Better Call Saul: Season Two

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Better Call Saul, Bob Odenkirk, Breaking Bad, Chuck McGill, Comedy, Drama, Giancarlo Esposito, Gustavo Fring, Hector Salamanca, HHM, Jimmy McGill, Jonathan Banks, Mark Margolis, Michael McKean, Mike Ehrmantraut, No Half Measures, Review, Rhea Seehorn, Saul Goodman, Television, Television Review, TV, TV Review, Vince Gilligan

This review contains spoilers for the second season of “Better Call Saul”.

This season of “Better Call Saul” has been a little bit disappointing. Whilst the performances of Bob Odenkirk and Michael McKean as Jimmy and Chuck were great, the season itself lacked considerably in entertainment. You can only review a season of television based on its merits, so despite the fact that I firmly believe that this season of “Better Call Saul” will eventually play a part in a brilliant series, I don’t think that it was good in itself. I have a lot of issues with it, and I can’t pretend that I actually enjoyed any one episode in its entirety, so my overriding feeling is one of frustration.

In my opinion, the best moments of the season all came from Mike’s storyline, and I still think that a series based around his character with the title – “No Half Measures” – would’ve been a way better prequel to “Breaking Bad” than “Better Call Saul” has been so far. One of the main reasons that this show appealed to me in the first place was that there was a chance of seeing other key players in the “Breaking Bad” universe again, so the fact that this is now happening on a regular basis as a result of Mike’s story gives me every reason to carry on watching the show.

Mike is the character who’s connecting this series to “Breaking Bad”, and that’s obviously a big reason why his scenes have been more exciting than Jimmy’s, but another reason is that the stakes are so much higher when he’s on screen. He’s up against powerful people, and he’s fighting for something much more noble than Jimmy is – his family. He’s a compelling and layered character who constantly holds your attention, and seeing him face off against Hector Salamanca (Mark Margolis) this season has been fascinating. If I had to review his scenes in isolation then I’d be giving this season at least a 9/10, which shows just how much better I think it has been when he’s been on screen.

This promises to continue into the next season following this year’s finale, which left Mike in the desert holding an ominous note. We don’t yet know who left the note, but things do point to “Breaking Bad’s” most memorable villain – Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) – or at least someone working for him. This would make a great deal of sense given that both men hate Hector, and that in “Breaking Bad” Mike was working for Gus and seemed to have a great respect for him. Mike hates the way that Hector goes about his business, a hate which Gus shares, so it’s only a matter of time before their partnership is born.

Still, whilst I’ve enjoyed Mike’s story this year and look forward to its continuation, I have to say that from my perspective Jimmy’s has stalled horribly. I had my doubts about his arc from the moment that the first episode finished, and things have only gone downhill from there. At the end of last season the feeling was that Jimmy was on the verge of becoming the man that we saw in “Breaking Bad”. The man who he saw as a symbol of what he could be, his own brother, turned out to be a villain in his life; he admitted that he had never believed in Jimmy and that he thought that he was and would always be better than him. All the hope that Jimmy had held for his own transformation should’ve died in that moment, and it would’ve been completely understandable if his moral compass had been destroyed forever.

Alas, the very first episode of this season destroyed that notion and since then Jimmy has barely evolved at all. The only dynamic that has actually moved forward over the course of season two is the one between Kim (Rhea Seehorn) and Jimmy, who have finally got together. Kim obviously had a role to play this season, because she was the reason that Jimmy sabotaged HHM’s relationship with Mesa Verde and eventually implicated himself in a significant crime, but this process could’ve been streamlined quite a bit.

I like Kim, and I’m glad that she’s developed as a character this season, but I don’t think that her role in the story is one that anyone can become fully invested in. We know that Jimmy isn’t going to end up with her – the pair aren’t going to run off into the sunset together because Jimmy becomes Saul and loses everything when “Breaking Bad” ends. So, to become invested in her character we have to believe that Jimmy’s losing her will cause his transition to Saul Goodman, something I just don’t buy.

Jimmy cares about Kim and she is capable of making him happy, but at the end of the day Chuck matters more to him than she does – it’s sad but it’s true. Kim is simply a device to move the plot forward, rather than a catalyst to change the direction of Jimmy’s life. It’s Chuck who really matters in this story, so every moment spent with Kim feels like a moment wasted for me; maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how I feel.

Jimmy’s relationship with Kim could’ve been furthered this season without spending so much time on the pair, and again I can’t pretend that I actually enjoyed watching their relationship develop. This has been a symptomatic problem of the series so far, as character development has been drawn out unnecessarily when things have already been established. The whole season has felt exactly like its predecessor, and in fact nothing has happened that didn’t happen last season in a different way.

Another issue that I’ve had with “Better Call Saul” this time around is that Jimmy hasn’t really offered much in the way of comedy. For much of the first season Jimmy was the comic relief on his own show, and this gave the season a light-hearted tone which offset the evolution that was happening with the character. This in turn made moments like Chuck’s rejection of Jimmy’s efforts to become a legitimate lawyer more impactful than they should’ve been, and gave the season a resonance that it simply hasn’t had this year.

Finally, I should say that the season finale was also noticeably lacking in drama. Mike’s scenes were good, but they didn’t result in any immediate pay-off, and Jimmy’s scenes were just boring. Whilst the final scene – in which it was revealed that Chuck had tricked Jimmy into admitting that he had doctored legal documents – was a surprise, I can’t pretend that I really cared. I think that the writers wanted this moment to be one which caused a gasp in the audience; a ‘how could Chuck do this?’ kind of moment leaving everyone desperate to see how he’d use the confession against Jimmy in season three. However, it just wasn’t interesting enough to generate this reaction because Jimmy said what he said to appease his brother, and it’s well known that Jimmy likes to talk his way in and out of bad situations. His confession could easily be framed as a lie told to mollify an increasingly unstable sibling, rather than as a genuine admission of guilt, so as a cliffhanger it felt incredibly lacklustre.

I haven’t enjoyed this season of television. It’s hard to say that it’s been bad, because a lot of the individual components of the show are good, but I personally expected a lot more to happen over the course of the season and I don’t feel that I’ve learned anything new about Jimmy, Mike, or Chuck. I still believe that Vince Gilligan and his team are setting up a series that will turn out to be great, but they’re taking far too long to do so – “Better Call Saul” has had two seasons now and yet within those seasons there have only been three or four brilliant episodes, which simply isn’t good enough. Hopefully there are better things on the horizon, but it remains to be seen.

5.5/10

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Better Call Saul: Season One

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Better Call Saul, Bob Odenkirk, Breaking Bad, Bryan Cranston, Chuck McGill, Giancarlo Esposito, Gustavo Fring, Jimmy McGill, Jonathan Banks, Kerry Condon, Michael McKean, Mike Ehrmantraut, Netflix, Saul Goodman, Television, TV, Vince Gilligan, Walter White

“Better Call Saul” has been one of the biggest surprises of 2015 for me. I wasn’t expecting all that much when it first appeared on Netflix, particularly because it seemed to come out of nowhere! I’d heard that it was being made, but it arrived in a weird way – no hype really built around it as far as I could tell, but suddenly it was available to watch. However, I was sold after the first episode, because I remembered just what made Saul (Bob Odenkirk) such a loveable character; he was intelligent, manipulative and ultimately hilarious in a show that was devoid of joy by the end.

Obviously that’s not a criticism of “Breaking Bad”, I’m just saying that given all the tension surrounding Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and his drug empire, Saul’s gags and punchlines were a breath of fresh air. As the first season of “Better Call Saul” progressed, the character we knew from “Breaking Bad” disappeared into the background, making way for Jimmy McGill, a very different character living in a Saul suit, until the titular character reared his ugly head again as the credits rolled on episode ten.

As you might expect, “Better Call Saul” is all about its titular character, Walter White’s morally ambiguous lawyer, and the brains behind his whole operation, Saul Goodman. However, the series begins six years before the events of “Breaking Bad” when Saul was known by another name. Jimmy isn’t always on the right side of the law, but he’s a long way off being the adviser of the biggest drug dealer in America! He’s a rehabilitated criminal desperately trying to get his life together, he wants to get away from being a petty crook and make his brother proud, and he’s in a constant struggle to fend off his true nature.

via indiewire.com

As the season unfolds we are provided with small insights into who Saul really was and why he became a “criminal” lawyer, through both the season’s overall narrative and supplementary flashbacks. These flashbacks are wonderfully woven into each episode, giving us more information about Saul’s past and explaining some of the motivations of the supporting cast, most often those of Chuck (Michael McKean), Jimmy’s clean-cut older brother. Chuck is a strange character, because he refuses to be around anything electrical due to what he believes to be a physical condition.

It’s clear to everyone but him that the condition is very much psychological and that actually Chuck is short of a few brain cells. I’d still like to know why Chuck came to believe that he should use his home as a sanctuary against electrical currents, because that hasn’t been fully explored yet, but I’m sure that this story will be revealed in time. What Chuck’s plight does for the show is that it demonstrates just how important he is to Jimmy, and also reveals a bit more about who Jimmy is in comparison to the man he will become. He visits his brother every day and brings him supplies, he provides much needed company for Chuck in a life otherwise devoid of human contact, and most importantly he puts up with Chuck’s judgemental nature and rises above any criticisms that come his way.

The funny thing about this is that Jimmy clearly looks up to his brother, he wants to be a lawyer just like him and he wants to surpass the expectations that Chuck has for him, but Chuck just doesn’t see it. As the season progresses it becomes clear that Chuck is the biggest villain on “Better Call Saul”, and he has more than one psychological impairment clouding his judgement. He can’t see that Jimmy is a good man, he won’t allow himself to see it, and he is destroying his brother as a result.

via indiewire.com

Chuck is the reason why Jimmy becomes Saul, pure and simple, maybe he doesn’t push him as far as he ends up falling, but he could’ve easily placed a net underneath Jimmy which wouldn’t have let him go too far down into the depths. By extension he’s also the cause of many of “Breaking Bad’s” tragic deaths, because without Saul, Walter White wouldn’t have stayed out of jail or survived his brushes with death. What makes this even more frustrating is that Jimmy really wants to change, and when it’s finally revealed what he did to upset Chuck so much, it turns out that it wasn’t even that abhorrent, it was just a simple mistake. It wasn’t Jimmy’s finest hour, but he didn’t exactly kill a man or rob a bank.

This first season has been extremely impressive. It’s brilliantly structured and well thought out, as each plot point feels fruitful and worthwhile. Some may think that this thoroughness leads to a pacing which is slightly too slow, because they want to know why exactly Jimmy became Saul, but people don’t transition from hero to villain in such a haphazard and swift way. The journey from Jimmy to Saul is paved with decision after decision, which makes it all the more tragic that Saul ends up where he does.

The season opens with Saul going about his daily routine after the events of “Breaking Bad”, and it couldn’t have been a more fitting way to start the series when you consider what has proceeded it. It reminds you of where Jimmy ultimately ends up, which makes each mistake all the more infuriating as you watch the show play out.

via indiewire.com

“Better Call Saul” has drawn on a similar premise to “Breaking Bad”, but it has felt significantly different due to a slightly more comedic tone and a slower pacing. Like “Breaking Bad”, this show is about one man becoming someone completely different, but while Walter White took pleasure from his descent into villainy, Saul is giving his all to avoid being the bad guy, fighting frantically to get his act together. These characters end up in the same place, but how they get there is a completely different story, and that’s why “Better Call Saul” is such a smart and enjoyable show. It never feels like a cash cow for Vince Gilligan – it feels like he’s telling a story that he knew all along, and that every time Saul gave Walt advice he was informed by what we’re seeing in this series. “Better Call Saul” is universe building, it’s adding to the brilliance of “Breaking Bad”, which is amazing when you consider how good that show was on its own.

Saul was the comic relief in “Breaking Bad”, he was a joker and a comedian but he got the job done when the time came. Here he’s a much more serious and emotional character, and it’s clear that he’s invested in something other than his own personal gain. There are people in his life that he wants to impress, people that he loves, which is why he refuses to use his considerable skill set to cheat people out of their money. What’s sad about this is that we know that he has to lose all of this in order to become Saul, but that keeps me tuning in every week, because I’m desperate to find out how that transition happens.

Not only has Saul been given an extra dimension over the course of this season, but we’ve also been afforded an inside look at what makes Mike (Jonathan Banks) tick, and why he became a hired gun for Gustavo Fring (Giancarlo Esposito). Mike is such a brilliant character, because he knows how it is and he’s seen it all before. He’s been a cop and he’s been a criminal, so he knows that neither of those life choices make the man.

via amcnetworks.com

In episode nine he says something along the lines of ‘there are bad cops and good criminals’, which just makes so much sense when you consider who Mike was in “Breaking Bad”. He was a killer, he was ruthless, and he wasn’t a good guy, but he knew that and whilst he was doing bad things he always got the job done without a lot of fuss. He hated Walter White and now we know why. Walt was a hypocrite, he wanted to be a criminal mastermind with a methamphetamine empire but he didn’t want to take moral responsibility for his actions. He didn’t think his wife and children should be repulsed by the man that he had become, and he always reverted to the claim that he was doing it for the family. He was a bad criminal, and he was destructive, which Mike could see through and looked upon with disgust; it’s taken “Better Call Saul” all of two episodes to make that abundantly clear.

Mike’s episode in this season was an outlier, because the show is named after Saul, yet he was absent for the majority of it. However, it was also one of the finest episodes of television that I have ever had the privilege to watch. The story made sense when you think back to “Breaking Bad”, because Mike believed that you shouldn’t take half measures, so he wasn’t going to leave it up to the police department to find his son’s killers when he knew that the department was corrupt and that they’d have to send down two of their own. It also showed everyone why Mike was involved with Gus in the first place, and why the money that he earned was going to his granddaughter in “Breaking Bad”. Not only that, but the acting was superb and the emotion that Banks generated when he finally told Stacey (Kerry Condon) what had happened was just astounding. I would recommend watching “Better Call Saul” for that episode alone.

All around the acting on this show is as good as you’re likely to see, and lives up to the lofty expectations set by “Breaking Bad”. Bob Odenkirk excels when playing his character and he gives the show a level of class that an opening season so desperately needs. Michael McKean is utterly hateable as Jimmy’s stubborn older brother, and makes for an excellent antagonist, while the rest of the supporting cast are perfectly acceptable in their roles.

via amcnetworks.com

The biggest problem with “Better Call Saul”, as far as I’m concerned, was actually the finale. It wasn’t bad, I want to stress that straightaway, but it lacked the bang that I was hoping for from a final episode, and the last scene was a bit unnecessary. The season did end with Jimmy finally expressing that he was going to change, and we know that that means he’s accepting his darker side; Saul is coming! However, this happened in a slightly too direct and transparent manner. In the end I’m not sure that his change of attitude was fully believable, given that he still had a lot to lose and is intelligent enough to recognise that his life had the potential to improve. Still, the series has tried its best to show that Jimmy makes split-second decisions that turn out to be idiotic, and I suppose that this is just another one of those.

The first season of “Better Call Saul” has completely surpassed my expectations, because it has breathed life into an already memorable character, and it’s been exciting to see the story progress from week to week. This first season stands alone as a great piece of television regardless of the material which it is building upon, but it also adds something significant to that material, whether you watch it as a precursor or a sequel. This is a must watch even if you’re yet to delve into “Breaking Bad” (although I still recommend watching that television milestone first), and now that it exists on Netflix in its entirety it’s more than worth binging on.

9/10