‘Better Call Saul’ Was the Uncommon Prequel That Nailed It

Should you advised me in 2015 that not solely would a Breaking Dangerous prequel starring Saul Goodman, the goofy, soiled prison lawyer performed by Bob Odenkirk, be good however additionally that I’d assume it was the higher present, I won’t have believed you.

Co-created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, they’d be the primary ones to let you know that they didn’t know the place Higher Name Saul was going at first. (They usually try this quite a bit.) However as an alternative of reworking Jimmy McGill (Odenkirk) into Saul Goodman immediately, Gilligan and Gould found that they appreciated spending time with Jimmy and his lawyer world enriched by characters like Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), who rapidly turned BCS’s beating coronary heart.

The opposite facet of the BCS coin was a cartel-focused present that, questionable Spanish apart, confirmed how characters like Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) and Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) got here into the fold. At occasions, it briefly teased Saul Goodman’s bleak post-Breaking Dangerous existence as Gene Takovic, the supervisor of an Omaha, Nebraska Cinnabon evading seize.

In a TV panorama the place from Barry season 3 continues to really feel like a documentary, it’s nearly miraculous that BCS had as a lot runway because it did.

It’s a sluggish burn the place we already knew the fates of a lot of its characters, nevertheless it was the uncommon prequel that created a world wealthy sufficient that the inevitable was as compelling and hectic to observe as what we didn’t know—and it confirmed the belief the creatives had in its viewers and the viewers had within the creatives that they’d discover their method.

By the point that we get to BCS’s sequence finale, “Saul Gone,” it brings an emotional catharsis for each Jimmy and Kim that equals, if not betters, the push of seeing Walter White (Bryan Cranston) taking pictures down a bunch of neo-Nazis with a trunk machine gun earlier than he dies, or the catharsis of seeing Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) getting away in El Camino.

Why it issues

It’s so uncommon nowadays to see one thing simply finish. So many hit TV exhibits and films are spun off into prequels and sequels whereas older sequence are rebooted or revived nowadays.

Within the case of prequels, they typically get caught up in an overload of cameos; discover the lives of legacy characters’ households or mentors; or present over-explanatory solutions to questions we didn’t ask.

BCS was responsible of that now and again, however how these had been executed by no means felt low-cost. And it additionally utterly modified. Saul Goodman? He’s a tragic determine, the likes of which, only a decade in the past, we may by no means think about. And now, it’s laborious to think about that universe with out these layers.