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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
135
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
The IndependentApr 20, 2022
Aug 3, 2018
Season 4 Review:
[Odenkirk's] nervous, shifty quality is perfect for the part, but he doesn’t bring a depth to Jimmy that would account for the character’s contradictions. Season 4 continues to bring Jimmy and Mike together for brief, nonessential meetings, which means that for now Saul continues to be about a third of a really good show--the portion in which Mr. Banks gets to exercise his tremendous authority and subtlety in the story line leading directly to the events of “Breaking Bad,” while Mr. Odenkirk and the other major (non-Hispanic) characters spin their wheels in the legal drama.
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The TelegraphJul 12, 2022
Season 6.5 Review:
The typically riveting episode sees two of Saul’s most significant characters accelerate towards a heavyweight showdown. ... Unfortunately, Better Call Saul has succumbed to the vogue for filming key scenes at night and in near total darkness. And so, much like that notorious Game of Thrones battle blanketed in gloom, a seismic confrontation goes off with a muggy whimper.
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The TelegraphApr 19, 2022
Season 6 Review:
They deliver that satisfyingly familiar mix of desert noir and Coen Brothers-style dark comedy (screwball camera angles are still a trademark). Amid the tension, rollicking dialogue and flashes of violence, Better Call Saul’s winning attribute continues to be its slow-burn consistency.
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Feb 6, 2015
Season 1 Review:
Saul moves faster, but it has that same sense of mood and atmosphere. Scenes are set through lighting, sound and visuals in a way that you actually notice and appreciate. It’s television as artisitic expression rather than just pointing the cameras at the actors and having them read lines.
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TV Guide MagazineFeb 11, 2016
Season 2 Review:
By the end of the second episode of Better Call Saul's very slow-burning sophomore season, Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) finally gets a call reminding us of the Saul Goodman he'll eventually, and regretfully becomes. [15-28 Feb 2016, p.17]
TV Guide MagazineFeb 3, 2015
Season 1 Review:
[A] marvelously original and instantly engrossing hybrid of origin story, prequel, and spinoff. [1-15 Feb 2015, p.16]
Uncle BarkyFeb 11, 2016
Season 2 Review:
Creator and executive producer Vince Gilligan isn’t afraid to let it all air out at a measured pace. But Better Call Saul is still avoiding the pitfalls of simply running in place. Instead, great expectations remain intact for a Season 2 that so far continues to make its mark by delivering just a little at a time.
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Feb 6, 2015
Season 1 Review:
Even without Walter White or Jesse Pinkman, Saul--with his bizarre acquaintances, his oily courtroom performances, his willingness to throw people under the bus to save himself, his me-first attitude, and his incredible potential for bad situations--makes for some darn good television.
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UPROXXApr 6, 2017
Season 3 Review:
This isn’t a story taking place in a parallel timeline to Breaking Bad, but one traveling down the same terrible track. And, like Saul Goodman’s most important client once said, nothing stops this train. All we can do is travel along it with these superb actors and the gifted writers, directors, and editors who keep the train moving, trusting that we’ll be wildly entertained even as it takes us someplace we keep hoping it won’t.
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Feb 6, 2015
Season 1 Review:
So why follow him? Because the writing, with its sudden shifts from drama to comedy and its sympathetic view of its bumbling characters, is so stellar. Because the show is a constant visual treat, from its odd close-ups of water tanks to its wide shots of desert landscapes. And because Odenkirk is terrific.
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Apr 4, 2022
Season 6 Review:
The good news for viewers who are interested in the storyline about Jimmy McGill’s slippage into the amoral Saul Goodman, and his dragging of Kim Wexler with him, is that that half of the series is as strong as ever. ... The more mixed result is that this series feels more bound up than ever in trying to draw out connections to “Breaking Bad.” The result is that even as the show moves toward its endgame, it can feel as if it’s looking over its shoulder.
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Feb 11, 2020
Season 5 Review:
The prolonged slip from compromise into amorality makes “Better Call Saul” compelling in the long view. ... It’s hard not to wish, though, that the series, as it enters its endgame, trusted its viewers to understand that we were watching a “Breaking Bad” prequel while keeping the delicacy of this series’s mood intact, and trusted us to remember those with whom Saul will soon be associating without resurrecting them to diminished effect.
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Jan 28, 2016
Season 2 Review:
Better Call Saul continues to display many of the same qualities as “Breaking Bad,” including its disarming quirkiness and embrace of stillness and quiet, as well as its unpredictability and occasional bouts of menace. That said, it’s so laconic, and less urgent in terms of its stakes at this stage, as to at times become a little too sleepy.
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Aug 6, 2018
Season 4 Review:
No show on the air does a better job of turning moments that ought to be blips on a viewer’s radar into moments of captivating drama, and as the story moves into increasingly tragic territory in its fourth season, it’s a necessary strength to keep Jimmy’s misfortunes (self-imposed or otherwise) something to care about, rather than to revel in.
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Feb 6, 2015
Season 1 Review:
If Breaking Bad gained dramatic tension from viewers feeling trapped between wanting Walter to redeem himself and wanting him to do even more horrible things, Saul can't really have that tension, because we know Saul's worst impulses will win out.... And yet there's so much about Better Call Saul that clicks, it's hard to hold too much of this against the program.
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Feb 5, 2015
Season 1 Review:
The first two episodes reveal a show that will benefit greatly from the time and space to develop story arcs, and to exhibit the same cinematic grandeur that distinguished “Breaking Bad.” The pace is a bit quicker, there’s more obvious humor. But the level of ambition is very much the same.
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Feb 11, 2016
Season 2 Review:
As with Breaking Bad’s second season, we get a glimpse of what the future has in store for James McGill, just like in the pilot episode of Better Call Saul. It’s another artful dose of melancholy that Gilligan and Gould occasionally call back to through the first two episodes of season 2, like a suspicious cough that just won’t go away.
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