Much of this satisfaction comes from creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s delight in the rhythms and patterns of their characters’ workaday lives — as they prepare processed snacks in a mall food court, help a regional bank expand operations or sell burner cellphones out of the trunk of a car. On the surface, Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad spinoff that tracks the rise of Saul Goodman, née Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), has a lot in common with its progenitor, Gilligan’s drama about a chemistry teacher diagnosed with cancer who starts a lucrative business cooking meth. But in a deeper way, Saul is the anti-Breaking Bad. It’s less interested in the premium cable fantasy of the powerful bad man than in the minutiae of the work itself. Whether that work is criminal or not is almost beside the point; as Jimmy’s now-deceased brother Chuck (Michael McKean) tells him in an earlier season, “No one ever accused you of being lazy. Every other sin in the book, but not that one.”
Last season, Chuck, a respected lawyer and
In the current season, he gets a job in a
She also surprises herself, and the viewer, by enjoying the transgression. She’s come a long way from the harmless grifts of previous
And in its observance of the labor of ordinary people — the juxtaposition of scenes involving Jimmy, Kim and Albuquerque’s legal community, and the underworld of the drug trade — the show doesn’t really distinguish between legal and illegal work. There’s work that’s dignifying and work that degrades, to be sure, but whether it’s square in the eyes of the law doesn’t change the satisfaction of the effort itself.
The series’ trademark is long, wordless scenes of people at work: drug henchman Nacho Varga (Michael Mando) meticulously switching out his boss’ heart medication with placebos; former cop Mike Ehrmantraut (the divine Jonathan Banks) scouting a rival drug cartel’s route through the desert; Kim making phone calls on her lunch break to poach potential new clients. These sequences often zero in on a single person carrying out a specific task, as if to bear witness to the kind of labor that normally goes unseen and unremarked upon. In the hands of Saul’s directors, what’s tedious in real life is spellbinding onscreen.
For all that, it doesn’t much matter what side of the law these people are on; whether they’re selling drugs or heading up a law firm’s banking division, Better Call Saul’s characters are susceptible to the inevitable boredom and letdown of having gotten what they have worked so hard for. The ends might not always justify, or live up to, the means, but this show has always been more interested in the means, anyway.
Gilligan and Co. understand that most of us harbor the urge to “break bad,” but rather than offer another deadening TV antihero daydream, they’ve conjured reveries of everyday life. The show’s directors relish disorienting their viewers; an episode might open on a hypnotic close-up shot of burning pieces of tattered paper floating up from the bottom of a pitch-black frame or a paper shredder mutilating documents. They focus on the essential weirdness of everyday life and objects — shining a light on the mundane, rendering it newly foreign and fascinating.
In Breaking Bad’s final installment, Walter White got to die in a glorious shootout, an epic, Hollywood ending to his tragic story. But most of us just have to keep going, keep working, keep supporting our stupid little lives, even if it makes us miserable, even if it doesn’t look cool. When it comes down to it, any work is better than no work.
The season finale of Better Call Saul airs October 8 on AMC.