The slow-burn joy of a Better Call Saul binge

I waited, I bailed, and I gave up on one of TV's best shows. I was an idiot ...

• This Boiler Room post was written and edited for publication before Lockdown: Part II began in Auckland. I though about binning it, but decided against it. If you’re anything like me, you might have found yourself with a bit of spare time to rediscover TV shows you thought you didn’t care about. Better Call Saul is definitely one of those.

Back in the simpler, happier times of 2014, I boarded a plane (remember that feeling?!), flew to Los Angeles (WTAF?!), checked into a hotel (calm down now, buddy) and prepared to interview the one and only Bob Odenkirk for the very first time.

I don’t remember much about the interview, but I do remember this: I didn't ask him a single question.

It just felt like the right thing to do. It was the end of a long day, I was one of the last in a lengthy list of international journalists queuing to meet him, and, cooped up in a stuffy hotel room, we were both tired.

Besides, I had a Run the Jewels gig to get to.

So we just chewed the fat. Spitballed. Joked around. Talked about anything and everything. The conversation wandered down weird, unexpected paths, and I was okay with that. For 20 minutes, I didn’t ask him a thing.

It felt nothing like most interviews, and that was a good thing. After all, I was sitting next to the break out star of Breaking Bad, and back in 2014, Odenkirk had scored his very own spin-off show. It was a big deal. Big enough for me to be flown to LA to spend a day meeting the cast and crew. Big enough to launch on Lightbox, back then New Zealand’s only streaming service (I wrote a bit about this last week).

So, a little star struck, a lot fatigued, I did something I don’t normally do in interviews, and let Odenkirk go for it. I’m glad I did: it turns out he’s at his best when he’s unchained, singing the tune of his own melody. That’s probably why he’s so good as freewheeling schister Jimmy McGill, aka Saul Goodman, his Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul alter-egos.

Afterwards, I dumped my gear in my hotel room, forgot about our chat, and spent the next 90 minutes strapped into the craziest taxi ride of my life, attempting to get across town during rush hour to interview Run the Jewels before their star-studded gig. That story involves wads of $100 bills, a giant food rider, freshly baked cookies and Zach de la Rocha. I should probably write about it sometime soon.

Anyway, when I got back to New Zealand, I filed my feature, and pretty much forgot about Better Call Saul. I’d watched a few episodes to prep for the interview and was instantly bored. Where were the drug cartels? The merciless box-cutting bosses? Grizzly characters like Hank and Gus? The tension and anxiety of Breaking Bad?

Why was I watching this slow-burn legal drama about feuding brothers, one of which dressed himself entirely in tinfoil?

It was an opinion I held for a long time. For mosts of the show’s five seasons, the better part of five years, I thought Better Call Saul sucked. Friends tried to change my mind, with no luck. Metacritic, which scored each of its five seasons at 78 per cent, 85, 87, 87 and 92, also tried to sway me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read my favourite TV critics declaring Saul to have surpassed Breaking Bad in quality, but its been a lot.

None of it worked. I’d made my mind up. I wasn’t going back.

Then Lockdown: Part I happened. Suddenly, I was gifted time to rewatch old faves, find new series to binge, and give previously shuttered shows a second shot. For some reason, possibly rewatching the Breaking Bad movie El Camino, Better Call Saul popped into my mind. Maybe I should give it another go?

So that’s what I’ve been doing. Over the past month, I’ve watched an episode most nights. It turns out I expected too much from it. Better Call Saul isn’t Breaking Bad - but how could it be? It’s a meandering slow-burner, one that sets its own pace. Saul thinks nothing of spending far too long on shots of empty rooms, doors slowly closing, a single shard of light coming through a dimly lit house, or using wide angles to expose the expansive emptiness of a desert.

Entire minutes are spent constructing a montage of Mike Ehrmantraut stripping a car of all of its parts. At the start of season two, an entire scene is built around Saul’s older brother Chuck teaching him how to correctly peel tape from a wall without ripping off the wallpaper. You have to use your thumbs, apparently.

Riveting stuff. No wonder I bailed.

But you have to bear with Saul. You have to give it time. A lot of time. Season one crawls at the pace of a snail, and season two doesn’t move much faster. But by season three, all those chess pieces are in place. Gus Fring makes a comeback, so does the bell-ringing dictator Hector Salamanca. Other Breaking Bad characters resurface, which I won’t spoil here, but holy hell does it all pay off by season four.

Like Walt’s transformation from “Mr Chips into Scarface” in Breaking Bad, the show’s about McGill’s slow-motion morph into frenetic bad boy lawyer Saul Goodman. But the real stand out, and the better story, in my mind is Mike’s. Across season three, he steals the show with his OG hitman antics. If there’s ever a spin-off to this spin-off, it needs to be about Mike.

By the time I got to season five (there’s one more to go after that), I appreciated all of those things I slammed Saul for at the start. The slow, meditative pace grows on you. The characters grow on you. The empty space grows on you. Now, I look forward to it.

Yes, it can meander as much as an afternoon lost in the kitchen accessories section at Bunnings. But lockdown showed me I didn’t need Saul to speed up to like it, I just needed life to slow down. I also needed to give it a second chance. I suggest you do the same.