Better stop holding your breath for “Better Call Saul,” folks. In a good-news, bad-news press release, AMC announced that the “Breaking Bad” prequel series, focusing on Bob Odenkirk’s Saul Goodman, has already been renewed for a second season, but now won’t premiere until sometime in early 2015, rather than the previously-announced November 2014 plan.
Season 1 will be 10 episodes, and season 2 will be 13. The release also says that the show will be paired with the second half of the next two seasons of “The Walking Dead.” (“TWD” hasn’t technically been renewed beyond this upcoming season, but that’s just a formality for the highest-rated drama on television.) With a November premiere, at least part of the first season would have still aired next to “Walking Dead” episodes, though, but this gives AMC more promotional time.
Also of note: “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan, who has a co-creator credit on “Better Call Saul” with Peter Gould (who wrote the episode that introduced Saul), will now direct the new series’ premiere, and will now co-run the show with Gould. (See above for a picture of Odenkirk on the set with Gould and Gilligan. As usual, the New Mexico sky looks great.)
What does everybody else think? I have sensed some ambivalence about the need for any kind of “Breaking Bad” spin-off. Does AMC’s apparent confidence in it, and Gilligan signing on full-time, make you more excited? Or does it seem like AMC is just desperate to have another successful show alongside “The Walking Dead,” given the struggles of most of their other recent dramas?