Over the weekend I finished season five of Better Call Saul. One season remains of the Breaking Bad prequel that has defied initial apprehension and become one of my favourite shows. The first question people ask is often the same; is it better than Breaking Bad? It has now hit a point where I can view the shows equally, a shared world and characters with their own style. The show has become a triumph of television through its characterisation and pace.
Characterisation
The strength of Better Call Saul is the time, depth and the rich back stories it allows for its characters. While Breaking Bad followed Walter White and his decent into darkness, the show remained very much his story. Despite other standout characters like Jesse Pinkman, the tale of Breaking Bad started and finished when Walter White’s did. There are significantly more cast members at play in Better Call Saul than Saul Goodman. The characters ebb and flow around the title character, sometimes driving his plot and sometimes being driven.
The standout new character is Kim Wexler, a performance crying out for awards, she’s the moral compass of the show whose arrow is now spinning freely. A character not in the sequel viewers are on the edge of their seats wondering just where her moral decay leads her. Others like Nacho and Lalo were throwaway names in the second season of Breaking Bad. Both members of the cartel, the depth and personality of their performances has helped expand and enhance the world seen in Breaking Bad. New characters in an established world are difficult to get right, the show does a commendable job of getting it right every time.
Familiar characters like Mike, Saul and Gus Fring play out in a world where their ending has already been told. The risk of a prequel is that any mystery from the sequel gets diluted and answered. The excellent craft of the show is that these stories enhance rather than overpower the performances we’ve already seen. Even after five seasons of this show, I’m craving more moments of these characters’s journeys.
As an actor or actress, a part in this show is what you crave in your career. The chance to explore a character’s backstory, beliefs and personality to their foundation. The story is a tragedy playing out in slow motion, we’ve already seen where it ends with Breaking Bad, yet the power of the show is in its characters carrying the story to completion.
The Pace
Better Call Saul often feels more like The Wire or Mad Men than its sequel, Breaking Bad. The pace is deliberately slow, a creation for the patient viewer. Many people tried Better Call Saul and abandoned the first season citing this pace and it would still lose those impatient for a quick payoff. In the first two seasons the initial ingredients of the show were still being prepared, it was gradual, but the direction was one of building a world far more than an individual story. The creators respected the audience’s intelligence, patience and investment as the show crept towards where Breaking Bad started. The payoff has been the most recent seasons, well-developed characters and plots expanding to their last stretches.
Yet still this is not a show about colossal explosions but simmering conclusions. The season finales of Breaking Bad were increasingly explosive, high tension and action filled. If the past seasons of Better Call Saul were about mixing ingredients the creation is a delicacy dish rather than a feast. Walter White’s journey reflected the show’s title; breaking bad, how an ordinary man snapped from being a schoolteacher to being involved in the drug world before our eyes. Jimmy McGill becoming the drug-cartel attorney Saul Goodman is a far subtler transformation.
Early in Breaking Bad Walter White spoke of growth, decay, then transformation which foreshadowed his own arc. Walter White’s own arc exploded in its last season at a rapid pace with all-consuming consequences. Better Call Saul lives in a similar cycle of decay and transformation, yet it’s a festering corruption than an explosive one. The line of morality is constantly being manipulated, stretched and twisted around Saul, those who cross paths with him dragged into a questionable existence. The pace may be quiet, gradual, but it’s never stagnant.
Is it better than Breaking Bad?
As I answered in the beginning, is it better than Breaking Bad? I can view the shows as equal heavyweights with their own unique merits, a shared world and characters with unique approaches. Better Call Saul, very much a triumph in its own right, finishes next year. I cannot wait.
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