Prequels often don't work for two reasons: one, because we all know what's going to happen and two, they tell us the things we need or don't want to know. Like Patton Oswalt said in "At Midnight I Will Kill George Lucas With a Shovel," his fantastic stand-up bit about the Star Wars prequels: "I don't give a s**t where the stuff I love comes from! I just love the stuff I love!"
That said, Better Call Saul creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould play it smart when it comes to retracting the steps that lead to Breaking Bad. They know it's not about what they do in this moment, or sometimes did even before then, but why they performed their actions and how that affects their personalities, and therefore the future personalities. One's sense of character has always been vital for Gilligan, as anyone who watched his predecessor series should most definitely know.
Still, there's a slippery slope which comes when one looks back on Mike's (Jonathan Banks) past. Part of what makes him such a wonderful character is his aurora of mystery he cloaks on him at all time, aided by his street-smarts and hard-earned advice. So to have him involved in a flashback series like Better Call Saul is to walk on an extremely thin line between ruining his wonderful enigma of a character. To the credit of Gould and Gilligan, they still create obscurity for Mike whenever possible. But, for the most part, they do spill the beans on what made Mike, well, Mike. Were it not for the wonderfully-anchored and genuinely Emmy-worthy work from Banks in this week's episode, "Five-O," there's a very real possibility this all would have gone to Hell in a prepackaged handbag. Thankfully, though, it doesn't, and as it goes along it becomes what could very well be one of the season's best installments.
While Mike obviously brought up his Philadelphia roots before in Breaking Bad, and even in this show during last week's episode, little has been known,until now, about what made him go from Philly all the way to Albuquerque. Besides, you know, his lovely little granddaughter. Turns out, as one would expect, Mike got himself on the wrong side of the law, but the reason for it wasn't money or greed or to point his gun at more low-life criminals.
As it is revealed, Mike wanted to defend his son and fellow cop Matty, who ultimately gave his life to his job thanks to the crooked system around him. Mike's never been one to let things like this slide, even as he gets well into his '60s, and all seems to have gone right until a few of his former cops find him in his New Mexico lodgings, as we saw in last week's cliffhanger, and Mike won't talk about the matter unless he has some representation from the law.
That's where our protagonist Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) comes, briefly, into play this week. Still dressed to the nines like Madlock — something one of the Philly cops points out to which Jimmy notes he's "a young Paul Newman dressed like Madlock" — it turns out Mike still doesn't trust his fast-talking, sticker beholding co-worker to any legal stride. He just wants him to spill some coffee on the cops —or what McGill calls a "third-rate Marx brothers route"— he seeks a peek at their notes and gets the low-down on what they do and don't know. Even years before he met Walt, Mike knew how to get the information he needed. After all, it came from his former job. From there, we get some heartbreaking flashbacks on Mike's actions, and also later get to see the actor open up in a way the performer never has before, and he absolutely nails it. But more on that later.
Written by Gordon Smith, a longtime Breaking Bad staff writer but first-time teleplay writer for either show beyond minisodes of the former AMC series during the writers' strike, there's an initial wobbly and stiffness to "Five-O" as it starts out. The latter may be fitting, given the character at the center of this new episode, but it makes the drama feel more forced and the dialogue exchanged less genuine. This kills some of the initial heart the episode tries to convey after its cold-opening. As it goes along, however, and details begin to emerge about Mike's checkered past, we get to see Banks' perform with all his heart and soul on the line, and its, of course, some of his most commanding and powerful, yet layered, work to date.
If AMC wants their co-star to finally get an Emmy for all his deserving work, they should definitely send voters some clips from this week's installment, because Banks absolutely knocks its out of the park here. Banks restrained, but deeply thoughtful and mature, performance is riveting in ways both Gilligan show rarely have been before. It relies not on the emotions of the moment or the future, but how one copes with their haunting past. It's a resoundingly progressive step forward for Better Call Saul, and continues to show the creators have put a lot of thought and care into this new show.
Breaking Bad is an extremely smart show, but it's also a very flashy, visual metaphor-etric series prided on its well-read and well-verse understanding of cinema. Better Call Saul continues its predecessor show's maturity, but focuses more on the characters in the moment rather than the visuals at hand. That's perhaps what make scenes like a drunken, broken Mike so impactful. Director Adam Bernstein intelligently lets us see both from Banks' character point-of-view but also understand the context of the moment. He lets the character progress in the manners he needs to, but never forgets to also step back and let the audience reflect on what happened and why it did. It's another way Better Call Saul continues to accelerate at breakneck speed, and proof there's more to this than meets the eye.
Hopefully, "Five-O" is made as a sign that Better Call Saul is just as much Banks' moment in the spotlight as it is Odenkirk's. We don't need to know everything about his character, but in letting him rip his chest open and bleed a little, we do get to understand the layers and process by which Mike becomes who he is, and that's what Gilligan and Gould's show is all about, or should be about. It's not about the choices, it's about how they gained their consequences, because we know, for better or for worse, the choices Mike and Jimmy, soon to be Saul, made. So with that, continue to prove why we need to care where the stuff we love comes from.
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