"Better Call Saul," Years Three and Four

Spoilers for both seasons ahead.

I remember the buzz around the early seasons of "Better Call Saul" that slowly died away as the show went on.  The series maintains its quality level just fine from what I've seen so far, but I can understand why some viewers started to drift away.  The third season is still fairly intense and fast-paced, focusing on the feud between Jimmy and Chuck that results in Jimmy having his law license suspended.  However, the fourth season, which takes place over a much longer stretch of time, is much slower.  There are two or three episodes that are all about how Jimmy is bored and frustrated, and they take more patience than the rest of the show has demanded up to that point.

We're steadily seeing more familiar faces.  Gus Fring, Lydia Rodarte Quayle, Huell Babineux, and Gale Boetticher have made appearances, with Gus becoming a regular foe for Nacho and Mike.  New characters include a heretofore unseen Salamanca, Lalo (Tony Dalton), who is sent up North to keep an eye on Hector and Nacho.  There's also Chuck's ex-wife Rebecca (Ann Cusack), and a group of Germans who are secretly brought to Albuquerque to work on constructing a lab for Gus, lead by the tragic Werner (Rainer Bock).  Both Jimmy and Mike have now passed the point of no return in their journeys to "Breaking Bad," Jimmy more gradually and Mike with more self-awareness.  It's also become clear that the defining relationship in Jimmy's life is the one with Chuck, even after Chuck dies.  Kim has emerged as the most sympathetic figure out of all of them, trying and failing to keep Jimmy on the straight and narrow, and letting herself become more and more compromised in the process.  I was really rooting for Kim and Jimmy to work out somehow, but Jimmy's inferiority complex and resentments have taken over by the end of season four.  His last really selfless act was torpedoing his career in elder law at the end of season three.

Mike and Nacho have the showier material in much of seasons three and four, getting wrapped up in Gus Fring's feud with Hector Salamanca, and later Lalo Salamanca.  Mike's ego is what gets him into trouble, his insistence on doing things his own way, and calling out the inadequacies of those around him.  (Hi, Marc Evan Jackson!)  This gets him more involved with Fring's operations until he takes on the construction project, and has to take responsibility for the fallout.  It's so much fun to watch Mike set up his little traps and schemes, it's easy to forget that he's taking a lot of stupid risks.  Nacho, on the other hand, knows he's in a bad situation from early on, and can't dig his way out from under the Salamancas.  Add Gus Fring on top of that, and I don't know how he could possibly survive until the end of the series.  So, like Kim, Nacho's one of the only really sympathetic characters left on the board.     

I like how the writers  handle the death of Chuck, the biggest event in the show so far.  More than that, I like that it's set up so far in advance, with Jimmy undermining Chuck at the trial, reporting the outburst to  the insurance agents to destroy Chuck's reputation, and putting Howard in the position to finish him off.  Similarly, the seeds are planted for Hector Salamanca's downfall throughout the third season before he has his stroke.  There aren't many television shows that really do long-form storytelling on the level that "Better Call Saul" does.  It's absolutely as good as "Breaking Bad," but is also confident enough to be more of a straight drama, keeping those big set pieces in few and far between.  Mike may have killed someone in the finale, but Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn deliver the most chilling scene in that episode with a two minute conversation.  

I'm giving myself a break before I get into the last two seasons.  I know what to expect at this point, and I'm confident that Vince Gilligan and company will be able to pull off a strong ending.  I admit that I'm glad that I decided to wait and binge the show so I don't have to deal with the long breaks between these final episodes.  Once I get started with these, I don't think I'll be able to stop until the end.

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