For most of its run, Better Call Saul has felt like two parallel series. And it is still one of the most striking-looking shows on television, with an eye for the beauty and the meaning of a shot’s composition, and a playful habit of planting the camera in odd places - with a bundle going through an X-ray machine, or up extremely close with an ordinary insect going about its business.Īt the same time, its shortcomings are still its shortcomings. It remains a show that relishes in the intricacies of a complicated scheme, whether it’s a bit of legal tomfoolery by Jimmy ( Bob Odenkirk) or methodical groundwork undertaken by Mike (Jonathan Banks) as part of a vaster criminal conspiracy by Gus (Giancarlo Esposito). (I’m begging you, Emmy voters: Stop sleeping on Rhea Seehorn.) The cast and writers (led by showrunner Peter Gould) maintain their gift for dancing between breathless tension, aching tragedy and genuine LOLs the first two episodes have moments of all three. Its performances haven’t missed a beat, and neither has its writing - if anything, these characters and the world they inhabit have only grown richer and more complex with time. The show’s pleasures are still its pleasures. One of Better Call Saul‘s most impressive qualities throughout its run has been its consistency, and that holds true in season six. But the first two episodes sent to critics, at least, continue to reflect a confident drama that’s firing on all cylinders, and that shows every indication of going out as brilliantly as it came in. How satisfyingly the series will ultimately be able to navigate between these conflicting directions remains to be seen. On the other, we already know more or less where the limits of that bigger picture lie, having seen the aftermath of Better Call Saul already on Breaking Bad.Ĭast: Bob Odenkirk, Jonathan Banks, Rhea Seehorn, Giancarlo Esposito, Patrick Fabian, Michael Mando, Tony Dalton On one hand, the bigger picture seems to be falling into place, paying off years of meticulous plotting as its characters’ disparate fates finally converge somewhere in the hellish sprawl of the Albuquerque underworld. As AMC’s Better Call Saul stands at the precipice of its sixth and final season (or technically, the first half of a supersized final season that will be broken up into two parts, just like the final season of its predecessor Breaking Bad), there’s a sense that its narrative possibilities are simultaneously expanding and contracting.
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