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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
135
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
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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Feb 6, 2015
Season 1 Review:
Is Saul funny? Yes, in the way that "Breaking Bad" could be very funny. And it's still Odenkirk, whose face alone is worth a comedy master class. But there's more pathos there than I'd expected, and a backstory that, like Walter White's, asks us to think about how much of one's destiny is predetermined and how much is due to circumstance.
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Feb 6, 2015
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 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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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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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 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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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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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 2, 2015
Season 1 Review:
Vince Gilligan and his team, as usual, have surprised me. I haven’t totally fallen for the prequel series Better Call Saul--it doesn’t quite feel like its own show yet--but it did make me care about the man who becomes Saul Goodman in a way I never did in “Breaking Bad.”
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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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Feb 4, 2015
Season 1 Review:
By the third episode of the three sent to critics, the bits and pieces of apparent flotsam from the earlier episodes have begun to form a direction for Better Call Saul and as they do, the series becomes less a comedy and more a serious exploration of a Falstaffian character who may be much more than the buffoon he seems on the surface.
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