Christmas has come early for Breaking Bad fans.
The first trailer for the highly-anticipated BB spinoff Better Call Saul dropped today, and as you might have guessed it prominently features Bob Odenkirk’s fan favorite…Jimmy McGill?
Yes, as obsessive Bad fans know, Saul Goodman is not Saul Goodman’s real name, but rather a Don Draper-esque nom de business that he felt would help him score clients and shed his loser-y past.
Better Call Saul takes place before Jimmy adopted his semitic alias ("for the homeboys who want a member of the tribe") but as you can see in this clip, the ambulance-chasing attorney is still all about that day of atonement:
From the looks of things, Saul will be more lighthearted in tone than its source material.
Then again, the Adventures of Walt and Jesse started off darkly comedic, before going to a place where the show offered the occasional laughs, but could hardly be described as a comedy.
Of course, it might be a good thing for Saul to distinguish itself as its own, standalone series right out of the gate.
Some critics have called Breaking Bad the best drama of all time, and Saul runs the risk of being crushed under the weight of fan expectations before its pilot even airs.
Having Jimmy go by his birth name (at least in the pilot) is a good way of establishing right from the start that this is an entirely different season that simply takes place within the same Meth-Fueled Albuquerque universe as Breaking Bad.
Naturally, Better Call Saul will feature cameos from BB characters, (we already know Jonathan Banks’ badass Mike Ehrmantraut will pop up in season one) but hopefully the writers will focus on Jimmy/Saul, and allow Odenkirk to do for smarmy lawyers what Bryan Cranston did for unlikely drug kingpins.
Better Call Saul premieres on February 8 at 10 pm on AMC. If that’s too long to wait, you can watch Breaking Bad online at TV Fanatic and/or check our this ingenious BB/Frozen mash-up: