Better Call Saul Almost Killed off Carol Burnett's Character

Jimmy McGill broke bad long before he became Saul Goodman on Better Call Saul, but there was one line actor Bob Odenkirk refused to cross: murder. The sixth and final season of the Breaking Bad prequel/sequel sees Jimmy/Saul (Bob Odenkirk) laying low in Omaha, Nebraska, where he befriends the neighborly Marion (Carol Burnett) and her scamming cab driver son Jeff (Pat Healy) as Cinnabon manager Gene Takovic. The show's penultimate episode ends with Marion exposing Jimmy's true identity as Albuquerque criminal lawyer-turned-fugitive Saul Goodman, who nearly strangles Marion with a phone cord — only to flee when she alerts the police.

"They rewrote this scene exactly how I wanted it, but not how your so-called good friend Better Call Saul executive producer Vince Gilligan had written it," Odenkirk jokingly told the audience during NBC's Carol Burnett: 90 Years of Laughter + Love special. "Carol, there's something that you should know: Vince wanted my character to kill you in that scene ... His exact words to me were, 'Saul ends up killing Carol Burnett.' And if I remember correctly, he didn't say, 'Kill Carol's character,' he said, 'Kill Carol Burnett.' But I refused, and I told him I'd walk."

Odenkirk continued: "Carol, I was willing to risk my career and never working in this town again. Because I didn't want little children who watched our show — and I hope many of them did — to see me on the street and say, 'Mommy, that's the man who killed Carol Burnett.' That's all I wanted to say. That I'm your real friend and Vince is not. And one more thing, Vince and I, and everybody on our show, we think you're the greatest."

Series co-creator Gilligan, who wrote and directed "Waterworks," previously revealed that Burnett improvised the line that may have saved Marion's life: "I trusted you." 

"I think that was a line Carol made up on the set, I don't think it's in the script. I think we were on the set and I think it felt like something was missing and she might have said, 'What about if I said, 'I trusted you?'" In that moment – which was a great addition – the clouds part for him and sanity prevails, thank God," Gilligan told the AMC blog. "And you see it on his face. Bob does such a great job in that moment – as does Carol – but you see it in his eyes this look of horror of 'What was I thinking? How did I get here? How did I come to this? This is insane. I'm going to kill this nice old lady? What have I been doing here?' And sanity floods back in and he runs, instead of assaulting her or killing her. But. Yeah. I think that's what we want the audience to be asking themselves: 'What happened to this guy?'" 

Better Call Saul season 6 is streaming on Netflix.