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We already know Jimmy will become a lawyer so amoral it’s played for laughs. With that knowledge in place, Better Call Saul can tell a deeper story.
We already know Jimmy will become a lawyer so amoral it’s played for laughs. With that knowledge in place, Better Call Saul can tell a deeper story. Photograph: Robert Trachtenberg/AP
We already know Jimmy will become a lawyer so amoral it’s played for laughs. With that knowledge in place, Better Call Saul can tell a deeper story. Photograph: Robert Trachtenberg/AP

The perfect prequel: how Better Call Saul left Breaking Bad in its dust

This article is more than 6 years old

The Breaking Bad spin-off is mesmerising TV that gets better the more it distances itself from its big brother. Vince Gilligan knows exactly what he’s doing

Get too close to a black hole and time starts to slow down. Minutes turn into hours, hours into days. You could argue that Better Call Saul does exactly that with the whizz-bang thrills of Breaking Bad. Series three, which ends this week, opened with 10 mesmeric minutes of Mike Ehrmantraut, Breaking Bad’s grizzled enforcer, searching his car for a tracking device. The hypnotic pace of that disassembly – and the ability of the show’s writers to squeeze drama out of the tiniest things, even punctuation – has made this series a consummate slow-burner. Gradually strengthening its ties to Breaking Bad, gradually developing Jimmy McGill’s metamorphosis into Saul Goodman, it has held back from anything remotely grandiose.

While the “glacial”pace has proved frustrating for some, with critics lamenting its seeming reluctance, 29 episodes in, to even introduce its title character, its excellence lies precisely in the time it is taking to tell its story. Better Call Saul is not Breaking Bad. It’s a show that takes full advantage of being a prequel, whose greatest enemy is usually foreknowledge: the hard sell of making a story gripping when everyone knows how it ends. The worst prequels fill that vacuum with cynicism. But Better Call Saul knows better – that all drama is about character, but prequels are especially about character; that they are not a challenge, but an opportunity. We already know Bob Odenkirk’s Jimmy will become a lawyer so amoral it’s played for laughs. And with that knowledge in place, Better Call Saul can tell a deeper story: the hows and whys of the journey, rather than the destination.

Exciting but conventional … it’s Holy Shit, Mike. Photograph: Michele K Short/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

In truth, Better Call Saul is really two prequels: Slippin’ Jimmy and Holy Shit, Mike. Holy Shit, Mike is the more exciting, but conventional: the story of how Jonathan Banks’ badass ex-cop – a man forever posing for his passport picture – falls into the employ of psychopathic chicken druglord, Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito). It’s the ultimate fan-pleaser, a conduit for callbacks and cameos. But it is not as interesting as Slippin’ Jimmy, a low-stakes drama fuelled almost entirely by Jimmy’s relationships and the roles they play in who he is to become.

This especially goes to his relationship with his older brother Chuck (Michael McKean), a high-powered lawyer with an apparent electricity allergy who, despite being cared for by Jimmy, blocks him from getting a job at his firm. The reasons, and the resulting feud, is complex, but at its core is a simple question of nature: can Jimmy ever escape his days as small-time con man Slippin’ Jimmy, or is he simply who he is? Despite actively trying to change (Jimmy starts in the mail room of Chuck’s firm; he studies in the evenings for a law degree), Chuck believes the latter – a lack of faith that, ironically, pushes Jimmy ever closer to Saul. It also leads to the show’s very best episode: series three’s Chicanery, where Chuck’s attempt to get Jimmy disbarred backfires spectacularly, leading instead to Chuck’s meltdown at the hearing. It’s heartbreaking. Especially the coup de grace: a battery planted in Chuck’s suit, proving to all – including himself – that his “electromagnetic hypersensitivity” is psychosomatic.

It’s heartbreaking … Jimmy’s brother edges him ever closer to Saul. Photograph: Michele K.Short/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

Better Call Saul cleverly subverts our sympathies, almost in acknowledgment of the Walter White/Skyler White problem Breaking Bad faced – of how golden age TV tries to justify the behaviour of immoral men. We’re meant to like Jimmy because he is likeable; a character crackling with charm and charisma, a well-meaning everyman who only wants his brother to be proud of him. But Chuck has a point: even when Jimmy tries to do good – such as helping his lawyer girlfriend, Kim (Rhea Seehorn), land a new client – his instincts are to cut corners, to play low and dirty. And when that instinct meets desperation (say money trouble, or brotherly hatred) it bends towards something darker.

Take last week’s episode, the appropriately named Fall – arguably Jimmy’s “Saul Goodman moment”. In true Better Call Saul style, it didn’t involve anything as dramatic as letting a woman choke to death. Instead, it involves the careful manipulation of the elderly; members of a class-action lawsuit that, if settled, would net Jimmy some much-needed cash. The problem is the representative of the suit: a sweet old lady called Irene, who would rather wait until the case is finished. What follows is a series of cons intended to convince her friends that she’s greedy, that she’s holding out while they struggle. It works. They stop inviting her to their mall walks, they start talking behind her back. Eventually, in one of his most convoluted tricks, Jimmy rigs a game of bingo so Irene wins. Having worked his magic, her victory is met not with applause but with deathly silence from a care home bingo hall. She flees the room in tears. She of course settles.

The ultimate fan-pleaser … psychopathic chicken druglord, Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito). Photograph: Michele K.Short/AMC/Sony Pictures Television

It sounds ridiculous but it’s deeply unpleasant to watch; to see the same likeable charm that made Jimmy so popular with the elderly in series one (when he practiced elder law) weaponised into cruelty two series later. In the finale he feels remorse and puts things right. But as Chuck says: “You’re just gonna keep hurting people, Jimmy, this is what you do. And then there’s this show of remorse ... If you’re not going to change your behaviour, and you won’t, why not just skip the whole exercise? In the end, you’re gonna hurt everyone around you. So stop apologising and accept it. Embrace it. Frankly, I’d have more respect for you if you did.”

Slowly but surely, Jimmy will embrace it. He will be pushed to a point where he stops caring about nothing and no one, and takes on the moniker Saul Goodman. The question, as always, is how, why and at whose expense? That’s the thing about prequels: you already know who’s missing from the future – and who to fear for.

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