Plemons began his career as a child actor and achieved a career breakthrough with his supporting role as Landry Clarke in the NBC drama series Friday Night Lights (2006–11). He subsequently portrayed Todd Alquist in season 5 of the AMC crime drama series Breaking Bad and won a Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance as part of the show's ensemble cast; he reprised the role in its sequel, the television film El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019). Following Breaking Bad, Plemons received his first Primetime Emmy Award nomination and won a Critics' Choice Television Award for portraying Ed Blumquist in the season 2 of the FX anthology series Fargo. He received a second Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his portrayal of Robert Daly in "USS Callister", an episode of the Netflix anthology series Black Mirror.