So I finally finished Better Call Saul. It is perhaps the best modern tv show I have ever seen (which if you know me, is very high praise). It’s way better than Breaking Bad and tells one of the greatest villain origin stories ever. The show did a fantastic job taking a seemingly goofy and sleazy villain and creating a backstory that is somehow way more fascinating than Walter White’s, and also exploring other characters such as Mike and Gus. There’s a lot to unpack with this show and I’ve already tweeted a lot about it, so I’ll just leave this by urging everyone to see this show.

Finishing season 4 of Better Call Saul is making me look at Walter White in a slightly different way. I always thought he was a terrible person (and he is), but if you’re looking at him from the point of view of Better Call Saul, he comes across more as a chaotic force of divine retribution to the protagonists. To Gustavo, he’s a similar seemingly mild manner citizen that is actually a secret evil genius who beats him at his own game. To Mike, he’s a dark mirror version of Werner (which is the first name of the real Heisenberg) who brings him nothing but strife. And to Jimmy, he’s another larger than life genius like his brother, Chuck, who constantly makes him feel powerless. It’s like Walter is a Homeric character preprogrammed by divine forces with just the right negative qualities to compel him to carry out justice against these characters without his knowledge, and once that was done, he was no longer useful, and his empire quickly disappeared.