You are not your age, Nor the size of clothes you wear, You are not a weight, Or the colour of your hair. You are not your name, Or the dimples in your cheeks, You are all the books you read, And all the words you speak, You are your croaky morning voice, And the smiles you try to hide, You’re the sweetness in your laughter, And every tear you’ve cried, You’re the songs you sing so loudly, When you know you’re all alone, You’re the places that you’ve been to, And the one that you call home, You’re the things that you believe in, And the people that you love, You’re the photos in your bedroom, And the future you dream of, You’re made of so much beauty, But it seems that you forgot, When you decided that you were defined, By all the things you’re not.
He’s got a brilliant, condescending older brother who undermines his career dreams. He’s got such a penchant for scoundrels he becomes known as ‘Slippin’ Jimmy’ in the neighborhood for his staged injuries. He has the Albuquerque branch of the Mexican drug cartel miffed.
And now he has to carry on the legacy of one of the greatest television shows of all-time, Breaking Bad.
Better Call Saul, which launched its second season this month, stands as a marked improvement over its smart-but-sporadic freshman year. Two episodes in, the series already has recovered some of the dark humor and violent tension that defined Vince Gilligan’s landmark preceding show.
Saul Goodman (Jimmy changed his name to match his motto: ‘S’all good, man.’) now has a love interest. A company car and his own digs. He’s even smoothing out the relationship with soon-to-be hired gun Mike Ehrmantraut.
Of course, that puts Saul — and creators Gilligan and co-creator Peter Gould — in something of a pickle. As the chronological predecessor to Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul must, eventually, return its hero to the place we first saw him: In Breaking Bad climes, as a pretty sleazy Yellow Pages injury attorney.
Consider how Saul was first described by Jesse Pinkman in Season 2, Episode 8 of Breaking Bad: When you’re up against the wall, “you don’t want a criminal lawyer. You want a criminal lawyer.”
And while he was great comic relief, Saul also was, in truth, a racist and chauvinist. He openly propositioned his secretary Francesca (“You’re killing me with that booty”) and confided in Walter the reason he changed his name: “My real name’s McGill. The Jew thing I just do for the homeboys. They all want a pipe-hitting member of the tribe, so to speak.”
The Breaking Bad Saul even sassed the feds. In the same episode, he trades barbs with DEA macho man Hank Schrader, who offered an unsolicited review of Saul’s daytime TV commercials. “I’ve seen better acting in an epileptic whorehouse,” Hank taunted.
“Is that the one your mom works at?” Saul snapped back. “She still offering the two-for-one discount?” Saul is decidedly gentler in his own series, and Gilligan and Gould would appear to have wedged themselves into a creative corner.
But Gilligan takes to pickles like a kosher dill. He is the first to admit he likes to write his characters into near-inescapable peril — then have them pull Houdini-esque escapes. Gilligan said he knew, for instance, that he wanted to end Season 2 of Breaking Bad with a plane crash, even though the series had been as landlocked as a dehydrated scorpion. So he wrote the season finale first, then retrofitted the story arc to include an airline disaster.
Shades of those darker grays are surfacing in Saul. Just as Walt slowly circled the drain into villainy in Breaking Bad, Saul appears headed for a fate that will change his law-office nickname from Charlie Hustle to Charlie Hustler. Just how dark a fate? In Gilligan’s hands, you’re almost scared to ask.
Still, Saul deserves credit for understatedly fixing what Hollywood movie studios still can’t: creating tension in a prequel. There’s a certain lack of suspense in an opening chapter: After all, your hero has to survive an origins story if chapter two is already written (and a hit). Gilligan and Gould circumvented that by making Better Caul Saul both flashback and prequel, leaving us to fret over his ultimate fate.
Of course, Saul the man still has a ways to go before he becomes a lovable lowlife, just as Saul the show faces its own challenges turning sinister: Mike continues to look older than he did in the “sequel” show, and capturing any of Breaking Bad‘s bleak lightning in a bottle would seem an impossible appeal.
But in the courtroom of television drama, even a shadow of Breaking Bad is a convincing argument. And in Gilligan’s and Gould’s hands, s’all good.
Every year, international corporations vie mightily for the semi-regular HB Commercial of the Month Award (celebrating its first anniversary…some day). Particularly on Super Bowl Sunday.
But before we announce the HBCMA winner (sorry for the nerve-wracking tension), a note on the Super Bowl itself. It sorta sucked a little.
But still interesting, because the story will become more dramatic over the decades as historical accounts replace actual. While it was a really a turnover- and penalty-ridden slugfest, dramatic historians will rewrite it as the triumphant final run of Peyton Manning, finishing a Hall of Fame career with a Super Bowl trophy and a scoring pass.
So for the readers of this in centuries future, know this: It wasn’t that dramatic. Billed as a showdown between superstar quarterbacks, distanced by age, race and worldview, neither guy played particularly well. Truthfully, the game was a defensive gem, i.e., dull.
As, largely, were the commercials. If the 50th Super Bowl ads had a through line, it’s this: Pharmaceutical companies have way the hell too much money. Primetime Super Bowl ads on constipation and irritable bowel syndrome? American poop must be big business. Budweiser commercials railing against drunk drivers? NFL ads on how the sport is really for women? You’re disqualified simply for hypocrisy.
The winning ad comes from, of all corporations, some organization called Avocados in Mexico, which touts exactly what you think. Hopefully, they’re as good as their ads. I don’t know who directed this, but said director deserves an immediate U.S. TV show, if only to counter the dull comets who orbit the reality show landscape. The ad:
The literary award, though, goes to the ad for a Toyota Prius. In just 1 minute, 40 seconds the commercial manages to tell a story (a bumbling bank heist) establish sympathetic heroes (they leave some of the stolen booty to the car-theft victim) and manage a running story that would be worth watching. The director of this commercial deserves, at least, to be Michael Bay’s well-paid life coach, just to teach the guy succinct storytelling. The big winner:
