BETTER CALL SAUL SCRAWL: EPISODE 103 TITLED NACHO

Grade: C+

Good news: BETTER CALL SAUL is getting better… But the bad news is, it can’t get any worse.

Title: NACHO

So that’s an uphill climb for us, the anticipating audience, trying our best to fall in love all over again with the shady character whose sole purpose was to straighten out the most bizarrely crooked of situations in BREAKING BAD, and now he has his own mess to perpetually clean up, and then some…

Beginning with Saul… or rather, his actual name, Jimmy McGill… In a backstory that’s really a back-backstory… And Michael McKean’s Chuck McGill, Jimmy’s successful lawyer brother, is not yet hiding out at home with that mysterious ailment causing him to wear space suits around cell phones...

Chuck's basically a dressed-up "Saul" in an edgy yet cryptic prologue where Jimmy’s in prison, labeled as a sex offender, and is much wormier and, shaggy-haired, hasn't heeded his calling...

Kung Fu Saul

Then we return to our true backstory, which is the mainline: Taking place as Jimmy makes ground as a defense lawyer before the BAD fallout... And finally tough guy Mike, played by Jonathan Banks, after being practically comatose as a courthouse ticket-taker, comes to life and kicks ass… Jimmy’s ass… But that’s already occurred in the teaser/trailer months ago… We knew it was a matter of time before the sleeping giant would awaken. 

In EPISODE THREE: NACHO, Jimmy possibly caused something terrible to happen to the snobby rich suburban couple he'd lost as clients in the first episode... And their children are also in danger, upping the ante. Meanwhile, the title heavy isn't as important as he should be. Well he is and he isn't.

Pool Doll

Remember BREAKING BAD when Walter allowed the girl to overdose? And her grieving air-traffic-controller father caused a plane to crash, leaving a remnant inside his swimming pool? Well that was the kind of crazy maze creator Vince Gilligan blew our minds with on a weekly basis, and in ten minute intervals…

But now his creativity is about as free-form as a traffic jam in a drag race… There’s a lot of potential with a sleazy lawyer connected to psychotic drug dealers, spouting lines from classics ranging from NETWORK to ALL THAT JAZZ to THE SHINING (perhaps making up for the lack of memorable dialogue here) and able to snake out of any situation he gets himself into, but the major problem, still, after two previously lackluster episodes, is right when Jimmy's got everything to lose, he still hasn't acquired enough for that losing to matter. And the side-characters, so far, mean very little... And yet there's actually some (start from beginning)