Vince Gilligan
Better Call Saul

It's true. After tasting a particularly delicious dish, captivated by a sort of fever, we eagerly go to taste all the dishes cooked by the chef of the aforementioned dish. The fever, paroxysmally, distracts us from everything else and we voraciously try to taste everything. However, at some point, our chef's dishes start to lose flavor and the magic disappears… So, we start to re-taste the old dishes or decide to change restaurants…

Metaphor aside, this is the story of life.

However, there are cases where it's impossible to do this. There are cases where chefs are remembered for only one dish and one alone.

There was the case of J. D. Salinger.

And there is the case of Gilligan and Gould.

This scorching summer marks the end of the sixth and final season of their series Better Call Saul; the eleventh season set in the Breaking Bad universe; two exceptional series for their narrative coherence, and for their stylistic and acting quality, in which two narrative lines often run parallel, intersecting every now and then and breaking here and there to offer some flashbacks and some flash-forwards of dazzling beauty.

Moreover, each character is meticulously outlined and portrayed with astonishing mastery.

So, inevitably gripped by the aforementioned fever, I asked myself, who, then, are Gilligan and Gould? I searched for answers, sifting through their filmography. And nothing, they have left no significant traces. Some seasons for X-Files, maybe. Then a movie based on a video game, shot with amateurish rhythm and another, fantastic, where two brothers, separated at birth and capable of starting a fire with their minds, meet again by life's twists.

And that's it!

So, how did they do it? Where does Better Call Saul come from?

I like to think that, perhaps, perhaps, in these years, it was the muse speaking through them.

The review should end here.

Yet I am troubled by an existential problem concerning even a case from the second season.

Briefly, I summarize the facts up to the case:

A man moves from Cicero, Illinois, to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Here he joins his brother, a successful lawyer, who has just managed to save him from a sure sentence of many years in prison. Another man, a former cop, arrives in Albuquerque from Philadelphia. Here he joins his daughter-in-law and granddaughter. And he, too, is escaping a murky past. Both try to make their way in the new city.

The problem is this: are the circumstances of life or the genes of human beings predominantly shaping their future?

To try to answer, you would have to sit down and maybe lie down in an armchair, and talk to an analyst for a few years. Surely, you would give an answer with great awareness.

However, if you want to answer sooner or do not have access to psychological counseling, perhaps you can try to reason it out or discuss it in good company after watching the second season of Better Call Saul.

The case of Jimmy McGill could be emblematic. He is a man who cunningly and creatively exploits the weaknesses and vices of others. “A good man,” but also a great swindler and trickster, an extraordinary storyteller of tall tales and stories, an excellent improviser, and perjurer, an artistic forger of evidence, and a creator of advertisements.

Once in Albuquerque, he tried to leave the past behind by almost paving his way straight, in an almost straight way. Thus, he lived in misery, delivered mail for the entire big firm of his brother, obtained a law degree, served as a public defender in many small cases, he set up and reluctantly sold a class action for many millions of dollars…

Until the opportunity of a lifetime came along: he was offered a partner contract in a large, very large firm. However, he refuses.

Why?

Perhaps, perhaps, the breaking point was a betrayal by his brother. And the other life circumstances, the judgments, the expectations of others. Maybe.

Or maybe not. Maybe it's only after the refusal that Jimmy is at peace with himself. During the years he tried to comply with the conditions imposed on him, he felt torn and uncertain; perhaps, only now, free from constraints, he can finally do what he does best, what he had always done.

Perhaps people do not change; the circumstances of life matter little, as his brother Chuck would say:

I know what you were, what you are—people don't change.
And, while over the course of the story the “good man” will be slowly, blow after blow, overwhelmed by his exuberant alter ego, I continue to wonder if things can change or if truly everything is predetermined from the start.