AMC’s Breaking Bad spinoff Better Call Saul and its star Bob Odenkirk get the big fancy New York Times treatment today with a lengthy profile. We learn all sorts of interesting things in the piece, like what made Odenkirk finally decide to do the show, Vince Gilligan and showrunner Peter Gould’s reasoning for continuing Saul’s story in the past, and how the idea of a Saul-based sequel evolved from a joke in the Breaking Bad writer’s room into a real project. But the most interesting part is tucked around the midpoint, when we find out more about the premiere episode and how exactly the show will get us to the prequel-y past.
Some mild spoilers ahead, obviously:
[T]he show opens in the future, after Walter’s downfall and Saul’s dispossession of his greasy empire. Saul is in his own version of witness protection, tucked away in the kind of job no one sees in a place where everyone goes. He is a hunted shell of the smack-talking lawyer, who finds solace in running old tapes of his once ubiquitous commercials beckoning one and all to call Saul. It is grim and scary, but the vibe is as much “X-Files” (which Mr. Gilligan used to write for) as it is “Breaking Bad.”
And then the tape ends and we are back to where Saul started, as Jimmy McGill, a slip-and-fall shyster trying to walk back to more honorable pursuits by taking on public defender work.
So there you go. We’ll get to the past via a quick detour through the future, and it’s apparently going to get weird. And we’ll (maybe, probably) get from the past to the somewhat-less-distant past — from Jimmy to Saul, if you will — via some shenanigans involving the criminal-types that pass through the public defender’s office, which was also implied in the trailer. Now all we need to know is if it’s gonna be, like, good. Fingers crossed.