Better Call Saul Series Final Post-Mortem

When it was first announced, all those years ago, that Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould would be putting together a prequel series to Gilligan’s Breaking Bad (on which Gould had been a key writer and director), I, like many critics, was worried. After all, Breaking Bad had just ended a run that cemented it as an all-time great television drama. I still consider the final season episode “Ozymandias” the best hour of television I have ever seen. I, like many, became even more nervous when it was revealed this prequel would focus on Saul Goodman, a delightful secondary character on Breaking Bad, but hardly one that called for greater depth and exploration. How could a series tracking his rise to power as the criminal criminal attorney in Albuquerque be worth our time? Reflecting back on the widespread worry that such a show might sully the pristine name of Breaking Bad seems almost silly now, as we bask in the glow of the incredible six-season run of Better Call Saul – a run that ended a mere two days ago with as perfect of a finale as anyone could have asked for. But we really didn’t know what to make of a prequel about a largely comic character. If we had really thought about it though, it would have been clear. Gilligan and Gould knew what they were doing – even if they, at times, might not have been so sure themselves – and they ended up creating another series that will stand next to Breaking Bad as an entry within the pantheon of all-time great television dramas.

If Breaking Bad was the story of taking Mr. Chips and turning him into Scarface, Better Call Saul was the story of taking a character with a defined fate and taking us back to the beginning in hopes of better understanding what caused him to make the leap from a low-level scam artist with a loose approach to the legal profession to the lawyer to the largest drug kingpin in the Southwest United States who thought nothing of helping to orchestrate a mass execution of men in prison. Of course, the through line in the series wasn’t a straight one – and Gould and Gilligan threaded in origin stories – of a sort – for Breaking Bad favorites Mike Ehrmantraut and Gustavo Fring along the way, and we also got a series of flash forwards to Saul’s post-Breaking Bad life – but the Jimmy-Saul-Gene tragedy unfurled in such a way that the series managed to surpass its forebearer – something I certainly never would have predicted nine long years ago when the series was announced.

So much of the success of Better Call Saul boils down to its silences. When people think back to Breaking Bad, they are likely going to quote one of Walter White’s iconic lines (“I am the one who knocks!” always comes to my mind) or perhaps one of Jesse’s fun quips (“Yeah, science!” anyone?). But with Better Call Saul, for a show about a lawyer who could talk his way out of anything, the show’s key moments were those without dialogue. The stunning montages, Kim Wexler’s looks that told entire stories for the audience, Lalo’s cat-like movements, Mike’s meticulous investigations, and Gus’s impeccable attention to detail – it all works to create a series that doesn’t rely on huge, loud gun battles (although there are, of course, some of those), but one that hones in and focuses on the character of it all.

And what characters the show provided for us to spend our time with. Jimmy McGill, a man who had the ability to be a great attorney if only he could get himself out from his brother’s shadow (and recognize that he has good to offer the world, even if he can only see himself as a con man through and through), was so brilliantly played by Bob Odenkirk that it was impossible for the audience not to fall in love with the character who would one day turn into the odious Saul Goodman. And Gould and Gilligan also fell in love with this huckster with a heart he didn’t want to show – their original plan for the series was to have it switch over to Saul’s time as a defense attorney in Albuquerque far faster than the series eventually did (where we only got mere glimpses of the real Saul we knew in Breaking Bad). No one anticipated Jimmy would become such a complicated character – a man pulled in the wrong direction ultimately by his own worse angels (and the loss of the love of his life through events of their own making), but one who still had the capacity for depths of love, joy, and kindness, even when he repeatedly heard from his older brother that he wasn’t worth much. Chuck (a masterful Michael McKean), that brother, had so many of his own demons, but was always quick to blame Jimmy for so many of his ills – and when we learned the truth of where that constantly simmering hatred stemmed from, it all made so much sense. This fight between brothers – the respected, but fallen, Chuck and the disrespected upstart in Jimmy – defined much of the early Jimmy McGill years of the series, and rightfully so. The wounds Chuck caused within Jimmy’s psyche never truly healed, and that festering discontent was the catalyst for much of the destruction both Jimmy and Kim wrought over the latter portions of the series.

And then there’s Kim. The heart and soul of the series made manifest in a woman with a clear moral code that slowly gets eroded throughout the series until she reaches a breaking point. In a performance for the ages, Rhea Seehorn took a character that was wholly new to this television universe and made her the indispensable center of the action. Jimmy’s descent into Saul may have been sparked by the wounds of his brother, but we all knew that the last vestiges of Jimmy wouldn’t fall away until Kim left his orbit. If we went into this series anticipating watching Jimmy McGill become Saul Goodman, we quickly realized that the real question of the series was “What happens to Kim Wexler?” The answer we were given was perfect, if hard to watch. But when you’re the moral center of a series that delights in delving into the darkness of the human soul, you can’t escape unmarked. The slow de-evolution of Kim from uptight, upstanding member of the New Mexico Bar to Jimmy McGill’s accomplice – and, near the end, driving motivator in his biggest and most destructive scheme – was a mesmerizing journey to take. While I’ll miss so many characters from this universe, I’ll absolutely miss Kim the most of all.

I haven’t even touched on the cartel side of things – which spent the initial several seasons siloed from the legal world of Jimmy McGill. Telling us the story of Mike and Gus before they met Walter White, this story was never more compelling than when it let us get to know Nacho Varga (a brilliantly understated Michael Mando) or the bombastic Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton, just electric), two names that were mentioned by Saul in his initial appearance on Breaking Bad who ended up being two of the most loved characters in the new series. Nacho’s struggles to justify his place in the cartel world while dealing with the disgust and disappointment of his beloved father presented a nice comparison to Jimmy’s own struggles with his brother and a never appearing acceptance. And Lalo was there to fuck things up for everyone – a chaotic presence that moved through both sides of the show’s storytelling like a deadly ghost, culminating in one of the series’ most shocking sequences in its sixth season. This wing of the story presented the largest challenge, as we all knew the fates of so many of its characters due to their presence within Breaking Bad. But it was still a wholly realized story, shading in the elements of old characters we knew and introducing us to tragic new ones.

Better Call Saul entered the television landscape with something to prove – to viewers who idolized Breaking Bad, to critics who weren’t sure lightening could strike twice – and while it never achieved the ratings success of its predecessor, it certainly won over the hearts and minds of fans and critics alike. In this time of too much TV, that’s not an easy thing to do. But it was always a joy (even if it was sometimes incredibly hard to stomach some of the actions of the characters we loved) to watch this series week in and week out. And, as we have now said goodbye to this realm of storytelling for what appears to be the final time, it’s a very difficult goodbye. I’ll certainly miss seeing Jimmy’s latest scheme, watching Kim reckon with her role both in Jimmy’s life and with her own professional wants and needs, or seeing Mike’s disapproving stare at what he is being asked to clean up. These characters were so fully realized, written so deftly and with so much complexity, that I would hold that this series is just as great, if not better, than Breaking Bad. The richness of the universe created by Gilligan, Gould, and their crack team of writers and directors will go down as one of the best in television history. It was a hell of a ride.