Better Call Saul, "Uno"

Of all the little oddball touches that distinguished Breaking Bad from the rest of the cable drama pack, Bob Odenkirk’s turn as criminal lawyer Saul Goodman was one of the best. The character could have easily been a bland attorney archetype, a suit-filler with little characterization beyond his functions to the plot. Casting a comedic actor instead and letting him devour the scenery turned out to be unexpectedly ingenious. His comic relief never seemed intrusive, and he was quite up to the task when things got serious. So it’s little surprise that Saul got his own show (for those reasons as well as the fact that he’s one of the few supporting characters left standing).

Last night’s premiere of Better Call Saul began with a look at what happened to the lovable shyster since we last saw him. It was a wonderfully amusing riff on the flash-forwards that Breaking Bad used to great effect, and its stark black-and-white and somber score of mall music struck a great balance between funny and tragic.

From there, the story goes back to nearly a decade before Breaking Bad, when Saul was Jimmy McGill, an Albuquerque public defender struggling to launch his own practice. In addition to few clients and little money, he also has to worry about his brother (Michael McKean), an attorney from a major law firm who’s on extended leave for an unnamed ailment. Desperate for a break, Jimmy tries to pull a small, one-time scam, but it backfires and leads him into more trouble.

The episode plays very similarly to the first episode of Breaking Bad, with a lot of quiet scenes of Jimmy sulking amongst everything—the bills, the crappy job, the crappy car and office—that drives him to take actions so drastic and immoral, just as Walter White did. Breaking Bad’s DNA is apparent in other places, too, from its black comedy (the video in the first courtroom scene is sickly hilarious), to taking its sweet time to build tension ever so slowly and ending at exactly the moment where the viewer won’t even think about missing the next episode. And, of course, a few other characters fans will recognize appear, one of which comes as a big surprise in the final moments. All made for an enjoyable first hour, but Breaking Bad’s shadow could be a hindrance to the show going forward.

Maybe it’s just the similarity between both series’ first episodes, but I got the sense that Jimmy is setting out on a path just like Walter White’s. Now that he’s already entered an evil, morally ambiguous world, every attempt to get out alive will just make him sink deeper and deeper until the good man he began as no longer exists. Or maybe it’s the surprise character appearance at the end that makes it feel like they’re retreading the same territory. Either way, Walt and Jimmy’s trajectories look much the same, at least after one episode. I really hope that's not the case, because the character metamorphosis of Walter White was already so perfect (I’d argue it was the best character arc ever in the history of film or television) that even a similar one from the same people would probably suffer by comparison.

I hope that the old character cameos turn out to be just some fan service for the premiere, and that the show does away with them now and goes its own way. It’s certainly possible, because while the Saul Goodman snark and humor we know and love pervades the episode, there are also moments where Odenkirk shows some desperate pathos. We'll see if he can carry a series, but it's clear he's at least capable of more than comic relief.