NPR

Checking In On 'Better Call Saul' (And 'Breaking Bad') At The 3-Season Mark

Both shows track the moral decay of their main characters, so we compare Jimmy McGill's arc, as of Sunday's Better Call Saul season finale, to that of Walter White after three seasons of Breaking Bad.
In "Lantern," the Season 3 finale of <em>Better Call Saul</em>, brothers Chuck (Michael McKean) and Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) reach the end of their relationship.

Contains spoilers for both Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad.

Two shows, two slow, inexorable descents into moral bankruptcy.

Over five seasons, from 2008 to 2013, Breaking Bad showed us feckless chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston) transforming — coalescing, really — into the coldly brutal drug-lord known as Heisenberg.

Beginning in 2015, its spin-off/prequel Better Call Saul has tasked itself with following small-time lawyer/recovering scam-artist Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) as he gets drawn into the criminal underworld to become the gleefully corrupt, perennially hustling shyster known as Saul Goodman. Saul's third season wrapped up Sunday night.

We don't know if Better Call Saul will undershoot or overshoot the five-season-arc of its predecessor. We don't even know, at this writing, that it will definitely get a fourth season (spoiler: it will definitely get a fourth season), as AMC has yet to announce the pick-up.

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