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Better Call Saul Season Two Episodes 1-2 Review

Published

11 years ago

February 27, 2016

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Breaking Law

♦ Tripwire gave Senior Writer ANDREW COLMAN the task of reviewing the first two episodes of darkly comedic drama Better Call Saul Season Two. Spoilers Ahead

Better Call Saul Season Two episodes 1 and 2

Director: Thomas Schnauz (episode 1), Terry McDonough (episode 2)

Stars: Bob Odenkirk, Rhea Seahorn, Michael McKean

Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s Breaking Bad prequel has been lauded as the first spin-off in the golden age of U.S. television, and although it shares the same location and feel as its parent series, its success is due to it being a very different show. Gone are the hysteria, psychosis and visceral hyperrealism – in its place, a considerably more stately parable of a man making a vaguely similar life decision to Walter White, but produced with laid-back restraint and subtlety. In Series 1, struggling Albuquerque attorney Jim McGill (Bob Odenkirk) spent the ten episodes fighting both his desire to return to his grifter roots as his Slippin’ Jimmy persona, and the machinations of his supercilious elder brother Chuck (Michael McKean), a career lawyer who cannot bear to see his prodigal sibling contaminate his treasured profession, despite him being his carer and nursemaid. Fans waited patiently for Breaking Bad Easter eggs – hidden clues as to how McGill would morph into Saul, and how his trajectory would collide with Senor Heisenberg’s, and indeed Gus Fring’s.

But little of that emerged – of course there’s the presence of Jonathan Banks’s magnificently truculent Mike Ehrmantraut, and the odd cameo from Tuco Salamanca (BB’s retired drug magnate), but that, apart from a few minor visual references, was all. At the end of Series 1, Jimmy is still Jimmy, and although he has made his connection with Ehrmantraut and declaimed that the straight life is something to be shunned, Saul Goodman, huckster lawyer to the underworld and aspiring meth dealers, is still nowhere to be seen. We assumed that with the death of his con artist henchman and best friend Marco (Mel Rodriguez) that he had rejected his brother’s world, and that the arc had been completed.

Series 2 finds Jimmy, now somewhat estranged from his older brother, still at a crossroads. His close friend and love interest Kim Wexler’s (Rhea Seehorn) unremittingly selfless and kind efforts to steer him on the right path have somehow gained traction. And despite Chuck’s partner at Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill Howard Hamlin’s (Patrick Fabian) resolute antipathy towards him, he opts to continue as an attorney, only at another firm, Davis & Main. It is, as Kim demurs, a very cushy number indeed, while even Howard has found it within himself to curb his contempt.

Everything seems rosy for Jimmy, so what will lead to his schematically ordained downfall? Apart from his murky past and the gnawing feeling that he isn’t being true to himself, plus his self-destructive tendencies, his past life should be a closed book. The core of the drama in these first two episodes, and the answer to that question is Mike’s connection to organised crime, and, far more importantly, Chuck’s desire to annihilate (professionally speaking) him. Chuck, superbly played by the remarkably versatile Mike McKean, sees his law firm and career as a citadel that must not be invaded by his upstart brother – to him Jimmy is an undeserving interloper, a fraud, and someone who could never identify himself as a true lawyer. To Chuck, the law confers superiority, something he innately believes to be key in his relationship with his kid brother – he has worked for so long, and never strayed, building and nurturing the company that bears his name over many years. Eternal loser Jimmy cannot threaten his perceived status quo, and thus has to be dispensed with. The foreshadowing of this process is when he unexpectedly turns up at a joint law firm meeting attended by Jimmy, who he immediately unsettles – no longer is he the helpless, housebound prisoner of his own phobias – he is now the eminence grise, there to passively bully Jimmy, to remind him of the fraternal hierarchy and the fact that to him, Jimmy is still the habitual feckless hustler.

It’s a slow burn of a show, with little in the way of pyrotechnics or off-kilter characters, apart from Mark Proksch’s continuing turn as Pryce Wormald, an industrially oafish small time drug dealer who has to be rescued from his stupidity (and the slyly ambitious Salamanca gang member Nacho) by Mike, and by extension Jimmy. What we do have is a superbly delineated study of a flawed yet vastly more sympathetic man than Walter White, aided by a pitch-perfect ensemble cast. The languid, at times almost noirish direction and reliably economical, excellent script mean that although you won’t be bulldozed into submission like you were with its illustrious predecessor, what you witness is another high quality outing, that has no need for high octane. Roll on episodes three to ten in what indeed is proving to be a series that stands alone, and deserves to take its rightful place in the golden age of U.S. programming.

ANDREW COLMAN