Better Call Saul has made for brilliant quarantine viewing

Vanity Fair

The Breaking Bad prequel, like the quarantine, tests our patience, says Sonia Saraiya. "Saul makes for brilliant quarantine viewing," she adds. "Baking bread and regrowing scallions are slow, time-intensive processes; so too is the making of Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), a lawyer without a conscience. Saul’s reach is so wide, and so seemingly incidental, that it’s sometimes frustrating: To understand how Jimmy McGill became a frightening drug cartel’s flashy, unscrupulous defense attorney, we’ve first had to understand Jimmy’s relationship with his older brother Chuck (Michael McKean), his girlfriend Kim’s (Rhea Seehorn) relationship with her mom, and the angst Mike Ehrmentraut (Jonathan Banks) felt upon killing a German engineer. Every week, the pattern is a little clearer—but it’s still drawing from a mysteriously vast universe of experience. Yet even as Saul reaches wider, it also assembles its scenes with painstaking care. This is a show of staggering moments, strung together on threads that span years. The emphasis on moment feels especially keen right now. Saul has been stuck in the early 2000s for years now; its characters are still snapping flip phones shut to hang up on each other. But even if it’s disconnected from our present, the show is deeply rooted in its own. Even when its characters are pressed for time, Saul itself is never in a rush; in scenes suffused with dread, it meticulously clocks every detail. That care fills these moments with their power—their complexity, their reach, their potential." Saraiya points out that Better Call Saul probably didn't need a season establishing Tony Dalton's Lalo Salamanica character. "Dalton joined the show late in season four, and brings an unpredictable, savage charm to it; he’s funny, perceptive, and absolutely terrifying, a cold-blooded killer with no conscience," she says. "We probably would have believed the depths of his rage without a season of getting to know his ways. But this is how Better Call Saul flexes its power on the viewer: even though you know what’s going to happen, you can’t stop watching it unfold."

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