Better Call Saul’s first season stills
If you haven’t seen Breaking Bad, can you watch its derivative drama Better Call Saul? It can be said responsibly that it has no impact at all.
Although Better Call Saul was nominated for seven Emmy Awards in the first season, none of them was won, which shows that it has a balanced strength and full stamina. Part of its good reputation comes from the mother drama, and more importantly, although it pays tribute to the mother drama, it has a completely different theme and is equally profound.
Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, the original writers of Breaking Bad, wanted to make a 30-minute comedy, because the protagonist Jimmy Miguel (bob odenkirk) was a gold medal supporting actor who was famous for his joy in the original play. In the end, it became a 45-minute episode, not only because he was one of the two characters with no definite ending after the collapse of the "Laobai" drug trafficking group (the other was "Xiao Fen"), but also because the screenwriter saw the common characteristics between him and Better Call Saul’s other protagonist, Mike Ermenshauban (jonathan banks), which made them more complicated.
Better Call Saul’s first season stills
In essence, Breaking Bad is about how good people fall, while Better Call Saul’s theme is how bad people try to be good people.
Lawyer Jimmy and killer Mike are both unruly people, and they are very talented in their respective fields. Such people are naturally not allowed in society. What’s more, the environment they live in is a well-behaved and hidden disaster on the US-Mexico border. Since they are not recognized by the mainstream society, they will easily become a bloody business to make a living. They all have their own set of rules, insist on not doing anything that hurts others, and often help others because they can’t bear it. If such people don’t die like ants, they must be very powerful to dance on the edge of the cliff.
The two screenwriters chose these two characters in Breaking Bad, and used their "street wisdom" to make the story look good. The shackles and tragic fate that they could not escape gave the play depth.
Better Call Saul’s first season stills
Compared with the big events in Breaking Bad, what happened in Better Call Saul is mostly trivial. It seems that time is the most important thing for the two screenwriters. They slowly use small things to create characters, and the camera pays attention to details, so that we can follow Jimmy through his cheating youth and now he wants to be a good lawyer.
He is as eloquent as an addict and loves to convince others. He is confident in appearance but always afraid in heart. The characteristics and too positive attitude of the little rascal always make others distrust him. Sophisticated people can easily see through his duplicity, and never forget to remind him of how unreliable and absurd he is as a lawyer.
In the first season, Jimmy was sad, and everything he did was bluffing, but the result was always bad. He was embarrassed from beginning to end as if he had given the wrong birth. Although he was good at forgetting his scars and making persistent efforts, it was obvious that he was out of place in the lawyer world.
By the end of the first season, the little things finally turned into big things, and Jimmy began to move forward to the lawyer Saul Goodman who was transformed in Breaking Bad. One is that he was frustrated and went back to his hometown to heal, and he went back to his old job with his old friends and cheated for a week, ending with his old friend’s heart attack and death in the process of cheating.
The souvenir left by his old friend is a ring. Jimmy carefully tied the ring of his old friend, the fat man, with a red line and put it on his little finger, and some of his abandoned nature slowly came back.
The other is that he discovers that it is his own brother Chuck (Michael McKenzie) who has been holding him back for years. Chuck, a barrister, is proud of his younger brother who works in a law firm after his rehabilitation, but he can never accept his younger brother as an excellent lawyer. His paranoid love for his career and his unconscious jealousy made him insist that the legal profession should not be defiled by gangsters like his younger brother. After discovering the truth, Jimmy was frustrated by this cold arrow.
Compared with Jimmy, whose values are still in turmoil, Mike is as strong and firm as in Breaking Bad. On the surface, Mike, who committed two murders for revenge and fled to the desert, got involved in the underworld because of money. The deeper reason is that as an old policeman, he already knew that black and white can’t be defined by law, and justice comes from people’s hearts.
He abides by his own rules of good and evil and does odd jobs for black jobs, but refuses to break other people’s "dirty jobs" and kill drug dealers with one shot to make a lot of money. Old Mike has a pair of dead fish eyes, looks like a collection of Stallone and Jackie Chan, and his skill is unfathomable, and he is as fast as lightning. He is experienced and extremely intelligent, and often the screenwriter sets a dilemma, and he quietly solves the situation. He is like a silent old grandfather. You look up at him, but he decides to take his skills and stories to the grave.
Old Mike
Mike is not afraid of anything and does not struggle between good and evil. His only weakness is that he needs money for his family. He is not greedy and has no ambition. Every master who is willing to hide in the city has his own reasons. Old Mike, like the chivalrous man of the East, tries his best to make things not too bad in his own way, but never lets people see his inner world.
Better Call Saul’s second season stills
Better Call Saul broadcast to the second season, the original relaxed and happy Jimmy line gradually became heavy. He is changing, thinking about what kind of person he wants to be, whether to be a well-behaved lawyer with his tail between his legs, or to release his nature and give full play to his strengths in a place where rules are not so binding.
Light comedy then developed in a serious direction, and old Mike’s plays also increased significantly. He has never been a joke, and his personality has long been stereotyped, and most of the changes come from external forces. Like Breaking Bad, Mike has shown the characteristics of "the most popular screen killer" here, so I’m glad to see him tied with Jimmy.
Better Call Saul’s second season stills
When the protagonists became heavier and heavier, the writers managed to retain the elements of black humor. In the first season, the million-dollar couple with extremely low IQ and outrageous stubbornness are very much like the butchers in Ice Storm. They are so stupid that flogging is particularly enjoyable.
There is another old face in Breaking Bad-the drug dealer gallery (raymond cruz). When writing the prequel to the gallery, the writers must have laughed themselves to internal injuries. In the words of Na Qiao (Michael Mando), a partner of the gallery, they vividly described a move that needed to be traded all day every Tuesday (actually, it didn’t take that long at all), just because the gallery liked to stare at every drug dealer’s eyes, which was called "lie detector" by Na Qiao. His cruel, suspicious, seemingly cool and handsome behavior is in contrast to his stupid "lie detector" behavior, and it is very funny to recall it.
However, there are many funny places, such as lawyer Jimmy and Mike who have not yet become killers. How to be a "good criminal" is ultimately an act of throwing eggs at stones, and the fate of the role is proof. Watching this black comedy under the setting of tragedy is a sinking process of happiness.