This review contains spoilers for Better Call Saul Season 5, episode 1, “Magic Man.”
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As Better Call Saul settled into its middle years, it started to feel like two very different shows. There was the continuing origin story of Saul Goodman, and then the slow construction of Gus Fring’s meth empire. These two main story threads had entirely different casts who rarely, if ever, crossed over into the other half of the show. The more bisected Better Call Saul became, the more it started to exhibit the tendencies that have ruined many a prequel to popular properties (Season 4 was particularly cameo happy). But, after almost a year and a half on hiatus, the Season 5 premiere feels like a refocused version of the series—one that can serve itself and Breaking Bad simultaneously as this prequel heads toward its own ending (Season 6 is confirmed to be the show’s last).
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The divide still exists in “Magic Man,” but it feels like every piece each now has two linking shadows, one of the past, and one of the inevitable future we already saw play out from 2008 to 2013. After the annual tradition of a black and white opener set after Breaking Bad’s finale (more on this later), we catch up with Jimmy McGill as he’s taking the leap to change his name to Saul Goodman once and for all. This is our first indicator that the series is getting close to its inevitable end, as Jimmy is publicly buried under the façade of Saul. But director Bronwen Hughes (returning to this world after helming seminal Breaking Bad Season 1 entry “Crazy Handful of Nothin’” way back in 2008) smartly doesn’t run the perspective of this pivot through Jimmy’s eyes; she puts it through Kim’s.
For Season 5, the outstanding Rhea Seehorn is one of just two series regulars who doesn’t appear in Breaking Bad or isn’t directly tied to the Salamanca crime family (the other is Patrick Fabian, absent from the premiere, his role as Howard seemingly continuing to shrink after Chuck’s death), and that makes her one of the most fascinating pieces of this prequel’s puzzle, if not the most. In this scene after the cold open, it feels like Kim Wexler has entered a different world. Here is a strictly Better Call Saul character looking directly into Breaking Bad’s aesthetic. Her long-term partner has changed his name into a bad pun. He’s excited to represent the guilty and try to cut them impossible deals, giving out burner phones that he’s programmed to have a one-button push to call him directly. Worst of all, he’s inviting her to be like him.
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The doomed Jimmy and Kim romance is Better Call Saul’s greatest and most gut-wrenching slow burn. She earnestly buys him a briefcase with the initials of Jimmy McGill on them, and suddenly they no longer apply. “Justice Matters Most,” Jimmy lets stumble out as an acronym for a motto in place of his name, an attempt to make her feel better about the now out-of-date gift. We see on Kim’s face that it doesn’t work. But the lack of sincerity with which he says it proves that the motto, at least to him, is also severely out of date. What matters most to him now is the game. Just how much can he get away with in the legal system? Jimmy’s personal mission now, it seems, is to find out.
And find that ceiling he will. This season’s monochromatic opening flash forward is a long one, at nearly 13 minutes. These season cold opens show Jimmy running from the very justice the system would lay upon him, which, in a way, thanks to his extensive paranoia and overtly poor quality of life, is its own kind of justice. But after avoiding work for a few days following a scare of being found out, he’s back at the Cinnabon in an Omaha, Nebraska mall when someone recognizes him from those goofy TV ads he used to run. This prompts a call to Ed Galbraith (the late, great Robert Forster), the “vacuum cleaner salesman” who helped Walt escape at the end of Breaking Bad, and had quite the run-in with Jesse Pinkman in last fall’s El Camino movie. But Jimmy’s call with him goes in the opposite direction. If this is indeed the last flash forward before the final season, Jimmy pushes this quiet story toward its climax, readying himself to stop running and looking over his shoulder. It’s a tantalizing as hell tease, seeing Jimmy fade out into one of the only futures unknown to us on this show. But first, more context from the past.
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The other half of the story is Mike dealing with the guilt from killing Werner at the end of last season. As the Germans wrap up work on Gus’ super lab, he’s confronted by Lalo Salamanca (Tony Dalton is the only new series regular this year, after his introduction late in Season 4) as to why his meth isn’t as pure as his usual output. Lalo makes for a thrilling threat to Gus’ empire, even if the outcome is all but known to us already. Dalton plays him like the sort of Quentin Tarantino villain that can silence a room with a smirk. With this character further fueling Gus’ rivalry with the Salamancas, this story thread feels just a few steps away from Breaking Bad. And for once, that’s okay.
With both Jimmy and Gus’ storylines no longer walking but running toward the tragic destiny awaiting them, there’s a synergy to them in the premiere that’s been missing from Better Call Saul in past seasons. Yet, keeping this show from losing the wholly independent spirit it first started with is Kim. Even she may be inching toward the darker side, as she helps a client by lying to them with Jimmy’s tall tale, but at least she’s checking herself in the mirror after, a final moment Seehorn drenches with feeling even with the camera pulled back. Better Call Saul finally seems ready to become Breaking Bad, but Kim’s not going to let the former go down without a fight.
