Better Call Saul finale and series review

There is so much of Better Call Saul that is absolutely phenomenal that I’m sure after I publish this I’ll end up kicking myself for forgetting it. Every technical aspect that Breaking Bad was great about, Better Call Saul steps it up. In terms of directing and cinematography, I can safely say that it is even more visually imaginative than Breaking Bad, the clearest example of improvement over its predecessor. The editing is phenomenal as well, both with montages, pacing of episodes and creating parallels between characters.

Much like a legal case, the plot of the show is extremely slow, which is something that I think aids the show in taking its time, giving the story, plot and character writing plenty of time to breathe and flesh itself out as the story moves along at a glacial pace.

All of the performances are on par with the best from Breaking Bad, everyone from Bob Odenkirk to Carol Burnett disappears entirely into each scene, bringing brilliant subtleties to their characters, making each and every character, no matter how minor, feel like a fully fledged human being. It’s one of those once-in-lifetime combinations where every actor is at the top of their game, and the writers are clever enough to know what to give each actor at every point in the story. It’s really a beautiful harmony between everyone involved.

What I love about Better Call Saul most is the ability it has to tell its own story that doesn’t rely on previous knowledge of Breaking Bad to understand or follow. The story of Jimmy McGill and his romantic relationship with Kim Wexler, and how the two of them bring out the worst in each other, resulting in Jimmy’s “Slippin’ Jimmy” persona transitioning into his “Saul Goodman” persona is fascinating, satisfying, and relentlessly entertaining despite rarely ever having action sequences or violent outbursts like Breaking Bad did. The slower pace and patience of Better Call Saul is a prime example of the absolute best that TV storytelling can be.

And then I remember that there is a whole other half of this show that is completely unwilling to be its own story and solely exists for Breaking Bad iconography. As much as I adore Jimmy and Kim’s schemes and the legal drama, I absolutely despise the cartel half of the show.

The problem with Better Call Saul is that it is completely unwilling to separate itself from Breaking Bad, making it not work as a standalone show. I know that mostly everyone who watches Better Call Saul has seen Breaking Bad so all of the references to it and flash-forwards to after the death of Walter White (SPOILERS: WALTER WHITE DIES IN BREAKING BAD) are not jarring, but for me it took me out of the show every single time.

Large swaths of Better Call Saul exist for the express purpose of over-explaining aspects of world-building that are better left up to interpretation and a need that both the writers have and an expectation from the fans to leave no stone left unturned. The show has a problem that a lot of revival shows and movies have, which is an extreme amount of reverence for every little detail of its predecessor's story, giving things that are insignificant in the grander scheme of things an air of importance. Most of the plot points involving Mike, Gus, Nacho and the Salamanca family serve no purpose other than to make the audience say “hey, I remember that from Breaking Bad!” which is not what I watch movies and TV shows for.

Nacho being the cause of Hector’s stroke, seeing how Gus built the lab, Lalo giving Hector his bell, and Lalo’s entire character being conceived out of a throwaway line from Breaking Bad’s second season. These are all things that did not need to be explored further whatsoever, and in the case of seeing how the lab was built, ruins a lot of the mystique that Breaking Bad had. The revelation that Hector's stroke was caused by Nacho swapping out his medication makes Hector a much less interesting figure in Breaking Bad; instead of feeling like a cautionary tale about how no matter how much power you wield, the aging process will eventually take everything away, almost mirroring how Walt's cancer affected him, it's now oh some guy just swapped out his pills.

Oh, and not to mention the character cameos that grind the story to a halt, especially as the show is starting to wrap it. The cameos feel like they’re intended to make the audience feel like it’s all coming together, but it all feels very hollow and transparent to me. Cameos like Walt and Jesse, Wendy the hooker, Hank and Gomez, Tuco Salamanca, Marie, Emilio, Crazy-8, the guy who gets his head crushed by the ATM, Don Eladio and the other cartel higher-ups and more that I'm probably forgetting, don't add anything to this show other than 'member berries. Like seriously, is there only one prostitute in the entire state?

All of these things make the world feel smaller, and like the entire world of the show exists as a setup for Breaking Bad instead of its own, self contained story.

And that brings me to the final season and the finale. I loved the first nine episodes of season 6. Everything was coming together with the Sandpiper case and the cartel plot line was finally starting to become satisfying, so I was hopeful that I would come out of Better Call Saul with a new perspective on the elements of the show that had bothered me before. “Plan and Execution” was maybe the best episode of the entire series, but after S6E9 it did something that I was dreading the show doing, which was shift its focus from the aftermath of Jimmy and Kim’s actions entirely and focus on the Gene plot line that had been teased at the beginning of each season.

I thought that the post-Breaking Bad stuff with Saul living under the identity of a Cinnabon manager named Gene worked as little vignettes to function as cold opens for the seasons, but I never found the prospect of what Saul got up to after he goes on the run at the end of Breaking Bad to be very interesting in the context of fully fledged plot points. The hook of the show for me is how Jimmy McGill becomes Saul Goodman, not what Saul Goodman did after Walter White died. I could seriously not care less about the Gene element of Better Call Saul and would honestly prefer that it be out of the show altogether. I was genuinely interested in seeing how Jimmy and Kim’s relationship would collapse after witnessing the death of Howard Hamlin, so for the final four episodes of Better Call Saul to not even show any of that and instead focus on flashbacks to the events of Breaking Bad interspersed with the extremely tedious way that Saul eventually gets recognized while in hiding and sent to prison left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. Maybe if the Gene story had been a separate coda to the main story, like El Camino was for Breaking Bad, I would've appreciated it more than I did. As is, it takes focus away from what I was emotionally engaged in seeing.

It feels bad that despite everything I think is phenomenal about Better Call Saul, I just cannot get past everything that bothers me so much about it. Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould are extremely talented writers, their use of foreshadowing and parallels is nothing short of astonishing. If I were to rewatch the show, I'm sure I'd notice dozens and dozens of details and bits of foreshadowing that went right over my head the first time through, but the cartel plot line and unsatisfying conclusion makes the prospect of a rewatch seem like it would be a waste, like everything I watched the show for was at the service of something I fundamentally don’t find very interesting at all.

And what hurts most of all is I genuinely think that Better Call Saul could absolutely stand on its own if it was brave enough to do so. Jimmy’s dynamics between Kim, Chuck and Howard Hamlin are absolutely strong and fascinating enough to carry its own show without the feud between Gus Fring and the Salamanca’s constantly dragging down the show. I would rather watch Jimmy and Kim’s schemes, Jimmy and Howard Hamlin’s passive aggressive/straight-up aggressive relationship, Jimmy work with the crew of film students, Chuck’s health decline, the Kettleman’s being sleazy incompetent frauds, the Sandpiper case, and any other of the dozen fun, memorable legal happenings that the show has to offer over seeing how Gus Fring built the meth lab every day.

The show being over leaves a bittersweet feeling in my heart. On the one hand, Vince Gilligan has once again given us one of the most impressive shows in recent memory, which is always worth celebrating, but when it was done I felt a feeling of “okay, I guess that’s it,” similar to how the end of the most recent season of The Boys made me feel. Half of it is some of the most engaging, well-written and well-directed TV ever made, and half of it is a boring, completely uninteresting jumble of ‘member berries' that only exists to service another TV show. If it was only the first half, I could see it being a contender for being on the same level of quality as Breaking Bad, but i can't, which breaks my heart.