Better Call Saul was always more than the sum of its Breaking Bad parts

polygon.com:

Saul Goodman is dead. Long live Saul Goodman.

After a devastating series of self-destructive, sloppy decisions that landed the con artist formerly known as Jimmy McGill in police custody, I was prepared for a hopeless series finale, one that implicated all of us in enjoying Saul and his smarmy schemes at the expense of real ruined lives. Up until halfway through the episode, I was ready to write about the tragedy of a man who is doomed to be himself forever. But the series finale of Better Call Saulproved it could pull the wool over our eyes one last time, ending satisfyingly with romantic optimism about change rather than a nihilistic I-told-you-so about who Jimmy/Saul/Gene was always meant to be. Jimmy’s last con was making us believe he was totally irredeemable, and we all fell for it.

Meticulously detailed, Better Call Saul has always been a show about craftsmanship. We watch Jimmy hang a wall of Post-it notes as he plans his revenge against Howard Hamlin; we watch Mike Ehrmantraut painstakingly drill dozens of holes in the ground; we watch Kim Wexler tighten her ponytail and button her suit and straighten her posture prior to every professional conversation. There is art in the skill it takes these people to pull off the schemes they pull off. You can’t fear being found out as a fraud if you’re not one — if you’ve convinced yourself you’re in the right, and if you’ve already played out and anticipated every possible outcome in your mind. (I think all of these characters would do great on The Rehearsal.)

This has always been true on a micro, character level, but part of the genius of Better Call Saul’s storytelling was its complete inability to exist in a vacuum. You couldn’t miss an episode; you’d miss a tiny,