4. Better Call Saul
When Better Call Saul was first announced, I was slightly skeptical, and I don't think I'm alone in that. Saul was always my favourite character in Breaking Bad, but something about the idea of a prequel series just didn't appeal to me for some reason. I don't know, maybe it was painful flashes of Joey and other failed spin-offs, or maybe it was the fact that, great as Saul was, he wasn't a character with an awful lot of substance, mainly just being an incredibly likable and frequently hilarious piecemover capable of getting Walt and Jesse to parts of the underworld they couldn't really navigate themselves. He was a dependable standout in the ensemble, but could Saul Goodman really support his own series? No, but Jimmy McGill could. Right from the start, there's something really special about Better Call Saul, initially a show about how Jimmy's conscience (emphasis on the con) totally dissolved to make him the criminal lawyer we came to love, but the real thrill of watching this show comes from how it gradually begins to blossom into something totally different- and in my opinion, slightly better- than its mighty predecessor. Something funnier, warmer and possibly even more tragic. Something that, at its best, has established itself as the best thing on TV right now
High praise, I know, but I'm just incredibly impressed at what BCS was able to do right from the start of its run. It begins as a sort of origin story, but the truth is that it's actually about much more than Jimmy McGill. If Breaking Bad was about a seemingly mild-mannered man sinking into the Albuquerque underworld, then Better Call Saul shows how that network of criminals and psychopaths became the way it was when Heisenberg arrived on the scene. As well as Jimmy's descent, the show also follows hard-nosed fixer Mike, put-upon gangster Nacho, the utterly unhinged Lalo and Jimmy's straight-laced brother Chuck. All of them are great, a nice mix of returning players and new faces that make the two worlds that Jimmy bridges feel so much more alive and organic. It never feels like Vince Gilligan and Saul's co-creator Peter Gould, are narrowing their focus to just tell one story, instead keeping their eye for epic storytelling and turning back the clock to really just study the world they created further and spend more time filling in some of the intricate details.
As expansions go, it feels a lot more organic than most; Gilligan's love for his weird, wild world is stronger than ever and I think that's really what makes Saul work as well as it does. There's so much more warmth and love this time around, and I think part of that comes from the kind of character Jimmy is vs. the cold psychopathy of Walter White. Jimmy's not a good person, nor is he necessarily a bad person. He's whatever the situation needs him to be, but under the flexible morality is a wounded heart and a set of values that keep bubbling up to the surface whenever he's at his most nefarious. This is where the show plays its absolute ace, the new addition that really gives an edge over Breaking Bad: Kim Wexler
Kim is the heart and soul of this show, the thing that keeps Jimmy tethered to the world of right and wrong as he gradually begins to shift into Saul. Rhea Seehorn consistently gives one of the greatest performances on television (though not great enough for the Emmys apparently), effortlessly matching reliably strong work from Odenkirk and Banks and turning Kim into so much more than just a love interest for Jimmy. She's what reminds him that there's value in staying good, in resisting the poison within and staying on the righteous path. The show toys with the audience with constant reminders that Jimmy's story doesn't end in salvation and that Saul wins in the end, but part of what makes Kim so compelling is how ardently she fights that losing battle. She's constantly trying to appeal to the better parts of him, and he wants to be better for her... but the seductive corruption of the Saul persona is always that little bit stronger. This gets especially interesting in the later seasons, where it becomes clear that Kim's no angel either, and the show begins to tease out the dark side that Jimmy will inevitably bring out in her. Her fate may be terrifyingly ambiguous, and she might yet break bad herself, but it's that push and pull between two people who simultaneously make each other better and worse that makes Saul such a consistently exciting show
I'm just in constant awe of Jimmy's arc here. It's not a straight line like Walt's was, and he isn't just slippin' down into corruption, at least not all of the time. Instead, the world is constantly ripping chunks out of Jimmy and letting the poison of Saul leak into the resulting gaps. And unlike with Heisenberg, the show lets us root for Jimmy too- some of the time at least. His "stick it to the man" approach to justice and occasional ability to do good are constant reminders that Jimmy's heart is sometimes in the right place, and that makes each of his lapses into darkness that much more devastating. His relationship with Chuck is the clearest indicator that despite how likable Jimmy is, he's capable of unspeakable cruelty too, and the show pits the brothers against each other constantly and brutally, culminating in a courtroom clash that's completely bloodless but still as devastating as anything Tuco or Fring could have devised
Stylistically, the show uses most of the same techniques as Breaking Bad, but tonally and generically, they're totally different beasts; if the ballad of Heisenberg was Gilligan's darkly funny tragedy, then this is his deeply sad comedy. The show drops the neo-western leanings in favour of a sort of sticky Southern noir, a perfect fit for the moral greys and deep shadows that The Slippin' One operates in. The show uses the audience's knowledge of how this story ends to absolutely inspired effect, constantly toying with the characters when they think they can best fate. It knows when to invoke what awaits them in the future, but the writers also excel at using the unknown quantities that Breaking Bad never had a chance to establish. Nacho and Kim's fates are still totally up in the air, and the flashes to Jimmy's dreary future are constant reminders that his story isn't quite finished yet. How fitting that a man who lived in ambiguity is ultimately trapped in a black and white future
It's gotten to the point where you could voice a preference for either show and I'd totally understand it. Better Call Saul is an add-on in the purest sense, taking what was already excellent and building on it, using the genius of Breaking Bad to give itself a strong foundation and eventually enhancing what came before it by giving old stories new meaning. It's funnier and quirkier and that's where Gilligan and Gould usher in the Trojan horse, billing it as a fun and enjoyable spin-off before driving the knife in again and again to create another truly intoxicating crime epic. This wider universe has now spanned 13 years and has knocked it out of the park again and again, each installment improving on the one before it and building a legacy that will endure in television forever. Breaking Bad is excellent, El Camino is incredible, and Better Call Saul is, in my estimation, the best of them all, a work of comedy and tragedy that is constantly deepening and twisting and growing better and better. Wherever the show ends up, this is one con that I'm happy to have fallen for
Excellent
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