Better Call Saul
Cast & Key People
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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 patient build tragedy that earns every second of its patience.
