Better Call Saul

So we start off after Breaking Bad, which is really interesting. I personally didn't expect to see post-Breaking Bad Saul ever again. This might have just been to get the show going, but I have a hard time believing that it won't somehow be incorporated back in. I'm very excited to see what happens here.

A lot of stuff isn't surprising, the trailer captured Saul's rough beginnings pretty well. He's, interestingly enough, not that bad of a lawyer, but his cases seem to be shit. His tone, and those of the people around him, seem to suggest that this hasn't been his first hiccup as a public defender.

So who is Chuck? Neither regard each other as father and son, and Saul says he was born McGill, so that rules out step-father. My guess would be a close uncle? Their scene together revealed a lot more about Saul's situation, he's apparently employed by the company, but Hamlin is probably going to make sure that he's in no position to collect on any of Chuck's earnings after he passes. Not sure what the electromagnetic thing is, I guess we'll get more on that later.

Already we're seeing that Saul is cut from the same cloth as Walter was. Decent guy, cares about his family, making jack shit doing work that he cares about, this is all very familiar territory. The incorporation of old characters definitely seems to be an attempt to ease us into this new series, though I think it's too much, and pretty unnecessary. I would rather that we start as fresh as possible, though if this is to intertwine with Breaking Bad, and eventually surpass it, then it makes sense I suppose.

The last point about the old characters is a pretty good point and something I'd completely agree with it. It'd be terrible to be honest if it got dragged down too much in it's past mythos with the franchise and we get a bunch of unnecessary fanservice in the process. In fact, I think it could actually have had more potential as it's own thing if it was something entirely separated from the Breaking Bad universe and it's pre-established characters, just my two cents but just judging from my initial impression it's easy for me to picture that working too.

On the episode itself, I really enjoyed it and loved that start with the cold opening. Saul's still pretty much his usual hilarious sleazy self that I know and recognize with his snappy lines except as carnificus he's much more subdued here. I think the drama around Chuck is something I'm already fairly interested in and it's going to be great to see how that goes to explore a deeper personal side to Saul I haven't seen before.

Also, did anyone sort of get a Jesse Pinkman vibe with the two boys, in conjunction with them partnering up with Saul and everything? It could just be me though.

considering the pilot made me expect something like cancer and it was actually a full-blown mental illness.

desert scene when Saul used his mouth as a weapon to smooth talk his way out of a situation as an example - It was just really interesting to see the differences in approach with loud mouthed Tuco when I thought back to Heisenberg. Where as Walt was always more forceful, intimidating and calculated in his kill-em-all approach who I always felt was mostly in control of his situations, this would never be something he could ever pull off with Jimmy's more erratic, on the spot/unplanned maneuver. I can't imagine his hands getting quite as dirty as Walts ever was here and his descent into the criminal world being as bleak. In some ways, he feels a little more identifiable and relatable as a person to me at a glance. And, god, I have to say, it was entertaining as hell to see him blab on and on under pressure like that, my favourite part actually.

Chuck's mental disease was really quite nice and while not outright explicit, it's easy to connect what's going on with his electromagnetic talk, the lamps and how he acted with the space blanket as well as his little jerk of the arm as he throws Saul's cellphone away. I especially really liked the latter little touch quite a bit there.

Seriously speaking though these are words I'd never thought I'd right but Tuco completely saved the start of the series for me. If I'm being honest I was quite bored during the first episode and a lot of things felt off to me. I hated the pacing of that first court room scene and they really botched the necrophilia reveal. I get what they were going for but the pacing felt dragged out and the actual reveal of the punchline was so underplayed so the episode started on a kinda sour note for me.

Then the rest of the episode had all the characters playing coy for no reason while talking to each other. It's a list scenes like Jimmy going to the law offices and having a conversation that the audience isn't meant to understand yet, then we have him going to visit Chuck where they talk in veiled terms about some more backstory. This kind of approach kinda drives me nuts in a new series. The first episode is supposed to engage me. Yeah, they shouldn't be giving me all the backstory right away, but if I didn't already know a bit about Jimmy and what he'd become from Breaking Bad I'd have zero investment in his conversation with the law office or Chuck. Leaving some mystery is great, but only after you get my attention. If we compare this to Breaking Bad's first episode the difference becomes clear. The show doesn't try to tease a bunch of cool shit that is going to happen in the future but instead we just get to know Walter and his circumstances. Cranston's performance holds it all together but there was something magnetically watchable about this guy's pathetic life as we go from one depressing scene to the next. It's a simple first episode, but one that's a lot more relatable than what we're shown of Jimmy in this first episode.

I guess it sounds like I am shitty on the first episode a lot, but there were good things about it. I loved Mike as the toll booth troll. I swear that man can say more with a glance than most actors can with an entire monologue. In general the acting is top notch here and there's definitely a different atmosphere than we had in Break Bad. BB had a lot of dark humor but it was still a drama at its heart. This show is definitely lighter and Jimmy is a character that is easy to both laugh at but also sympathize with. He's down and out and no one wants to give him a break, but at the same time he's still got a coating a sleaze that invites ridicule. He's like all the bad cliches about lawyers rolled into one surprisingly human package and Bob Odenkirk was born to play this role.

Then we get to the end of the first episode and I groaned when Tuco answered the door because I thought things were about to go to shit. Which is why I was delightfully surprised when I was consistently laughing my ass off with the second episode. Once again we're dealing with a pre-BB Tuco here so he's slightly less of a psychopath than he would become later. He's still a psychopath but BB Tuco would have just snorted some meth and killed everyone for punking his abuela. This Tuco though has just enough sense left that he can be talked down a little bit which is where Jimmy's strengths come out because he masterfully motormouths his way through the situation and the negotiation scene had me in fits of laughter. I have no idea how Tuco got from "I'm going to break their arms and legs" to "I'm going to cut their legs off" but when Jimmy says "No, you're negotiating up." I had to pause the episode for a laugh break. Praise the actor playing Tuco because somehow they took this one note villain and while still being one note managed to make him just the right combination of frightening and hilarious.

And when they get to the desert scene is just where this show starts to define itself as something different from Breaking Bad. It showed how Saul was going to be different from Walter White and it showed that it was going to let go and just be the black comedy that Breaking Bad always could have easily turned into. It also showed that Saul just has more decency than Walter White ever had. It might only be a shred, but it's enough to give his character a little bit of nobility that makes him an anti-hero protagonist rather than the straight up villain protagonist we watched in Breaking Bad. Yeah, in the earlier seasons of BB it was easy to start sympathizing with Walter sometimes but then you always have to go back and realize he always had an out. His treatment could have been covered in full if he'd wanted it that way. It's his pride that drove him and in the end he always ended up doing exactly what he wanted no matter what he said. Saul on the other hand is desperate and has no easy out for himself. He's a sleazy lawyer and a natural con artist, but he's also being constantly shit on by the universe and there are no rich benefactors to reach out a hand and offer him some help. Even the law firms offers of payments are a way of fucking him over. Also, Walter would have been happy enough to save himself in that situation. He would have never stuck his neck out to save the twins. He may have played gallant a couple of times risking things to save Jessie but the relationship dynamic there was completely different and say what he wanted Walt always had a need for Jessie. Jimmy had no good reason to save the twins, especially after they sold him out to Tuco the first chance they got, but he did it anyway and it makes me like the character a lot more instantly.

Oh a secondary shout out goes to Tuco's henchman in the desert scene. Just the way he interrupts Tuco politely so he can question Jimmy himself was hilarious to me. Especially because we see Tuco's two other ill fated henchmen and know how they end up. This guy obviously has a future role to play in the series. He's the one that's going to drag Saul completely into the underworld, but the desert scene is a great introduction to the character. He is reasonable, but his threat to Saul at the end shows he can be quietly menacing in a way that is scarier than the cartoon-ish psychopath that Tuco plays.

Anyway, after the desert scene this episode stays fairly entertaining, but I didn't care for the montage at the end. Once again I felt like it wasn't funny enough to warrant how long it seemed to drag on. Breaking Bad was masterful with its montages which makes it all the more strange that this montage just feels so damn long. I wasn't digging it at all even if once again I get the point and understand what themes it was trying to get across. Jimmy still wants to be legitimate and he wants to do good. Public defender work pays shitty but there is a certain nobility to it....even if Jimmy's natural sleaze somehow drags it down a peg. However, it could could have been shorter or something and gotten the same point across.

I don't have much to say about Chuck at the moment just because I feel there needs to be more revealed there. It's certainly going to be here where Jimmy's fate gets tipped and he decides to become Saul, but for now there needs to be more development. Chuck's illness does indeed seem to be some kind of punishment for Jimmy. The scene with the space blanket is enough to show that everything about what is going on with Chuck is meant to indict Jimmy and so far he's been found wanting. I did find out that electromagnetic is a thing, but I think it's safe to say that Chuck is a hypochondriac and his symptoms can be put down to mental illness.

Chuck McGill was one of the founders of the HHM law firm and clearly had on its name a substantial proportion of its actions and benefits. But due to whatever reason he developed an illness that makes him disabled for work, and the Hamlin guy takes advantage of his naive thinking that he'll get better and come back so that he doesn't have to pay him off with all the millions of dollars that would entail, instead giving him a much cheaper prolongued leave salary.

The dialogue was certainly kind of cryptic in the meeting room since we lacked a good chunk of the pieces, but it's preferable to contrived revelation of information both characters know about - and the next scene clears it up quite a bit anyway.

The situation is simple enough, I just don't like the way it was handled. There's more to be revealed but the basics of the situation are a common enough story device.

There's a middle road to be taken between obvious exposition dump for the sake of the audience and just being coy, cryptic, intentionally playing the pronoun game and being cagey to hide information from the audience. Both approaches are pretty fake and stick out like a sore thumb. I wouldn't mind so much if I was already engaged but I wasn't hooked in by the court room scene so I didn't really care much when they started talking.

I also feel like there's a ton of stuff going on in the first scene with Chuck. It was so much to introduce all at once. I mean there;s basic information there that people didn't pick up on. After the first episode one of the most common questions I saw was "what was Saul's relationship to Chuck?' I feel like when people aren't even getting that they are brothers from that scene then something has gone wrong.

Gus?

Here I'd sooner put blame on the viewers rather than the exposition, to be honest - no offense to anyone here. It'd be one thing if the meeting scene happened, half an episode went on and then the scene with Chuck were just thrown in there disconnected, but having one pretty much after the other was meant to tie whatever loose ends people had from the previous conversation. For one, Jame's ''brother'' is mentioned several times at the meeting and then the scene with Chuck has him talking about going back to the company... it's pretty self-explanatory.

Although I did say the Hamlin/James back-and-forth there was cryptic I didn't mean the dialogue itself wasn't natural to me, just that I was missing information to fully understand that was promptly provided afterwards. The writing in the first scene offered many hints - ''Can he even walk to the bank?'' - as to what was going on and it just kept me piecing it together rather than wishing for it to end, so personally I was okay with it.

I agree that a double premiere was a great decision, though - while I thought the first episode was really good for an introduction, it's the second one that'll reel people in and have them stay, because things truly get going there and James shows us in his conversation with Tuco just what is it that'll make the show special.

You're talking about the little cameo at the vending machine right? If so, yep, although that was actually pretty hard to spot for me and only noticed it the second time I watched it hah.

It's mostly only his distinctive suit that gives it away his face isn't shown that clearly.

As for the first episode personally I wasn't confused about anything but then again I always tend to watch things more anally than more casual viewers. I think maybe the best way I can think of describing it is the pilot felt like just TV to me. I'm familiar with all the narrative tricks being used and some of them are quite obvious. The way the information is presented in pretty standard TV stuff with the conversations leaving out information so it can be revealed later. I think what I was looking for was a more personal touch from the episode. The thing about the first episode of Breaking Bad is the episode felt very intimate. I really felt like I was having a private peak into this guy's life. The first episode of Saul felt like I was watching a well acted TV with some nice dialogue and some pacing issues. I also wasn't immediate drawn to Chuck or particularly interested in the law firm because I know these are things Jimmy will end up shedding from his life as he loses his grasp on that last piece of decency and starts to buy into his own bullshit.

It's the second episode that makes me care for Jimmy and the world that surrounds him because it's the moment he talks down Tuco that I respect the character. Taking care of his brother, public defense seem more like things he does out of guilt. Not saying he doesn't care about Chuck, but the relationship didn't grab my attention the way other things in the second episode did.