How ‘Breaking Bad’ cooked up the addictive formula for ‘Better Call Saul’

Released in 2008, “Breaking Bad” made the debut the year right after “Mad Men” put AMC on the map as a home to get prestige storytelling. Along with FX’s “The Shield” and “Nip/Tuck, ” those basic cable connection networks demonstrated can be considered premium TV could be defined by quality and goal, not merely its venue.
The particular keys to “Breaking Bad’s” endurance can be traced to a variety of ingredients, combined in a manner that has rippled through “Saul’s” addictive formulation, but which has proven as difficult to reproduce for imitators as Walter White’s unusually pure meth.
Both collection charted the meaning descent of their main characters, combining dark comedy, absurd occasions and long, slower scenes imbued with tension and high-stakes drama.
Perhaps foremost, “Breaking Bad” — which usually presented the advancement of high-school biochemistry teacher Walter Whitened (played by Bryan Cranston), faced with a terminal diagnosis, into a criminal mastermind — became one of the most unpredictable series TV has ever produced. Creator Vince Gilligan and his team consistently wrote themselves into seemingly inescapable corners, prior to revealing some credible and usually innovative way out.
As for Walt’s moral decay, the particular signature moment arrived when he sitting idly by watching the sleeping sweetheart of his companion Jesse (Aaron Paul) choke to loss of life — not doing murder, exactly, but failing to intervene in order to protect themself. That foreshadowed additional casualties that would follow, including the astonishing sequence in which White designed the demise of drug kingpin Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito).
During the time commentators drew parallels between Walt plus Tony Soprano, both family men and crooks who epitomized the age of the TV antihero.
Unlike “The Sopranos, ” although, viewers watched the former gradually turn to the dark side, inviting questions about what ordinary people might do below similar circumstances. Since critic Gene Seymour observed immediately before the finale, “it’s the seeming normality of Walter White-colored that makes us interrogate ourselves more than he or she interrogates himself. inch
In a sense, “Better Call Saul” faced an even more sensitive balancing act which is typical among prequels : building toward the particular narrative territory occupied by its precursor without either exhausting that real estate too quickly or undermining the popular material that motivated it.
“Saul, ” too, has unfolded as “a tragedy, inch as Gilligan lately described it within a session with reporters, watching Bob Odenkirk’s character make the changeover from Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman, with the alienation associated with his significant other, Kim (Rhea Seehorn), as the mysterious linchpin hovering over the story in terms of completing that metamorphosis.
“Breaking Bad” stuck the landing in terms of its series finale, offering a definitive plus satisfying finish after a period characterized by cryptic being that to various extents left viewers in order to puzzle over the writers’ intent. The show also bucked TELEVISION trends by being a late-blooming hit, steadily building audience toward the end — sketching a series-high ten. 3 million audiences for its final event — as individuals discovered the display and word of mouth spread.
When “Breaking Bad” concluded within 2013 Gilligan took what amounted to a triumph lap of TV interviews, including an appearance with Charlie Rose, who asked whether the producer had accepted that he might never do anything this good again.
“It was lightning inside a bottle, ” Gilligan said.
Against the odds, Gilligan and “Saul” co-creator Peter Gould captured lightning twice. Whilst they have said you will find no plans for even more adventures in this world — the spinoff of a spinoff — along with Gilligan telling Rolling Rock it might be “time to do something totally new, ” the everlasting lesson from each series might be how hard it is to walk away from a lucrative enterprise for all those operating at the top of your game.
“Better Call Saul’s” series finale premieres Aug. 15 upon AMC.