You want to plot-driven capers, racing pulse, and zeitgeist pop?
Youre getting a willfully idiosyncratic drama that moves at a deliberate clip and with self-conscious style.
You want fixer and contract killer Mike (Jonathan Banks) to, like, kill people?
Credit: Ursula Coyote/AMC
Youre getting a whole season of Mike not wanting to kill people.
You wantBreaking Badcameos and backstory?
Okay, fine, heres some Salamancas.
Nowstop looking for anagramsand suck on the beauty of my elegant and rigorous filmmaking, dammit!
Season 1 ofBetter Call Saultried too hard to be its own beast.
It risked pretentiousness and artifice in the pursuit of moral perspective and originality.
It was Michael McKeans Chuck, super-responsible and solipsistic, weird with highly metaphorical electro-phobia.
I love how they geek out on psychology, not mythology.
While throwing out the garbage, he locked himself in the dumpster room for hours.
When liberated, we saw he had left something behind, some defiant graffiti.
My fanboy brain immediately theorized foreshadowing.Oh, Goodie-Goodman!
Trash chores, time-outs, and tagging?
He chased responsibility and rejected it, then accepted it, sabotaged it, and abandoned it.
(The number: 505-842-5662.
Jimmy McGill: A lawyer you’ve got the option to trust.
It could have been a one-to-grow-on mistake the birth of conscience.
Jimmys relationships with Kim and Chuck made for a complex three-way conflict.
What was funny was how she was all those things, and not.
But at the same time, I didnt want them to break up, either.
In doing so, though, he subverted her agency and compromised her miserably.
It was loving to Jimmy and she hated herself for doing it.
The tragicomic punchline came afterward.
But has Chuck broken bad himself?
The seasons best scam was Chucks emotionally manipulative sting operation against Jimmy that ended the season.
Note that it also came after Chucks electromagnetic bombardment in the hospital.
(Hulk Chuck smash puny immoral brother!)
A better caretaker of him?
Better Call Sauls parallel narrative Mikes progression from parking lot attendant to underworld Mr.
He was maturity to Sauls immaturity, but the intrinsic wickedness of his profession tripped him up.
Someone was looking out for him.
Maybe FRINGS BACK after all.
The season finale set us up for heartbreak and tragedy, breakups and blood.
Instead, life goes on for all, their incremental slouches toward whatever theyre becoming continue.
