As a fan, let me thank them. I won’t say anything about the finale. But Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould constructed a wonderful series. BREAKING BAD is my all-time favorite dramatic series (sorry MAD MEN, SOPRANOS, CSI MIAMI) and I worried that any prequel would fall way short. Worse yet, it could be BeforeMASH. And although it wasn’t as compelling as BREAKING BAD (no show was) and it did have its slow stretches, BETTER CALL SAUL was way better than I expected and wonderful on its own terms.
It’s hard to do a prequel and super hard to do a finale. Expectations are so high. And again, Vince & Peter pulled it off. It was satisfying with lots of surprises. No SPOILER ALERTS. Go watch it.
To me the hardest part of writing is the storytelling. People say it must be really tough to come up with all those jokes. Actually, jokes are the easy part. Coming up with a good original story, perhaps told in a unique non-linear way — if that’s constructed well the jokes just naturally come.
In BREAKING BAD and BETTER CALL SAUL the storytelling was magnificent. You could never outguess them. There were ingenious schemes, elegant character development, suspense, and even laughs. My hat’s off to those writing staffs.
And of course a nod to the superlative cast. Bob Odenkirk for sure, but the breakout star was Rhea Seehorn. Surround them with the likes of Jonathan Banks, Patrick Fabian, Giancarlo Esposito, Michael Mando, Tony Dalton, and Michael McKean and you had magic. It’s the magic that every screenwriter dreams of.
So thank you, BETTER CALL SAUL. And whoever cast Rhea Seehorn.
from By Ken Levine
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