2.3 Amarillo Yet something bothersome is starting to happen on the fringes of the show, something I can’t believe I’m even thinking, let alone writing down, an issue that is directly tied to the shadow cast by Breaking Bad. I’m starting to feel like Better Call Saul has a problem, and that problem is Mike. Don’t get me wrong; Jonathan Banks is still giving a world class performance as the character and getting to see him again on a regular basis is a treat. But, three episodes into the second season of the show, I’m starting to wonder if that’s all it is. Last year the series could be forgiven a few uneven inconsistencies; it was still figuring out what it was in the wake of continuing the legacy of one of the most beloved shows in history, and the way it veered from quirky comedy to crime thriller to courtroom drama to character study mostly worked because we weren’t yet sure what we wanted from the series. At times last year it felt like Better Call Saul was testing out a few different guises to see what worked and by the end of it, while all those elements remained, the legal/character drama took precedent. While Mike’s backstory in Five-O made for a brilliant episode in predominantly crime/triller territory, it felt more like an interesting deviation than a key part of the spin-off’s makeup. It makes me wonder if Mike and the show would be better served by reducing his role. Not enormously; he’s a brilliant and beloved character, but I feel like that very fact is causing the writers to give him more precedence than is necessary. Consider the fact that even in Breaking Bad his prominence wasn’t huge until the fifth season, prior to which he was a fascinating yet enigmatic figure keeping things colourful on the fringes of the story. In Better Call Saul it feels like the writers are constantly trying to give him things to do, when the character might be more effective in smaller doses, at least until he can be given a role befitting of his status as a fan favourite portrayed by a world class actor. Currently his material feels slightly beneath him. All of that said, Better Call Saul, like Breaking Bad before it, is a series where every episode is part of a greater whole, and so judging episodes based on their individual merit becomes a lot harder without knowing where these plot developments will sit in the grand scheme of things. Gilligan and Gould are too good at what they do to let Jimmy and Mike’s plots continue to diverge for much longer; the problem is that right now the characters don’t really feel linked to each other in any significant way. When television is as generally good as Better Call Saul, problems that might scupper a lesser series can feel more like quibbles. Whatever issues are starting to hang over the show, it’s still cracking along, each episode ending with me desperate to see the next one. And really, at a certain point it’s hard to ask much more from a television series than that. Read Gabriel’s review of the previous episode, Cobbler, here.
