You can have too much of a good thing if the saga of Walter White taught us nothing else, it surely taught us that. So when creator Vince Gilligan teamed up with writer Peter Gould to create a prequel to Breaking Bad starring comedian Bob Odenkirks sleazeball ambulance-chaser Saul Goodman it was hard not to think they were aping their own creation. Wasnt returning to this world so soon, to tell the origin story of a drastically different kind of person, hubris on a Heisenbergian scale?
Its now safe to say that, after three seasons of Better Call Saul, Gilligan and Goulds confidence has paid off. Theyve somehow defied the odds and slowly, almost stealthily created a second canon-worthy drama, without attempting to recreate the glories of their previous smash hit all this despite the increased presence of BB characters as the two shows timeframes draw closer and closer together. Thats a trick not even an experienced con man like Slippin Jimmy McGill could pull off. Howd they do it?
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Their success starts with the cast. Odenkirks strengths in the starring role are obvious thats why he got the spin-off, right? But Jimmy is a far cry from the Bad (il)legal eagle we came to know and love. He has yet to establish the unshakably confident glibness that made him such a criminal-empire asset, and so valuable to that hit series as comic relief. Hes constantly struggling, fighting to win cases and win back the trust of his loved ones, elated when he succeeds and miserable when he fails. The actors performance isnt showy; simply by adding high-pitched notes of glee or desperation to his voice, or turning it steely and cold, he reveals a startling emotional range.
The supporting players are just as strong, starting with Jonathan Banks as Mike Ehrmantraut, the aging ex-cop turned gangland fixer whos so prominent on the show that he functions as a co-protagonist. With his craggy, taciturn face and sepulchral voice, he just radiates world-weariness in the role a perfect fit for the way Mike is written, as he painstakingly performs the tedious work of surveillance and sabotage with barely a word of dialogue for minutes at a time.
As Jimmys girlfriend, business partner and conscience-slash-enabler
Kim Wexler, Rhea Seehorns role is anything but flashy but she is such a marvel of restraint that it doesnt
matter. Her drive, her skills, her
frustration with being yoked to so many difficult men, her embrace of a
savior complex that Jimmys all too willing to fall back on: Seehorn
sells it all with coiled-spring body language and painfully expressive
eyes. The rest of the cast, from Patrick Fabians suit-and-tie big shot/sparring partner Howard Hamlin to Michael Mandos mild-mannered mid-level drug dealer Nacho Varga, all make the most of their screen time. (And welcome back Gus Fring, Giancarlo Espositos icy Breaking Bad druglord who finally made his long-awaited debut on the show after Gilligan and Gould had begun dropping some Season Two brain-teaser hints.)
But the big revelation here is Michael McKean, playing Jimmys his
older, smarter, mentally ill and implacably vindictive brother Chuck.
His successful, ailing lawyer can frighteningly competent and ambitious
one moment, helpless and crippled in the face of his psychosomatic
condition the next. The scenes in which he and Jimmy really tear into
each other when Chuck reveals hes been sabotaging his kid brothers
career, or when Jimmy pays him back by humiliating him on the stand
are the BCS equivalents of Walt-and-Skyler blowups. They convert
personal pain into a fuel that both drives the story and threatens to
burn it all down. Which, eventually, is exactly what happens if youve seen the third seasons finale, you know that the characters arc had already been creeping into self-destructive territory. Its the way McKean lets you see that gradual deterioration under the Im-all-better-now! guise that makes the performance stunning. If he does not win an Emmy for this, there is no God.
Better Call Saul has also secretly morphed into one of the most visually accomplished shows on the air. Bads riotous visuals echoed its chaotic plot, but this prequel has taken a more austere, slow-and-steady approach to its storytelling and its cinematography follows suit. Directors of photography Arthur Albert (for Seasons One and Two) and Marshall Adams (his successor for Season Three) favor shot compositions that emphasize the geometry of the spaces that Jimmy & co. find themselves in: rectangular windows, square glass bricks, the diagonal slash of a staircase, the glowing arches of a conference tables lights. The result is an elegant claustrophobia, in which the characters look pinned to a grid or a game board, unable to control their own movements.
And during the shows third season, Adams adapted Alberts already impressive use of different lighting styles into a cleverly coded system, to the point where you could almost tell which characters story wed be following before they appeared on screen. Jimmys segments are brightly lit by the New Mexico sun or by the glare office-light fluorescents, casting a spotlight on his sins. Chuck exists in a shadowy world of his own making, silhouetted in the darkness of his house against a clean white haze of daylight from his windows or the glow of his indoor lantern. Mikes nocturnal prowlings are given an amber yellow cast the color of caution, warning and ear, all subliminally signaling us to slow down and watch out.
Its a color that suits the whole show. Better Call Saul rarely indulges in the breakneck action-thriller pyrotechnics that has characterized most antihero-TV appointment viewing (including its sibling show). The pace is slow, deliberate, and in the case of Mikes scenes this season, almost meditative. But to think that just because the stakes are smaller that they arent just as high is a mistake. Each decision these characters make to take on a security job, to bamboozle old biddies, to undermine a brother, to go into business with a boyfriend brings Jimmy McGill one step closer to becoming Saul Goodman, criminal attorney. That journey ends in an Omaha, Nebraska Cinnabon, where hes forced to spend the rest of his days in hiding, thousands of miles and hundreds of dead bodies between him and the people he once loved. We dont know what happens to Kim; after last nights stunning seasonal bow, we have a sneaking (and queasy) suspicion as to what Chucks fate might be. We already know what eventually happens to Mike.
The result is that Saul does more than shake off the spin-off curse of contempt-breeding familiarity and diminishing returns it becomes a singular, slow-motion tragedy, a car-wreck that takes its time getting to the inevitable carnage. The series calmer, more even pace gives you the false hope that the descent of Jimmy and the rise of Saul can be avoided; the fact that youre made to care about this formerly peripheral MVP only makes its unfolding that much more painful to watch. Thats the brilliance of BCS. Its the story of a bad man trying, desperately and futilely, to break good. Only theres no success like failure and failures no success at all.