Better Call Saul Uses Breaking Bad’s Legacy to its Full Potential
WARNING: Spoilers for Better Call Saul
Season 5 of Better Call Saul continues to prove that creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould are more than just a one hit wonder, displaying an achievement in television that is fully on par with their last. It is also apparent that no matter how good Better Call Saul gets, it will never be separated from its comparisons to Breaking Bad, the critically acclaimed crime drama from Gilligan and Gould that the show is based on. While this inseparable bond may be seen as a somewhat unfortunate fate for Saul, it’s also deeply ingrained with how the show functions and what makes it so interesting when it comes to the expectations of the audience.
As Saul Goodman and company inch closer and closer to what we know is the beginning of Breaking Bad’s timeline, a unique instance of dramatic irony has been created that is unlike anything seen before. We know who’s around in Breaking Bad: Saul, Gus, Mike, and others. We also know who isn’t around: Kim, Nacho, and Lalo. Because of this knowledge, it may seem that the show can only raise the stakes so high. If we know that most of the main characters are going to make it, how tense can things get? However, it is the question of ‘how’ that becomes so intriguing rather than the simpler ‘what happened?’ This remarkable frame that surrounds the show, as well as the expertly written story of Jimmy McGill’s transformation into Saul Goodman, makes Better Call Saul one of the best shows on TV right now.
The season begins with Jimmy officially changing his law license so he can practice under the name Saul Goodman, the same name that his mostly criminal clientele knew him by when he was hustling burner phones on the streets. Kim, Jimmy’s girlfriend at the time, is quite taken aback by this and presses him as to whether this is the right move for him. The relationship between these two has been developed quite well throughout the past seasons, but this season really sees the bond between them at the forefront of nearly all of Jimmy’s decisions. For instance, Jimmy takes a client that is in direct contention with Kim’s client, Mesa Verde, later disrupting their supposed settlement of the clients’ disputes with a raucous and unexpected attempt by Jimmy to blackmail the CEO of Mesa Verde. This leads to the pair getting married so Kim can’t legally testify against Jimmy in court. When Jimmy is given the opportunity to become, “a friend of the cartel,” Kim embraces the news quite well, going as far as telling off a psychopathic cartel member (Lalo) who confronts Jimmy and Kim in their home, all the while being watched from afar through henchman Mike’s sniper rifle scope. By the end of the season, Kim has gone full Goodman, embracing his wild legal perspective herself as she plans to bring down another lawyer for, “something unforgivable,” through any means necessary, going as far as mirroring Jimmy’s classic finger guns gesture after scheming. Not only does the connection between the two become deeper and more complex, even surprising Jimmy at times, it also makes the question of how they fall apart more and more pressing. When Jimmy tries to blackmail Kim’s client, we expect her to leave him then and there, but no. When Lalo confronts her and Jimmy in their home, we wonder if this could be Kim’s demise. And yet, they’re still together, seemingly stronger than ever. Their relationship is one of the perfect examples of how Gilligan and Gould use the dramatic irony created by Breaking Bad’s existence to its full potential.
In terms of performances, Bob Odenkirk (Jimmy McGill) and Rhea Seehorn (Kim Wexler) shine as the leading couple, doing nothing but proving their chops are sound, delivering some of the series’ most emotionally intimate moments yet. Other standouts include Tony Dalton as the insane but charismatic cartel man Lalo. His unhinged attitude and dedication to the Salamanca family makes every scene he’s a part of feel dangerous, emitting very familiar ‘Tuco energy’ while offering a bit more intelligence than his cousin. Michael Mando returns as the ever increasingly nuanced Nacho, being somewhat overshadowed by Dalton’s wild antics, but still delivering a solid performance. Familiars Jonathan Banks (Mike Ehrmantraut) and Giancarlo Esposito (Gus Fring) also return, delivering great continuations of their characters from Breaking Bad.
The equally withdrawn and intensely personal cinematography of the Breaking Bad universe returns in full fledge this season. Many desert sequences lend themselves to recognizable shots that should make fans of the world feel right at home. The cinematography is also widely responsible for the somewhat melancholic tone of the shows quieter moments, utilizing many static and distanced shots and ambient sounds to let the characters fill out the realistic space the show creates.
Some stand out moments of season five include episode one’s “Magic Man” classic Vince Gilligan fueled montage sequence showing Jimmy/Saul obtaining questionable clientele in a tent on the streets while jazzy music plays over it, the previously mentioned scene in which Jimmy/Saul confronts the Mesa Verde legal team in an intense and chaotic surprise yelling match, when Jimmy/Saul and Mike become stranded in the desert (very reminiscent of Breaking Bad’s “4 Days Out”) after Mike picks off an entire group of cartel soldiers to save Jimmy in one of the most tense and brutal action sequences of the series, and the season’s finale that sees Lalo taking out a group of armed special operatives who storm his compound. Oh, and who can forget Jimmy throwing bowling balls onto ex-coworker Howard Hamlin’s car, hiring prostitutes to harass him at a public lunch, and freaking out on him in the courthouse while declaring himself, “a God in human clothing?”
While it may be somewhat regrettable that nearly all of the Latino characters that appear in Better Call Saul are members of the cartel or are in some other way connected to drugs/drug use, they are not written off as straight up stereotypical bad guys that are used simply for the heroes to fight against. Lalo and Nacho are in fact drug dealers working for the cartels, but they’re fully developed characters that have some of the most interesting arcs in the season. The pressure is continually on Nacho now that he is being pulled between the Mexican cartel and Fring’s up and coming meth empire, desperately trying to escape both but unable to effectively cleanly break his bonds with either. Rhea Seehorn’s Kim Wexler proves her strength as a nuanced character this season as well, slowly evolving alongside Jimmy who seems to be revealing her inner Saul Goodman. Kim’s fate may be one of the most interesting questions the show has yet to answer, and knowing she’ll eventually be separated from the universe in one way or another due to her lack of involvement in Breaking Bad is a tough pill to swallow as Seehorn is one of the most compelling characters in the whole series.
It seems that Better Call Saul will never reach the commercial success that Breaking Bad did, at least for now. Perhaps it is better for it to retain its status as a critical darling that in some ways is more real than Breaking Bad was, even if it lacks the manic romance of a family man becoming a meth cook. Season five has continued both series’ reputation of being some of the best written television in recent memory and its expertly unfolded narrative has utilized the intrigue of Breaking Bad to launch an extraordinarily compelling and different kind of story that appears to be one of the greatest feats of reverse engineering in TV storytelling history.
