for pickpocketing, and eventually got in contact with a vet named Caldera, who has connections to the criminal underground.
Better Call Saul[]
Huell chronologically first appears in the Season 3 episode, "Chicanery", where he, on Jimmy McGill's orders, bumps into Charles McGill and slips a fully charged battery into his pocket as part of a plot to prove Chuck's electromagnetic hypersensitivity to be a hoax. In court, Jimmy reveals to Chuck and to the court that Huell slipped a battery into his breast pocket an hour and 43 minutes ago, which went wholly unnoticed by Chuck. Jimmy proffers how Huell will later testify to the incident on the stand but is interrupted as an enraged Chuck humiliates himself as he starts ranting about how he's not crazy, and that Jimmy is a con man who shouldn't be a lawyer.
He and Man Mountain don masks and are hired to kidnap a trio of youths who had previously mugged Jimmy. They tie the teenagers upside down amongst a lot of Piñatas and begin bashing one Piñata after the other terrifying the three. Huell's baseball bat comes close to arriving at one of their faces, but stops just before it hits them. The three youths are left traumatised and never target Jimmy again.
Later on, Jimmy hires Huell to be his bodyguard during his burner phone business. Over several months, business is going well, until Huell assaults a man to protect his boss somewhere in late 2003-early 2004. Unknown to him, the man is a cop, and Huell gets arrested. The cop, who happened to be the same cop who locked him up for pickpocketing in 2001, believed Huell's attack to be intentional. Jimmy and Kim Wexler devise a con where they pretend Huell was a hero in Coushatta, who saved several lives during a fire, among others. Thanks to this, Huell is released with four months of probation. Following this, Huell would serve as a bouncer when Jimmy sells his remaining burner phones, and then attends Jimmy and Kim's marriage.
Afterwards, Huell is hired by Jimmy to pickpocket the keys to Howard Hamlin's car. Huell takes the keys to a fellow criminal who makes a duplicate of them, leaving the original keys next to Howard's car and giving the duplicate to Jimmy. While getting paid, Huell asks Jimmy why he's doing the things he does if he and his wife are well-paid lawyers. Jimmy claims that what they are doing will be worth it, as soon they will be helping people once the scam is done. Huell laughs it off, showing his skepticism, before leaving.
Breaking Bad[]
Four years later, Huell is hired by Saul as a bodyguard. He would use both him and Patrick Kuby, his "A-Team", into intimidating Ted Beneke into repaying his IRS debts. Once it's done, Ted tries to make a run for it, but slips on his carpet and breaks his neck after crashing into a wall. Huell and Kuby look at Ted, believe he died (he actually managed to barely survive, although paralyzed), and flee the scene. Afterwards, Huell explains the situation to Saul, believing it to be an "act of Hod". Later on, Saul and Walter White hire him to pickpocket a vial of ricin from Jesse Pinkman, which Walt would use to poison the eight-year-old Brock Cantillo as a way to convince Jesse that Gustavo Fring needs to be killed. Jesse originally figures out it was Huell, but Walt manipulates him into thinking it was Tyrus Kitt, one of Gus's henchmen.
A few cameos later, Huell and Kuby collect all of Walt's money and bring it to Saul. During this, the former proposes stealing all the money and escaping to Mexico, but the latter shuts down that option, pointing out their boss had ten people killed in prison within two minutes. After delivering the money, Walt gives Huell and Kuby some of it, with implications that they went and stole some of the money before giving it. When Jesse is planning to use Ed Galbraith to relocate with a new identity, Saul has Huell pickpocket Jesse's bag of pot, believing Ed wouldn't have accepted Jesse if he brought it with him. When Jesse realizes what happened, he puts the pieces together and realizes Huell really did steal the ricin from him, and that Walt and Saul are responsible for Brock's poisoning. He barges into Saul's office, steals his gun and beats him up, threatening Huell with a gun before escaping.
After Jesse almost burns down Walt's house after stealing Saul's car, Huell takes back the car from Walt. Following this, he is brought into a DEA safe house and interrogated by agents Hank Schrader and Steven Gomez, who have figured out Walt is the infamous meth kingpin that they've been searching for. Hank lies to Huell that Walt is assassinating anyone connected to Brock's poisoning and that Kuby has recently gone missing. When Huell starts doubting that, he is shown a picture of what is apparently a dead Jesse. Huell, shocked by this, starts talking to the agents about how he and Kuby collected Walt's money in barrels and put them in a van, and that later Walt returned with the van but without the barrels. Hank and Gomez leave the safehouse while advising Huell to stay in it until they return and say he's good to go.
Fate[]
As Huell is never seen again in the series, it is unknown what ultimately happened to Huell and if he was able to leave the safe house. Due to their deaths at the hands of Jack Welker, Hank and Gomez were never able to pick Huell up and release him. That said, it's quite likely that he could have eventually left the DEA safehouse and returned to living a normal life now that Walt is dead, and Saul fled New Mexico under a new identity. In promotional videos for the sequel movie El Camino, Huell is seen in the safe house lounging and watching a news report about the events of the series finale. Afterwards, tired of waiting, he puts on his security jacket and leaves the safe house on his own. That said, it's unknown if those videos are canon or not. Meanwhile, series creator Vince Gilligan claimed that after Hank and Gomez went missing/died, Huell would have eventually been released by DEA agents and lived life as a free man after being questioned about what he knows.
In the sixth and final season of Better Call Saul, it's revealed that, since the DEA held him under false pretenses, Huell was allowed to walk free and moved to New Orleans, finally putting the question to rest and solving his fate.
Trivia[]
- Huell has become a very popular character in the fandom that spawned many memes, such as him resting on the stockpile of money, being stuck in the safehouse for eternity (pointed out above), being "reasonably" happy (referencing a famous quote of his), having a unit of time named after him (1 hour and 43 minutes, the exact time he lists during the court trial in Better Call Saul), or outright being portrayed as a godlike entity who used only a fraction of his power to make Ted slip and break his neck (similar to how other fictional characters are portrayed as godlike, such as SpongeBob SquarePants or Shaggy of Scooby-Doo).
- Because of Lavell Crawford's massive weight loss between Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, the character looks drastically different in both series due to Crawford's much skinnier appearance in Better Call Saul.
- Ironically, this makes Huell somewhat more tragic, as it implies that he gained a massive amount of weight between both series, parallel to Crawford's real-life accomplishment.
External Link[]
- Huell Babineaux on the Breaking Bad Wiki
