Keep Calling Saul
Oh, man. And just like that, AMC’s award-winning drama that spun off the now legendary Breaking Bad series, Better Call Saul, is done with its third season. We all have to wait yet another year to find out what will happen next, and it is going to be excruciating. The thing is, Better Call Saul is one of those series that comes only rarely on TV, in that it’s a spin-off that has gotten a whole life on its own. Hell, the only other series I think that was able to do that is Frasier; everything else seems just like a poor imitation of the original at worst and, at best, there are those who gain a reasonable amount of popularity and acclaim yet remains as “that one show based on that one other show.” I guess what I’m trying to say is that given enough time there is a chance that Better Call Saul may overtake Breaking Bad: it is simply that good. The thing is, the Better Call Saul title is really a bit misleading, since it makes you think that this is a show focusing solely on everyone’s favorite shady lawyer from Breaking Bad, Saul Goodman. After all, most spinoffs usually go that route, where a whole new world is introduced so as not to make it seem like a carbon copy of its source. Better Call Saul, on the other hand, is more a legitimate prequel than it is a mere spinoff, as it provides a lot of back story to characters that appeared in Breaking Bad. Come to think of it, it’s like the whole show is Breaking Bad minus Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s actually quite the exercise in world-building and storytelling. I am still maintaining a bit of hope that Breaking Bad’s two main characters will pop up somewhere along the way even if it were just a cameo.
I am not saying, however, that all the entertainment in Better Call Saul simply comes from the already established characters like the titular Saul Goodman (whom you should know by now is really Jimmy McGill), Gustavo Fring, or Mike Ehrmentraut. The new additions to the cast, such as Kim Wexler, Charles McGill, and Nacho Varga are equally important to the whole Better Call Saul tableau that removing them would make the show far less interesting.
With the conclusion of the third season, the story leaves viewers with probably one of the grimmest finales they could see on television, and I’m not talking that it’s like what The Walking Dead did when Negan beat the brains out of a then-unknown character (that one was a very shitty way to keep viewers hooked). Yes, several plotlines in this season have been resolved, such as Nacho’s plans to save his family from the Salamancas and the fate of the Wexler-McGill firm, but it still leaves viewers looking forward to what will happen next. I for one am really excited with Mike an Gus’ newly formed alliance.