Paste Magazine: The Real, True Story of TV's Most Valuable Supporting Player by Stuart Miller
The inflatable air dancer—also known by various aliases, such as the dancing tube man—spent years in the limited role of storefront shill, but lately he’s made his mark in television as the go-to prop in shows like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, American Dad, Rectify, Broad City, Better Call Saul and Brockmire...
Better Call Saul used an air dancer to inspire Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), even if all he was aspiring to was self-sabotage. McGill had been trying to tough it out at a buttoned-down law firm, but he wanted out, needing to set loose his inner Saul (the irrepressibly loud one viewers know from Breaking Bad), and a colorful air dancer showed him the way. In an exuberant and funny montage—one of many excellent montages in the series’ first three seasons—Jimmy reinvents himself as a flamboyant and tactless pest that the firm just has to fire (letting him keep his bonus), establishing AMC’s spinoff as a show that stood on its own two feet (as opposed to the air dancer, who remained on just one).
Smith says that Melissa Bernstein, an executive producer on both Better Call Saul and Rectify told him the latter show had already introduced an air dancer, but Smith felt the roles were different enough that it wouldn’t be an issue. McKinnon jokes that Better Call Saul knew they could use the same character because “only 20,000 people saw our show.”
“We were looking for something that could give Jimmy the idea to go loud and get fired, something he could come across,” Smith says. “It took a lot of discussion to find the right thing. These things are larger than life and colorful, a lightning rod for attention—once we came up with that, we realized it was like Jimmy’s spirit animal.”
