To a lot of people who've watched Better Call Saul, the show has cemented itself as one
of the best of all time, and while I think there will be countless debates over whether
it surpassed Breaking Bad or not, I think one
thing it did perfectly was show how a prequel series should be approached.
Many shows and movies fall victim to the parent one, but there are
many reasons why Better Call Saul stands out as a rare example of one that delivers.
In this video, I'm going to be discussing why I think Better Call Saul is the ultimate
prequel and why it elevates Breaking Bad in numerous ways.
There will be spoilers in this video, so if you're not up to date on Better Call Saul,
then I would recommend catching up before watching
my analysis.
But before I get into it, if you want to see more topical videos on Better Call Saul, then
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But without further a do, lets dive into why Better
Call Saul is the ultimate prequel.
So last week Better Call Saul came to an end, and according to Vince Gilligan, it was very
likely the final straw in a universe that included two series and a tv movie.
Yes he did say he may come back to it if everything he does
after fails, but knowing the quality that Gilligan, Peter Gould and the Breaking Bad
team put to the small screen, I think it's likely we've seen
the end of these stories.
And that in my opinion is a good thing.
Not because it's ending, but because these writers and creators know when to stop and
when to put a fully told story to bed.
They gave us three projects that interweaved yet breathed on their own with certain aspects
and that's some thing that many franchises within the tv and film sphere fail to pull
off successfully.
Other franchises quite frequently take it too far and upset their fan base by either
retreading familar ground too often or try to bring something new in an unsatisfying
way.
Take Star Wars for example.
But Better Call Saul is an example of a spin off or prequel that was tackled with care
and respect when it came to it's central character, yet it made us
feel differently about the parent show in satisfying ways too.
Originally, a spin-off show about Walter White’s sleasy lawyer seemed unnecessary and also
quite uninteresting.
How could they ever create a prequel show that would
be as intriguing as Heisenberg’s thrilling crimes and eventful turn.
But it gave the room to do a show differently, one that would eventually
lead into the danger of the parent show's events, but one that would focus centrally
on building a multi-layered and visually transcending drama that includes a multi-genre structure.
Better Call Saul seamlessly combines the degrading nature of Jimmy McGill’s soul with the Breaking
Bad cartel subplots that come into the forefront with Mike Ehrmantraut and Gus Fring,
and it goes a step beyond by letting us see more of an emotional anker with side those
characters too.
And therefore, the debate quickly became, has Better Call Saul reached or surpassed
the heights of Breaking Bad?
We are left to debate that question until the end of time, with these two impactful
stories of human nature.
One being how a con man’s story of greed, yet
intimacy evolves to become a tale of redemption.
And another, involving a science teacher’s change into a narcassistic yet regretful meth
king pin.
Better Call Saul did the prequel right and one reason for that is that it didn't copy
Breaking Bad, even if it does include elements of that world or moments that shock us to
our core, like with that show.
With Breaking Bad being appreciated as one of the greats of television, it must have
been tempting to do that again and give the viewers as much fan service as they
would want and share it's story beats.
But we actually get one that transcends those beats, yet crucially does things differently.
While they both focus on flawed characters, Better Call
Saul's drama is about introspection, rather than destructive change and it focuses on
the smaller details that lie in relationships, whether it be the unusual, yet warm connection
between Jimmy and Kim or the disjointed one between Jimmy and his brother Chuck.
And I think this is the main reason the show didn't intially attract the mass viewership
that the previous show did, because it had a slower, more natural
pace rather then the intensity that Breaking Bad sustained throughout.
It created a barrier for Vince and the writters intially, but over
the years it was worth it, because all the relationships and plot points we watched unfold,
communicated the important messages by the end.
They stuck with the unique telling they were constructing and didn't try to make it Breaking
Bad 2.0.
That had already been done phenomenally well, but it was time do something equally as impactful
in creating a new formula.
It's a singular piece of work that can be appreciated
on it's own, and yet it still furthers our thoughts on the Breaking Bad world that follows.
Who originally would have thought that this story would ultimately lead to showcassing
a regretful character, one that hasn't redeemed himself since the beginning and even after
he got a new identity, following the collapse of his
Saul Goodman empire.
Who would have thought that Kim Wexler would be the literal light at the end of the cigerette,
that helps him to finally have that redemption.
And who would have thought that we would have gotten flashback
scenes with characters we already know from Breaking Bad, used to highlight these characters
regretting a choice they've made, yet reversing that notion.
It's all really interesting character work and for them to keep us guessing right until
the end, is almost unheard of in prequels with the viewers knowledge of what's to
come.
They go beyond that narratively, thematically and also structurally, showing us the before,
the time period that we thought we knew fully and then the after to give us a new
message.
One that tells us, while a character may always be this way, it's not too late for them to
make a right decision.
A character that fully owns up to his sins and Breaks good if
you will.
Better Call Saul avoids the prequel problem using it's multi-timelines, and even adds
to the characters whose fates are already set in motion.
The fates of Mike and Gus are decided, but we see more into their mental
being, how they function and how they built their relationship, ultimately giving us another
side to their ways and what they fear.
And then, while Jimmy, Kim, Howard, Nacho, Chuck and
others had uncertain fates, the effect of their stories would ultimately go beyond Breaking
Bad.
The show works because it's essentially a sequel, just as much as it is a prequel.
It makes this before story important for the audience and makes us care about it's ever-building
use of detail and what it means for these players in the long run.
And this is where I should touch a bit more on the show's brilliant use of character work.
Quite traditionally, spin offs or prequels find it hard to create new characters that
feel as impactful as the ones that came before.
Or to go a bit further, even their known characters feel like they are executed with a lesser
effect in comparison to the original.
But Better Call Saul's returning and new members, are
given roles that have a whole new purpose.
Many people were as interested in Kim Wexler as they were in Walter and Jesse, and that
role was the crucial pin in Jimmy’s storyline.
And then we can even extend this to Michael Mando’s portrayal of Nacho, in which they
gave us a gangster that was more affectionate and relatable than
what we've seen before.
There's also Chuck Mcgill with his ever-present warnings about Jimmy and how he's always known
him to be the way he is.
And they gave us a psychopathic villain in Lalo Salamanca, that has to be up there with
the iconic villains we saw in Breaking Bad.
He gave the show it's extreme sense of threat towards the end of the pre-Breaking Bad timeline,
yet his character maintained the dose of twisted humour that this show built it's identity
upon.
While most of these characters died, they either impacted the story of Jimmy in crucial
ways or left their mark on the world that everyone else operates in.
After Chuck died, his constant message about Jimmy was taken up by Jimmy himself by the
end and he ultimately came clean.
Lalo changed Jimmy and Kim's lives forever, and it led to the latter walking out, which
in turn, helped birth Saul Goodman.
And even in Lalo's fatal moments with Gus, we could say
that this made things clearer to Gus.
That while he will pursue his revenge on the Cartel even further, he can't possibly have
the chance to settle down with another partner in this line
of work.
And then with Nacho we also got someone who went out telling Gus and the cartel what he
really thought of them and saving the person he cares about in the process.
It's how the smaller character falls victim to this deadly
world, but how the life of them shines through and that's what becomes investing.
It can be debated that the deaths of these characters are
more impactful then those in Breaking Bad, and while that's up to everyone to decide,
I think what makes this a conversation, is how they've made us focus on the character
details even more.
How they've grown characters and given them meaningful endings, just as great as the ones
in Breaking Bad.
And while giving us new characters to invest in, like I touched on before,
it made the returning cast more affective too.
Gus is given an arc with much more sadness yet reflection and Mike is more of a tragic
hero here, then the henchmen to Fring we saw in
Breaking Bad.
But most importantly, the series builds its main character with the most interesting layers
too.
In Breaking Bad, Saul Goodman mostly served as comic relief, whereas in
Better Call Saul, he's reframed entirely as a deeply tragic figure with a complex history.
A man on a cycle of not changing for the good, becoming worse, until the changing of Kim
Wexler, his true love, makes him understand the poison
that he is to those around him.
And all of this culminates to fundamentally change how we think about Breaking Bad, making
us not just see the importance he had in Heisenberg's empire,
but the identity with which he has taken up and why he was that way.
Watching Breaking Bad after Better Call Saul, gives every appearance
from Saul, Mike and Gus more meaning and we can look at it with more tragedy then we ever
did before.
But alongside the characters and narrative beats, the show goes even further in creating
a just as compelling prequel.
I cannot mention all these great things without at least mentioning
the masterful production and cinematography of the show, whether it's effectively communicating
it's powerful meaning through a single frame, conveying tone in a musical note or
sustaining the pacing of a moment within the edit.
The Better Call Saul cinematography for instance excels in just about every area.
It builds mood with it's lighting, it frames it's
subjects using a variety of angles and camera movement, and it made the tv montage the best
it's ever been.
Whether it be the something stupid montage or the Cinnabon montage, it get's
it's message across in the space of a few minutes effectively.
I will be doing a video on the cinematography at some point because I could talk at length
about that in a whole video, but like most people who've seen the entirety
of Saul, I agree that the photography is absolutely stunning in this show and is some of the best
I've ever seen.
There's shots that linger within our minds for the rest of time, whether
it be the opening shot of Gene in his home watching his Saul Goodman commercials in colour,
to then see that shown to him again and leading to his eventual arrest.
Or the shot of a blue flower at the beginning of an episode, grown at the deathsite of Nacho,
to indicate the life that he embodied and displayed, even if he was
in a doomed line of work.
Or even the image of the Zaphiro Anejo bottle top lying in the road, signalling that Kim
and Jimmy's relationship is poison for others.
Yet reversely, it can communicate that they are the one thing that
together, aids Jimmy's redemption arc in the end too.
It's important imagery that isn't just there to be pretty.
Breaking Bad had amazing cinematography too but I think that this is
one area that Better Call Saul has progressed in and it helps to really elevate the ideas
it leaves in our mind.
But yes, the overall production on Better Call Saul helps to sustain
its slow-build pacing, that while slow, is effective and right for this kind of show.
In the end, it all builds on what happens and on
rewatch it's even more effective.
And I think it's this slower build that became too much of a change for some viewers in the
earlier seasons.
But those who have stuck with it and become comfortable with what Better Call
Saul was trying to tell us and the way it was doing so, have been rewarded in it's final
bow.
The show is now being labelled as one of the all-time greats and that's based on a lot
of its own merits.
The telling of Jimmy McGill's story is much different to what we saw in Breaking Bad,
and after watching both shows multiple times, I think it's too simple to just
compare it to that show.
I understand why though and it's interesting to see what people would pick, but I guess
what I'm leading to is, why put Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul against
one another when you can appreciate both for what they each do great?
I mean the fact that viewers are even asking the question of what's better at all tells
me that Better Call Saul has done what it set out to achieve, and that's
quite a rare feat which we don't see much of.
A prequel series that offers it's own characteristics as powerfully as the original did.
It's crazy that we've even gotten to a point where
this is a debate and I think it speaks to the power of Better Call Saul as a great example
of the prequel.
But that was my video essay on Better Call Saul being the perfect prequel series.
Of course, we can all have favourites when it comes to two of the best shows of all time,
but I think it's great to appreciate both shows having
achieved individual feats.
I can't wait to rewatch the Breaking Bad universe again and again in the future and I think
it'll be a long time before we see the level of quality we got
in this universe in another.
But that's just my opinion, and I'm interested to hear your thoughts towards Better Call
Saul being a perfect prequel, alongside how would you rank it with
your favourite shows of all time?
Let me know down below in the comments section and stay tuned for more uploads on the show
over the next couple of weeks, including a ranking video
on all seasons of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.
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But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed it, I've been Cortex and as always make some noise.