The series focuses on providing the backstory for Saul Goodman (Odenkirk), the smarmy "criminal" lawyer who helped Walter White build his drug empire in Breaking Bad. Most of the series is set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, between 2003 and 2007 (which is where the Breaking Bad timeline starts). We see that Saul is a struggling solo practitioner named Jimmy McGill, who is living on taking low-paying public defender cases and whatever other work he can find. He is living in the shadow of his brother, Chuck (McKean), who was a partner in a prominent law firm called Hamlin Hamlin McGill (HHM) but is now a shut-in because of a debilitating hypersensitivity to electromagnetism. When the series uses flashbacks (mostly to the 1990s), we see that before moving to New Mexico, Jimmy was a conman in Illinois who scammed Marks out of money. After being bailed out by his brother after being arrested, Jimmy moves to Albuquerque to work in the mail room at HHM, secretly goes to a correspondence law school at the fictional University of American Samoa, and then passes the New Mexico bar exam. While Jimmy is a good lawyer, he can never quite leave his conman past behind and is more than willing to cut corners, which is one of the keys to his transformation into Saul Goodman. The series also jumps to Saul's post-Breaking Bad life, where he lives in Omaha under an assumed name, "Gene," managing a Cinnabon (paying off on the line from Breaking Bad) and pining for his life as Saul.
The Blu-Ray set is a 19-disc set. Seasons one through five each have three discs, and season six has four. They are packaged in a large keep case that requires discs to be stacked on top of each other on tabs that either make it damn near impossible to get the discs out or allow the discs to fall off and float loose. The extras include at least one commentary track on every episode (some episodes have two commentary tracks). Most commentaries are led by one or both showrunners, Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould) and include cast and/or crew members. The commentaries spoil events from the series, so if you have not watched the series yet and care about spoilers, you should watch all the episodes first, then listen to the commentaries. Then, in each season, there are behind-the-scenes material, gag reels, and "training videos" that are led by cast members in character and use animation with Easter Eggs from the series and from Breaking Bad. They are the same discs released for the individual seasons, with the same extras, just repackaged in a single case. So, if you bought the seasons individually on Blu-Ray, this does not give you anything more.
The series is a very good prequel that is different from but matches the quality of the parent series. Odenkirk is wonderful playing Jimmy and showing his devolution into Saul. The writers do a great job conveying that there were a series of events that, had things gone differently, Jimmy would have never become the criminal he ultimately would. They also reveal that there were several events that should have warned him against the life he would ultimately choose. The series also shows the evolution of Mike Ermantraut (played by Banks) from a guilt-ridden former dirty cop from Philadelphia to Gus Fring's fixer. It is not a family-friendly series. It includes swearing, drug use, some sexual content, and nudity. While it was initially conceived as a comedy (revealed in one of the commentary tracks), it is a fantastic drama with some humor (usually dark humor) mixed in. Ultimately, if you loved Breaking Bad, this is a must-watch. If you have never seen Breaking Bad, you can watch this series first, but you want to watch Breaking Bad before you watch the final three episodes of Better Call Saul. Otherwise, it will spoil much of what happens in Breaking Bad. Even if you have not watched Breaking Bad and are just looking for a good dramatic series, this is absolutely worth your time to watch.
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