If Breaking Bad hadn't been such a great show, I certainly wouldn't have stuck with Better Call Saul for the three slow, slow and even slower seasons they've made so far. I'm excited to see if things pick up and there is a little bit of action instead of long, boring conversations.
It's definitely a better show to binge than to watch week-to-week. I fell off after the first season because it was pretty slow but watched the next two seasons in a couple weeks and it was fantastic.
It is a slow moving show so I can see a person that's not invested in the characters not finding enough to entertain them. I enjoy it don't think this is a series for everyone as my wife enjoyed BB but this show not so much.
How many more times can it be said that “Better Call Saul” is one of the best shows on television? As many more times as they’re willing to make new episodes.
Watching the ways in which the “Better Call Saul” team challenges themselves to push beyond the expected, beyond the easy, beyond the mundane (especially when depicting the most mundane of events) has been one of the most fascinating experiences possible for a TV fan.
As more is learned about these characters, all the details, spoken or not, that make them feel so real build upon one of the show’s most interesting truths: With a prequel, so many outcomes are already known. Thus, the most exciting mysteries are the ones based in character.
Where “Saul” is at its best . . . the subtle sequences where it’s not clear what might be happening, but sussing out why becomes more gripping than any dragon battle.
Only issue I see is that Saul and Mike look considerably older than their BB characters. It's a minor issue but Mike in particular is looking pretty worn down for a guy that hasn't yet ascended to RH man for the local mob boss.
I wouldn't say BCS is horrible. But it's definitely much slower then BB was, and it takes until about season 3 to get going. But I can see why it might turn some people off. Some people enjoy that super slow character building. And usually it leads to some kind of story arc that makes it all worth while. But it's certainly not on par with BB, and I don't get those people who say they like it better. BB drew you in almost immediately, and after episode 1 you just knew it was going to be epic all throughout.
BB was, and will forever be the standard that great TV series' are held to. BCS is clearly a tier or 2 below IMO. I feel that if you didn't watch BB, you would have a much harder time getting into it since you won't care about the cameos or returning characters from BB. Part of the fun of BCS is how it ties into the storylines from BB that weren't fully explained (Hector, Don Eladio, etc). You really needed to have watched BB first, and I think people would appreciate it more.
I wouldn't say BCS is horrible. But it's definitely much slower then BB was, and it takes until about season 3 to get going. But I can see why it might turn some people off. Some people enjoy that super slow character building. And usually it leads to some kind of story arc that makes it all worth while. But it's certainly not on par with BB, and I don't get those people who say they like it better. BB drew you in almost immediately, and after episode 1 you just knew it was going to be epic all throughout.
BB was, and will forever be the standard that great TV series' are held to. BCS is clearly a tier or 2 below IMO. I feel that if you didn't watch BB, you would have a much harder time getting into it since you won't care about the cameos or returning characters from BB. Part of the fun of BCS is how it ties into the storylines from BB that weren't fully explained (Hector, Don Eladio, etc). You really needed to have watched BB first, and I think people would appreciate it more.
Now quite as good as BB, but still a great show.
The hindsight is pretty rosy with BB. I always loved it, but IIRC the BB thread was full of complaints about episodes bein slow or whatever. I think people will come to appreciate BCS the same as BB, just not on a week-to-week basis.
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Breaking bad has an incredible amount of slow episodes. When I re watched it recently that's what I noticed. But the great episodes are just phenomenal and sort of hides that.
The farther out I get from the finale of Breaking Bad, the more the switch to the bikers as the villains bothers me. It didn't feel earned, and the rest of the series really earned its payoffs.
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The farther out I get from the finale of Breaking Bad, the more the switch to the bikers as the villains bothers me. It didn't feel earned, and the rest of the series really earned its payoffs.
Agree.
The final season is maybe the worst season but paradoxically contains probably the best individual episodes of the series.
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After Gus and Hector are wiped out, the final season seems like a drag. The confederate bike gang doesn't seem to be as ruthless as the Mexican cartels and it seems like the producers are running out of ideas and wants to write off Walter White's final demise as quickly as possible.
Now, Better Call Saul seems to be doing the opposite. Maybe the sponsors had paid for x number of seasons and the writers have to really do the slow burn to stretch the plot to as many episodes as possible.
The farther out I get from the finale of Breaking Bad, the more the switch to the bikers as the villains bothers me. It didn't feel earned, and the rest of the series really earned its payoffs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flash Walken
Agree.
The final season is maybe the worst season but paradoxically contains probably the best individual episodes of the series.
What to your mind was the toughest one you ever had in terms of, “What on earth are we gonna do now and why did we do this to ourselves?”
Well, my knee-jerk, Rorschach test reaction to that question is definitely the M60 machine gun.
That’s the one that pops into my mind. There were, to be sure, a great many and we could talk all day about it. All the time, we idiotically painted ourselves into a corner in the writers’ room. But the worst of all, in my memory, was the M60 machine gun. At the beginning of the final 16-episode run of the series, we’re there in the writers’ room and I’m thinking, “We gotta open this thing with something interesting and evocative. Something that tells us, oh man, there’s big drama afoot in these final 16 episodes.”
I don’t even remember who got the idea, because again, as I’ve said many times in interviews, the beauty of a writers’ room is it’s just one big hive mind. It doesn’t matter who says what. But the idea got floated that Walt buys this big belt-fed machine gun in the parking lot of a Denny’s. We had no frigging idea of what we were gonna do with that machine gun when we conceived of that.
And I figured, “Wow, 16 episodes. Oh man, we got all the time in the world. We’ll figure it out.” No idea what the hell Walt needed this thing for, which was so idiotic in hindsight. And I gotta tell you, the reason I remember it very distinctly is because working on the final four or five episodes of Breaking Bad, and my writers very astutely reminded me over and over again, whether I wanted to hear it or not, that we needed to work this machine gun thread into the storytelling.
. . . .
So, I don’t remember the big eureka moment. I remember, obviously we talked about, well, what do you need a machine gun for? It’s not just for killing one guy, it’s for a whole squad of guys. So, slowly but surely we started to figure out, “Well there’s gotta be a gang in there somewhere,” and the white supremacist gang led by Uncle Jack came into being. As always, we tried to play chess 20 moves ahead, but that’s as hard as it sounds. It’s really hard to figure that stuff out. So I don’t remember any particular eureka moment.
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I’m glad he had so much regret over The M60 Machine gun. The whole writing “hive collective” should be slapped. It felt like they completely forgotten the premise of the show that this was about a chemistry teacher finding salvation in the drug world. It should’ve ended with chemical warfare
Walt was a Chemist, not a Physicist
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I’m glad he had so much regret over The M60 Machine gun. The whole writing “hive collective” should be slapped. It felt like they completely forgotten the premise of the show that this was about a chemistry teacher finding salvation in the drug world. It should’ve ended with chemical warfare
Walt was a Chemist, not a Physicist
That's a good point about the chemistry.
Yeah I don't want to beat a dead horse here but so much of season 5 was mediocre to bad. Everything to do with the bikers, madrigal, Lydia etc. There were a few standout episodes but it was otherwise a letdown.
I also feel like pointing out that S4 episode Crawl Space, specifically the ending, was one of the greatest episodes of TV ever and I tend to rank BB quite a bit lower on the all time TV show list than most people (more like top 10 instead of top 5 or top 3).
Excited for tomorrow's season 4 premiere! So basically, last season, we know that Chuck committed suicide, Nacho tried to kill his boss Hector Salamanca and Gus has started to bring Mike into his world. The transition of Jimmy into Saul is probably 50% complete and I'd expect that by the end of this season, he closes into 100% completion.
The below clip is a preview of this season with some of the cast members and Odenkirk confirms the reveal of "Lalo" who was mentioned once in the Breaking Bad world when Saul was kidnapped by Walter and Jessie (clip below).
I've been re-watching season 3 these past few days and just want to say again that the 5th episode "Chicanery" was a freaking masterpiece. Simply outstanding acting especially by Michael McKean.
