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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
135
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
iJul 12, 2022
Season 6.5 Review:
A strength of Better Call Saul has been the way it is able to draw on viewers’ knowledge of future events to make a dramatic use of fate. Occasionally this foreknowledge can be a weakness and (without being too specific) a climactic showdown here loses some suspense because we know which character must survive to feature in Breaking Bad.
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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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Jul 12, 2022
Season 6.5 Review:
We still have five precious episodes left before the series ends, but we may already have the crux of what happens to Jimmy and Kim and the reason for the Kim-less years ahead. ... It was a satisfying end to the Lalo/Gus chapter of the cartel war. ... This episode is Smith’s final script for the series, one that is wonderfully paired with Gilligan’s thrilling direction.
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The IndependentApr 20, 2022
Apr 19, 2022
Season 6 Review:
This opening pair of episodes for Better Call Saul’s final season proves Kim was serious about every decision she made in season five. ... What results in the Vince Gilligan-directed “Carrot and Stick” is the most hold-your-breath action sequence from this world since Hank’s showdown with the Salamanca cousins in the Breaking Bad classic “One Minute.”
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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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Apr 18, 2022
Season 6 Review:
The first two episodes sent to critics, at least, continue to reflect a confident drama that’s firing on all cylinders, and that shows every indication of going out as brilliantly as it came in. ... Its performances haven’t missed a beat, and neither has its writing — if anything, these characters and the world they inhabit have only grown richer and more complex with time.
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The Daily BeastApr 18, 2022
Season 6 Review:
Better Call Saul has arguably the finest cast on television, as well as the sharpest writing and direction. Gilligan and company are experts at orchestrating exhilarating centerpieces (such as a second-episode shootout), but their real brilliance is evident in extended sequences that communicate plot developments and twists through dramatic staging and visual framing.
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Apr 15, 2022
Season 6 Review:
So far, Better Call Saul Season 6 belongs to Kim Wexler. ... It’s gratifying to see her finally take the lead. It’s also a shift that gives Better Call Saul a deeply ominous quality. In its first two episodes, Season 6 doesn’t feel like a finale. It feels like just another twisting saga in Vince Gilligan’s corrupt world.
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Apr 15, 2022
Season 6 Review:
Through the first two episodes made available for review, “Better Call Saul” remains a well-plotted masterpiece, similar to “Breaking Bad” for which “Saul” is a prequel, complete with unexpected twists and action sequences that a viewer might expect to go right but end up going left.
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Apr 13, 2022
Season 6 Review:
It never feels like Saul is repeating itself, as the characters keep making huge shifts. ... These episodes still feel alive with possibilities. [Apr 2022, p.73]
Apr 12, 2022
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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Apr 4, 2022
Season 6 Review:
The two episodes of Season 6 sent for review are so far from where the series was in Season 1 that they might as well be a different show. And yet, it remains easy to trace the narrative throughline to see how every move, every decision has brought us to this moment in time. ... Better Call Saul is, and remains, one of TV’s very best shows, not just of the last decade, but possibly of all time.
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Mar 5, 2020
Season 5 Review:
Like Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul is not just another show about quirky characters and intriguing storylines. The people behind these two series love to make television, and it’s evident from the product. ... This is television magic, and it won’t last long. You should enjoy it while you can.
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Feb 24, 2020
Season 5 Review:
[The first five episodes of this fifth season] provide overwhelming proof that “Better Call Saul” remains one of the best shows of any kind anywhere on television. And Odenkirk hardly is the only compelling reason to follow this series. All of the characters are intriguing.
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Feb 24, 2020
Season 5 Review:
Better Call Saul keeps getting nominated for drama series, as it deserves to, and Odenkirk keeps being nominated as lead actor, which he deserves — but if you are a viewer who thinks that the show is compelling and that Jimmy as a character is compelling, I would argue that Seehorn's tough, funny, sympathetic, occasionally damning interactions with Jimmy are the reason the entire thing holds together.
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IndieWireFeb 20, 2020
Season 5 Review:
Yes, “Better Call Saul” is a double-edged sword of reward and loss, but it isn’t too sad to watch because you’re too invested to look away. If you’ve come this far with Jimmy, you have to see his journey through to the end, whether that end is with Saul, Jimmy, or Gene.
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RogerEbert.comFeb 18, 2020
Season 5 Review:
One of many remarkable things about “Saul” is how the writers have defied the common trap of prequels in that we still feel urgency even though we know that nothing too bad can happen to Saul, Mike, Gus, and now Hank because that wouldn’t line up with “Breaking Bad.” ... The truly remarkable accomplishments of “Better Call Saul” that make it arguably the best drama on TV are in the subtlety and nuance of the characters—both in terms of writing and performance.
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Feb 18, 2020
Season 5 Review:
Twelve years into the lead role, Odenkirk keeps finding new shades of goofy charisma and freaky desperation, and the Saulification of Jimmy is a performance within a performance. ... Season 5 still feels tangential, juggling placeholder subplots with hysterical continuity.
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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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Feb 5, 2020
Season 5 Review:
Odenkirk, as always, continues to find new things to explore about this character he’s now been playing for 11 years, with a notable addition to his repertoire in these early episodes: We’ve seen this man angry, scared, happy, and heartbroken—but there’s a new potential in him to be legitimately scary, which Odenkirk plays here with a sort of raw quiet that brings with it a new kind of terror.
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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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Aug 6, 2018
Season 4 Review:
Better Call Saul just keeps on getting better and better. That's an easy call, particularly after seeing the gripping first three episodes of the "Breaking Bad" prequel's fourth season. ... One constant in Better Call Saul is that, as riveting as Odenkirk is as Jimmy, this hardly is a one-actor showcase.
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Aug 6, 2018
Season 4 Review:
This is a series you can’t just half-watch while scrolling your phone, because if you do, you won’t know what’s going on. The show can be hard to follow even if you’re watching closely, because so much of the plot is inferred. ... The pleasures of Better Call Saul are almost entirely visceral and emotional.
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Aug 6, 2018
Season 4 Review:
Better Call Saul is TV's version of a Russian nesting doll, slowly adding layers to the "Breaking Bad" prequel, inching toward its logical expiration date. As the new season demonstrates, the AMC show has grown richer in the process, even if the pacing at times remains a trifle sluggish.
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RogerEbert.comAug 6, 2018
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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Aug 3, 2018
Season 4 Review:
The transmutation of Jimmy to Saul (and don’t forget Gene and his season-starting cameos) is likely to produce the best balance of darkness and humor that the series has mustered, if for nothing else than there's a gleeful appreciation on the part of the audience for Saul's shenanigans; their rising occurrence will be amusing while, at the same time, watching the exacting toll it took on Jimmy to get there will be distressing.
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ColliderAug 3, 2018
Season 4 Review:
The new season of Better Call Saul starts off slowly and somberly (as of its first three episode available for review), full of silence and tension. Jimmy, Mike, and Nacho are all dealing with the fallout from decisions they’ve made to do what they thought was right--even if what they did to get there is more morally muddled.
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Aug 1, 2018
Season 4 Review:
In order to land some sorrowful emotional beats, these new episodes have to shed some of Better Call Saul’s defining lightheartedness. And make no mistake: The way season four kicks into gear with such confidence and precision has all the markings of Breaking Bad’s clockwork plotting.
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Jul 31, 2018
Season 4 Review:
The season premiere, written by Mr. Gould, serves as a warm-up act for the season’s more gripping second episode that features at least two remarkable scenes with bravura performances: Jimmy self-sabotaging and Kim, in a searing performance by Ms. Seehorn, ripping into Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian).
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Jul 23, 2018
Season 4 Review:
There are a lot of tiny delights. (On this show, making coffee looks Hitchcockian.) But there’s a resistant macro-feeling of: Like, why? ... I’m left with the feeling that the Gus Fring scenes in Better Call Saul are the dark-drama equivalent of the horrible Darth Vader scenes in Rogue One, this looming figure of evil awesomeness brought out of retirement to emanate coolness fumes.
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Apr 11, 2017
Season 3 Review:
Regardless of where we are in this strange voyage, it’s obvious that Gilligan and Gould are accelerating Jimmy toward his grimmer future. The third season opens with a heavier atmosphere leaning more into the drama of the tale, so much that one may forget that it was originally conceived as a half-hour sitcom.
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Apr 10, 2017
Season 3 Review:
Although Fring’s first arrival is, unshockingly, a muted one, the sight of Giancarlo Esposito as a fast-food manager may nevertheless dislodge a few tense memories in the Breaking Bad fan’s brain. Remember the careful way he assembled his fish stew? Remember the precise manner he used to cut an underling’s throat? What a fitting addition to the Saul story: a devil who works in details.
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Apr 10, 2017
Season 3 Review:
Odenkirk is flat-out terrific at times, but the show hasn’t kicked into gear for me. On “Bad,” Bryan Cranston’s Walter White was in a desperate situation that unleashed his inner monster and diabolical genius. Meanwhile, the occasionally dense Saul is meandering toward his sugar-rush exile in Omaha.
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Apr 10, 2017
Season 3 Review:
This prequel is worth watching because it asks more of itself. And the amount of jailhouse imagery in the season three advertising campaign, coupled with the trajectory of the two episodes screened for critics, suggests that Jimmy’s and Mike’s paths will continue diverging. But there is this force that we know unites them in the future.
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Apr 7, 2017
Season 3 Review:
The larger point is that, with all this character growth continuing, the already superb Better Call Saul is in a position to take its biggest creative leap yet. It's not a surprise that we will eventually get to Jimmy McGill becoming Saul Goodman, but it's certainly surprising just how heartbreaking that transformation has become.
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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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ColliderApr 4, 2017
IndieWireMar 27, 2017
Season 3 Review:
From what we’ve seen the show’s commitment to smart, engaged, and challenging storytelling has yet to falter. There are sequences that will make you ask questions. There are sequences that will offer very little explanation. But in pushing to understand, the experience becomes all the more richer.
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Feb 16, 2016
Season 2 Review:
The first two episodes of Season 2 should feel then like an elaborate tease, as we see Jimmy slipping into his old rhythms even while reaching for what looks like a brighter future, one that may include Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn). That they don't is due to the show's respect for the present, the place that Jimmy lives right now, and where he still has hope and where anything might yet happen.
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RogerEbert.comFeb 12, 2016
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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Feb 11, 2016
Season 2 Review:
Better Call Saul is a good yarn. It is also exactly the sort of show it is hard to imagine getting greenlit on its own merits. It’s great, but its arc--a working stiff who becomes a shadier working stiff, and then, when things get really exciting, the show ends, because the exciting part already happened on another show--is not the sort that sells in the room.
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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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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]
Feb 11, 2016
Season 2 Review:
The season's first two episodes confirm everything that was obvious by the end of last year: Jimmy's doomed attempt to play things straight and not go back to his con man Slippin' Jimmy ways is much too fertile an area to be abandoned so quickly. It feels like a creative choice rather than a commercial one (as opposed to all those times Dexter Morgan managed to evade the brilliant investigators at Miami Metro because his ratings were too high), and the choice plays out in fascinating ways early in Saul season 2.
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ColliderFeb 11, 2016
Season 2 Review:
Better Call Saul’s new season jumps right back in to the Sandpiper case, law firm culture, Chuck and Jimmy’s now-frosty relationship, as well as Jimmy’s budding romance with Kim, and his association with Mike (who is now an entrenched ally). But what really keeps everything sewn together so beautifully is watching Jimmy when he’s alone.
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Feb 10, 2016
Season 2 Review:
Good because it’s as funny and sweet and prickly as what viewers got in Season 1, with continued standout performances by Odenkirk and Banks, and a very welcome initial broadening of both McKean’s role as Chuck; and Rhea Seehorn’s role as Kim Wexler, Jimmy’s girlfriend. Yet, bad because there’s also more of the same, as Jimmy struggles to stay on the straight-and-narrow and how that struggle tears at him.
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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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The Daily BeastFeb 9, 2015
Season 1 Review:
The ball of manic, depressed, negative energy that is Jimmy is a perfect match for Odenkirk’s comedic (and newfound dramatic) chops, as he lends plenty of pathos to this mesmeric loser with a heart of fool’s gold. He’s not Saul Goodman just yet, but the journey there should be a bumpy, thrilling ride.
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