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Apr 8, 2022 · TV. Features. Apr 8, 2022 8:15am PT. Bob Odenkirk Knows What’s Next After ‘Better Call Saul’: Living in the Moment. By Emily Longeretta. Chelsea Lauren/Variety. Before Bob Odenkirk stepped into the...
- Overview
- The soul of 'Saul'
- The end of the road
Bob Odenkirk chose his words carefully.
The actor and comedian, perched on a couch at his home in Los Angeles, attempted to answer questions about the final season of "Better Call Saul," his “Breaking Bad” spinoff series, without uttering a word that might be construed as a spoiler.
“I now know what happens, of course,” Odenkirk said matter of factly, “and I would love to talk about it with you.”
It might seem strange that the final 13 episodes of “Better Call Saul” are dotted with so many question marks ahead of the season premiere on April 18 on AMC. The show is a prequel to one of the most popular series of the last quarter-century, which means millions of people around the world already know that Odenkirk’s character, the low-rent Albuquerque huckster and hapless public defender Jimmy McGill, transforms into the flashy, flamboyant drug lawyer known as Saul Goodman on “Breaking Bad.”
But the writers of “Better Call Saul” have always had more tricks up their pinstripe sleeves.
In the course of 50 intricately written episodes, co-creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould have hooked viewers on a gallery of characters who do not even appear on “Breaking Bad” — as far as we know. What fate will befall the besieged cartel lieutenant Nacho Vargo (Michael Mando); Jimmy’s ethically malleable partner, Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn); the white-shoe attorney Howard Hamlin (Patrick Fabian)? How exactly do their rich storylines intersect with the saga of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), the meth-cooking antihero who started it all?
“Breaking Bad” is one of the landmark shows of the prestige TV era, but the artistic fruitfulness of “Saul” was not assured. The prequel series lacks the original’s “Mr. Chips-to-Scarface” conceit and struts at a different tempo, low-key but jazzy. “Breaking Bad” was often high-octane; “Saul” is relatively more leisurely, with a defiantly shaggy dog spirit. And yet there are plenty of violent shocks and propulsive twists as Jimmy gets more deeply tied up with a vicious Juárez drug cartel and the gleefully sociopathic Lalo Salamanca (a terrifying Tony Dalton).
“Saul” is not a Nielsen-ratings behemoth like “Breaking Bad.” But many fans and critics now believe the two shows are equals, contrasting each other in provocative ways. Walter White’s descent into evil was Wagnerian in intensity, but the incremental nature of Jimmy’s moral downfall feels more painful, like witnessing a luckless friend slowly implode.
Seehorn, one of the show’s breakout performers, delighted in the chance to illustrate Kim Wexler’s stunning evolution, too, embodying a character who dwells in the gray zone between professional competence and ethical slipperiness.
“I find her fascinating, personally. They [the writers] allowed the room for there to be subtext. They do this with all the characters, but she [Kim] was constantly in situations where she didn’t show her cards,” Seehorn said. The result could have been inscrutable, she added, “but instead I was encouraged to play the subtext in a way that allowed the audience in.”
The prequel series also plumbs deeper into the psyches of some of the most rivetingly pulpy “Breaking Bad” characters, like the calmly calculating drug lord Gustavo “Gus” Fring (Giancarlo Esposito, unnerving) and gravelly ex-cop Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks, never better). In an interview, Esposito said he was originally reluctant to reprise his role on “Saul,” uncertain that he could bring new dimensions to a villain known for his stone-faced countenance.
“I was suspicious,” Esposito said with a laugh, “and I had to talk to Vince about what the plan was. We had to come to an agreement that the mysterious nature of Gustavo, in terms of his background, should be preserved.” The prequel gave Esposito intriguing new notes to strike, too: “Gus [on 'Saul'] is more hot-headed, less reserved. His cards are less close to his chest.”
The final season, which airs in two parts — seven episodes in April and May, six episodes in July and August — draws a curtain on a character Odenkirk has played for much of the last 13 years, redefining the career of a journeyman performer previously best known for the cult HBO sketch series “Mr. Show.” It also closes a chapter on a surrogate family that sprung up around the production.
“It was a true family,” Seehorn said. “We read all the time about actors on shows who say they all get along, and I hope most casts do get along … but we are real friends.”
During the production of the last three seasons, Odenkirk shared a house in New Mexico with Seehorn and Fabian, a witty conversationalist who said he modeled his character’s distinctive walk on Cary Grant.
“We were like a college acting troupe,” Fabian said with a grin. “We’d spend all day with one another, and then we’d end up at home around the kitchen table talking about what happened today and what will happen tomorrow,” adding that the housemates rehearsed and ran lines together in between grocery store runs and hikes.
“Patrick was the activities director,” Odenkirk said affectionately. “Rhea and I were the indulgent actors — talking, talking, talking about their [expletive] characters,” Odenkirk joked. “We talked about motivations and theory and psychology and shooting styles, breaking it down all day long. It was a great friendship and partnership.”
The final season might offer closure on what became of Jimmy after he fled Albuquerque following the events of “Breaking Bad” and reinvented himself yet again as Gene Takovic, a manager at a shopping mall Cinnabon in Omaha, Nebraska. Odenkirk said he always believed it was important that the writers do not completely foreclose the possibility of enlightenment — or something like it — for his small-screen alter ego.
- Reporter
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