By Jennifer Kusch
North Pointe
Grosse Pointe North HS
1st Place
Division 2, News Writing
Review
Like a sleazy, slimy cockroach, Jim-my McGill (Bob Odenkirk) just can’t be squashed.
Odenkirk has returned to AMC to reprise his role of Jimmy McGill, later known as Saul Goodman — the role that catapulted him to fame during Breaking Bad’s historic television run.
The spinoff was highly anticipated, as this prequel is an encore to arguably one of the best TV shows ever aired. The premier clocked a total of 6.9 million viewers, making it the highest-rated premiere for a scripted series in U.S. cable history.
Better Call Saul dished out thrills, laughs and suspense just as pure as Breaking Bad once did, and its product is equally potent.
Viewers will remember Saul Goodman as the savvy lawyer behind Walter White’s meth empire. But as this show proves, there is so much more to the greasy-haired lawyer than cheesy commercials and one-liners.
McGill, although a huge player in the Albuquerque underworld from Breaking Bad, managed to scuttle away unharmed into the shadows of Omaha, Nebraska after the season finale. The show gives a glimpse into his new life before back-tracking into his past in New Mexico, where the rest of the episodes take place.
Better Call Saul focuses on McGill, who was a broken down, dirt-broke lawyer from New Mexico at the end of his rope. Viewers observe McGill at the beginning of the end, as the seduction of corruption and cold hard cash was only beginning to take root in the poor lawyer running
shop in the back of a nail salon.
The opening, a black-and-white teaser of McGill’s bleak post-Breaking Bad life, was even better than fans were expecting. McGill, who now goes by Gene, has dis-solved his entire big shot persona and works in a Cinnabon bakery. He resides with the fear that his enemies in Albuquerque will finish the job he didn’t let them complete when he left White’s empire. He relishes his former notoriety and spends his nights rewatching the old commercials for his seedy strip-mall law office.
This peek into Mc-Gill’s future provides a seamless segway into his past, as his commercial (in glow-ing technicolor) sucks him into reveries of his good ol’ days where he danced with the law and had yet to cross the line from desperate to deranged.
The show artfully balanced the humor of McGill’s pitiful situation and witty repartee with the heavy tones of familial responsibility and desperation tainting the otherwise stand-up guy. While McGill’s brother wastes away after seeming to have had a mental break, McGill fights tooth and nail to preserve his brother’s share of a law empire laying to waste in the wake of his brother’s personal crisis. This, along with his predictable lack of monetary success as a public defender, creates a man not hungry for a con but just starved for a feeling of success and fulfillment. All of this produces a perfect storm, like a car crash we cannot look away from, as McGill begins to dabble in white lies and shady dealings out of sheer necessity — and later out of pure greed.
All of this backstory gives the Saul Good-man viewers had loved to hate a cast of humanity that seemed lack-ing in the money-hungry lawyer. The man was willing to recon-struct his life around success, changing his name from the clearly Irish Jimmy McGill to a more Hebraic Saul Goodman. The move was for the “home-boys” who would trust a “member of the tribe” (as said in Breaking Bad, when McGill was introduced as Saul Good-man). This obvious and life-altering change further illustrates the complete metamorphosis McGill/Goodman under-took in his past to be depicted in Better Call Saul.
While the plot maintains a fine balance between humour and violence, creator Vince Gilligan uses the same filming techniques he employed in Breaking Bad. The show’s similar plot (boy meets crime, boy loves crime, boy loses crime) does not seem overused or boring despite our knowing that of the death of McGill’s morality, self respect, and hairline is looming just over the New Mexico horizon.
The cherry on top of this cinematic success? The return of Breaking Bad’s beloved supporting cast-mates. The crazy drugpin Tuco, Mike (the retired private investigator who kills more frequently than he cashes in his social security) — they all make a return for the series. Their presence does not feel desperate or forced, but instead paints a background for a man who would soon have a “guy” for everything and more targets on his back than anyone could sleep soundly with.
The Jimmy the audience grows to know in this new show is a polar opposite from the Saul that fans knew so well, and that growth is what keeps viewers hooked. Although the audience knows that Jimmy McGill never dies in a literal sense, they know they are watching an average man waste away into a corrupt scumbag willing to murder his own associates. The tribute to McGill’s future demise via cinnamon rolls in Omaha was artful in the sense that it completely acknowledged that we are observing everything he loved and lost.
Millions of fans can now witness his path split and watch his life go down in expensive, meth-fueled flames as he chooses the road less legal.