5. BETTER CALL SAUL (AMC)
Gustavo Fring sits at the hospital bedside of a fallen enemy,
unspooling a Bond Villain monologue about how the enemy has more suffering in store before he will be granted permission to die. It ends with him declaring “I believe you will wake up, Hector,” and the most of us who have seen
Breaking Bad know that he is correct and exactly how this continued torment will play out for the both of them. As he leaves, the camera pans down to the comatose hand, and the finger that will ring the trademark bell that introduced us to the character so distinctively. And we wait for it to twitch, as we know it will. As it
has to. But it doesn’t. The medical machines continue their indifferent beeping and the hand stays still. We know what is coming, and the show knows we know, and that it doesn’t have to hurry to remind us. Like Gus Fring himself, it is both extremely purposeful and extremely restrained.
So it goes for the slow descent of elder-care advocate Jimmy McGill into the shucking and jiving Saul Goodman, the primary narrative of
Better Call Saul. This lack of hurry is the most important trait that
Saul inherited from its parent show; the ability to move its plot forward deceptively fast while crafting individual scenes and sequences that take their time and luxuriate in performances and stylish visual storytelling. These flourishes can risk coming off as indulgent; I look to Sam Esmail’s work on
Mr. Robot and
Homecoming as a handy contemporary comparison for just how easily such bravura style can drown out the substance of a story if the balance isn’t maintained with the scrupulous precision of a Mike Ehrmantraut. But the stylistics of
BCS are anything but empty; each lengthy monologue or showy montage moves the narrative and emotional ball forward. Like
BB (once it got its feet under it), it churns through a lot of plot while never seeming to be in a rush.
This is a truly rare feat amongst modern day TV shows. Most strive for the
feeling of constant movement, even as they try to kick their narrative cans endlessly down the road of serialization. And they don’t seem to realize that a lack of movement is actually preferable to pointless movement. Audiences, even the majority of those who are unable and/or simply disinterested in articulating exactly how a show pleases and displeases them, have an intuitive understanding of what actually matters to a story, and recognize when they are being sold a bill of goods. Lately, Netflix has been the worst offender in this arena, with its dramas (particularly within its Marvel brand) acquiring a reputation for sputtering in the middle of seasons as wheels are spun to pad out season lengths. In the most egregious cases, there are entire episodes that feel like they could be skipped entirely without having much effect on the finale. Perhaps Netflix is making a knowing calculation that quantity of content is more important than quality to their business model. But maybe their producers just need to watch
Saul, to learn that it's better to walk with a purpose than sprint in circles.
Or maybe too much of what makes
Saul work is not reproducible. It's been 4 years now and I’m still amazed this show doesn’t suck. Because on paper, it still looks like it makes a ton of bad decisions. As this year opened with sudden vacuums in the dramatic ecosystems of both main storylines left by the sudden removal of Chuck McGill and Hector Salamanca, I didn’t know exactly where it should go next. But if you had asked me what it should definitely
not do, I could have made a quick list. Spending a whole year with Jimmy running out the clock on his suspension from the legal profession. Continuing to sideline Michael Mando’s already-marginalized Nacho, in favor of bringing Gus Fring, the character whose development is shackled thickest and heaviest by the prequel of it all, more directly to the center of the plot. Devoting an entire season to building (half) the Superlab, which still sounds like a horrendous waste of time in the abstract, even after I’ve seen how the show was able to make it all sing.
The keys to making it work are the eloquent visual filmmaking, and the performances. Not just from Odenkirk and workhouses like Jonathan Banks and Giancarlo Esposito, but utility players like Mando and Patrick Fabian, and most especially Rhea Seehorn. The role of Kim is vital to make us feel the weight of Jimmy’s transition, as the character is the
least shackled by the prequel of it all, so the threats to her future feel the most acute even compared to the characters that have constant threats to their lives. And Seehorn makes her immensely relatable, seeming entirely natural while threading a needle that makes Kim neither a saint nor a dummy nor a harpy. More than any other character, she mirrors what attracts and repels the audience about our protagonist, so we follow her reactions instinctively. When she explodes into a
fiery monologue of protectiveness of Jimmy, we are right there with her. And when
she recoils silently from the birth of Saul Goodman, we are there too. She is the lynchpin of the cast, giving arguably the best performance on TV, and while I am still unconvinced that this (or any) prequel really
needed to exist, introducing her to the
Breaking Bad-verse has to be one of the biggest feathers in its cap.
Watch It For: The best schemes and heists of the year whether it is a rocky Hubbel figurine robbery, a fraught gangland assassination attempt, or an elaborate legal grift involving fabricating an entire Louisiana church and congregation of accents to match.
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