‘Better Call Saul’: ‘Uno’ / ‘Mijo’ (TV REVIEW)

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Full disclosure: I am a massive Breaking Bad fanboy. Maybe we all are, to some degree. There’s 62 episodes of the Albuquerque-based drama about a meth-slinging high school teacher-turned-Scarface; I gobbled all that shit up one by one, loving every moment, and I’m not even embarrassed. Perhaps not the best person to be critiquing Vince Gilligan’s next televised endeavour, I realize, but hey — here we are.

That being said, even I had reservations going into Sunday’s premiere of Better Call Saul. Gilligan deserves the benefit of every doubt after the brilliance that was Breaking Bad, but questions of his ability to both reward loyal Bad fans and still cater to new viewers, or questions of Saul Goodman’s ability to successfully carry an entire show of his own, still floated around from ear to ear right up until air time. In some cases, they still do. For the most part, though, Saul’s opening episodes managed to quell my major concerns for the show and leave me lusting for more time with Saul Goodman before he became everyone’s favorite criminal lawyer. We’ve got a lot to look forward to.

Here are my takeaways from Better Call Saul’s first two episodes:

The Road Already Taken

Better Call Saul’s first episode likely felt familiar to Breaking Bad fans. There are lots of reasons to feel this way; Vince Gilligan’s touch is as unique as any, and so many things in this pilot, from soundtrack to cinematography, were just dripping with his influence. It was refreshingly recognizable.

But there’s more to it than that. We meet Saul — erm, James McGill — worn thin by life after a long while of honest, yet unrewarding, hard work. “Public defender work is some of the best experience there is,” Chuck, Saul’s brother, tells him. But it can’t make ends meet. Soon, Saul see an opportunity to make a name for himself in the legal world by doing something that’s anything but.

It’s a formula we’ve seen before. In Breaking Bad’s pilot, Walter White, after a lifetime of underselling himself and barely scraping by, has a similar moment of realization and shift to the darkside. Like Saul, it also gets him into a whole mess of trouble (and eventually with the same character, Tuco, which is also worth mentioning). The two characters share other similarities, too, like being burdened by family — Walt with his wife and disabled child, and Saul with his kind but misguided (and perhaps mentally ill, what with the severe electromagnetism fear) brother. For characters who were near-opposites in Breaking Bad, the resemblance between the framing of the two in their respective pilots is hard to dismiss.

Are some of these similarities a stretch? Maybe. But the parallels certainly exist, and it will be interesting to watch the development of Saul as he spirals further into a life of crime — especially in a narrative where, unlike Breaking Bad, we already know how it ends.

Bob Odenkirk is a Star

Odenkirk was great in Breaking Bad. No one will argue any different. Many times, though, Saul’s character was used as a source of comic relief in a show that, by the end of its second season, had rounded into shape from a dark comedy of sorts to an intense, character-driven drama. Odenkirk has always done comedy (see Saturday Night Live circa 1990 or 1998’s Mr. Show), so his success in that role came as no surprise, really. His value as an auxiliary character was sky-high in Gilligan’s first production, but his ability to project the type of character depth required from the face of a series was still up in the air.

Luckily, Odenkirk shines in the first two episodes of Better Call Saul. His range is on display in every scene — in the series’ very first cold open, we see Odenkirk as a post-Breaking Bad Saul, who, after changing identities and moving states, is forced to make a living as a Cinnabon employee and relive his glory days as Saul Goodman through a VHS reel of his old TV spots. He says nothing, but his sagging face and fixation on the television communicate a stagnant, yet completely overwhelming, feeling of regret. In the very next scene, Saul, now as James McGill, gesticulates wildly to himself in a courthouse bathroom mirror as he desperately prepares his closing speech to a jury. Both versions of Saul are dynamic and convincing. It’s becoming undeniably clear that the role of Saul Goodman was made for Odenkirk.

Even outside of Odenkirk, performances are great. Both Daniel Spencer and Steven Levine, who play two skateboarding brothers looking to scam unsuspecting drivers, are convincingly bad at manipulation, and Michael McKean, who plays Saul’s brother Chuck, navigates a somewhat gimmicky character with enough nuance to make him seem real. Whether or not this characters stick around for the remainder of the series is still up in the air, in large part because nobody mailed it in. Fans of Breaking Bad had a right to expect great casting and even better performances, but, for newcomers, this is surely promising.

Honoring Past and Present

One of my biggest concerns about Better Call Saul heading into the premiere was how the series would balance the arduous act of rewarding returning viewers and longtime fans of Gilligan’s Breaking Bad, yet still making the show accessible enough to new viewers. We see this a lot when shows are revived or receive spin-offs — it becomes too self-referential, too reliant on what made the previous version such a success (here’s looking at you, season four of Arrested Development). It’s a real danger for a show like this one.

So far, Saul has managed to toe the line successfully, at least for the most part. References to Breaking Bad exist in the first two episodes, but they seem to be, for the most part, either subtle enough to not be a disruption or necessary to Saul’s future. The series’ cold open — ultimately a callback to Saul’s “I’ll be managing a Cinnabon in Omaha” line from Bad’s penultimate episode — serves a dual purpose in that it gives a small nod to fans of the previous series while setting both the tone and the stage for newcomers, as if to say, “hey, this isn’t going to end well for our guy.” It’s both tasteful and necessary; I loved it.

Likewise, Mike’s presence also makes sense. Although it hasn’t been revealed yet, he’s sure to become a significant character in Better Call Saul’s narrative, so seeing his face time after time means almost as much to new viewers as it does to Breaking Bad fans. It’s important to remember it.

Tuco’s appearance, however, could turn out to be the most heavy-handed and unnecessary of callbacks. In the previous show, Tuco and Saul never meet, as (SPOILERS) Tuco is dead several episodes before Saul shows up. So far, Tuco’s presence — and by this I mean the idea that it has to be Tuco and not any other batshit-crazy, meth-selling junkie — seems to be not much more than a look who we’ve got to fans of Breaking Bad. And that’s okay, for now. But references like that to Gilligan’s universally acclaimed series are going to have to stop if Saul has any hope of standing on its own merits. And, if these first two episodes are any indication of the future, it absolutely can. Looking forward to next week.

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