While I’ll try to avoid spoilers as much as possible, some are probably inevitable, so read at your own risk.
Ultimately, this was all about scorpions and frogs.
The parable about nature and fate seems appropriate for a story set largely in the desert, a place scorpions call home. Albuquerque, New Mexico has been the setting now for two magnificent series. I was tempted to write ‘crime’ series, but are they? Crime is certainly one of the big focuses of both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, but they’re both about so much more.
Both shows served as extended character studies of their central protagonists, using crime as a jumping-off point to reveal more and more layers. Given the scope and the length of each series, that could only ever hold an audience with both top-quality writing and top-quality acting. In both cases, the team involved exceeded expectations. That’s a big statement for Better Call Saul (BCS) in particular because for many people, Breaking Bad is one of the best TV series ever made, if not the best.
While I still hold up The Wire as the best TV I’ve ever seen, I will say that both these shows had better final seasons and better endings (although The Wire is definitely due a rewatch).
For those that don’t know (and because that number must be vanishingly small, I’ll keep this brief), Breaking Bad is the story of Walter White a deeply talented chemist who makes some mistakes and has the same kinds of regrets that most people have if they reach 50 years old. By that time he’s married with a son and working as an underpaid high school chemistry teacher. When the bombshell of a terminal lung cancer diagnosis literally floors him, his understandable fear of leaving his family with nothing is met with the realisation that he can manufacture street drugs (crystal meth) to a higher quality than anyone else in his region is capable of. So begins a race against time to sell enough of the product to keep his family supported once he is gone.
Inevitably, this endeavour finds him in trouble with the law, so along the way he engages the sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman, who both helps him, and leads him deeper into the criminal underworld. It’s this character who we concentrate on in BCS.
Both series share fantastic dark humour throughout, but while Breaking Bad leans heavily into the thriller genre, BCS is more deliberate and more obviously character-driven (one of the great things about Breaking Bad is its rewatchability. You’re so caught up in the drama the first time that you can easily miss the character beats. My feelings towards Walter and Skyler in particular completely switched the second time around. I hadn’t experienced that since Fight Club.) That is not to say that BCS lacks thrills… some of the scenes, particularly in recent seasons have been spectacular.
Other than crime, there’s another thing they share in common with The Wire, too: respect for their audience. While neither Breaking Bad nor BCS has the complexity of The Wire, they delight in time jumps, foreshadowing, deprivation of context, and little ‘Easter Eggs’ that deepen and enrich the story. At times, BCS is operating in three different timelines, with the central character known variously as Saul, Jimmy, and Gene. It’s ambitious and intelligent without being pretentious or hard to follow. You have to pay attention, sure, but it’s so much more rewarding than being spoon-fed every last detail. I suppose one downside is that shows like this reduce my tolerance for others. I’ve probably missed some decent entertainment due to my impatience with so-called ‘dumbing down.’ The more creators we have like this (Vince Gilligan was the creator of Breaking Bad, he partnered with Peter Gould for BCS), the better.
If you’ve watched Breaking Bad but not Better Call Saul, you’re not alone. I had a false start myself, trying the first few episodes and not getting into it. It is slower. You’re dealing with a lot of new characters, at least one of whom is very odd. But it is a different show and it’s slower for a reason, giving the characters room to breathe and moving pieces into place ahead of explosive encounters. When I went back the second time and persevered, I found it truly rewarding. After a while, it does link back in quite closely with the Breaking Bad story and yes, there are cameos. But it was the other characters, in particular Kim Wexler, who became the most fascinating and the biggest reason to watch. Her portrayal by Rhea Seahorn is incredible: layered; fragile; hard as nails; brilliant but flawed… she is utterly compelling.
You may struggle with the protagonist. Saul Goodman was almost always an amusing character – his attitude and sheer bravado saw to that – but beyond that, he was rarely likeable, particularly if you see the legal profession as noble in any way. The thing about this character though is the way he’s written and the way he is portrayed by Bob Odenkirk… he is real. He goes beyond being a well-written role on a TV show, beyond the cliché of a ‘living, breathing person.’ He is a person. He transcends the whole Breaking Bad universe… you could make a convincing argument that this is the best-realised television character of all time.
The ending of Breaking Bad was perfect… until now. Saul’s story ends the way it must and in doing so, it elevates everything that has gone before.
Gilligan, who was a writer on the X Files before Breaking Bad, is reported now to be working on a ‘grounded’ series with similarities to The Twilight Zone. As a genre fan, I’m delighted.
Excellence is in his nature, so whatever he does will be good. Like the scorpion, he can’t help it.
