Breaking Bad’s Relapse

For a spinoff of Breaking Bad that’s meant to be a prequel, Better Call Saul opens in a strange place: the kitchen of a Cinnabon in a Nebraska mall, some time after the closing credits rolled on five seasons of the show’s forebear. The man behind the counter, sporting a bushy mustache but missing his trademark hairpiece, is Saul Goodman, the crooked defense attorney who played a supporting role on Breaking Bad. He’s on the lam, selling buns while furtively watching a VHS tape of his defunct law firm’s TV ads.

Soon we’re pulled back into seedy, familiar Albuquerque, in the years before Walter White quit his job as a high school chemistry teacher to peddle crystal meth full time. We meet the young Jimmy McGill, Esq., who was Saul before he was Saul. (Fans of the first Vince Gilligan series on AMC will recall that Saul’s nom de law was invented so he could cater to criminals “who want a member of the tribe.”)