Breaking Bad is considered to be one of the best series ever, and it is a title that is well deserved, for anyone who has appreciated all that this series has to offer can confirm it 100%. As I had mentioned in previous posts, Breaking Bad is in the first place in the top of my favorite series (sharing the first place with Mr.Robot) and this is something that still remains and I'm sure it will never change. What made Breaking Bad great, besides its very well elaborated and developed plot throughout its 5 seasons, are its characters, each one of the main characters of this series has an excellent development and a gradual evolution, in such a way that characters we met in the first season, at the end of the 5th and last season were totally another type of characters, with different personalities and different perspectives, all this, once again I say it, with great development and gradual, creating this way a totally credible and reasonable evolution.
For many people in Breaking Bad, their favorite characters would be Walter White (main character), Jesse Pinkman (supporting character) or even Gustavo Fring (antagonist for most of the 5 seasons), because of their convictions and changes over the seasons, just like many people, these 3 characters are my favorites, however, there are 2 other characters that showed a lot in this series, that in the same way for many people and for me, are their favorites, but in Breaking Bad they didn't have a very worked background, in spite of being excellent characters (and excellently played by their actors), these characters are Saul Goodman (The Lawyer) Mike Ehrmantraut (Gustavo Fring's henchman and right-hand man). These two were excellent characters throughout the series, one for being a corrupt lawyer, but with an excellent charisma and a great personality and the other for being a person with values, who does things the way they have to be and for being a professional in the criminal world.
Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad knew how to create excellent characters, but he had already mentioned in Breaking Bad that he didn't give them a depth of plot, we don't know their pasts or much of their life stories, that's why after Breaking Bad was over, he decided to create a spin-off series where he tells the story of the most beloved corrupt lawyer of all and the right hand of a mafia boss.
And so Better Call Saul was born, a series that despite not having the same level of intensity that Breaking Bad had, is a series that knows how to have its own charisma and personality, being in a great way even as good as the original product, I can even say with a lot of confidence that in some chapters it surpasses Breaking Bad.
In Better Call Saul, he logically tells us about life a few years before Saul Goodman started in the legal world, and although he had that malice and "corruption" that so characterizes this character, he still didn't fully develop it. We even see characters that were in his life that were never mentioned in Breaking Bad, thus giving a better level of development to this character. So much changes this character that at first is not called Saul Goodman, because that is not his real name, his real name is Jimmy Mcgill, and that for issues that happen in the 4th season this decides to change it to the emblematic and that everyone will later know as: Saul Goodman. But we will not only know Saul Goodman's past tense, because this parallel series will also tell us the story and development of Mike Ehrmantraut, how he ended up working for one of the biggest drug lords in the universe of Breaking Bad and also give a background to this character where they show us why his convictions and morals. Besides that we know a certain aspect of his past and it gives a better level of personality to this great character.
As in Breaking Bad, we could say that Better Call Saul shows us little by little, how a character is going to fall into a hole of low morals, little by little his goals are higher and in many cases, his actions are not the right ones, but the necessary ones to fulfill them. Something I like about this series, is that in certain moments they show us what happened to Saul Goodman after he escaped in Breaking Bad, these scenes of the future are in black and white, and they show us a frightened, paranoid and bad looking Saul Goodman, working on just something he had mentioned in his last appearance in Breaking Bad. An excellent wink from the director and creator of the series.
Although it is a spin-off, it is necessary to have seen Breaking Bad, before starting to watch Better Call Saul, because in addition to looking at the perspective in the changes of some characters, there are many winks, references to the main series, which makes it more enjoyable when we are watching it. Iconic characters from the main series appear and the best thing is that the introduction of those characters in the series is totally natural and correct.