It's not like there wasn't any reason to have some high hopes for Better Call Saul. After all, Breaking Bad ended its run as one of the only shows to ever manage to never have a bad episode, and with most of the crew - especially on the creative side - coming back together for a show, why wouldn't you have high hopes? At the same time, though, there were many - myself included - who wondered if we really needed a Breaking Bad prequel, even if it did mean more of Saul Goodman (and apparently Mike Ehrmantraut), and wondered if the show wasn't going to end up falling into the curse of prequel-itis. Now that it's all over, though, I guess it's safe to say we didn't need to worry. Better Call Saul wasn't just better than it had any right to be; it was phenomenally good, mixing comedy and drama, character work and backstory, tension and release all effortlessly to make something wholly wonderful out of the alchemy, and delivering one hell of an opening season. Of course, it's not as though Better Call Saul is a typical first season; this is a team essentially evolving their show into something new, giving them a confidence and a built-in fanbase willing to give them the time they needed to set things up properly. Yes, Better Call Saul brought back Saul Goodman, pushing us back to his life as Jimmy McGill, a small-time lawyer struggling to make a name for himself and earn the respect of his older brother, the famed lawyer Chuck McGill (played beautifully by Michael McKean as a man whose sanity is crumbling even as his mind remains sharp). Yes, it brought back Mike Ehrmantraut, giving us the chance to see Jonathan Banks being awesome as well as exploring the events that led Mike to becoming the efficient operator we know him as. But even with the return of these characters, there's no mistaking Better Call Saul for Breaking Bad, despite their shared universes; if Breaking Bad was the story of a bad man coming to realize how evil he could be, Saul is the story of someone desperately trying to do the right thing and being a far better man than he gets credit for being - and being punished for the attempt. The result is sometimes hilarious (between Jimmy's meeting with a toilet inventor and Mike's use of a pimento sandwich, Saul consistently delivered some of the funniest scenes on TV), sometimes crushing (it would have been hard to imagine the show topping Mike's brutal final monologue in "Five-O," but the show managed with Jimmy's realization at the end of the season's penultimate episode), and always absolutely a joy to watch. Just like Breaking Bad, it was beautifully shot, incredibly acted, thematically and morally complex, and just plain brilliant. I may have worried the show wouldn't live up to my hopes, but I'm thrilled to know that it did and then some. And weird though it may sound, I'm almost as excited to be waiting, knowing that there's more goodness to come.
- Josh Mauthe
- Josh Mauthe
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