‘Better Call Saul’: One of TV’s Greatest Accomplishments

There is a dense character-drama hidden within a show like Better Call Saul; the conflicts that arise from trying to be someone you’re not. Trying desperately to keep the people you love at your side while completely destroying the world existing around

This feature article contains spoilers for the entire series of Better Call Saul. We recommend finishing the series before reading further.

SPOILERS AHEAD

I felt like I needed to just sit down and write about all these thoughts I have circling my mind. This is not a typical review, but rather just some of my thoughts about a show that means a lot to me. Better Call Saul has enraptured me since the beginning. Sure, I was a Breaking Bad fan just as much as the next person but it wasn’t a show that I found myself recommending to my friends and family. Surprisingly, if only to myself then, that this show has flooded my heart with such a fervid, emotional downpour of feelings. Potential spoilers ahead, so catch up before moving on. 

It’s been about a month since the series finale of Better Call Saul was released. I’m still in awe of how the show progressed so effortlessly through the years. Originally debuting in 2015–and to stellar reviews from fans and critics almost immediately–no season, of the six total, dropped below 95% on the Rotten Tomatoes meter between the audience or critics score. When you listen to Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould talk about the making of the show, it doesn’t seem like they had a clear direction in mind either. However, that freed them to carefully craft an experience that could evolve and change over time. If a planned story beat didn’t quite make sense by the time they got to it, it could be reworked into a new vision for the show. In my recent review of Barbarian, I talk about how letting the story forge its own path can help with authenticity and it applies to this show, too.

Not only did it thicken the muscle of the Breaking Bad universe, but it existed entirely on its own two feet–especially in the first few seasons. Jimmy McGill, or Saul as we know him (played by the wonderful Bob Odenkirk), has a way with connecting with the every-day man; both in the show and with the viewer. He has a sort of charming, yet apparent sleeziness to him that is infinitely more endearing than when we first meet him in Season 2, Episode 8 of Breaking Bad, titled “Better Call Saul.” Here, his motivations are clear from the get-go: he has a persistent need to constantly prove himself to everyone, but more importantly his brother, Chuck McGill, played by Michael McKean. 

Vince Gilligan explained in a 2018 interview with Rolling Stone that, “Because the show is named Better Call Saul, we [Peter Gould, co-creator] thought that we had to get to this guy quick or else people will accuse us of false advertising — a bait and switch. Then lo and behold, season after season went by and it dawned on us, we don’t want to get to Saul Goodman … and that’s the tragedy.” And that tragedy that Gilligan speaks of hits hard.

There is a dense character-drama hidden within a show like Better Call Saul; the conflicts that arise from trying to be someone you’re not. Trying desperately to keep the people you love at your side while completely destroying the world existing around them. In a lot of ways, Better Call Saul is the ultimate tragedy of romance (yes, even better than Damien Chazelle’s La La Land).

None of aforementioned people does Jimmy love more than Kim Wexler (Rhea Seahorn). It’s funny, too, because Kim Wexler eventually became a character it felt like the whole world would follow to the ends of the Earth just to keep safe. That’s because to a lesser extent Ms. Wexler is our de facto protagonist, idly watching Jimmy’s own demise as a moral center. As a viewer we are privy to a bit of voyeuristic tendencies both in motion pictures and televised programs: lurking in the background unbeknownst to our subjects on the screen. It was this moment here, during an episode in the third season titled “Fall,” that this became overwhelmingly obvious to me just how much Kim meant to me as a viewer and storyteller myself:

The elliptical cut that occurs in-between her consciousness during the crash was so masterfully placed that I quickly reached for the remote, almost completely knocking over a glass of water, just so I could play it again and again. 

But there are so many intimate moments we experience between Jimmy, Kim, Chuck, Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), Nacho Varga (Michael Mando), and even Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito). Sometimes the show will cut to these characters just existing together in a single space with no real “action” propelling the plot forward. While it’s not always the case, the fact we see them interacting in such an intimate manner almost certainly elicits an emotional response when their lives are eventually disrupted. Then there’s the intentional, almost torturous feat of lingering on a single frame for an extended period of time. Some of the best television episodes even do this with no dialogue and it’s endlessly beautiful. Take this scene between Jimmy and Kim in Season 5, Episode 3 “The Guy for This:”

You understand so much of their relationship dynamic from the visual language of the camera but also the subtleties of their performances. “Waterworks” in Season 6 has the same effect but on an individual level. This scene below, while emotionally brutal, shows just how affective these moments can be:

Not only is it the writing that’s on point, but the precision editing of montages. This is a show that confronts the hardships of making an unforgettable montage head-on. It doesn’t go unnoticed, either, as there are such fine details to pick apart in each one throughout the series. John Gray of the New Statesman writes, “Long-form television drama enables this kind of deep realism, and never has it been achieved more successfully than in Better Call Saul.” I’m inclined to agree as every department working to make this show successful was firing on all cylinders at every turn. Between the clever writing and editing, intimate camera work, and nuanced, raw performances, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Disclaimer: this piece by no means covers everything I loved about Better Call Saul. It doesn’t even cover a quarter of everything the filmmakers managed to get right. But creatively, this show has proven to me what I once thought was impossible: an absolutely perfect show from top to bottom—and one that I’ll miss dearly. Just like a tragic love story. Like Jimmy and Kim’s.