‘Better Call Saul’ Is The Perfect Addition (And Antidote) To ‘Breaking Bad’

This is a spoiler-filled recap of the season premiere of Better Call Saul.

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So here we are, with the first prestige spin-off. Sure, we might all pretend that Nashville is about Mrs Coach’s secret singing career, or that Timothy Olyphant’s U.S. Marshall character in Justified is the great-great-etc-grandson of Timothy Olyphant’s sheriff character in Deadwood. But Better Call Saul – which premiered this week — is the first post-Golden Age, premium cable, official ‘important drama’ sequel to crop up, recycling the settings and support characters of Breaking Bad to spin a new story.

Does this show need to exist? Sure, we all loved Saul, the diverting comedic presence in a program wallowed in grim determination. And with Mad Men ending, and True Detective proving a bit of a self-important wank, it’d be great to have another series to collectively sweat over each week. But a spin-off? Really?

The creators are well aware that the show might seem like a cash grab, and has the potential to tarnish something sacred. Before fan-boys can cry foul over the possible besmirching of their dearly beloved Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan and his co-creators serve up a rejoinder in the form of Saul’s first case. The fast-talking lawyer must defend three young idiots who broke into a morgue and defiled a body. Yep, the show opens with someone literally screwing a corpse (don’t worry, we’re spared the sight of their actions). It’s a loud declaration from the showrunners that they know what they’re up against, they get the joke, and they’re happy for this to be a real head fuck.

But let’s backtrack – because Saul isn’t even Saul at this point. Just as Breaking Bad was a pre-determined story (see the oft-cited log line of “Mr Chips to Scarface”), so too is Better Call Saul. The prologue to the new program starts where Breaking Bad left off. Saul has been relocated to Nebraska, after the explosive revelation that Walter White was Heisenberg left him a sitting target for both criminals and the law. He is now working at Cinnabon. He has a moustache. He is sad (there is nothing sadder than the sight of uncooked mass produced dough, filmed without colour) and scared. Go home, Saul. Make a terrible drink, pop in an old cassette, watch a commercial or two from your glory days of ambulance chasing and defending drug dealers.

His present is a black and white dirge (has anyone been to Nebraska? Is the state a complete monochrome?), but those old commercials were shot in low-def technicolour. Take us back Saul, to where it all began…

Jimmy McGill is a hustling, middle aged workingman. He’s dodging final notice bills, he’s struggling to keep legal clients, let alone get new ones, and he’s burdened by the responsibilities of family. This is all we know at the beginning of the show, and it could feel a little too familiar. Saul takes place in the same America that Breaking Bad did. It has the same deft artistic flourish for the mediocre disposables of life: urinal cakes, Big Gulps, lemon juice squeeze bottles, chain cafes and letterboxes adorned in knick knacks all get their beautifully framed close up – it sets a scene of small ideas, small pleasures, low risk, and low reward. It’s also a place of small irksome trials and patronising pats on the back. Just as Walter found himself frustrated by the institutions of education, medicine, middle management and marriage, Jimmy is surrounded by speed humps and hiccups, sticklers and wannabe ‘Employees of the Month’. Everyone’s nitpicking the small fry details and missing the big picture. And Jimmy, as played with the mid-Western throwback bluster of Bob Odenkirk, is all big picture.

Bob Odenkirk steps up to leading man status so effortlessly it’s almost criminal no one gave him a shot before. Of course the role suits him – Odenkirk’s background is not simply comedy, he’s a master of improvisation and sketch and craft. If you’ve heard Odenkirk talk his way through the sketches he wrote on the cult classic Mr Show (a Velvet Underground-type, ground-zero influencer on many modern comedians) or goofily riff on Comedy Bang Bang, you know he’s a perfectionist who thrives on spontaneity. As Jimmy circles through the endless trimmed lawn, one-storied culs de sac of New Mexican suburbs, he composes and revises the blag and bluster he’ll launch at prospective opportunities for cash (people). The problem for Jimmy, and the pay off for the audience, is that all of this muttered prep work is for naught. No situation ever arrives that requires the rehearsed lines. Instead, every performance is a night at the improv, and we thrill to the danger and the hilarity of the unknown.

This is where Saul breaks free of its origins. Breaking Bad was all about control – how can this scientifically minded man arrange the chess board to suit his purposes, when the pieces were all hot-headed criminals and flaky scumbags? Saul is about the conflict that comes from the gaps between one’s talents and one’s lot in life. If Jimmy were a cartoon, he’d be an independent ant or a tap-dancing penguin. Instead he’s a lawyer who cares about the deeper meanings and truths, trapped in a world of judicial procedure and evidence. There is the probable knowledge that his parking is fully validated, and there is the annoying truth that his ticket is missing a sticker (Mike Ermantraut, a series regular, makes a great first appearance as a hangdog hurdle of bureaucratic indifference).

There is also what’s morally right for Jimmy’s mentally unstable brother, and the reality. The law firm he built should, for all intents and purposes (and screamed empty threats from Jimmy), cash him out and pay him his dues. What they’re legally obligated to do is pretty much nothing until the delusional and paranoid man asks them to. This is the heart of the show, and the happenstance that pushes Jimmy McGill on his way to become Saul Goodman. Michael McKean is warm and heartbreaking as a dependant older, smarter brother, clinging onto the belief that he might get better, all the while bunkering down in the darkness, and hiding from electromagnetic pulses. Odenkirk is fantastic as a depressed caregiver, strenuously crunching mental gears as he tries to manoeuvre them both into a better future.

Better Call Saul is a show about storytelling. It’s about what we tell others to get our way, what we prepare and dump and revise and then finally deliver – always as compromised as any legal transaction; always as crumpled as Jimmy’s brown suits. It’s also about what we tell ourselves about ourselves. Building a story around a storyteller isn’t new – from Tom Sawyer to Don Draper, we’re familiar with mythmakers weaving their way through trouble via a golden tongue. Jimmy’s a storyteller par excellence – he remembers names, notices appearances, tugs at your heartstrings and distributes back-street swears and dirty vernacular with the precision of a dive bar darts player.

As Jimmy becomes Saul and the stakes ratchet higher, I hope the show doesn’t drift into solely live-and-die situations. Jimmy’s determination to play dirty while the underdog is sweet and cheer-worthy – it’s almost a bonus that we know he’s not ever getting much further. What’s more, like any true huckster, he enjoys the scam more than the pay-off. Luckily for audiences, it seems like the show does too.

Walter White’s empty pledge, “I’m doing this for my family”, became, for this viewer, representative of the show. Empty. A well-shot, well-soundtracked, well-acted journey towards a moral morass. Jimmy’s tale, of mediocrity gained and mediocrity squandered, sounds boring compared to Breaking Bad, but hopefully this more low-key structure allows the creators to prove that other great rule of storytelling: it’s often not the destination that’s important; it’s the rambling, scrambling, bullshitting journey that you take to get there.

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Better Call Saul‘s first episode is available to stream on STAN; alternatively, you can watch it via iTunes, Google Play or EzyFlix.TV.

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Matt Roden co-hosts FBi Radio’s film & TV show, Short Cuts, at 10am each Saturday; his illustration and design work can be seen here.