By Dante Spado
Breaking Bad is one of the most renowned shows of all time, up there with the likes of The Sopranos. I’ve seen it through twice and I truly love it. I don’t think I can say anything unique about it that hasn’t been said before because it really is one of the greatest shows of all time.
Of course, the success of the main show spawned a sequel movie, El Camino, and a prequel show about criminal lawyer Saul Goodman, titled Better Call Saul (BCS). It, as the name implies, focuses on the backstory of Saul Goodman, or as he was known prior to his dealings with meth kingpin Walter White, Jimmy McGill.
Funny enough, I started watching BCS before I saw Breaking Bad. Like five years before I saw it. It was my sophomore year of high school and I was at home sick with the flu for several days. The show’s first three episodes were out and AMC was doing a mini-marathon to catch people up if they had missed them before it was too late in the season. I had next to no knowledge about Breaking Bad or even who Saul Goodman was. I just knew it was connected. But I watched the first three episodes and LOVED it. Jimmy McGill was hilarious and the show had great drama, acting, comedy and dialogue. I was hooked.
Over the next few years, I watched the first three seasons of BCS without watching Breaking Bad. I always told myself I would get around to it, but I never did. I knew that eventually Jimmy would turn into Saul and the first three seasons show glimpses of the darkness Jimmy is capable of. Still, I had no idea who Saul Goodman truly was.
Finally, in my junior year of college, I bit the bullet and watched Breaking Bad. It was actually kind of cool watching the show in reverse (I’m adamant that you can watch them in whatever order you want because the writing and connections between the two are SEAMLESS) because when characters like Mike, Tuco and Gus were introduced, I already had background information on who they were.
However, the most jarring thing was seeing the real Saul Goodman. In his debut episode on Breaking Bad, he suggests murdering a client to get around all the legal repercussions that could come with defending him. MURDER. That’s a big step up for a guy who was writing wills for the elderly the last I had seen him.
I finished the rest of Breaking Bad pretty quickly and then circled back to BCS to watch season four, which I had missed out on when I didn’t have a TV in the first part of college. About a month after that, season five premiered, and I think it’s the best season of BCS and as good as any season of Breaking Bad. Jimmy finally adopts his Saul alter ego and begins to define who Saul is. He becomes much more involved with the cartel, inching him closer and closer to his partnership with Walter and Jesse.
The point is, Better Call Saul is an AMAZING show that introduces awesome new characters, like Kim and Nacho, but also fleshes out established and fan-favorite characters, like Gustavo Fring, Mike Ehrmantraut, and of course, Saul Goodman. It hasn’t received nearly the accolades and attention that Breaking Bad did which truly baffles me. The first season is a little slow and different from its predecessor. Meth-cooking montages are replaced with late-night paperwork sessions and gang violence is substituted for legal proceedings in the courtroom. But the writing and cinematography of these “slower” scenes make them captivating, and things that happened in season one have a lasting effect throughout the show which really ramps it up and increases the stakes.
I cannot recommend this show enough. It was even on Barack Obama’s list of best shows to watch. It has five brilliant seasons, four of which can be viewed on Netflix, and the sixth and final season is coming out next year. I think the fact that I watched three seasons of it without seeing the show which it spawned off of is a testament to how good it is. So, if you need something to watch, give Saul a call.