We Don't Need Two Metaphors

I think it’s fairly safe to say, even at this early stage, that this second episode of Better Call Saul will not go down as one of the best. It’s not a bad episode but merely a serviceable one in a show that’s still moving its pieces into place. The episode kicks off with the recapping of last week’s denouement from Tuco’s perspective. We know that Tuco will become the crazed, hysterical drug dealer by the time Walter White enters his life, but here he is nowhere near that level of derangement. He’s still crazy, but just not batshit crazy. He seems to accept that his grandmother is in the wrong, albeit unaware of her accidental participation in Jimmy’s hare-brained scheme. He appears to be willing to speak with our skater knuckleheads right up to the point where one of them calls his grandmother a “crazy old biznatch”. Of course they don’t know that Tuco isn’t a shining example of mental stability, but we do.

Deconstructing Saul Is it possible to strike televisual gold twice? Given Breaking Bad ’s gradual transformation into a cultural behemoth, one could argue that even if Better Call Saul amounted to nothing more than (in this clumsy metaphor) a few bronze coins and a handful of bottlecaps, then that would be ok; just as long as it isn’t awful. Based on this opening episode, the future looks bright for everybody’s favourite shady criminal lawyer. This first episode works so well because it manages to establish the show’s relationship to its big brother whilst also breaking down the man we knew as Saul Goodman into the constituent Jimmy McGill sized parts.