The inherent problem of prequels is that the stakes are low. We know the next chapter and how the story turns out for at least most of the main characters. The creators of Breaking Bad seemingly had an even greater challenge than say, George Lucas, in that Breaking Bad starts in the most ordinary of circumstances: a working stiff gets a bad medical diagnosis. By the end of its brilliant run most of the best and most memorable characters are dead.
Saul Goodman does not die a physical death over the course of Breaking Bad, but we know that he disappears into mundane circumstances with a pronounced need to keep a low profile. The obvious idea was to give Saul an origin story of his own, by starting the story before Saul was Saul.
But no one wants to watch the story of how a man became the manager of a Cinnabon. So Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould did something truly inspired: he built a universe for our hero that is equally balanced between the doomed cast of Breaking Band and characters who are not even mentioned in Breaking Bad.
The new characters are a brother, Chuck, played by Michael McKean and a love interest, Kim Wexler, played by Rhea Seahorn. I've been a fan of McKean since childhood, and he is as good in this part as he is Spinal Tap or the Christopher Guest movies. Ms. Seahorn was unfamiliar to me before this series. But from the first episode, the audience is drawn to her. She's a striver in ways that nicely echo Jimmy's slightly shadier vocation as a hustler. She is beautiful and she is smart. There is always a hint of some damage that she underplays. We don't know a lot about her biography except what gets dragged out of her on a job interview. And that's where it gets interesting for this show's future.
I should mention at this point that a lot of my enjoyment of this series is heightened by the fact that I am a working lawyer. The dialogue on this show captures the real way lawyers write and speak better than any police procedural or blockbuster based on a John Grisham novel. They nail the details, even when the temptation is there to be splashy. (See in particular the pedestrian cadence of the opening statements at Jimmy's disciplinary hearing in Episode 4.)
But the writing is marked by a much broader point of distinction. This show is so good because it shows us in painful detail just how hard the characters work to create these problems for themselves. Mike doesn't just run afoul of Gus Fring. He stays up half the night chewing on macadamia nuts waiting for Gus' underworld to show up in his driveway. And Chuck can not simply be happy for his brother or grateful for his compassion. He goes to absurd lengths to get even, not because he hates Jimmy but because he put so much value on a petty point.
A wonderful plot device has framed each of three seasons so far. Each begins with a flash-forward in black and white to a taste of Jimmy/Saul/Gene's future at the mall in Nebraska. Filmed in flat black and white, we see our hero reduced to the status of a working schlub. He brings his lunch to work. His only pleasure to surreptitiously watch his old basic cable commercials on a beat up VCR with a homemade cocktail. He lives in fear of the police and is cut off from his one true passion: defending people that just need someone to give a crap about their future.
Which gets us back to Kim. On that job interview last season she is asked where she is from. She replies that she is from a small town in Kansas, near the Nebraska state line. In another episode she wears a Kansas City Royals t-shirt to bed with Jimmy.
It's about 90 miles from Omaha to the Kansas state line. Vince and Peter could have made Kim be from anywhere in the world, but she's just a short drive away from Gene's shopping mall. This is not an accident.
Before the start of season 2 and season 3 I tweeted out that I wanted the flash-forward to end with a knock on Gene's door and for Kim Wexler to be the one who knocks. It may or may not happen exactly that way, but I do believe Gene is destined to meet Kim in the black and white plains of his drab future. I like to think that this will be more than just a flash-forward. I think, at some point, the story will shift to the present. And like the Wizard of Oz in reverse, the screen will fade to color when Jimmy and Kim meet there.
As for Chuck, I don't expect him to make it out of Better Call Saul alive. I think that last week Jimmy and Kim did a masterful job of raising doubt about Jimmy's real motivations when "confessing" to his brother. I expect that Chuck, under the influence of Howard, will realize that Jimmy can do more damage to HHM then they can do to him. I think they will work out a compromise where Jimmy keeps his law license but has to stop using the McGill name when practicing law.
Hence, the need to become Saul Goodman. And at some point he too will become ensnared in the world of Fring and the cartel. We know how that ends for Saul. But the real story to watch, the one to root for involves Gene and Kim and the promise of some kind of future. Much depends on just how much damage Saul does to her reputation. I expect it will be enough for her to have to leave town. But not enough for her to turn him away when he reappears in her life, older, balder and bedecked in the uniform of an Omaha Cinnabon.
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