A perfect teaser for Better Call Saul season 3. The show returns this spring with 10 new episodes, and it looks like Gus Fring, the wonderfully evil meth kingpin in Breaking Bad, will play a role. Read the rest

Can't wait for Season 2 of AMC TV's 'Better Call Saul,' the offshoot of the Breaking Bad multiverse in which our protagonist is the beloved underdog scumbag lawyer played so perfectly by Bob Odenkirk. This is my absolute favorite show right now. Don't fuck it up this season, guys, Season One was perfect perfect perfect perfect and this S2 trailer is too.

Better Call Saul Season 2 returns Feb. 15 to AMC.

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Slippin' Jimmy (aka Saul Goodman) and his buddy Marco pulled a number of classic cons in the first season of Better Call Saul, and Megan Friedman of Esquire asked con expert Alexis Conran to weigh in on their portrayal on the show. He says the show did a great job overall.

The Black Money Scam

Later in the montage, Jimmy and Marco convince a few rubes that they have a bunch of cash dyed black, and the perfect formula to remove the stuff. "I was particularly happy to see it in there, because it is an old classic and it's a wonderful scam," Conran says. If the con is done right, there are a few real $100 bills included, and then boxes and boxes of simple paper covered in black paint. Conran has pulled off the scam several times for TV, and says the trick still continues today.

Related: Read the Boing Boing reviews of Better Call Saul's first season. Read the rest

In which we review the penultimate episode of Better Call Saul’s debut season. Spoilers ahead.

Remember when the idea for Better Call Saul first floated around in television production gossip, and it was conceived as a half-hour comedy? There has been a lot of controversy over the new rules for category eligibility at the Emmys, with Shameless making it into Comedy despite its hour-long runtime and decidedly serious worldview, and Orange Is The New Black finally shifting over to compete in its rightful category as a Drama. I had a screenwriting professor who worked in Los Angeles throughout the 90s and 00s, and was still livid that Ally McBeal got to compete as a comedy when it was an hour-long dramedy that had no business going up against sitcoms.

Those are all semantic arguments about categorizing shows when there’s a lot of mutability. But imagining a world where Better Call Saul isn’t 45 minutes of deliberate, enthralling dramatic irony, holding a hopeful carrot out in front of Jimmy when the audience knows there’s a banana peel waiting to catch his foot, makes me shudder with would’ve been lost.

The cold open to “RICO” is one of my favorites so far this season, because it succinctly encapsulates the futile tragedy of James McGill. Better Call Saul eluded to the fact that Jimmy worked in the HHM mailroom, but here it’s on full display, as he cheerfully delivers mail to everyone around the office, with the added bonus that he knows pretty much everyone’s name. But the reason the show ventures to this moment in McGill history is because it’s the day Jimmy believed his life would change: when he passes the bar and becomes a lawyer in the state of New Mexico. Read the rest

In order for Better Call Saul to inch closer to the timeline it’s trying to meet, James McGill’s difficult life has to fester into bitterness. He’ll do anything to escape it.

One of Breaking Bad's finest characters gets an episode in the spotlight

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Episode four of the Breaking Bad spinoff, recapped.

Jimmy and Mike find common ground in "Nacho", episode 3 of the Breaking Bad spinoff.

The task set before Better Call Saul is impossibly daunting. Can it join Breaking Bad in the pantheon of great TV?