Eric Bay-Andersen review the first and second episode of Better Call Saul season 2…
Like a lot of die-hard Breaking Bad fans, I was sceptical when it was announced that they were making a prequel, focusing on Walter White’s shady lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk). Luckily (or perhaps unsurprisingly, given the returning behind-the-scenes talent) last year’s first season was a resounding success – different enough not to be a carbon copy of Breaking Bad, but with enough of that show’s DNA to make it feel like an organic and worthy companion piece.
Season two opens with a mysterious black and white scene (just like season one did), which is set after the events of Breaking Bad and shows Jimmy working at a Cinnabon in a mall. He gets trapped in a back room, and rather than opening the fire door (which would set off the alarm and call the police) he waits for someone else to come along, and as he leaves we see he’s written ‘S. Goodman was here’ on the wall. It’s a great introduction – it’s stylish as hell, it suggests that he’s lying low but that he still misses his old sleazy ambulance-chaser persona, and most impressively, all of this is achieved using hardly any dialogue at all.
From there it picks up exactly where season one finished off – after falling out with his brother, Jimmy’s work on the Sandpiper case lands him with a job offer from a different law firm. Jimmy is initially reluctant to take the job, unsure of whether he even wants to be a lawyer anymore . When his friend Kim (Rhea Seehorn) tries to persuade him to reconsider, he demonstrates to her how his ‘skills’ could be put to better use – together they scam a sleazy Wall Street broker in a hotel bar out of hundreds of dollars worth of alcohol. It’s a classic scene – not only is it hugely entertaining, it shows that he’s truly in his element when he’s being ‘Slippin’ Jimmy’, the morally flexible huckster, not James McGill, the stuffy boardroom lawyer. Nevertheless, after he and Kim end up in bed together, he takes the job, but his fondness for rule-breaking crops up again in the episode’s final scene, where he can’t resist flipping a switch in his new cushy office that says ‘Do Not Switch Off’. It’s these subtle yet powerful moments (that Breaking Bad was chock full of) that creator Vince Gilligan is so skilled at, and which makes his characters so layered.
Another story thread involves amateur drug dealer Pryce (Mark Proksch) telling Mike (Jonathan Banks) he doesn’t require his services anymore when dealing with Nacho (Michael Mando), and immediately paying the price for his naivety – Nacho distracts Pryce with compliments about his ridiculous new yellow Hummer (in episode two he hilariously describes it as “a school bus for 60 year-old pimps”), finds out his real name (Daniel) and address, and goes there to steal his baseball card collection. Pryce, in a truly stupid move, calls the police to his house, who quickly find a secret hiding place behind his couch while Pryce is out of the room. His character is amusing to watch, mainly because he’s so nervous and bumbling that anyone he shares a scene with automatically becomes his deadpan foil (Jonathan Banks is a master at this, but the policeman in this scene do it a very good job of it too).
And speaking of foil, episode two ‘Cobbler’ sees the return of Jimmy’s brother Chuck (Michael McKean), still wearing his foil-lined jacket whenever he leaves his house to protect him from his electromagnetic hypersensitivity. When he shows at up at a meeting between his company and Jimmy’s, the tension is palpable. Chuck made it clear in the previous season that he didn’t think Jimmy was suited for a career in law, and although Jimmy is having trouble adjusting to his new lifestyle (there’s a brilliant visual metaphor where his ‘World’s 2nd Best Lawyer’ mug doesn’t fit in his fancy company car’s cup-holder) it’s clear that for the time being he’s sticking with it, if only just to please Kim and to prove Chuck wrong.
However, he’s instantly drawn back to his shady ways when Mike asks him to save Pryce from the cops’ suspicions – I suspect I’m in the minority on this, but I found the speed at which he agreed to do this funnier than the method he used to pull it off. He uses the classic technique of ‘confess to a different lie to get away with the real lie’ technique – he tells the cops that Pryce’s secret compartment was for storing pie-fetish porn rather than drugs (it may be weird and disgusting, but it isn’t illegal!). Even though Odenkirk performed the scene brilliantly, I just didn’t buy that the cops would swallow that (no pun intended). Regardless, Jimmy’s actions spark a potential rift in he and Kim’s fledgling relationship – she tells his that she can’t know when he does stuff like that. They’re a great pair to watch – they clearly care about each other, but their different views on morality and the law can only have tragic outcomes (as we know, she’s nowhere to be seen once he becomes Saul Goodman).
Unlike other Netflix shows (House of Cards, Marvel’s Daredevil and Jessica Jones etc.), Better Call Saul is being released one episode a week, rather than a whole season at once – while this may upset the binge-watchers, it’s an appropriate way to view this particular show. As we know from Breaking Bad, creator Vince Gilligan is all about the long game, and there’s a joy to be had in re-watching and analysing each episode for clues and potential foreshadowing (the use of black and white in the opening credits alone suggests that this season might feature more flash-forwards, and the return of villain Tico has been tantalisingly hinted at). So far, season two is maintaining the high standards set by the first, and I’m looking forward to finding out more about how Jimmy became Saul…
Eric Bay-Andersen
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Originally published February 26, 2016. Updated April 14, 2018.
