Better Call Saul

OTOH, I don't know how anyone gets through an entire episode of Two Broke Girls without being swallowed by an existential void from which there is no escape.

Finished this last night after starting it literally months ago, the season really dragged and I just didn't have the enthusiasm to watch the next one. Then I shotgunned the final three in one night - there was a hell of payoff and suddenly there seemed to be a reason to keep watching them. Werner in particular was a terrific character.

But the rest, good god, stop making us work so hard. Jimmy's depression was necessary but dull, Jimmy selling cellphones was dull, the Nacho/Hector Salamanca stuff was really fucking dull. The first three-quarters of Mike's arc was dull. It's difficult to think of a character who feels more wasted in this than Gus Fring.

For a fundamentally character-driven show it feels largely unconcerned with developing most of characters in interesting ways. I started to wish they'd decided to focus on Jimmy alone and given him a wider circle of friends and acquaintances rather than just Kim, Howard and Chuck.

I don't usually disagree with you re tv but I really really do on this

finally watched all of this show after giving it a wide berth after being unimpressed with the start of the first season.

i have ended up enjoying it, but with so many reservations.

the idea that this is better than breaking bad, or even worse, "more character driven" is preposterous to me. the jimmy and kim romance is one of the least believable on-screen romances ever, why are they together? jimmy is a serial liar and conman who were are supposed to root for, a sort of grifter with a heart of gold who could have gone good given the right circumstances. i don't really think this comes off. he's a shyster, kim, though she likes to dip her toes into his world once in a while, is basically a goody-two shoes and it's taken far, far too much for her to grow sick of his frequently highly criminal behaviour if people think that the female characters in breaking bad are ... bad, and they are, then that's definitely repeated here, kim is very underdeveloped as a character. mike's turn to the criminal and total respect for fring really doesn't jibe with literally everything else we know about the character.

i also don't think i've ever watched a whole season of a show where main characters have little or no involvement with each other. why is mike in this show about saul? although i honestly enjoy mike's parts more than jimmy's.

chicks dig a bad boy

yeah but he's not sexy type bad boy he's slimy

well they're already in a relationship by the time the show starts so who knows. I thought the implication was that he cleaned up his act after the Chicago Sunroof thing, only to have Slippin' Jimmy slowly come back, driven by certain events. They worked in the mailroom together and neither of them seem to have any free time whatsoever. I had gotten the impression that those smoking breaks were the only time they had to really socialize with anyone.

I agree that Mike's motivations are a bit unclear, but that was a little odd in Breaking Bad too, why does he need to leave $25 mil to his daughter when realistically she'd be taken care of for like 2% of that. I see that as Mike needing something to do in retirement (he's got no other family, apparently) + respect for a man as meticulous and careful as he is.

also, I think the Mike/Saul thing is kinda cool, its neat that this is basically two separate shows that occasionally collide. I wonder how that comes off to people who haven't watched Breaking Bad.

btw I haven't seen S4 yet - its not on Netflix or Hulu...how are y'all watching it?

well they're already in a relationship by the time the show starts so who knows.

they’re long-time friends (who’ve probably had sex once or thrice) when the show starts, they don’t become a couple until a season or two in


btw I haven't seen S4 yet - its not on Netflix or Hulu...how are y'all watching it?

it was on TV six months ago!

ah, its on Prime. gotta pay for it but whatever, it's worth it

only up to E4 so I'm not totally caught up yet but a have a few stray observations. #1, Rhea Seehorn has a really great voice. #2, I love how this show (and Breaking Bad) handles injuries - when someone like Jesse or Nacho gets mangled, they gradually heal over the course of 3-4 episodes, instead of all at once like a lot of shows do. Jesse's face was messed up for like, 25% of BB. Can't think of another lead character getting his ass kicked so much

I am constantly surprised that people rate Breaking Bad as highly as they do, especially in comparison to Better Call Saul (which is one of my favourite shows ever, I think). I went back to rewatch a few scenes from Breaking Bad as a refresher, right when I was in the thick of BCS S3, and was stunned at how one-note a performance Bryan Cranston was delivering, and how completely inept Aaron Paul was as an actor, and how ham-fisted the writing was. In comparison, Chuck is one of the best characters I've ever seen on TV, both in the way he was written and McKean's performance

But whatever *jazz hands away*

i was a huge fan of BB but in retrospect it was def all DRAMZ! all the time.

I definitely prefer the more relaxed pace & slower burn of Better Call Saul.

I still haven't seen the most recent season of this, but the issue I had with "breaking bad" (which I loved) is that it's ott from the very start. Vats of acid and all that. So it really has nowhere to go other than "how will he get out of this mess and who will he take down with him?" Which is/was great! But it got ... yeah, just ott, almost to the point of campy at times, imo.

Breaking Bad was SUPER-FUN television, and "how will he get out of this mess and who will he take down with him?" was delightful to be stressed out by, and to feel horribly complicit in.

Better Call Saul is a different show. It retains the skill at making you feel invested in the success of horrible people, but spreads it across more characters and lets you hope for their redemption this time -- even though we know all along that Jimmy will only get worse, and the best we can hope for Kim is that she escapes his life and the series.

Saul is a better and richer story, but that doesn't retroactively make Breaking Bad crap for having not been trying to do the same things. Looking great and making the audience nervous are very hard things to do!

BB was far from crap! But BCS is better.

Better Call Saul is an incredibly subpar sketch comedy program compared to Mr. Show. Sorry that's just how I feel.

I... think Breaking Bad was really crap, in retrospect. I can't believe I watched a show for so many seasons with those six leads, bleah! Glad they made a spin-off show with the three best characters, though

I only finished S3 of BCS maybe last week and I'm just shocked about Chuck, and what an incredible character he is, and what an amazing performance.

I watched BCS first and then BB. It worked really well that way! Especially made Mikes death a lot more poignant.

fgti included tho I do think it was great trash

included = otm

You people are mad, BB is great.

otm

not about to go back and rewatch either show... but BCS leading by a hair for me. It may depend on how the hell they wrap it up.

anyone know when the next season starts? Have they said how many seasons they expect to make?

Yeah, shit talkers in this thread acting like producing five seasons of incredibly gripping drama with a constantly propulsive plot and continually raising stakes which actually comes to a satisfying conclusion, and doing all that with style and wit is somehow no big achievement.

Granted the acting is better and the characters perhaps more deeply drawn in BCS (which I like), but come on. A lot of it is treading water which BB never did for a second (YMMV on 'Fly').

xpost

Very different shows in terms of mood, like/love both. BCS is probably more consistent, but it does meander along at times; BB was all over the place, but at its best, pantheon.

love both of them in different ways

Well, apparently in 2019 shit-talking Breaking Bad is something that only happens in private conversation and over text-message and we're not ready to have The Talk in public just yet

BB was undeniably thrilling to watch week-to-week but of the canonical Great Shows it's the one I'm least likely to ever revisit.

The treasure of today is the trash of tomorrow.

Well, apparently in 2019 shit-talking Breaking Bad is something that only happens in private conversation and over text-message and we're not ready to have The Talk in public just yet

― flamboyant goon tie included, Thursday, April 4, 2019 8:58 AM (fifteen minutes ago)

it makes you sexist iirc, deeply steeped in stuff and whatnot

If anything I wish Breaking Bad treaded water more. It was cool that the plot was always hurtling forward but it was undeniably stressful to watch, especially if your only time to watch it is right before falling asleep (as it was for me). I'm still impressed at how well everything came together - my only complaints were 1) the foreshadowing of the plane crash in S2, which leads you to believe one thing but is actually something completely different - once you get down to 15 minutes left in the last episode, as soon as they reveal Jane's dad as an air traffic controller, you know exactly what's going to happen (the plot point itself was great, I just wish they hadn't done the B&W foreshadowing) and 2) Andrea's brother just so happening to be the one who shot Combo, the sort of random coincidence that this show was pretty good at avoiding. Still, it kind of feels like nitpicking given how great the whole thing was.

Nah it's more like I cannot remember a time when I've seen a more acutely observed and perfectly realized character as I see in Chuck. His relationships with Jimmy and Howard gave me some deep recognitions of stuff I've subconsciously observed in others but never been able to nail down... a specific trait of claiming to "care deeply" for an individual you're actually trying to destroy? a quintessentially American character!

We're nothing if not inveterate self-mythologizers.

(A quality cultivated in the course of pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps and carving out a great nation with naught but our bare hands.)

Chuck is just Lois from Malcolm in the Middle; unlikeable but technically right about everything

nah, lois actually cares about everyone

also Chuck was wrong about lots, and would cut corners & mislead in order to try and trick Jimmy into revealing that Jimmy was cutting corners and misleading

Yes, the subtext being that Chuck had quite a bit more Slippin' to him than he ever would've admitted.

Chuck embodies so many interesting traits! First, this particular kind of hidden resentment that try-hards have for people who drift from situation to situation with minimal effort and are able to stay afloat with nothing but their charm and ambiguous morality. Second, this kind of scheming manipulation wherein an individual can convince others (and himself) that what he's doing is RIGHT and GOOD but it is in fact just a method of exerting power and influence. Third, this incredible psychosomania, which was so meticulously shown in the show that Yes He Is Faking and yet Yes It Is Real. There are so so so many dichotomies represented with the character that I just found him fascinating

I mean when you look at it from a certain angle, Chuck's sensitivity to electricity was just one big meticulously-maintained scam pulled to convince everyone (including himself) that he wasn't mentally ill.

what was Chuck wrong about?

I don't think Chuck's EHS was at all a scam, I think it was likely a psychological defensive response to the traumatic experience of his separation from Rebecca

Or even more: it was an extension of his constant need to retain as much control as possible over people around him. After he was forced to realize that "other humans have free will and you can't force them to do what you want all the time" (Rebecca leaving him), he developed this EHS as a method of attempting to exert control over Jimmy, Howard, Ernest, to try and force people into caring for him and doing his bidding. The fact that he was constantly insisting that people ground themselves before they enter his house? The fact that he admitted to playing up his symptoms to effect a confession by Jimmy? Affected symptoms, as psychosomatic illnesses go, are truly felt by the individual affecting them. Chuck believed he had EHS! His EHS was so painful that [spoiler]! This is what was so interesting about Chuck imo, he literally was faking it but also feeling it at the same time

^quality post^

I really miss this show

anyone know when the next season starts? Have they said how many seasons they expect to make?

They usually start each season 14 months later than the previous, so October is your best vague guess right now. Gould has said they're closer to the start of Breaking Bad than to the start of BCS, but would consider picking up with Gene once they run out of prequel.

That would be neat. Out of the (few) characters that survived Breaking Bad, Saul was the only one whose fate I wondered about

I completely forgot BCS isnt finished yet haha.

Chuck was an incredible character, yes. The first half of the most recent season felt very directionless without him.

Kim was my favorite character early on, but a lot of the meandering the last season or two has had to do with the Jimmy/Kim relationship. So in the end, I'll go with Chuck too as the show's greatest creation. I don't think I've ever encountered a character like him anywhere else. His condition was maybe a little gimmicky--or at least they twisted it into a thousand shapes as the situation warranted--but the Chuck/Jimmy relationship, their deep animosity (hatred, really) mixed with love and protectiveness and worship, was riveting.

update: no new eps until 2020.

Sounds like it's driven by cast members with commitments elsewhere:

http://theplaylist.net/amc-better-call-saul-season-5-2020-20190405/?fbclid=IwAR10afGkHuYJr495KPzkVcQH8ZWmsi7Rj-zYE5MVjDGkJYq0Dyxp2Sh6atM

That reminds me that the most interesting thing awaiting--"Well, we know clearly the end was already written before the beginning began"--is how and where BCS segues into BB. I actually thought they were ready for that at the end of season 1, when Jimmy drove away from parking-lot Mike (humming "Smoke on the Water") saying he'd never get bogged down doing the right thing again. But he goes on to cycle through that epiphany like six more times.