Doomed By Its Own ‘Doomed’ Narrative

BY CASEY EPSTEIN-GROSS

BETTER CALL SAUL should not have been good. When the Breaking Bad prequel was first announced in 2013, the reactions of fans and critics would most succinctly be summarized by the title of this article from Unreality Magazine : “For the Love of God, No More Prequels to Anything Ever.” No one wanted Better Call Saul . At best it’d be fine, at worst it would fall into the infamous “prequel trap” and ruin the magic of a series many were lauding as one of the greatest of all time. No one expected anything special, even the creators and showrunners themselves – as Vince Gilligan himself said to Empire in 2013, “There’s the intangible ques - tion of…whether it’ll move people as much as [ Breaking Bad ], and… the safest answer to that is: ‘Probably not to the same level.” How could it, when it centered around the making of a side character whose primary purpose was to play the comic relief sleazeball? “I worry it could be the ‘ Joey ’ to Breaking Bad’s ‘ Friends ,’” wrote one reviewer, comparing the upcoming prequel to a spin-off that must have been so humiliatingly bad it was essentially wiped from the face of the Earth, because I literally had no idea such a thing ever existed until this very minute, and I’ve seen most of Friends .

Better Call Saul should not have been good – and yet it was.

Defying all expectations, the prequel turned out to be a phenomenal, groundbreaking show in its own right. While there’s no universal consensus on which Albuquerque crime-drama ranks superior, the fact that this is even a debate is almost miraculous given the dread leading up to the prequel’s premiere. Not only did Better Call Saul avoid falling into the prequel trap that viewers and critics alike were initially so afraid of, it used its own status as a prequel to its advantage, turning the limited structure dictated by the demands of a prequel into one of the most powerful vehicles for exploring character depth and moral ambiguity in modern media. Through extensive care for and attention towards the nuances of the characters inhabiting the world of the show, Better Call Saul made a shallow, comically sleazy character into arguably one of the most sympathetic, nuanced characters in recent television history, all before turning him right back around again into the horrible person we all once loved to watch. The twist is that now, because of the history we’ve become aware of, we find it almost viscerally painful to see. Gilligan, Gould, and co. ingeniously turned the prequel trap into an impending tragedy, a car crash you knew was coming but couldn’t look away from, desperately hoping the driver would turn the steering wheel before it was too late, but knowing they would never, ever be able to.

One of the most important aspects of creating an actually decent prequel is setting it apart from the story’s initial iteration, or its “mother show,” if you will. And Better Call Saul , thankfully, wastes no time attempting to mimic its predecessor. Instead of trying desperately to shoehorn in classic action scenes, shocking plot twists, and other elements of the tried-and-true formula of Breaking Bad , the prequel, instead, focuses intensely on character dynam - ics and relationships, snappy dialogue, and quick humor. While Breaking Bad focused on showing the inhumanity in its characters, Better Call Saul emphasizes and exemplifies their humanity instead. Where the former spent shots lingering on the unforgiving heat of the New Mexico desert, the latter shows moments of domesticity – some shoes lined up by the door, a dumb joke and the ensuing laughter, the act of sharing a cigarette and watching the orange flame flicker. It’s hard to think of a show whose characters feel more human, even beyond Jimmy McGill – there’s the nuanced characterization of Jimmy’s unlikable but complicated brother Chuck, the gratingly affable and patronizing top lawyer Howard who ends up one of the most sympathetic characters by the end of the show, the steely resolve of the reluctant drug dealer Nacho, and, most of all, there’s the extraordinarily subtle, multi-layered, and masterful portrayal of the female protagonist, Kim Wexler. But while entire theses could be written about the nuances of each of these characters – entire dissertations when it comes to Kim in particular, who I would argue to be one of the best female characters in television history –it’s what Better Call Saul does with Jimmy that first captures your heart and, in the end, most effectively demonstrates the show’s mastery of characterization via the prequel trap.

In an era of prestige media that has, frankly, been somewhat over-saturated with cool, grimacing male anti-heroes driven by crises of masculinity, intellect, and pride (for an example, look no further than Breaking Bad’s own Walter White), Jimmy is a breath of fresh air. He’s emotional and deeply caring, earnest and desperate to please, charismatic and expressive and incredibly funny. He might bend the rules, but more often than not, he does so in order to help people. The tragedy of Jimmy McGill is that he wants so badly to be good, but everyone around him insists that he never will, and even in his attempts to prove them wrong he ends up proving them right. This sends him spiraling into self-hatred and leads him to act out again, creating a tragic cycle in which he digs deeper and deeper holes for himself. And every time he does, you can see something in him breaking a little bit, a gradual process heartbreakingly captured by Bob Odenkirk in one of the most impressive, nuanced performances in recent television history.

Better Call Saul does not, in fact, feature the titular Saul for a long, long time, focusing instead to flesh out Jimmy and his world before moving into expected territory. This was an unexpected and unwelcome development for the many Breaking Bad diehards, who tuned in primarily to see more of the sleazy criminal lawyer they had grown to love and hate, as well as the tension-filled action sequences the original show was known for. Early seasons spawned endless Reddit threads and thinkpieces complaining about the show’s ‘glacial pace,’ sounding not unlike restaurant-goers frustrated that they’d only been brought their appetizer with no main course in sight. Unfortunately, they’d have to wait a while longer, because Better Call Saul was not Breaking Bad (where, if one is to consider committing murder a sign of ‘breaking bad,’ Walter White’s transition was completed by the end of the first episode). Instead, Jimmy’s journey to become Saul is long, winding, and anything but linear; in other words, it’s realistic. It’s human. He spends multiple seasons working with elderly ladies to take down the nursing home that secretly stole money from them for years, and even when he does start taking on the persona of Saul Goodman, that trajectory is never linear. His “breaking bad” is never clear nor is it irreversible; his path to becoming Saul often looks more like him taking one step forward, then two steps back. Jimmy wobbles back and forth between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ so frequently that those rather simplistic categories begin to lose all meaning. He is driven by his heart, by his compassion for the people in his life and his desperation for them to care for and respect him, by his sense of justice and what people do or do not deserve – and these things often take priority for him over what is legal or what might typically be perceived as “right.”

Jimmy’s attempts to navigate this set of conflicting motivations are simultaneously immensely compelling and deeply hard to watch, largely because you want so badly for him to choose ‘well,’ to be the good person you know he wants to be and can be. It’s funny; the original draw of the show was in seeing more of Saul Goodman, but at some point you begin to actively dread Jimmy’s transition into him. Suddenly, you realize you would do almost anything to see him stop, to see him remain where he is and not go down the “bad choice road” you know he’s headed down. The prequel structure, forcing you to confront inevitable tragedy, is precisely what makes the show so affecting, so effective. While a lot of the desire to see Jimmy stay Jimmy and not become the person he is doomed to become stems from our genuine affection for the character of Jimmy, it is also in part due to the show’s unique portrayal of the “anti” aspect of its titular “anti-hero.” Most media about morally gray male anti-heroes portray their “badness,” whenever it arises, as something “badass.” Heisenberg-Walt in Breaking Bad , for instance, was seductively fun to watch – he walked away from exploding buildings like a badass, he shaved his head and wore a (questionably?) badass fedora, and he gave cool, badass monologues about being “the one who knocks.” “Evil” Walt was cool. But there is nothing cool about watching Jimmy turn into Saul. Instead, it’s sad, it’s painful, it’s embarrassing. Where

Walt-Heisenberg had famous badass monologues, Jimmy-Saul has humiliating public tantrums. The second-hand embarrassment is almost unbearable, and the takeaway is never that Jimmy is intimidating or cool or a badass – it’s that he is in pain.

The fact that we knew he would be in pain does not make watching it any easier – really, I’d argue it makes it worse, turning an uncomfortable scene into an absolutely tragic one. You’re not watching a narrative unfold so much as you are rubbernecking an inevitable, brutal car crash while trapped at a red light. As soon as you saw the swerve, you knew what would happen, but you watched it unfold anyways. But unlike the experience of sitting in your car staring horrified at a crash, Better Call Saul doesn’t let you look away, not even once the smoke has cleared and the light has turned green. It forces you to keep looking long after you normally would, longer than any traffic light would ever allow. Because just as Better Call Saul subverts the trope of the prequel trap, it also subverts the very label of “prequel” – it shows you the aftermath too, the real aftermath, years and years down the line.

The show hints at what’s to come the whole time: at the start of every season, audiences are privy to a few minutes of black-and-white footage of Saul’s life after the events of not only the prequel itself but Breaking Bad , and see quick glimpses of his life under yet another name, this time Gene Takovic, a Cinnabon store manager in Omaha, Nebraska. The final stretch of episodes take place entirely in Gene’s world, every shot in grayscale and him sporting a nifty mustache – it officially becomes no longer a prequel, but a sequel. Except… not quite. That’s because it isn’t a sequel to Breaking Bad , even though chronologically, that’s where the Geneera immediately follows. Frankly, anyone who had only watched Breaking Bad wouldn’t understand or even be interested in it, because it wouldn’t make any sense. Saul Goodman’s story was over. Saul Goodman’s story is over, but the character of Jimmy McGill still has a ways to go, and that’s what the final episodes cover. By then, yes, the events of Breaking Bad have come and gone, and every atrocity Saul Goodman has committed has now been cemented into the timeline. But Better Call Saul couldn’t just end with that, not after everything we’ve learned and grown to care about regarding this world and its inhabitants – about Jimmy. Because we do care, immensely and bafflingly so. The show has been so effective in character and world-building that by Season Six, objectively boring shots of Gene staring at frosted cinnamon rolls with an unreadable expression feel nothing short of riveting. This outcome was almost unthinkable before the show began. After all, during the show’s early seasons, everyone watched the prequel solely to see the emergence of Saul, and complained after every episode that he hadn’t appeared yet. But then, by the sixth season, Saul was all gone. By the sixth season, everyone was watching solely for Jimmy – and everyone was watching. How could they not? The story wasn’t done. Jimmy’s story wasn’t done.

The key question still remained: as Peter Gould put it in a conversation with Entertainment Weekly, “‘What does this man deserve?’ Not just: ‘What’s going to happen to him?,’ but ‘What would be a deserving end to this?” Better Call Saul is a show that centers around the questions of inevitability, certainty, and absolutes, and the question of “what does this character deserve” wasn’t just a byproduct of writing an end to the show – it had been the series’ driving force this whole time. Was Jimmy a “bad” person, like Chuck believed? Did he deserve to suffer for the harm he caused? Was he a “good” person, like Kim believed he could be? Could he be allowed a happy ending, despite everything he had done? What Gould eventually decides upon regarding Jimmy’s fate doubles as the show’s entire thesis: there’s no such thing as a “good” person or a “bad” person, there are just people, and most people are doing the best they can with what they’ve got. There is never going to be a cutand-dried answer to the question of what Jimmy “deserves,” because people can’t be analyzed like that, distilled into a few acts of good or bad. No one person will ever only be any one thing, destined to live out any one life – noth - ing is ever that simple, that black and white.

But while Better Call Saul refuses to give answers, what it does give (and thankfully so) is a sense of hope and possibility, even when, realistically, it doesn’t feel like there should be any. Because that is what happened with the show itself: the outcome of the prequel (Jimmy’s evolution into Saul) was inevitable, but somehow, so much meaning, love, ethical complexity, human connection, and wonder was found in the interim, in the gap between point A and point B – so much that the show ended up taking on a second life even after it should have ended. The plot points, the timeline, the tangible facts of Saul’s life we’ve gleaned from the Better Call Saul prequel have remained entirely consistent with what was already known from Breaking Bad ; nothing has changed, not tangibly. But somehow, everything has anyways. Not in plot, but in character; not in logic, but in emotion. And while logically, narratively, the prequel should have ended just at the point at which Breaking Bad begins, that would have felt thematically and emotionally wrong for the characters as we know them now. So the show keeps going –it’s different, yes, in black-and-white, yes, but it should have been over. It looks bleak, but the fact that the story is still going means there’s still promise for a future, and for that future to be better. It comes as no surprise, then, that the end to Jimmy’s story is similar: even in the bleakness of inevitability, the black-and-white delineations of fate, there is always hope and color to be found, as small as it might be.

To me, this is what Better Call Saul is about: the falsehood of inevitability. Everything in the show is supposed to be inevitable, predetermined, unchangeable – the outcome is set by the very nature of its being a prequel, so what’s the point of watching it? Viewers know Jimmy is doomed because we have already gotten to know Saul, so what’s the point of seeing it unfold? If, as Jimmy’s brother Chuck says to him, Jimmy’s “gonna keep hurting people… over and over and over,” why doesn’t he “skip the whole exercise” of trying to change? If “in the end, you’re going to hurt everyone around you” and “you can’t help it,” shouldn’t you just “accept it,” “embrace it?” Sometimes, we do. We accept it, embrace it. We become our own versions of Saul. Things are easier that way: it’s the path of least resistance. If everything is inevitable, if you’re doomed to become who you’re doomed to become, then you don’t have to keep trying to be anything else. If a narrative, a person, a prequel, a life, if anything is inevitably going to be “bad,” then – to quote Vince Gilligan talking about the likely inevitability of Better Call Saul being worse than Breaking

Bad – you have to “ask yourself, ‘Does that mean it’s not worth doing?’”

That’s the question Better Call Saul asks, and that’s the question it answers, with every fiber of its being – in content, in form, in character, in narrative, in practice. From the story inside the show to the story of the show’s success in the outside world, Better Call Saul shows us that there is a point, there always is. The mere fact that the show exists in the first place is answer enough, but then that question is answered again, again, and again, all the way from the first episode to the last. Even if the outcome of something is inevitable, it’s worth doing, worth living anyways, even if it’s just for the chance of seeing some shoes lined up by the door, of hearing a dumb joke and the ensuing laughter, of sharing a cigarette and watching the orange flame flicker.