TLDR: There’s a lot of humor in Better Call Saul, generally around Bob Odenkirk’s behavior and constant ethical dilemmas. Does Breaking Bad have the same level of humor?
Full version: When Breaking Bad first came out and was being widely and wildly praised, I tried a few episodes and didn’t care for it. The episodes I watched were very dark, and as a big fan of Malcolm in the Middle I didn’t really get Bryan Cranston’s completely different character.
I recently watched the movie “Nobody” and thought Bob Odenkirk was fantastic. Netflix has been pushing Better Call Saul a lot, so I thought I’d try it out. I’m up to episode 4 (the billboard episode) and I’m loving it. Bob Odenkirk is a goddamn national treasure. Jimmy’s constant battles with his past, his conscience, his brother, the parking attendant, and his “clients” is incredibly entertaining and hilarious. I get that the show is ultimately about his fall, but his daily struggles have me hooked.
So I thought maybe I should give BB another chance, but only if it’s got some of the wit and humor as well. So please help me out - does BB capture that same type of humor outside of Saul’s character, who I assume is just as funny? Or is it pretty much just as dark as the few episodes I watched?
No - not at all. I found BB S1 very funny. Starting w/S2, not only did it get darker, but I no longer perceived the funny parts. So I stopped watching.
Breaking Bad is no where near as funny as Better Call Saul. Period. One of the things I liked about Saul was the comedy/humor, and just being overall “lighter” (many episodes without someone getting killed).
That said, BB is excellent and well worth watching. It is dark and intense, and the closest you get to “happy endings” is that someone you liked didn’t die in that episode. Saul Goodman is the closest you get to some “comedy relief” (Badger doesn’t really count). But be warned, the Saul you see in BB isn’t the “Jimmy” you see in BCS. BCS is all about how Jimmy becomes Saul.
I totally understand you reaction to trying BB - same thing happened to me. I had to kind of set it aside for a while, and then come back to it. And even then, I could only take doses of a couple episodes at a time. But as it goes along, each episode ends with you needing to find out what happens next, so you get hooked. And with BCS, it is fun to see the origins of not just “Saul”, but “Mike” and “Gus” as well.
I wonder if BCS will get darker and darker as the show goes on. You know, the “present” with Saul working at the Cinnabon or whatever, he’s always looking over his shoulder. . . kinda dark. And large parts of the last season were pretty dark.
There’s definitely comedy in Breaking Bad, all throughout its 5 seasons, but I would compare it to a show like The Wire and The Sopranos–these are fundamentally shows dealing with crime, the dark side of human nature, greed, ego, violence, and to some level corrupt societies that beget these things. All three deal with similar themes, and all three have in common amazing writing. The Sopranos and Breaking Bad have very strong casts (The Wire less so, but it arguably has more complex writing than Breaking Bad and more realism than The Sopranos.)
I also disagree that Odenkirk is the only comic relief in BB, there’s comedy involving Walt, Jesse, some of the “tertiary” characters. From everything I have seen, Better Call Saul is deliberately intended to be lighter and more comedic, while still being a drama at its core, BB never approaches BCS levels of pervasive humor, but it has funny moments throughout. If you’ve seen The Sopranos I think that’s probably the best comparison for how much comedy is in the BB world, it never becomes the major driver of story, and it’s never central, but there’s always some appearance of humor here and there. Other than maybe like the final three episodes of S5 of BB, which are when darkness becomes basically all that’s left.
There are moments in Breaking Bad of very dark humor. Not a lot, but bits and pieces - things going on in the background can make you laugh at loud. Things going terribly wrong can make you laugh in horror.
There is one good long segment, and I will just call it ‘Worst. Dinner Party. EVER!’
BB was not too funny in general, but the Saul character was a wonderful comic relief for it. Me and the Mrs were looking forward to seeing more of it in Better Call Saul, but we gave up after the first three seasons. Yes, BCS had some very funny parts, but not nearly as much as on Breaking Bad.
Yeah, I can tell you exactly when I quit. Right after watching the one with the tweakers, the ATM machine, and the kid. Having a kid that same age when I watched it made it too dark for me.
Plus, it had ceased being quite as funny; even the stuff that might have been funny wasn’t; it was somehow just dark. I mean, Jesse, his RV stealing and the porta-potty should have been hysterical, but it just ended up sad.
I think that when you set out to make a series about a high school teacher who’s dying of cancer and in a desperate move to take care of his family after he’s gone starts cooking meth, you’re not leaving yourself a great deal of leeway for humor. That said, they get a few moments in here and there.
By contrast, when you set out to make a series about a shady lawyer, considering the usual stereotype of lawyers in popular culture, inspiration for jokes may well rain down on you like manna from heaven and you’d find yourself obliged to throttle back on it. If memory serves, in BB we haven’t even seen Odenkirk’s face yet when Jesse, within sight of the god-awful inflatable Statue of Liberty above Saul’s office, utters the well-known line “When the going gets tough, you don’t want a criminal lawyer. You want a criminal lawyer.”
My opinion, which could be a minority opinion.
In Better Call Saul: Everything with Bob Odenkirk is good/funny. This includes the Kim Wexler and Chuck parts. The other parts with other people did nothing for me. And the latter seasons were less good/funny. They had too many “other people” scenes.
Then I started watching Breaking Bad. It was like the “other people” scenes. I stopped after a couple of episodes.
This is right on the money. Breaking Bad is not supposed to be funny, except in small doses of dark humor (and yes, that includes Saul, Jesse, etc). It is, however, a fantastic show about a man’s descent into evil and includes some of the best secondary characters in TV history IMO.
A lot of the joy of watching Better Call Saul comes from it being set before Breaking Bad. Because you know the consequences - the characters and their role as they appear in BB, you’re already invested in how their back-story is created, and how a whole bunch of its odd moments get explained.
I’d say there are well-placed moments of black humour throughout Breaking Bad, but they definitely rationed them to not destroy the overall tone they were after.
