WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED SEASON 2 OF BETTER CALL SAUL YET.
Another season ends and I’m still left puzzled and wondering “how did Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) become Saul Goodman, after all?”. We saw more typical characteristics of our old acquaintance this season than last. However, he’s still not Saul. Neither did Mike (Jonathan Banks) become the Mike we know from Breaking Bad, but both have started to go down their paths.
Jimmy is driven by the feeling he has for two people: Kim (Rhea Seehorn), responsible for getting him a job at a prestigious law firm and his love interest, and his brother Chuck (Michael McKean), who has some resentment toward Jimmy. It is to please both that Jimmy makes almost every decision this season. At one point, however, he realizes that he doesn’t want to have to adapt to the way others want him to behave. That’s when we see start to see the colorful suits and television ads. However, it is not the beginning of the “cheating”: it’s always been there since he was a boy, as we see in a flashback. And Jimmy decides that this will be his modus operandi, which is why decides to practice law on his own.
Another character driven by affection is Mike. He does everything to protect his family – which doesn’t always leaves him in comfortable situations, as we saw in the season finale.
Just like last year I loved this season! I enjoy shows like this: complex and well-developed characters, without that Manichaeism of “good guy” and “bad guy”. We see the various facets of all the characters in this series, thanks to the creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould. All the stories are interesting and well “stitched”. Even if one has the feeling that not much happened in one episode, one realizes that it was just an impression when the subsequent episode is released. The arches take a while to be developed but, when they are, we see the quality of the script!
It’s a shame it only has 10 episodes … I’m already waiting for the next season eagerly!
