Better Call Saul

[Dragged Into Sunlight]

On rewatch and I forgot how annoying Kim was later in the series.

"Oh no, all my professional dreams came true but I must self-sabotage and quit because I only feel fulfilled if I'm helping poor brown criminals avoid punishment."

Season 6 just felt off to me,

I'm just about finished with my rewatch and I feel the same way. The way they're fucking with Howard for such a completely selfish reason is no fun and not good TV. With their other schemes, you can understand their motivations but what they do to Howard is just utterly scummy. Kim had a job at S&C where she made all the money she needed and could indulge in her savior complex but threw it away for no reason. And then they turn around and fuck with Howard in an unforgivable way in order to make money.


Also, Nacho surviving the S5 finale is totally pointless if you're just going to kill him off a few episodes into S6.

 

[AnOminous]

Kim had a job at S&C where she made all the money she needed and could indulge in her savior complex but threw it away for no reason. And then they turn around and fuck with Howard in an unforgivable way in order to make money.

I could see having a plot where they did something like this, but they just didn't sell you on it.

This is bad for a character-driven show. It came across as pure evil for its own sake.

I think Season 6 could have been dispensed with.

Also the Gene arc they teased from the very beginning turned out completely pointless and unmemorable.

I think they should have wrapped up after Howard got killed, with swift consequences. It didn't help that the very last episode was probably the worst.

 

[Seventh Star]

When I think about BCS, I never think about Season 6 at all. It was at its best when it was a corrupt lawyer show and it should've stuck with Chuck for a while longer.

This is bad for a character-driven show. It came across as pure evil for its own sake.

Up to S5 and in Breaking Bad, there's nothing indicating Jimmy is a cruel or nasty person, he's just some crook with a law degree. They really needed to hammer the point home that he's evil, because modern writers are talentless faggots that can't write nuanced characters anymore, god forbid if you sympathize with them.

 

[TheHarbinger]

When I think about BCS, I never think about Season 6 at all. It was at its best when it was a corrupt lawyer show and it should've stuck with Chuck for a while longer.

Show should have ended with Jimmy driving Chuck to suicide then starting his own Better Call Saul lawfirm.

Up to S5 and in Breaking Bad, there's nothing indicating Jimmy is a cruel or nasty person, he's just some crook with a law degree.

He tells Walter and Jesse to murder the witness against them. Later they would retcon Saul into being a likeable clown. By the time BCS is over they have him practically being a heroic saint and martyr for Kim. But they did the same with Walt as well. Where he's saving Jesse and killing Nazi gangs and solving murders for the DEA by the end of the show.

They really needed to hammer the point home that he's evil

The writers didn't ever intend for Saul or Walt to be evil like Tony Soprano or Vic Mackey or Stringer Bell. They want them to be like Dexter where the audience is rooting for them to win every episode. We've seen when characters go berserk like Danaerys from Game of Thrones that audiences have a hard time accepting that their former hero goes insane or turns to the dark side. Even Darth Vader, who genocides Jedi children, gets a redemption arc.

because modern writers are talentless faggots that can't write nuanced characters anymore, god forbid if you sympathize with them.

This is how 99.9% of writers are. Even Tolkien wrote mostly heroic and lawful characters. Very rarely will you get things like The Sopranos or Dune where the characters are often massively selfish and outright evil. Or shows like Oz or The Shield where nearly every protagonist is a violent sociopath mostly beyond redemption past their initial story arc.

Neither Saul or Walt actually break bad. Other shows do this much better. Including garbage shows like Game of Thrones.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

I think they should have wrapped up after Howard got killed, with swift consequences. It didn't help that the very last episode was probably the worst.

Its hard to do that, though, when you have to tee up everything for Breaking Bad. (Fate/Zero had this same problem. )

 

[A Very Big Fish]

On rewatch and I forgot how annoying Kim was later in the series.

"Oh no, all my professional dreams came true but I must self-sabotage and quit because I only feel fulfilled if I'm helping poor brown criminals avoid punishment."



I'm just about finished with my rewatch and I feel the same way. The way they're fucking with Howard for such a completely selfish reason is no fun and not good TV. With their other schemes, you can understand their motivations but what they do to Howard is just utterly scummy. Kim had a job at S&C where she made all the money she needed and could indulge in her savior complex but threw it away for no reason. And then they turn around and fuck with Howard in an unforgivable way in order to make money.


Also, Nacho surviving the S5 finale is totally pointless if you're just going to kill him off a few episodes into S6.

On the one hand, I think that they did need to bridge the gap of Jimmy being a conman to being the kind of guy to suggest shanking Badger because he's a liability.

And to an extant, I can kind of see Jimmy just deciding to fuck over Howard, because he hates Howard, and he could do it as an ego move, or whatever. The problem is, I don't think Kim gets to that point that fast. For quite a lot of BCS, she is straight laced, and even when she does more illegal and questionable shit, it at least has motives that are sympathetic, like saving the crotchety old dude's house. But there's a million miles between helping a dude keep his house, and absolutely ruining the life of an employer you don't like.

Honestly, I think they should've kept Chuck around longer, because I think he makes a much better contrast to Jimmy. Even the shitty stuff Chuck does, its not hard to see how he gets there, and with how much Jimmy escalates, I think it would be interesting to see how Chuck changes as Jimmy gets worse and worse. The scene where you realize Chuck is the one who fucked over Jimmy is still one of my favorite bits of the show. He died before the vast majority of Jimmy's work with Lalo and the Cartel, which I think could've been a real great interaction. There's a world of difference between being a shyster and a conman and helping a murderous cartel member escape from justice.

Regarding Nacho, I think him and Lalo should have died in the raid at the end of S5, Have Gus tell Nacho to let them in to kill Lalo, and as Nacho goes to leave, one of the mercs just guns him down, and he's set up as the fall guy for everything.

Though, I do love Nacho's last scene in S6.

"Him? You think the chicken man? What a joke. Alvarez has been paying me for years. Years. But you know what? I would've done it for free because I hate every last one of you psycho sacks of shit. I opened Lalo's gate and I would do it again and I'm glad what they did to him. He's a soulless pig and I wish I killed him with my own hands. And you know what else Hector? I put you in that chair. Oh yeah. Your heart meds? I switched them for sugar pills. You were dead and buried and I had to watch this asshole bring you back. So when you are sitting in your shitty nursing home, and you're sucking down on your Jell-O night after night for the rest of your life, you think of me. You twisted fuck."

I liked the show, I've actually re-watched it over the last year with my Mom whenever I went to visit my folks, and while I still like the show quite a bit, there are definitely things that I think could've improved.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Honestly, I think they should've kept Chuck around longer, because I think he makes a much better contrast to Jimmy. Even the shitty stuff Chuck does, its not hard to see how he gets there, and with how much Jimmy escalates, I think it would be interesting to see how Chuck changes as Jimmy gets worse and worse. The scene where you realize Chuck is the one who fucked over Jimmy is still one of my favorite bits of the show. He died before the vast majority of Jimmy's work with Lalo and the Cartel, which I think could've been a real great interaction. There's a world of difference between being a shyster and a conman and helping a murderous cartel member escape from justice.

Imagine if Howard had stayed a background character and it had been Chuck that Jimmy and Kim had been fucking with only to watch helplessly as Lalo murders him.

 

[innocent jogger]

I've always felt the Gene arc was set way too soon after Breaking Bad. When you first see him it looks like it's been at least a few years since he escaped into his shitty mundane life in Omaha.

Also s6 was made when woke trash was amped up to 11, it's still much better than anything else that was coming out then. I mean they shat out Woke Watchmen and "Velma" around that time IIRC.

 

[Arthur Morgan]

I'm just about finished with my rewatch and I feel the same way. The way they're fucking with Howard for such a completely selfish reason is no fun and not good TV. With their other schemes, you can understand their motivations but what they do to Howard is just utterly scummy. Kim had a job at S&C where she made all the money she needed and could indulge in her savior complex but threw it away for no reason. And then they turn around and fuck with Howard in an unforgivable way in order to make money.

It's even worse when you remember Kim was on her way to a meeting that would have secured her idea of high level attorneys for broke clients, and abandoned it just so she could make sure Howard got fucked with. The problem was that it wasn't about the money for her and it was about the con, that was all that mattered to her. She was shown she could help people legitimately, something she gave up her high paying job to focus on, and then gambled it all on a scam just because she got a thrill out of it.

I've always felt the Gene arc was set way too soon after Breaking Bad. When you first see him it looks like it's been at least a few years since he escaped into his shitty mundane life in Omaha.

Same, it also makes him seem even dumber because he couldn't lay low for a few months before he felt the need to start running cons again?

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

In my mind, BCS isn't canon to BB. I could never buy that the Saul we see in BCS is the same person we see in BB—the "God, you're killing me with that booty" problem. Saul Goodman was conceived as a comedic side character, and he should have been left at that. Actually, the original idea they had for BCS probably would have worked better: a comedic sitcom.

I think they took too long to make the transition from Jimmy to Saul. Then it was too late because they had other interesting plot lines that they wanted to focus on instead.

I agree with both of these, Season 1 was an interesting season because it felt grounded but still within the Breaking Bad universe. The stakes were lower, but it still nailed the semi comedy tone of the franchise. It's so funny to watch back in hindsight because the entire tone of the show changes completely after Season 1 and then changes again completely after Season 3 once Gus enters the frame. Partly because it looked like the writers had realised they liked Kim's character too much so couldn't remove her to progress Jimmy's story, leading to FAR too much wheel spinning and long drawn out sequences, and partly because they had no idea where they wanted the show to go and were completely winging it.

It's funny because some of the writing was genuinely top notch, being able to convey so much in literal seconds... and then they'd have elaborately long drawn out scenes and Jimmy doing the same shit over and over again and Jimmy and Kim making up and falling out all over again etc. 90% of the comedy just disappears after Season 1 as it becomes clear that it's now a "character study show"

It's a difficult show to rate because I feel a lot of us were just hoping the ending would tie everything together and everything would make sense, so when the final season completely missed the mark it brought into question everything that had happened before and the horrific realisation that so much time was wasted on doing absolutely nothing. A good third of the show could have been cut and you wouldn't actually miss much.

The funny thing is that the entire show could have rocketed forward if Jimmy had gotten the Sandpiper money in Season 3, doing a big elaborate "fuck all you guys" and starting up his Saul law firm with the proceeds. He could have started working with shadier and shadier clients until eventually he got tied into the cartel and had to spend a good chunk of his illicit gains on protection money. This would give him a much bigger incentive to work with Walter to take down the cartel so he could go back to being a 'free' man just practising law without the risk of being shot dead in his bed.

EDIT

In fact, that would have tied everything up perfectly. The realisation that Sandpiper settled JUST before Chuck died. Jimmy starting Season 4 with the bittersweet knowledge that he's got millions but at the cost of his brother. He could still interact with Kim or Howard as he's on the way up just as they're on the way down. Hell, he could have even eventually bought out H+H just to own the land and turn it into a laser tag arena (which funnily enough would result in Walter paying him a shitload of money and have it click that that's why he wanted to push it so hard over the carwash). Instead Season 4 started with about 6 episodes of "Waah Jimmy is sad lets watch him mope about because his life is bad waaah" and before you knew it, the season was over and nothing significant has been pushed foward.

/EDIT

Overall it was embarressingly clear that the writers were scared of rocketing forward as it would have resulted in too much lore changing at once and potentially causing plotholes with Breaking Bad, so we ended up with about 4+ seasons spent across an agonisingly slow year before we got the first timeskip, as having Jimmy only really interact with the 'Better Call Saul' characters and occasionally Mike and Gus would allow everything to exist in its own seperate canon. Except by that point Jimmy was a completely different character to Saul in Breaking Bad, and no amount of timeskips or radical shifts would have allowed to course correct. Leading to the shitshow of the final season.

It's heavily implied that Madrigal was involved in drug smuggling from the outset of their fast food division. And that the entire Los Pollos operation was created specifically for drug smuggling and money laundering. The Breaking Bad wiki even says that the Madrigal employee who blows his heart up knew Gus from his South America days and was always in on the drug smuggling. And that Los Pollos was nothing more than a front and not a real business that was even viable.

I always saw it as Los Pollos being a loss leader for the cartel. High quality chicken and highly paid staff served at a low cost to the consumer resulting in a 'discount premium' fast food chain where a lot of money could change hands, without being really profitable allowing for a lot of money to be washed. The trucks were far too big for delivering to a single fast food company, no matter how many stores were in ABQ, which tbh might just be a writers oversight but it was plainly obvious that not a single part of Los Pollos could have worked without the cartel subsidising it, and in turn Los Pollos subsidising the cartel with money laundering and drug transportation.

 

[The Hardest R]

The funny thing is that the entire show could have rocketed forward if Jimmy had gotten the Sandpiper money in Season 3, doing a big elaborate "fuck all you guys" and starting up his Saul law firm with the proceeds.

At the time, this is what I thought he would do. But instead they really wanted to focus on the Kim and Mesa Verde crap, which was a complete waste of a plot point.

 

[Calandrino]

I always saw it as Los Pollos being a loss leader for the cartel. High quality chicken and highly paid staff served at a low cost to the consumer resulting in a 'discount premium' fast food chain where a lot of money could change hands, without being really profitable allowing for a lot of money to be washed.

Makes me wonder what Buc-ees might be a front for

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

At the time, this is what I thought he would do. But instead they really wanted to focus on the Kim and Mesa Verde crap, which was a complete waste of a plot point.

The funny thing about the whole show is that they'll introduce MASSIVE plot points and then not do anything with them for like a season or two. Seasons 1-3 could have been Sandpiper because it was actually fucking strange how Chuck and Jimmy realise they're sitting on this absolutely mammoth case that will make a serious chunk of money and then... it's basically left to stew for a few years. Have Jimmy do more 'creative' investigation into Sandpiper leading to more and more concrete evidence, have Chuck get worse not because he's being toyed with by Jimmy, but because he's recognising that Jimmy is REALLY good at unorthadox investigation that is still, technically legal but goes against standard law. BOOM. You've got the setup for Saul Goodman now he's more confident and sure of himself.

Like I get it, I expected a completely different show, I'll hold my hands up and say that. I just found it incredible that had this deliberately slow, methodical show in the Breaking Bad universe and then had Lalo be some sort of insane action villain and had Mike casually being socially smart enough to be another weird superhero, and had the cartel being incredibly violent retards. It just created this weird tonal dissonance between different characters in the SAME SHOW.

After a few seasons it just felt like an incredibly autistic man trying to correct plotholes in his favourite TV show. Who cares why Hector is in a wheelchair, who cares if Saul said DMV by accident because we know what he fucking meant by it, who cares about the logisitics of creating a meth lab underneath a laundromat etc. Hell an offhand comment in Breaking Bad means that we need to see who Lalo is etc. As far as I'm concerned BCS was a wonderfully shot and directed show that unintentionally fucked with the canon because all of the mysteries were somehow even lamer explained than simply letting the viewer roll with it.

 

[The Hardest R]

I’ve said ad nauseam here on this thread that BCS was more fanservice than an actual show, let alone the prequel to Breaking Bad. It is obvious Vince Gilligan had more fun writing stories about the Salamancas and Gus than about Jimmy. There were some great moments on that show but it’s also why it all came crashing down in the final season.

There also was just some plot dead ends, mostly involving Kim. I bring up Mesa Verde again. I guess the whole point is that Kim wanted to be a great lawyer fighting back Jimmy’s influence but then we saw various scenes where she was the bigger trickster over Jimmy. Felt like a lot of wasted time that was better spent elsewhere.

 

[TheTitKoker]

It's a difficult show to rate because I feel a lot of us were just hoping the ending would tie everything together and everything would make sense, so when the final season completely missed the mark it brought into question everything that had happened before and the horrific realisation that so much time was wasted on doing absolutely nothing. A good third of the show could have been cut and you wouldn't actually miss much.

I actually think that was a key part of the delivery - you draw out trivial bullshit to highlight the fact of the matter at the end of the day. To a criminal it's ALL about the motive, prep, and side hustles that lead up to the moment of the crime, but none of that assures the successful execution. If you cut the prep and side quests, it kinda lessens the impact at the end.

 

[TheHarbinger]

I actually think that was a key part of the delivery - you draw out trivial bullshit to highlight the fact of the matter at the end of the day. To a criminal it's ALL about the motive, prep, and side hustles that lead up to the moment of the crime, but none of that assures the successful execution. If you cut the prep and side quests, it kinda lessens the impact at the end.

Not really. You have probably an hour or more of self indulgent montages of ants crawling on ice cream cones or Mike disassembling a car that could have been removed to get to something that actually mattered. Like Jimmy becoming Saul. Or Gus spending five to ten minutes ordering a bottle of wine and flirting with some faggot waiter. This is just the producers huffing their own farts and reddit praising the smell.

The entire sales pitch of the show was "watch Jimmy break bad into becoming Saul". Instead we get long sequences of Mike throwing shoes onto a power line or two meth heads going on a crime spree because they saw a legal advertisement for "half off your court cases".

I guess the whole point is that Kim wanted to be a great lawyer fighting back Jimmy’s influence but then we saw various scenes where she was the bigger trickster over Jimmy. Felt like a lot of wasted time that was better spent elsewhere.

Kim starts out as the straight lawyer to Jimmy's unethical approach. But by the end she's even worse than Jimmy. And Jimmy is some reluctant lap dog who can't say "no" to Kim and does her bidding. And finally when Howard is killed it shocks Kim into quitting law. And Jimmy becomes trapped in the cartel looking for a way out (which was the exact opposite of his Breaking Bad character).

 

[BigBadBastich]

After a few seasons it just felt like an incredibly autistic man trying to correct plotholes in his favourite TV show. Who cares why Hector is in a wheelchair, who cares if Saul said DMV by accident because we know what he fucking meant by it, who cares about the logisitics of creating a meth lab underneath a laundromat etc. Hell an offhand comment in Breaking Bad means that we need to see who Lalo is etc. As far as I'm concerned BCS was a wonderfully shot and directed show that unintentionally fucked with the canon because all of the mysteries were somehow even lamer explained than simply letting the viewer roll with

I joked with someone once and said BCS is the Star Wars Prequels of TV shows in that everything has to connect the original series, no matter how inane and pointless it needed to be. Stuff like Hector getting his bell is literally "Anakin built C3PO" levels of worldbuilding.

 

[Thankfully Illogical]

I joked with someone once and said BCS is the Star Wars Prequels of TV shows in that everything has to connect the original series, no matter how inane and pointless it needed to be. Stuff like Hector getting his bell is literally "Anakin built C3PO" levels of worldbuilding.

Can’t forget Lalo coining Krazy 8’s nickname. I found that even funnier than the bell thing.

 

[Tom Nook's Gloryhole]

Can’t forget Lalo coining Krazy 8’s nickname. I found that even funnier than the bell thing.

NOTHING will top the DMV thing for sheer autism. I nearly quit the show right then because it felt like a "Hey viewers, I didn't actually make a mistake in Breaking Bad so maybe you should give me even more good boy points, maybe even a tummy rub"

 

[ShittlerNiggler]

Can’t forget Lalo coining Krazy 8’s nickname. I found that even funnier than the bell thing.

My favourite is Saul asking Walter and Jesse if Lalo sent them because Mike just didn't outright tell him that he was dead and kept it vague all these years for no reason.