"Better Call Saul" - pre season and Season One Discussion

New extended trailer.

 

Talk about a ready made audience! The producers know they have some very big shoes to fill. There's a lot of audience goodwill towards these characters and the desire to see these people in more stories is still strong.

Saul should have plenty of interesting clients and situations to keep things fresh.

The supporting cast of BB was always strong, so I would think they should be able to carry the show if the stories are strong. The writers are eager to continue in this universe too, so I'm pretty confident audiences will be pleased with the outcome.

 

Agreed, but I hope they don't make it a quirky-client-of-the-week type of show. I'd prefer to see an ongoing narrative, like in BB. Maybe have one or two big clients with ongoing story arcs, perhaps intersecting somewhere down the road to raise the stakes.

 

Huel on board ?

 

Since they're planning on doing shows that take place both before and after Breaking Bad, they can finally get him out of that hotel room!

 

Cant wait for this! Its getting close

 

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1089417/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t17

Looks like not , WTF ?

 

Did someone already pick up on his website? Pretty classy.

http://www.bettercallsaul.com

 

Well, there's still Mike... and I remember hearing Combo might show up.
If the show 'makes it', there's still hope....
Truth be told, I don't really care if Walt & Jess don't appear.
I'd rather see Huel & Bill Burr... and GUS, ... AND Badger & Skinny Pete!

 

I'd like Saul to have that same secretary too. She was perfect for that role, and had a humorous demeanor. There was a scene with Huell in the office where she noticed him sitting there and just staring at her. At first I thought he was "eyeing" her. Then I sort of thought he was possibly asleep with his eyes open, but couldn't be sure. Her reaction seemed vague and didn't really clarify things. Anyway I'd like to see more interaction between her and Huell.

 

Wow, here's a fantastic interview with series star Bob Odenkirk, along with showrunners Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould:

‘Better Call Saul':
Bob Odenkirk and Vince Gilligan
on Bringing the ‘Breaking Bad’ Spinoff to Life

http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/better-call-saul-bob-odenkirk-breaking-bad-1201404233/

First episodes start on February 8th & 9th.

 

Positive review:

I began watching "Better Call Saul!" as a skeptic, the first three episodes have mostly made me a believer. There are nods to the parent show — and those are among the more emotionally affecting parts of this young series — but "Saul" quickly learns to function as its own thing, rather than taking the easy approach of being "Breaking Bad, Episode 1: The Phantom Ehrmantraut."

Looking forward to it...

 

I'm counting down the days!

 

This show will be popular for a few episodes because of the Breaking Bad tie in, but based on that trailer, it won't sustain an audience like Breaking Bad unless they rethink it's direction. What's missing from that trailer? Violence. What was the major element that kept drawing viewers to Breaking Bad? Violence and danger. IMO, the country went ga-ga over Breaking Bad because the outrageousness of the action it kept piling on. Crime on top of violence on top of crime. It packed more complications and action in every episode than you see in most television shows. It was as though someone finally managed to put the "good parts" of a crime thriller on tv. The writing of Breaking Bad was okay, the acting was just okay (Cranston is a bit of a ham and the rest of the cast was passable. Jesse was the most likeable talent on that show) and the concept fun if a bit stretched out concerning Cranston's "big secret", but I still say the show's greatest strength was the pure tittilation of its crime and violence -- it served up good action. I don't see the same kind of "good parts" of "Scarface" kind of action or thrills in this "Better Call Saul" trailer and Vince Gillian better start cooking some up if he wants to keep viewers.

 

They've got Combo on the show, and have promised to delve deeply into how he got to where he was. So I think you can calm down...It's gonna be good.

 

You may be right in terms of the larger audience, but I have almost the opposite perspective, and I doubt I'm completely alone. I enjoyed Breaking Bad more in spite of the violence and action than because of it. To me, the real strength of the show was its black humor and its quirky characters. Sometimes the violence added to that humor, but for me its function was mainly to set up inappropriate (or perhaps all-too-appropriate) reactions from the characters. I still think moments like the tossing of the pizza box onto the roof or Jesse referring to his stereo's "digital tubes" (not to mention just about any scene featuring Gus Fring's eerily calm and meticulous demeanor) were far more memorable than any of the shootings or explosions. Whether that sort of thing will translate into a similar vibe for the Saul spinoff is another question, though...

 

I'm not talking about shooting and explosions so much as situational violence: Man chained in basement, who's going to kill him? Someone needs to poison a drug dealer, who's going to do it? Two Mexican hitmen are on Walt's tail, how will he escape? Jesse chained in a basement by White Supremacists how will he escape? Breaking Bad was masterful at setting up little cliff hangers. It was those kinds of situations and promise of violence that kept viewers glued to the set. I never really grew "fond" of any of the characters, not like "The Sopranos." Never felt the same richness or dimensionality of character. I really liked the humor between Walt and Jesse in the first shows. Once Jesse turned morose after gf's death, it lost a lot of watchabilty for me. And there was all this talk about the masterful writing of Walt's transformation into a calculating sociopath? Gilligan bragged "We're going to take Mr. Chips and turn him into Scarface." Really? He seemed exactly the same character to me all the way through the series. His situation changed, but he pretty much remained the same thickhead all the way through. And that wasn't helped by Cranston's limited range as an actor.

 

Again, if it's character development you want, Combo is your guy. And he's ginna be one of the stars.

 

I would disagree, at least from a personal perspective. Usually I'm repelled by pointless violence and if that's what the show was all about, I wouldn't have watched it or even have it in the my top 5 shows. What made it great was the intelligence of Walter, his situational awareness and his ability to improvise and manipulate to get out of trouble, his pure resourcefulness. That's what made the show for me (and the whole ensemble of characters), not the violence.

 

This is a good thought. It's like what Lucas said he borrowed from Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress" when writing "Star Wars." He said the idea was to keep putting the characters into situations from which there was no escape and having them figure out a way to do so. That idea is certainly part of Breaking Bad's appeal. Yes, maybe violence is maybe too simple, but a series of endless cliffhangers is more appropriate. But will "Better Call Saul" have the same intense sort of situations that the drug game put the characters of Breaking Bad into? Not unless Saul goes around knocking people off, which doesn't seem likely. We'll see.

 

I don't know, but I also don't think it will be a carbon copy of BB and it's not meant to be, so it will have to be judged on its own merits.

In the review I linked to previously, the reviewer (who loved BB), came into it skeptically and after watching the first 3 eps, he was onboard. Of course that doesn't mean that anyone else will feel the same way, but it is at least a little encouraging while we wait for the premiere.

 

I liked that Gilligan said that he and the other writers would come up with a situation and then figure out how yo get out of it. It was a reverse writing technique that forced the writers to be creative when writing for Breaking Bad. I don't see why that wouldn't or couldn't happen with Better Call Saul. I hope that it's as well written as Breaking Bad, though the show obviously focuses on Saul's life situations. I'm really looking forward to it.

 

The first episode has been reviewed by Esquire, and it's an unqualified rave:

“I'll just say it: The first few episodes that I saw are better than Breaking Bad.
They are smarter. They are sharper. I have never seen a prequel handled so cleverly.”



http://www.esquire.com/blogs/cultur...ire.com/blogs/culture/better-call-saul-review

 

Great news! This seemed like a hard one to screw up, and glad it looks like they didn't.

 

Watching the 'train robbery' episode last night made me think: perhaps Lydia might show up, too!
Mike talks about her screwing him over in the past.... perhaps, we'll see how!