Better Call Saul
Our Review
Six seasons of television this good have no right to also be this patient. Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s Breaking Bad prequel takes Jimmy McGill — the sleazy lawyer we met as Saul Goodman — and shows exactly how a good, funny man dismantles himself. Bob Odenkirk’s Jimmy is the saddest clown on TV: a former con artist one Chicago Sunroof away from respectability, forever in his brilliant brother Chuck’s shadow.
Chuck (Michael McKean) is the show’s secret weapon — the jealous genius whose resentment curdles into something like evil, delivered in a cardigan and a space blanket. The Jimmy-Chuck courtroom war is the best legal drama in decades. Then there’s Kim Wexler: Rhea Seehorn gives one of the great TV performances of the era as a woman who discovers she loves the con, and whose arc collides with Jimmy’s in a finale that recontextualizes the entire series. Saul Gone is a masterpiece of quiet devastation.
It’s funnier than Breaking Bad, sadder than Breaking Bad, and by the end it might be better than Breaking Bad. Yes, I said it.
Verdict: Watch it. A slow-burn tragedy that earns every second of its patience.