BETTER CALL SAUL

BETTER CALL SAUL


When people look back at Breaking Bad, there's always hero worshiping towards Walter White, when in reality, it took him poisoning a child to even shake that, even after that he was still cheered for. They didn't understand that HE was the villain of the last season. So much so that the only one they could flip that around for in the later half to bring him full circle was a group of Neo-Nazis.

Looking at Better Call Saul, here's someone you should care about. Jimmy McGill is the con man turned office mail room guy turned lawyer who, well, has his heart in the right place, even if he's a bad guy in a sense.

Let me be clear, Walter White, for all the shouting that he did it for his family, that's wrong. Walter White was a very selfish character. He did it for himself... He liked it. It made him feel good. That's the basic core at the heart of it all.  Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman on the other hand, he may be a shyster fella, but he has a heart in his actions and it's mostly doing something morally or ethically questionable for the sake of someone else.

In season 1 he constantly took care of his brother. Going as far as waking up every morning to get him a specific newspaper to read and visiting him every day with supplies while juggling his own hardship in practicing law and making a living. Putting a lot of himself on the line and sacrificing his own ability to move forward. Man, I totally relate to that situation of putting yourself second to help the ones you care about.

Then in season 2, he did the questionable action of flipping dates on court papers so that Kim could keep the account she fought hard for. Was it against the law? Yeah, but he put himself in harms way again in order to do something to better the person he cares about.  Jimmy may seem like the visually shyster kind, but between him and a Chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin, the lawyer is the one with the heart of gold.

Through the series thus far, whenever he's attempted to change who he is at his core, a fella who does things the "Jimmy" way, he's had it blow up in his face. To the point where he has accepted that he can still be a good guy even though he's doing things that skirt the law and morality grey area. Man, I totally get that and have a sympathetic place for this take on Saul Goodman.

It's odd, when you first heard the news that there would be a Saul Goodman spin off to Breaking Bad, you figured that it was going to be a half hour of comedy gold Saul Goodman moments. What we got was something completely different and completely better. Hell, I'd say that I enjoy Better Call Saul just a bit more than I do Breaking Bad. Yes, the twist and turns of BrBa was amazing, but man, I just love Jimmy. He speaks to me and it's something else entirely. I almost don't want to see how he turns into Saul and just hope for a happy ending. Though we already know what happens at the end... He gets the vacuum repair man's trick of a new life in Omaha, Nebraska and manages a cinnabon and lives a pretty miserable existence.  Basically a shell of his former self. Watching old VHS tapes of his ads while drinking Rusty Nails. Man, it's just sad.

Gene is locked in the dumpster area and the only way he could get himself out without having to wait several hours for someone to bring trash is by pushing the emergency exit doors. But by dong so, it will set off an alarm and cops will be called. A man who was morally questionable through most of his life as Slipping Jimmy McGill couldn't do even this because at this point, he was completely broken. The simple threat of cops being called and his escape life being at risk stopped him. It did something Chuck, his brother who constantly wanted him to stop doing things his way couldn't.

On top of that, the scenes with Gene in Nebraska are just tense as all hell. Even more so than some in Breaking Bad with Walter. They really found a way to make smaller stakes feel so much more larger than before. Feeling that looking over the shoulder worried of being caught on the run feel or even just dealing with any police interaction as a scary PTSD sort of situation. Geez, I can tell you that there's so many angles to the character to relate to.

But seeing the three different aspects to this man - Jimmy McGill, Saul Goodman and Gene are awesome. There's also a little bit of a fourth version of himself.  Charlie Hustle. During the third season, after he is on a year suspension, he has to rush around from community service to hustling for money to keep the life he had as Jimmy going while also having a touch of Saul Goodman come out in video production. It's an interesting aspect that there's so much roundness to this character through out the three seasons so far, that I am just amazingly excited to see what happens in season 4 tonight.

Better Call Saul is back for season 4 as well as renewed for season 5 already on AMC 9pm or whenever the fuck you time shift it. It's 2018 for fucks sake, don't be a tool to the time restraints of your network overlords.