Saul's story

Breaking Bad, which many critics call the best TV show ever, ended in such an epic blaze of glory that a spinoff prequel may seem sacrilegious to fans, like re-digging an enshrined grave. But with sharp writing, measured black humor, and frankly, more enjoyable characters, AMC’s Better Call Saul may get its own shrine.

Breaking Bad fans know him as Saul Goodman (the versatile Bob Odenkirk), the smarmy lawyer in Albuquerque who helps lead character Walter White launder his meth-earned millions. But here, “Saul” is James (Jimmy) McGill, a public defense lawyer making $700 for defending three teenage boys who broke into a morgue and did unthinkable things to a corpse’s head. Jimmy is so broke that he lives/works in a closet behind a Vietnamese nail salon and sputters over a $3 parking ticket. He’s also taking care of his older brother Chuck, a once-successful lawyer now crippled by a mental disorder.

The premiere opens with a black-and-white flash-forward: a paunchier, balding Jimmy is slapping out dough at an Omaha mall Cinnabon when he suddenly senses a man watching him. He breaks into a cold sweat, then visibly relaxes when he realizes it’s a false alarm. Later, he’s home alone watching old VHS recordings of his infamous “Better Call Saul!” advertisements. It’s a gorgeous, detail-rich opening, a promising reminder of director Vince Gilligan’s mesmerizing cinematography—and a foreshadow of misfortunes to come.

Jimmy is Walter White’s mirror image. Unlike Walter, an overqualified, misery-swallowing high-school chemistry teacher who played by the rules until he waded into the blood-boiling Phlegethon of hell, Jimmy is an underqualified, glib-tongued scam-artist-turned-lawyer who hopscotches around his own chalk-drawn squares of rules and ethics.

What makes Saul satisfying is the colorful way it connects the dots delineating familiar characters: We already know Saul, who at some point in his career changed his name because, he explains to Walter, “the homeboys want a pipe-hitting Jew.” We meet Jimmy as a law-abiding, bottom-rung lawyer, and learn that at some point in his life, he’s banished to bun-baking in Omaha, full of regrets and paranoia. So what happened in between those dots?

Spoiler alert: In episode two, a bound-and-gagged Jimmy is in the New Mexico desert with a wire cutter clamped around his finger. Towering over him is his captor Tuco (Raymond Cruz, still awesomely odious), whom many will recognize as Walter’s psychopathic meth distributor, and sniveling nearby are two skateboarders who’d botched Jimmy’s con and insulted Tuco’s abuelita.

Stuck in an impossible situation, Jimmy unleashes his sole weapon: his mouth. Somehow, he blabbers his way to freedom, and then cleverly barters for the skateboarders’ lives by coddling Tuco’s ego: “You show everybody that you’re the man, but that you’re fair, that you’re just!” Jimmy eventually whittles down the skateboarders’ punishment from skin-flaying to eye-gouging to one broken leg each. He and Tuco shake hands to finalize this sick negotiation of “justice.”

That’s what distinguishes Saul from Breaking Bad: Rather than facing justice for bad choices, Jimmy tinkers with his own system of justice. He finds little allure in the nihilistic power that seduced Walter; instead, he’s just a hustler trying to stay afloat in a world of sociopaths and criminals by cheating on a few rules. He’s self-aware of his faults, but he progressively accepts them through twisted logic and half-truths.

There’s a turning point when Jimmy’s counting piles of ill-gotten cash—the kind that’s stuffed into duffel bags—and he mutters, “Upon this rock I will build my church.” He’s quoting what Jesus said when Peter confessed Jesus is the Christ—except in Jimmy’s case, he’s confessing a life built upon idols and lies. Ironically, Jimmy forgot the second part of Matthew 16:18: “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Saul is a tragically familiar story, one whose conclusion we already know—and not just because it’s a prequel.