Better not watch Saul - he's run out of gas

Season 1 of Better Call Saul was an interesting jaunt with a few really good scenes - Mike helping the nebbish pharmacy worker in a drug-for-cash exchange, Saul's (Jimmy McGill, in this series) ill-conceived scam to entrap motorists into a drive-by collision, his pathetic little office in back room of a nail salon, his frustrating attempts to manage a potentially huge class-action case - all good, as he might say, though in truth I was never convinced that this was really the back story of the Saul who became the injudicious lawyer who helps Walt throughout Breaking Bad - this seemed like just another character played by same actor (Bob Odenkirk). Saw the first episode of Season 2 and will watch no more - it was plain evidence that the creators of this series have no idea where it's going nor do they care. We see Jimmy and his appealing lawyer/girlfriend scam a guy (himself a scammer) out of an expensive meal (Jimmy pretends to be a naif seeking stock advice from a man who's clearly trolling for suckers - and gets what he deserves) - but there's nothing especially clever, funny, or significant about that. The episode reprises the drug-sale scene of the previous season but in doing so makes it worse, not better. In short, the idea has run its course and the show has run out of gas, and I think fans of Breaking Bad, and of Odenkirk for that matter, should just let it alone so as not to ruin the recollections.

To Live Outside the Law: The good and the bad in the finale of Season 1 of Better Call Saul

Each episode of Better Call Saul has at least one damn good scene with Breaking Bad-quality writing that makes the episode and the series itself worth watching: the scene in which the ex-cop takes signs on as a bodyguard for the hapless young man who's selling some stolen pills to a gangster-thug is one great scene in the penultimate episode, and in the finale for Season 1 Jim's mental and emotional breakdown during the Bingo game is a classic: the kind of one-man scene that would be a great exercise for an acting class or for an audition. That said, some aspects of season 1 were quite disappointing: overall, it felt as if this should have been a one-season prequel, but perhaps, realizing they had a pretty good show going, Gilligan and Gould decided to stretch out the timeline - so this season ends with Jimmy's decision to go to the dark side, to live outside the law and, presumably, to represent those (like Walter White) who do so as well - not the sweet clients he's built up in his elder-law practice. Some of the plot mechanics, as Jim/Saul/Odenkirk would or might say: Just didn't do it for me. For example, I never bought into the fact that his brother, Chuck, would want him out of the law firm because he's "not a real lawyer" - when everything up to that point suggested Chuck was proud of Jim and grateful for Jim's devotion. Similarly, I found it very hard to keep in mind the various schemes and scams that Jim gets involved in - which tells me that none of them, really, were particularly important to the story line. I guess ultimately I can never really accept this character as an Irish-American hustler from Cicero when, throughout Breaking Bad, he seemed so quintessentially Jewish, didn't he? In season 2, which I no doubt will watch, it'll take a lot to convince me that this guy could so easily morph into a new persona - Saul Goodman - and set up a practice in the same city where he used to practiced as Jimmy McGill?

Street Illegal: Watching Better Call Saul

For fans of Breaking Bad, like me, there's a fix out there - Better Call Saul - a surprisingly good prequel, a genre that usually is just an attempt to exploit the popularity of a far more vibrant original and pales in comparison. Not so here, as BCS is a good series in itself, enriched by knowing what eventually happens to Saul (Bob Odenkirk) in his legal (illegal) practice, but you don't have to know all that to enjoy the series. Odenkirk is great in the title role, which he plays, variously be-wigged, in various time frames. Over the first 4 episodes, we see Saul in some scenes as a scheming petty crook probably in his 20s - and also as the criminal lawyer in witness protection, working in a Cinnabon, in Colorado. But most of the series shows Saul - who at that time was called Jimmy McGill  - as a young attorney trying to make a living in Albuquerque, picking up near-hopeless criminal defense cases on assignment at the county courthouse. He's a completely lovable and engaging schemer, who'll do just about anything to get a client and to win a case - but he does have moral scruples (albeit with some flexibility) and he has a heart. And, as one of the thugs he encounters puts it bluntly, he has a mouth - and part of the fun of the whole series is watching him talk his way out of various scrapes, applying his legal skills to his life's troubles. Also fun to see how he gears up, how nervous he is - in the courthouse men's room, rehearsing his lines - before a case, however petty and pathetic, however obviously guilty his clients may be. Four episodes in and it's still not known how or why he will change his name and start his new, high-profile practice: his still living in his office, which consists of a fold-out bed in a storage room at the back of a manicure salon in a strip-mall. I would say that at times the complex plot feels a little creaky: his "discovery" of the couple that fakes a kidnapping-abduction is so improbable as to push even the boundaries of comedy, but that aside, the series is fun to watch, engaging, and promising.