Greatest Legal Mind I Ever Knew

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About

Greatest Legal Mind I Ever Knew is a line uttered by Better Call Saul character Howard Hamlin (played by Patrick Fabian) that became a shitpost meme popularized among the TV series' fandom, which involves posting a GIF of Hamlin captioned with the quote or referencing it in some other way that went viral in the /r/okbuddychicanery subreddit in August 2022. It is also used less commonly as an exploitable image macro.

Origin

On May 23rd, 2022, episode seven (titled "Plan and Execution") of the sixth season of the crime drama series Better Call Saul premiered on AMC.^[1] In one scene of the episode, the character Howard Hamlin reminisces about his friend and colleague Chuck McGill, calling him the "greatest legal mind he ever knew" (scene shown below).

Charles McGill. The M in HHM. Greatest legal mind I ever knew.

On May 24th, 2022, the official Better Call Saul GIPHY^[2] account uploaded a captioned GIF of Howard saying the line. The GIF accumulated over 248,000 views on the site in four months (shown below).

Spread

In June 2022, the scene saw limited use in memes as a three-panel meme format in the /r/betterCallSaul subreddit, with Redditors replacing Chuck McGill's portrait with other characters. For example, on June 8th, 2022, Redditor Kuiperdolin posted an edit that gained over 1,700 upvotes in the subreddit^[3] in three months (shown below, left). On June 10th, Redditor morfyyyy posted an edit that received over 4,600 upvotes in /r/betterCallSaul^[4] in the same period (shown below, right).

In August 2022, the GIF achieved virality among users in the /r/okbuddychicnary ironic memes subreddit as a shitpost comment. For example, on August 8th, Redditor^[5] Mew_T posted it in the comments to a post, with the reply gaining over 70 upvotes in three weeks. On August 9th, Redditor^[6] banster9357 posted the GIF in the comments to another post, with the comment gaining over 1,900 upvotes in three weeks.

Starting on August 10th. the omnipresence of the GIF in comment sections in the subreddit became a subject of memes and references. For example, on August 10th, 2022, Redditor^[7] Nobody696969696969 posted a meme referencing the spam that gained over 5,800 upvotes in /r/okbuddychicanery in two weeks (shown below, left). Also on August 10th, Redditor^[8] hello_human69 posted a re-edited version of the GIF that gained over 2,000 upvotes in the subreddit in a similar timeframe (shown below, right).

More viral memes about the GIF, including bait longposts,^[9]^[10] were posted in the subreddit in August 2022.