We haven’t heard much from the gang over at Better Call Saul since the finale last month (other than the announcement that the series would be renewed for a fourth season), but Vince Gilligan was in Australia last week promoting the series. In an interview with the Sydney Press Herald, he dropped a few interesting quotes, including a fact that many of us have forgotten, namely that Better Call Saul was originally pitched as a half hour comedy.
The original idea, he says, was for “a straight-out half-hour comedy. Maybe it’ll be Saul sitting in his office in front of the American Constitution on his wall and the Styrofoam columns on either side [a staple scenario in Breaking Bad]. And interesting, quirky people will show up every week with legal problems and he’ll solve them. That was the original pitch.”
That idea was scrapped, as we know, once Gilligan and Co. realized that “we’re one-hour drama guys,” although they still try to infuse their dramas with as much comedy as possible. They were concerned, however, that Odenkirk — originally a comedic actor — might not have been up for the challenge of a darker drama.
I don’t think any of us knew he was going to be as good as he is. We thought he would be funny and interesting to watch, and that we would write to his strengths, most of which we thought would be his comedy chops. And then when we started the show he started acting and acting and suddenly we realised, ‘My God, this guy can really go dark, and he can go sad, and he can do all the dramatic things we could ever possibly want from him’.
Gilligan also revealed that Saul was not their favorite character from Breaking Bad and that AMC originally wasn’t that enthusiastic about a Saul Goodman spin-off. In fact, they’d have preferred a spin-off about Jesse Pinkman.
It’s ultimately unlikely that Better Call Saul will see a spin-off of a spin-off (although it’s not unheard of; Happy Days was a spin-off that spun off several series, and NCIS was a spin-off of JAG and ultimately spun off several other series, as well). However, if Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould decide that they aren’t done with the Breaking Bad universe after a few more seasons of Saul, there is one character that Gilligan might be up for spinning off. Howard Hamlin would be my first guess, and then Nacho or perhaps Ernesto (who perhaps turns to a life of crime after he’s fired by Chuck). But it’s none of those three men, according to Gilligan, but rather Kim Wexler.
“Personally, as one of the first two fans of Better Call Saul, I want to know more about Kim, I want to see and learn more about her.
“If we were to do another spin-off it would be the Kim Wexler show.”
I don’t want to get my hopes up, but that could totally work. Assuming at some point Kim and Jimmy part ways, I’d love to see a nice family drama with Kim Wexler and her new husband (maybe Howard Hamlin!) that turns seriously dark when she becomes a lawyer for the wrong client.
Still, if I had my druthers, there’d be no spin-off and Gene and Kim would find each other at the end of Better Call Saul, because this universe deserves at least one happy ending.
(Via the Sydney Press Herald)
