I know that this review is super timely and relevant given that the show ended over 11 years ago and most of the world has probably already watched the entire series twice. My wife and I tried to watch it a few times, but by the 3rd episode it was so dark that my wife couldn’t watch anymore. So this has always been a show that I wanted to revisit, but I never knew when I’d have a chance.
My son convinced us to give Better Call Saul a try, so we finally did a few months ago and we loved it! This made us want to give Breaking Bad another try, and while the first several episodes were very dark, it actually lightened up a lot after that. By this time, we were addicted to the Breaking Bad universe, so it was no problem finishing the series.
By now, everybody knows that it’s an amazing show with great story telling and incredible acting, so adding to that seems kind of pointless. Sir Anthony Hopkins summed it up in his email to Bryan Cranston.
But I do have three spicy takes on the show:
The first is that while Walter White knowingly and methodically transitioned from a boring family man into an evil guy, he wasn’t really that bad compared to many of the other characters on the show. It ends with Walter White being one of the most wanted men in America, but he was never really in charge of a big operation and he sold much fewer drugs and killed way less people than Tuco or Hector Salamanca, the chicken man, Don Eladio, or the Nazi group.
In the end, he was more employee than kingpin.
The second is how much money he made and how little he benefitted from it. I have no idea how realistic this is, but at one point he had around 80 million dollars, but he wasn’t able to spend it. It also seemed like they spent enormous amounts of money trying to keep everything secret. In the end, he was broke.
My third spicy take is that while Breaking Bad was a master class in drama (and the better of the two shows), Better Call Saul was also great and was more fun to watch. Saul Goodman is a really fun character and his show zig-zagged a lot more than Breaking Bad. Bob Odenkirk has said that he never deserved to be in Breaking Bad, but he more than held his own.
I’d highly recommend them both!