Why You Need To Be Watching Better Call Saul , TV's Most Underrated Drama

Taylor Antrim
Updated
Better Call Saul has its share of white-knuckle sequences, but what makes it unusual is its undercurrent of sadness, its heavier emotional ballast. You know what's coming, and you can't stand it.

There I was, in the dark with my kids, wincing under the frenetic chaos of Incredibles 2—when a familiar voice emanated from a character on the screen. A jocular, warm, entirely adult voice. It was Jimmy McGill! I'd know that wily, lovable lawyer anywhere.

Such is the effect of AMC's seductively brilliant drama Better Call Saul, which begins its fourth season on Monday. The show is so good, and still so underrated, that it inspires a kind of impassioned loyalty among fans—especially for its star, Bob Odenkirk (who indeed voices a cameo in Incredibles 2). Odenkirk was pure comic relief on Breaking Bad. In Better Call Saul, he's proved himself capable of so much more—he's a comedic, romantic, and tragic hero—that to watch the show is to feel you know him. And you want to see him in everything.

But how many of us are watching Better Call Saul? The show, which debuted in 2015, has never dominated conversation, living as it does in the long shadow of its progenitor. It has somehow accrued a reputation as minor prestige television—slow, some critics have said, or too wrapped up in low-stakes legal work, or hamstrung by its status as a prequel to Breaking Bad. (We all know the good-hearted Jimmy McGill is going to turn into the con-artist Saul Goodman, lawyer for a Mexican drug king pin, so where's the drama?)

But Saul has plenty. And its lightness of tone is something of a misdirect. The sunny, off-kilter mood actually serves to elevate the familial conflict that has played out over three seasons—the fraternal rivalry between McGill and his older brother, Chuck, a senior partner at the Albuquerque law firm Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill—into near Shakesperean drama. Season three ended—spoiler!—with Chuck's apparent suicide, which has darkened the new episodes considerably (I previewed the first three). Monday's fascinating premiere episode picks up right where last year's finale left off, and shows McGill dealing with shock, denial, anger and grief in real time, along with his girlfriend Kim Wexler (the fabulous Rhea Seehorn). Odenkirk has never been better; he somehow makes compartmentalization gripping.

Meanwhile, Albuquerque's drug world, the rivalry between traffickers Gus Fring and Hector Salamanca and their respective, frightening henchmen, begins to take center stage in the new episodes. That means the violence that has played at the edges of Saul's first three seasons is encroaching, making the show feel more and more like Breaking Bad. That series was a masterpiece of tension. Saul, which also comes to us from show-runners Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, has its share of white-knuckle sequences, but what makes it unusual is its undercurrent of sadness, its heavier emotional ballast. You know what's coming for McGill, and you can't stand it.

The show was just renewed for a fifth season, so those of us already hooked can rest easy. But the first three seasons of Saul are all there for the binging on Netflix. If you haven't already, take the plunge, and watch along with the rest of us this season. Saul is the best show on television.

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