There are glimpses of what's to come when he goes into performance mode, cajoling a jury with wistful rambling about his misspent youth ("Oh, to be 19 again…") and energetically quoting Network at a room full of nonplussed corporate lawyers. He has zero messages, a stack of unpaid bills and can barely even get his parking validated at court, where he goes to defend paltry cases for even more paltry paychecks. Saul – who I guess I'm going to call James from here on because, weird though it feels, that is his name – is a long way from the sleazy hotshot we know and love here. Instead, Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan have taken the origin story route, delving into the process of how a Saul Goodman gets made, and how the distinctly unimpressive James McGill becomes the kind of guy Walt Jr would be excited to run into at the carwash. Its title alone suggests a catchphrase-driven sitcom, but the type of humour Saul brought to Breaking Bad isn't enough to build a show around. Since the bulk of the show is set long before that bleak future, the question underlying all of this becomes "Was it worth it?"Īll of this is to say that while it's often enormous fun, Better Call Saul is a much more pensive and mournful show than anyone imagined when it was announced that Bob Odenkirk's larger-than-life lawyer was getting his own spinoff.
In one of many delightful bits of fan service, he has fulfilled his own prophecy and now manages a Cinnabon in Omaha, having 'disappeared' himself into a new identity post-Walter White.īut even with the consolation of delicious pastry, it's a lonely, paranoid existence Saul's resigned to, constantly looking over his shoulder for fear of getting made, and watching videotapes of his own TV commercials for a taste of the good old days. But Better Call Saul, at least in its first season, is a closed circle – we see, in a beautifully filmed black-and-white opening sequence, exactly where James McGill ends up as a result of being Saul Goodman. Much of the tension in Breaking Bad came from the fact that we had no idea where Walt's dramatic, accelerated moral decline was ultimately going to lead him.
While AMC's rich, deadpan prequel Better Call Saul takes place in the same thoughtfully stylised New Mexico as its parent show Breaking Bad, and centres similarly on one man's transformation from sad-sack to self-made legend, its opening moments make clear just how different the rules of this story are.