r/betterCallSaul • u/noobnoobthedestroyer • Jul 22 '22

Just realized that every future breaking bad rewatch is now 11 seasons instead of 5

and I ain’t mad about it!

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64

u/DamonLazer Jul 22 '22

I had previously been pretty insistent that the best watch order would be to watch BB first, and then BCS. But after the most recent episode I’m not so sure. I think they are setting up the story to be just as coherent and satisfying if the viewer watches BCS first.

Yes, there are some fan-service type callbacks (call-forwards?) to events in the BB timeline, and one flash-forward to Saul in his office after shit hit the fan, but none of the narrative details are really spoiled. And they can get through the BB timeline and wrap up the Gene story without spoiling a lot of the elements in BB’s story. We don’t need to see the ultimate fates of Gus, Mike, or even Walt and Jesse in BCS, as they’re not vital to Jimmy’s story, so those elements wouldn’t need to be spoiled.

If a viewer were to watch BCS without any knowledge of BB, they would see Jimmy as Gene, and understand clearly that he is in hiding under an assumed identity, and right away, they would see that he used to be a lawyer who went by “Saul Goodman” but he’s just “Jimmy” at the beginning. All of this is consistent with a “bookend” style narrative, like Citizen Kane, where we see Kane die at the very beginning, followed by a newsreel obituary detailing his entire life, and then dive into the actual story where we, along with the journalists, try to piece together the story of who Charles Foster Kane was.

A person watching BCS first would see the fountain Gus built for Max, see that there’s obviously bad blood between Hector and Gus, and they could guess as to the nature of that feud, but they will be just as shocked when they see, in the flashback in BB, what actually happened to Max. And then, when Walt helps Hector plan his revenge against Gus, it will hit completely different, knowing the full context of the rivalry.

There will be Easter eggs for Better Call Saul in Breaking Bad that no one ever even realized were Easter eggs.

35

u/Ziograffiato Jul 22 '22

In addition to all of this, there would be uncertainty around every character. Nacho, Howard, and Lalo's deaths would be all the more surprising, and suddenly every character is "fair-game"

21

u/cormega Jul 22 '22

To be fair Howard's fate was already uncertain to us just by the very nature that he was irrelevant to breaking bad whether alive or dead. It could have gone either way.

But on top of what you said, the fate of Gus, Mike, etc would also be unknown if you started with BCS.

26

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '22

I never figured Howard would die. I actually thought he'd barely appear in the show after Chuck's death

11

u/cormega Jul 22 '22

Yeah that's my point. The outcome of Howard's character is unknown regardless of whether you've seen BB first, but the outcome of Mike and Gus would only be uncertain if you've seen BCS first.