Better Call Saul

The second season of Saul establishes what should have been obvious all along--this is basically just a continuation of “Breaking Bad.” Same themes. Same setting. Same preoccupations. Even same humor. But best of all, same deep, abiding intelligence.

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.

The show's writing is as economic and poetically parred. Each moment is compact, leading to the next with unpredictable, behaviorally astute precision.

Gilligan and Gould have been wise to set the show far apart from its ancestor, such that it becomes a draw for its clever writing, inventive direction, and nuanced performances rather than its proximity to another story set in the same universe.

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.

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.

Saul is a show that really rewards the viewer's attention to detail--because however much you might pick up on, there's probably at least three levels of meaning you're missing.

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.

In its first two episodes, season two of Saul offers a welcome return to form.

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.

Season 2 makes room for Jimmy’s relationship with Kim, and to my mind, it gives the show a jolt of emotional resonance.

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.

In its second season, Better Call Saul allows us into a new world of complexity by deepening one of the show’s pivotal relationships. It’s the best-case scenario for a spin-off: a show that occupies a familiar world but opens up entirely new themes.

Better Call Saul season two is not yet as gripping as season one’s best episodes were. But there’s plenty of reasons to bet it soon could be.

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]

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.