Rhea Seehorn steals the spotlight on 'Better Call Saul'

The massively entertaining second season of "Better Call Saul" - AMC's "Breaking Bad" prequel promising to show how somewhat-legitimate lawyer Jimmy McGill (Naperville native Bob Odenkirk) became slimy huckster Saul Goodman - will reach its finish line at 9 p.m. Monday with an unexpected person in the driver's seat.

Not Odenkirk, though Jimmy's scheme to derail his brother Chuck (Michael McKean) with a little photocopier trickery was as deliciously devious as anything he's done.

Not Jonathan Banks, though his multidimensional performance as enforcer/loving grandpa Mike Ehrmantraut has yielded one of the all-time great TV characters.

And not co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, who have given "Better Call Saul" its own narrative and cinematic identity while seamlessly including callbacks (or call-forwards?) to "Breaking Bad."

The MVP is Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler, a resourceful lawyer who provides this show full of dubious characters with its moral center.

A lesser show easily could have written the lead's romantic and professional foil as a ditz, a shrew or a ditsy shrew. But this series has its crown jewel in Kim, a brilliant professional who can't deny her affection for con-man Jimmy - whose brilliance is decidedly unprofessional.

In that way, perhaps Kim is the audience surrogate, something "Breaking Bad" never really had. Seehorn makes us feel Kim's excitement when she joins Jimmy in scamming a scumbag at a bar. We root for her when she works the phones for hours to earn her way out of her boss Howard's (Patrick Fabian) doghouse. We want to join her in punching Jimmy in the shoulder when she realizes, for the umpteenth time, that all those nasty things Chuck says about him are absolutely right.

Last year, I said in this column that I hoped Seehorn would get a brighter spotlight in Season 2. This year, I say Seehorn has carried "Better Call Saul" in a season that has both kept Odenkirk and Banks apart and scaled back McKean's screentime. It's fun to see Walter White's old enemies show up from time to time, but it's even better to see Kim Wexler every single week.

Oh, I hope Jimmy doesn't break her heart ... but we all know he has to.

• Sean Stangland is a Daily Herald multiplatform editor. You can follow him on Twitter at @SeanStanglandDH.