Dear Saul –
Can we get on with it already??!
I just watched S3E4 and once again was left with a bad case of blue balls.
Like pretty much everyone in the known world, I was a huge fan of Breaking Bad. The measured storytelling, the cinematic visuals, the mix of black comedy, brutal violence and banal domesticity – it all built to what was, without a doubt, the most electrifying final season in TV history.
The prequel, Better Call Saul, was always going to be a more subtle beast. From the start the pace wasn’t just measured, it was positively glacial. Just like its lawyer anti-hero, taking a series of baby steps into more criminal behavior. Which was fine because the character detail and subplots were so smart. There was great fun in anticipating how Saul/Jimmy’s and Mike Ermantraut’s very different worlds would come into collision – or perfect harmony, depending on how you look at it. Just like with Walter White, we’re rooting for both men to go “bad”…to break out of the constraints of normal society and embrace their true identities of slimy crook’s counsel and cold-blooded hitman.
Season 1 worked like a Swiss clock.
Season 2 was almost as fun but started to test my patience near the end.
Season 3, so far, has me squirming in frustration.
Must everything happen so slowly?? Can somebody please get killed? Could it be Chuck so I never have to hear his annoying whine ever again?
I like stories that take their time, but this season feels more like it’s padding out an undernourished plot than carefully setting up for eventual payoffs. It’s so thin, I have no idea if Jimmy and Kim are still in a romantic relationship or if they have put that on hold for the sake of their business. This week he seemed to be sniffing her longingly as they worked side by side, but shouldn’t I know where they are as a couple? The same goes for the scenes between Mike and his widowed daughter-in-law…which, in this episode, consisted of her asking him if he was okay. Even the return of Gus Fring feels stiff. Why aren’t the writers using this opportunity to fill in this villain with some nuance or backstory? Instead, we get a long scene with a Mexican drug lord pitting his minions against each other that feels derivative of countless movies from the 1980’s.
Now Jimmy and Kim finally seem to have a trick up their sleeve for putting Chuck in his place at last…though, yep, you guessed it, we will have to wait another week to find out what the plan is, let alone its outcome.
And the scenes from next week do not signal any speeding-up of the narrative. Jimmy’s hearing to keep his law license felt as if it was going to be the lever that gives him his new identity as Saul, but now I’m not so sure. And since it has taken four episodes to get Mike and Gus to where I expected them to be in S3E1, I’m not expecting anything very dramatic there either.
At first I told myself all of this will play much better when one binges the show in the future, watching 2 or 3 episodes at a time…but none of this feels rewatchable to me. The show needs to entertain us from minute to minute, making the journey as pleasurable as the destination, and it’s not doing that.
It has become airless, claustrophobic…and – I hate this word – just BORING.
I’ll still be watching the rest of the season, of course. I doubt I will ever truly give up on it. But something precious has been lost for good now. I’m not sure how much I care anymore, and that’s a shame.
–RR