A good start, and just gets better and better

grantss

(Updated after Season 4).

Introducing Jimmy McGill (played by Bob Odenkirk). You may know him better as Saul Goodman, Walter White's slippery, resourceful lawyer in Breaking Bad. When first we meet him it is a few years before he meets Walter White. He is a struggling lawyer in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He mostly defends small-time crooks and represents people in civil liability claims (much of which amounts to nothing more than ambulance chasing). His brother, Charles "Chuck" McGill (Michael McKean), is a senior partner at a prestigious Albuquerque law firm but hasn't left his house for several months due to a strange affliction. Jimmy is supporting him through bringing him groceries and the like. Jimmy has a dark, pre-lawyer past, being a small-time fraudster in Chicago before moving to Albuquerque to start over and work with at his brother's firm. We also meet Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), ex-cop now working as a toll booth attendant at the courthouse parking lot. We see how Jimmy and Mike's stories converge and how Jimmy slowly becomes the Saul Goodman we know from Breaking Bad.

Good drama series: engaging with some interesting episode-specific stories and solid season/series-wide stories. Great character depth - we see how Jimmy got to where he is and what makes him tick. Decent depth to secondary characters too.

Not as compelling a watch as Breaking Bad though, especially during Season 1. Part of the problem is you know how Jimmy/Saul is going to end up, and you want him to get there as soon as possible. Saul Goodman was a wonderfully colourful character in Breaking Bad - funny, very resourceful and not above underhanded means to achieve ends. Jimmy McGill (in Season 1, at least) isn't even a shadow of Saul Goodman. So the longer the Jimmy part is drawn out and the Saul part delayed, the more impatient you get.

In Season 2 this is far less of an issue, as the sub-plots are good enough to stand on their own, without even knowing that Breaking Bad even exists.

Only other negative is that I find the character of Chuck quite irritating and always tend to feel anything involving him is a sideshow and a distraction from the main events. This is not the case in Season 3 though...

Season 3 is where it all starts to come together. Jimmy uses the name Saul Goodman for the first time and things with Chuck reach a breaking point, the fall-out from which pushes the series in a different, more interesting direction. On Mike's front, a face familiar to Breaking Bad viewers appears and makes a profound impact. This additional link with Breaking Bad helps to make you think the two stories are at last converging.

Season 4 is the best season to date. The Breaking Bad storyline is definitely in view, with more characters from that series appearing...and a memorable structure. More a crime drama than a domestic drama, at last.

Season 1 - 8/10, S2 - 9/10, S3 - 9/10, S4 - 10/10

score 9/10

grantss 25 May 2016

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3475823/