With Better Call Saul having come to an end, many of us couldn't have predicted that the
seasons we've seen would compete with that of Breaking Bad, and it makes for an interesting
question.
What is the best season of the Breaking Bad universe?
Now many of us will have completely different answers from each other, and it can speaks
to the consistent quality that the writers have brought with these shows, but
I thought I would put together a ranking video discussing how I would place each of the seasons
from worst to best.
I personally think we haven't had a bad season from either of the
shows, or even with the tv movie, but I do have my favourites and I'm going to be presenting
them in this video.
But before I get into it, if you want to see more videos on the Better
Call Saul and Breaking Bad world, then don't forget to support this video by giving it
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But without further a do, lets dive into my ranking of every Better
Call Saul and Breaking Bad Season.
Placing at the bottom of my list, is El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie.
To me, the 2019 Netflix movie is by far the weakest entry from the Breaking Bad world,
and while I have many issues with it, it was still a good entry from Vince
Gilligan that brought fantastic visuals and interesting outlooks on Jesse Pinkman's escape
to freedom.
Looking back, I do think the ending of Jesse's arc in Breaking Bad was fine left
alone, even if there were loose ends about how he would escape that situation, but it
was equally intriguing to see the many flashbacks with
Todd that were used to frame his path to freedom.
Yes, Todd was quite distracting and the cameo scenes here were probably the weakest in this
universe, but it's a compelling 2 hour movie that still delivers in other departments.
Overall, it was unique to see this kind of project and I think the camerawork was one
of the standouts for me, especially in seeing Gilligans
use of cineamscope over the fullscreen format brought with the shows.
At the next spot, is my lowest ranked season in the Breaking Bad universe, and that is
Better Call Saul Season 2.
Now, the second season didn’t really progress things as much as I
thought it would have, especially after the intriguing character entries in the previous
season, but it did keep to the level that season 1 entered with, and that's still solid
in this list of incredibly well made television.
One thing is for sure, is that it gave us much more of Jimmy and Kim’s relationship,
and it progressed our knowledge of the McGill brothers,
making it still a crucial entry in this whole story.
And I can't forget that we got more of Nacho who would go on to be one of my favourite
characters in the spin off show.
Making the top 10 is season 4 of Better Call Saul.
I think from this point onwards every season comes very close in score for me.
And Season 4 was an entry that started to really tie-in
the prequel show to the former one.
We saw Gus Fring really setting out to build his empire with the help of Mike, and we get
quite the intriguing set of events that follow.
Whether its all the drama with the german engineers in
the superlab, the deadly measure that Mike has to carry through with, the boiling war
with the cartel, or the misteps that Jimmy makes, this
season was essential viewing, even if it is still setting up the connections between the
subplots.
It was season 4 that inched ever closer to reaching the tension that Breaking Bad
contained, and like season 2 of Breaking Bad, it was crucial for the characters and their
arcs come the end, especially with what we know about Mike and Gus come the events of
that show.
Again though, it retains it's genius humour, breathtaking images, and slowburn pace, to
keep you ready for more.
At no.9, I'm putting the first season of Better Call Saul.
The opening season of the prequel show really lived up to the hype, that like season 1 of
the parent example, had memorable moments, lines and commedy.
This was all used to set up the Slippin Jimmy persona or Jimmy Mcgill, and alongside his
relationship with Chuck, the scenes with Mike were also a standout.
They presented Mike as a more sympathetic anti-hero, and we especially see that in the
Five-O episode, which is all about Mike’s past and why he is where he is now.
It's episodes like this that indicated to us that the prequel
show had the opportunity to live up to greatness of Breaking Bad and really build over the
seasons, to make us learn more about these characters we thought we knew.
Better Call Saul may be a show about the side characters from Breaking Bad, but it certainly
makes them as important as ever.
Up next, is the season that kicked it all off, and that is, season 1 of Breaking Bad.
While most first seasons of great shows tend to be known as the last memorable ones, I
think it speaks to the quality of this series, with
all the gret moments we got at the start of the show.
It gave us the start of Walter White's turn, it built his partnership with Jesse, it set
up the first of the Salamanca villains and gave us a promise that things were only going
to get more explosive from here.
I think it's also a season that executed it's dark comedy better
then a lot of the Breaking Bad seasons that followed and having rewatched it recently,
I really forgot how memorable that stuff really was.
But of course, there's all the fantastic photography and central character work with
walt that has to be praised, being a season that led to the first of many emmys for this
all time great show.
At the next spot is season 3 of the original show.
This really was the increasing boil when it came to the show's second half and the death
of Gale and Walter's killings in Half Measure and Full Measure, really kickstarted the perfected
thrils that this show would bring week in week out.
I could also mention the one minute episode, the problems between walt and Skyler
and the development we got with Jesse and that's only half of the interesting decisions
that were made in this third season.
It's right up there when it comes to Breaking Bad, and if it
wasn't for the satisfying payoff of the later seasons, this may have been closer to the
top for me.
But overall, it's a season that delivers some of the best performances of the entire
show, whether it be with Jesse's emotional hospital scene with Walt, both partners anxieties
in the lab, Hank's struggles and ultimately explosive turns in the heisenberg case.
It's a season that I'm sure many will put towards
the top and the more I watch it, the higher it moves up my list.
Coming in at no.6 is Better Call Saul season 3.
This was a season that contained the important consequences that the show would carry through
to the end with Jimmy McGill's redemption arc.
In particular, the courtroom drama that this show is mostly half tuned in with, came to
blistering heights in the lawsuit that took place between Jimmy and his brother Chuck.
As Jimmy wins, we see how Chuck's warnings were truly
right, and his eventual death is one of the most emotional goodbyes to a character in
this universe.
Like the parent show did with Walt, Skyler and Hank, we get the consequences of
the main character's actions when it comes to family, and the psychological twists between
the brothers is one part moving and one part sickening to say the least.
It had some of the best performances and probabaly the best episode in the whole show with the
season 3's Chicanery.
And to me, it'll go down as one of the most rewatched and praised seasons in Better
Call Saul, containing a fitting, yet moving goodbye for Michael McKean's Chuck.
Rounding out the top 5, is Breaking Bad Season 2.
When it comes to the next two seasons on my list, I found it incredibly hard to decide
how I would place them, but I put season 2 of
Breaking Bad next, because I think the following seasons do payoff slightly more.
But even though I say that, this season was absolutely crucial to the underlining emotion
between Walt and Jesse and how their relationship
would ultimately develop over the seasons to come.
There's standout moments here like the masterful 4 days out episode, the death of Jane, the
plane crash ending, or even the development of Jesse in the peakaboo episode and the introduction
of Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul.
They all end up being important pilars of the
characters we follow and it becomes a staple for the darker paths they will eventually
go down.
I really love this season and it's very tight when it comes to how I positioned the next
3 or 4 seasons on my list, but season 2 of Breaking
Bad is iconic for many reasons and I understand why many would have it closer to the top.
Next, I'm placing season 5 of Better Call Saul.
This season was the final nail in the cofin for me, when it comes to Better Call Saul
being one of the greatest shows of all time alongside
Breaking Bad.
Like its predesecor, it ramped up the tension, yet it once again didn't lose sight of it's
differences, giving us great moments with the prequel characters that we love.
One of them is Kim Wexler, and it still baffles me to this day how Rhea Seehorn didn't get
an emmy for her performance here.
Her move down bad choice road was exceptional to watch and I
will never forget the iconic and tense moment between her, lalo and Jimmy in their apartment.
And I cannot mention this season without referencing the Bagman episode, which is one of my
all time favourite episodes in the Breaking Bad universe.
The exhausting yet violent ramifications of that episode are felt in the episodes that
come and it's no wonder why they used a scene between Jimmy and Mike from this episode
in the finale of the show.
The camerawork and broad scope of it is felt in all its moments, and Vince Gilligan knows
how to capture the desert to the best of his capabilities.
Overall, it's a rollercoaster season that is bookmarked with a thrilling conclusion
between Nacho and Lalo, and it set up a final season that we
all couldn't wait for.
Making the final 3 is Breaking Bad Season 4.
It was hard for me to decide on these last 3 seasons and especially between the final
2 of Breaking Bad, which to me were packed full on
satisfying moments, great production work and compelling performances.
Season 4 has all of this, and it's fully on display in the episodes that give us the end
of Gus Fring's reign in the criminal world.
And it's also on display in the many iconic episodes of season 4 too.
Whether it be in the explosive Face off episode, which is one of my all time favourites of
tv, or the devilishly tense Crawl Space.
This season is really the one that made me have all the trust that the showrunners would
nail the ending and give us many more standout moments before
the show concluded.
With this being Gus Fring's final season, we were given some absolute badass moments
to completed the villain's arc, especially when it comes to the salamancas.
But I guess he should have also brought those full
measures when it came to Walter White in the end too.
Still, it's a high octane season that showcases Walter's complete turn, the demise of
Gus and set's up a final season of heisenberg's reign in full effect.
The runner up on my list is the season that's just unfolded, and that's none other than
Better Call Saul Season 6.
Coming into the final season of the prequel show, I didn't think that
Gilligan and Gould could conjure another perfect end within the same universe, and for the
character of Saul Goodman they did just that.
After a season full of shocking moments and endings to characters we've followed, it was
ultimately the telling of Jimmy, going from someone of Greed, desire, love and loops to
someone ultimately with a redemption of their character.
The creators of the show staged the deaths of Nacho, Howard and Lalo with brilliance,
and it all fed into either the character of Jimmy or the fears that he and Kim would
face going forward, ones that eventually transformed them.
From it's superb cinemataography, to it's tense writing, and it's masterful character
work, season 6 of Better Call Saul is a time jumping rollercoaster that doesn't lose
site of it's identity, nor it's ending.
It delivered in every setting it went too, and yes I am someone who absolutely loved
the Gene stuff we got in Nippy too.
Especially with what that episode meant for Jimmy come the finale.
We ultimately got the reverse to Breaking Bad in all the best of ways, and from top
to bottom, I consider it a perfect season of television.
And finally at the top spot, is Breaking Bad Season 5.
In my eyes, this was another perfect season of TV and it was always going to be hard to
dethrone this.
When it comes to my own personal ranking, and maybe with the advantage
of time things may change, I still consider the end of Breaking Bad to be the perfect
conclusion for a TV series and much like the number 2
spot on my list, this season combines expectly crafted production and character work to bring
an explosive end to Walter White's journey.
In a similar way to the spin off's ending, way we
saw a shocking end to characters we'd followed, and most importantly with that of Hank in
the Ozymandias episode, which is still my favourite episode of tv to this day.
In the end, Walter got everything he wanted but he also lost
the connection to his family in the process, showing us the immaculate completion of a
villian's arc and the end of the changing process he'd
been on since that very first season.
There was no dull moment and it answered every question we had, other than the few loose
ends that were answered surrounding Jesse in El Camino.
Still the arcs of all the characters were answered in fitting ways for how we knew them,
and it's a season of TV that I think is very hard to beat.
Again, season 6 of Better Call Saul may top it over time and rewatches, but to
me, it did come very close and showed that both shows had perfect endings to the stories
they were telling.
But that was my ranked list of all the Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad seasons.
Like I said before, to me, there hasn't been a bad entry in this Breaking Bad universe
and even the seasons that are ranked lower on my list are
still really great.
I haven't felt that way about many franchises in history and I think it speaks to the quality
with which Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould and the whole team work at.
And having seen many fans have different rankings to mine, I think it shows how difficult they
have made it to judge all of the work they've put to the small screen.
If anything, it gets me super excited to see what Vince and co does next and hopefully
it will be another groundbreaking series of television.
But how would you rank the seasons of Better Call Saul and Breaking
Bad, and like me, do you think the final season of the prequel show is right at the top?
Let me know down below in the comments section.
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