This is the secret of “Better Call Saul’s” fifth season success

Better Call Saul is getting closer to Breaking Bad. When a prequel to the famous Heisenberg series had been announced, many people were afraid that the "legacy" would be ruined. Mainly, they didn't think it possible that a minor character, like Saul Goodman, could bear the narrative.

In other words, he is a character with huge charisma, but who, if they forgot about the dramatic issues, would be a step "away" from the essence of Breaking Bad. Nothing is further from that, something that was perfectly seen in the fifth season, which media like Hypertextual cataloged as "perfect".

Some fans even went so far as to say that, in at least several respects, they managed to beat Breaking Bad. Mainly, they emphasize “the time” that they have been building the motivations and personalities. Since they have a foundation on which to base themselves (i.e. the base series), they can take more time to deepen feelings and ideas. Let's see, then, the secrets of the success of the fifth season of Better Call Saul.

How do you explain the success of Better Call Saul?

The first thing we could say is that there are many similarities to Breaking Bad, for logical reasons. However, it is from this point in the story when it becomes "more Breaking Bad than ever", as mentioned by the MDZ Online website. This can be explained in several ways.

The first is the drama structure itself of the series. The story tells us of the beginnings of Jimmy McGill, a person who will later adopt the identity of Saul Goodman, the cheating lawyer we had met in Breaking Bad. However, he did not always have enormous popularity, so the series will try to explain how he became that unscrupulous person.

In this sense, we see that the first seasons were a little removed from the events of the base series. Despite the fact that the plots had depth, we all expected a little more, although that was the first sin: Better Call Saul is not Breaking Bad, because they have a different way of storytelling.

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Despite the fact that the essence remains, especially in terms of direction, cases of crazyness are rather few … until this season. Here we are presented with a villain with a sarcastic and brilliant personality: Lalo Salamanca.

Even the creator of the show, Vince Gilligan, feels "ashamed" of not wanting him initiallty, since he thought that his role would be secondary, something that the medium Tónica mentions. However, his appearance led to the transformation of Saul Goodman towards the "dark side", represented by his association with the drug cartels … although not only from him, since his partner, Kim Wexler, also begins to transform into an unscrupulous lawyer.

Despite the fact that the first seasons seemed to need Breaking Bad to capture the interest of viewers, it has transformed, paradoxically, into an independent series. Therefore, they began to "not abuse" the winks towards the original story, although when they did, it worked wonders.

An example of this occurs in episodes 8 and 9, which IMDb rates 9.8. Here you can see references to some iconic moments in the series, such as the desert shots or the terror of meeting a murderer alone and not knowing what will happen. At that precise moment, we understood that, although they share a universe, emotional conflicts are different.

Even as viewers we no longer even care about the flashforwards that will occur at the beginning of each season. In other words, where we see, for a few minutes, the "future" of Saul Goodman after Breaking Bad. Although we can assume what will happen in the present line, the interesting thing is to know how it will happen, something that the series, in its fifth season, knew how to do masterfully.