Why Better Call Saul Is Way better Than You Think

The Breaking Bad spinoff may not look as captivating as its forerunner, but here is why you should give it a try

I have a confession to make: I watched perhaps five whole episodes of Better Call Saul when it came out and decided "meh, not for me," and stopped watching. What an epic mistake! After recently watching all the seasons, I have concluded that Better Call Saul (BCS) is probably the better show. No, let me be clear: BCS is one of the best TV series made in decades. It is simply a masterpiece.

How could I be so utterly wrong, and why didn't the show have immediate appeal to me? I want to answer this question because I think a lot of you are missing out on what could be one of your best television experiences.

Why Breaking Bad Had Such Immediate Appeal

Let me contrast with Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad packs a punch from the very first episode, and that is not surprising. The first episode was the pilot. The show creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould could not know whether they were going to catch an audience or not. Not having proven themselves, they had to captivate the audience on the very first episodes.

Breaking Bad as a concept is absolutely awesome: You got a stuck-up old high-school chemistry teacher with penance for waging his finger. Everybody has had a teacher they found kind of boring, slightly moralizing, and who loves their subject a lot more than any of your classmates do. That is Walter White, the main protagonist. He is the unlikely hero and the unlikely villain.

Next, you combine this stuck-up old teacher with one of his former loser high-school students, Jesse Pinkman. He is the kind of student you think of as a high-school drop-out, but he did actually graduate as the show will later point out. Pinkman is doing the opposite of what every teacher is wishing for their students: He is producing and selling drugs while hanging out with other losers and drug abusers. He is a massive disappointment to his parents, who have essentially kicked him out and tried to forget all about him.

Having these two unlikely companions work together to build a drug empire is what makes Breaking Bad such a great show. But why? Because great stories are always about interesting conflicts. If everything is going after plan, then the story will not be very entertaining. There is a reason movies rather tell stories about dystopias than utopias. Walter White is the polar opposite of Jesse Pinkman. He is an older family guy with genius level understanding of chemistry and other formal knowledge. Jesse Pinkman in contrast is young, carefree and understand the streets and the drug trade. They both have heavy prejudice against each other. Their many conflicts and arguments is what creates great television.

This dynamic is what gives us a lot of action from the early episodes as they try to deal with both each other and dangerous drug dealers while cooking methamphetamine.

The Challenges in Making Better Call Saul Equally Engaging

Better Call Saul cannot challenge the naturally explosive recipe of Breaking Bad. The story of a shady lawyer who bends all the rules and cut corners cannot get explosive in the same manner. We also have to consider the profoundly different incentives powering the creation of both shows. Breaking Bad established a massively favorable reputation and credibility for show runners Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould. Because Better Call Saul happens in the same universe, they knew they immediately had countless people interested in the show. Consequently, the need to hit viewers with a knock-out punch from the first episode wasn't there.

Instead, Vince and Peter could afford to meticulously build up a great show, one stone at a time. The Breaking Bad universe was not well hashed out when Breaking Bad (BB) first aired. With BCS in contrast they had a well-thought-out universe that allowed them to build out characters, their histories and environments in a far more deliberate manner. If BB is like fast food with instant gratification, BCS is more like Sous Vide aka slow cooking. It may not hit your senses instantly the way fast food does with all its sugar, salt and fat. Yet, a slow cooked meal has richer layers of tastes and texture, which you come to appreciate as you take time to enjoy your meal.

What Kind of Show is Better Call Saul?

So, what exactly is BCS about? I said it was about a shady lawyer who bends the rules. That description really doesn't do the show justice. It comprises many stories woven into a whole. From one perspective, it is an in-depth story about a man fighting his himself and his own worst inclinations. Bilbo in Lord of the Rings is essentially fighting Sauron. Jimmy McGill of BCS is fighting Saul Goodman, but they are one and the same person. It is a bit like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Jimmy is Dr. Jekyll, the guy who is trying to do the right thing. Saul in contrast is like Hyde, a character with no moral scruples who does whatever he wants for his own gain and benefit.

The man we see in Breaking Bad is Saul Goodman, a person with very flexible morality. BCS introduce us to his alter-ego Jimmy McGill, who is the person he was before he was lost to the dark side. For all your pop-culture references, you can relate it to the origin stories of the various super villains of the DC and Marvel universe.

Although Walter White from BB is probably the closest to a DC villain origin story. Walter gets cancer, and he is essentially broke and too proud to ask for financial aid. That is what leads him down the path of becoming a drug kingpin, and he never truly redeems himself. Walter starts out as a good-guy or a completely strait-laced family man. The story of Jimmy McGill in contrast is very different, as he is always balancing on the edge of the law and morality. Jimmy is a flawed character from the get go. The show stresses this fact by giving us a background story about Slippin' Jimmy, his alter-ego from the past when he lived like a con-man in Cicero, Illinois.

In flashbacks, we get to know how it was Jimmy's older brother Chuck, a highly respected lawyer, who got him out of serious trouble in Cicero and forced him to come to Albuquerque, New Mexico to start a new life. For a long time Jimmy is putting his con-man days behind him and start working in the mailroom of the prestigious law firm Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill (HHM) founded by his brother Chuck McGill. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the partners, Jimmy studied via correspondence courses, gained a law degree from a diploma mill and eventually qualified as a lawyer.

When BCS starts, that is how we see him. He is trying to make it on his own as a solo practitioner and public defender. But judging by his beat-up car and tiny office at the back of a nail saloon, we can tell it isn't going very well.

Just another American Court Drama?

Doesn't sound all that exciting now, does it? A struggling lawyer who cannot seem to catch a break? When I began watching this, I started asking stuff like: Where is the cool Walter White and Jesse Pinkman dynamic? Where are the drug gangs? We see briefly Tuco in one of the early episodes, but the drug gangs seem quite peripheral to the show initially. I am thinking: This is yet another American lawyer and court drama. Haven't we seen too many of these already? Suits, the Lincoln Lawyer and many others.

Fortunately, I was very wrong. In most court dramas, it is about whether the lawyer can get his client off the hook or perhaps solve a crime. In essence, they are part of a long tradition since Sherlock Holmes about tracking down the criminal and getting justice. BCS is an entirely different ballgame because we as an audience are not worried about the bad guy getting away with murder. We are worried about our anti-hero losing himself. Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould manage to get us as an audience to really like Jimmy McGill in a way none of us ever really liked Walter White. We so want to see Jimmy get on the straight track and make it as a proper lawyer.

How to get the audience to root for an anti-hero

But how exactly do the show runners make us like Jimmy McGill? Why do we root for him? Why do we celebrate his success, and why does he appeal more to us than Walter White? There are actually many similarities. Part of the reason we cheer on Walter White in the beginning is that he is being dealt so many bad cards, and he is constantly belittled in various ways. His boss at the car wash is making him do shitty work, while his former students laugh at seeing their old chemistry teacher out on his knees washing their car. Meanwhile, his handicapped son is looking more up to his brother-in-law Hank Schrader with the DEA. He is the typical macho man of action. Walter White resents how he is seen as the coward while Hank is the brave hero. Walter White wants to be someone his son can look up to. A real man. In reality, we don't quite realize that his son does, in fact, look up to his father a lot.

BCS is setting up a very similar dynamic. Jimmy McGill is a man who cannot seem to catch a break either. He never gets any good clients, and he gets paid an absolute minimum as a public defender. The moody clerks at the courthouse are giving him a hard time. The parking lot attendant Mike Ehrmantraut is always getting on his case for lacking the right number of validation stickers. In addition, his brother's law firm HHM didn't want to hire him when he became a lawyer, and we can see over many episodes how despite his best efforts he can never get the approval of his brother that he so desperately craves.

The relation between Jimmy and his brother Chuck isn't a substitute for the relation between Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, which creates so much drama, conflict, and comedy in Breaking Bad. So where does the entertainment value in BCS come from? A lot is from the crazy con-man schemes Jimmy comes up with as a lawyer. They can get absurd and entertaining in that unique quirky way that only Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould know how to do.

And while the whole drug gangs aspects take longer time to develop in BCS, that is a world which also get very well-developed and create its own excitement. The later seasons really crank up the pressure and temperature in this sense. Jimmy McGill really gets pulled in deep into this, but we kind of expected something like that to happen given what Breaking Bad was about.

The love story nobody saw comming

What I think came in from left field and which also surprised the show runners themselves is how the series develops into a very memorable love story. Vince Gilligan has remarked that one should perhaps think this would not be surprising to him, given that he writes the lines. But what I found interesting in an interview I saw with him is that he remarked on how the amazing chemistry between the characters Jimmy McGill and lawyer friend Kim Wexler took the show in a different directions. Many viewers have commented on this: Rhea Seehorn, who plays Kim Wexler blew away everybody with her talent and managed increasingly to steal the show.

I admit, she came in left-field for me. The first episodes, she was just kind of there. She would stand in the parking garage, sharing a smoke with Jimmy. But she was kind of in unobtrusive character that at least I didn't notice that well at first. Rhea Seehorn however is a master in acting with subtleties. She can steal a scene without screaming or saying very many lines. In some ways, she reminds me of watching actor Al Pacino in the God father series. He plays a character, Michael Corleone, who doesn't say a lot and who isn't very noisy. Instead, facial mimic and stares are used in some of the more memorable scenes.

Rhea Seehorn pulls off the same kind of thing as Pacino while playing Kim Wexler in BCS. Jimmy McGill might be rambling on in a scene, having pretty much the whole dialog, but as a viewer, you cannot take your eyes off Kim Wexler. Often it is her reactions to what Jimmy or others are saying which is what the defines the scene rather than the dialog. It is not without reason that Rhea Seehorn won an Emmy Award for her portrayal of Kim Wexler. As I have written about earlier, this love story is a bittersweet love story different from what you normally see on the silver screen. You can tell how much they feel for each other and their connection without any great announcements of affection. "I love you" is perhaps uttered only once and far into their relationship.

The art of visual story telling

To better understand why the story about the relationship between Kim and Jimmy works so well, you need to appreciate something that the show creators have taken to an art form in BCS: Visual story telling or "show not tell." In a badly written novel, the author would write "Jimmy was angry." In that case, the author is explicitly telling what state of mind Jimmy is in to the reader. The alternative which you see well executed in BCS is that Jimmy kicks a trashcan next to the elevator repeatedly after a meeting that didn't go well. Perhaps not earth-shattering, but it is the attention to detail which really stands out. For instance, we can see the bucket is heavily dented already. You sit there chuckling in your couch, realizing that this isn't the first time Jimmy kicks over the trashcan. The poor trashcan has a history of being beaten up by a frustrated Jimmy. It is a way of showing that Jimmy is somebody with many setbacks and frustrations without explicitly telling us so.

But, it doesn't stop there. Every scene in BCS has many layers. The trashcan scene is no exception. After kicking the trashcan, he shares a cigarette with Kim Wexler in the garage complex. When they go back in, you notice at the corner of your eye that Kim Wexler straighten ups the trashcan, puts on the lid and puts everything in order. It may seem insignificant, but over time you notice these little details. At one point both of them are frustrated and throw beer bottles from her balcony onto the payment below causing the glass bottles to shatter.

Again the story tellers don't explicitly state: "Kim Wexler is angry is frustrated." Instead, we see her do something which is out of character. In an earlier scene, for instance, on the same balcony, we see her making sure a bottle Jimmy placed carelessly on the balcony edge is put away safely to prevent it from accidentally falling down. We know from little observations like this that Kim is a person who is always looking out to do things nice and proper.

Visual story telling gets to tell what kind of person Kim is in relation to Jimmy the day after. They see the broken glass and Jimmy walks to the car, saying that the professionals hired by the housing organization will clean it up. "Don't worry about it," he says. Jimmy gets in the car, but in the background we see Kim Wexler sweep up the glass meticulously and putting it away in the dumpster. She knows she did something wrong and is intent on setting things straight. Just as she set the trashcan straight after, Jimmy kicked it over.

These examples may seem like absurd little details to obsess about, but the whole show is full of these kinds of visual story telling elements. Combine these elements with stunning wide artistic shot and the entire series is visually thrilling without any elves, fire breathing dragons or fantasy castles to spice up things. BCS manages to turn a frickin' ice cream cone dumped on the pavement into visual art. I will not elaborate on that further. You will have to see it for yourself.

Great characters, personal growth and moral choices

If the show was only about Jimmy and Kim, it would already be a great show, but what takes BCS to the next level is the rich gallery of other memorable characters with their own story arcs which keep you engaged. You have gangster Nacho Varga, ex-cop Mike Ehrmantraut, drug kingpin Gus Fring, drug cartel Don Lalo Salamanca, classic corporate suite Howard Hamlin and many others. Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould have managed to make even peripheral side characters memorable and engaging.

Nacho Varga is for instance an entirely new character in the show, but many viewers got really invested in his story arch. He is a gangster who is part of Tuco Salamancas drug gang. He is a smart guy caught in the wrong circumstances trying to get out. He loves his dad but is seeing how his bad choices are increasingly putting his own dad, a staunch believer in honest work, in the firing line.

You got Mike Ehrmantraut, whom we already know, but who gets a much more fleshed out backstory than what we saw in Breaking Bad. He has similarities with Jimmy in that he had made some bad choices in the past, but like Jimmy struggles not to get pulled further into the criminal world.

Ultimately, BCS is a story about people and the complex moral dilemmas and choices they face. We are presented with people who have both a lot of good in them, but also many deep flaws. We keep rooting for these flawed characters to let their good sides triumph over the bad. It may seem like there is no hope for Jimmy because we know what he turns into in the Breaking Bad series. However, BCS also tells the story about the time after Breaking Bad. Hence, as a viewer, we have an investment in seeing whether Jimmy McGill can at the end escape Saul Goodman. Is Dr. Jekyll stuck as Mr. Hyde forever?

Personally, I hate watching tragedies. What makes this show work so well for me and many others is that despite a lot of things going really bad it is packed full of humor and good vibes. It is not all bleak and tragic. Some of the elaborate scams Jimmy pulls off makes you really laugh out loud.

If you are tired of huge budget fantasy, science fiction and superhero shows which fail to deliver then you owe yourself to watch BCS to get reminded of what great story telling, dialog, and acting felt like. Fancy special effects and CGI cannot make up for substandard directing, dialog and acting.