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      FIGURE 1.2. In the closing shot of Better Call Saul’s pilot episode, Breaking Bad’s Tuco Salamanca appears, offering an exciting callback for fans.

      The pilot draws upon the imitative tradition primarily by evoking memories of Breaking Bad, reminding viewers of the Albuquerque setting, echoing themes of morality and character change, and reintroducing two familiar faces. Beyond the title character, we first get a glimpse of an old character at the fourteen-minute mark—Mike Ehrmantraut appears in an unpredictable locale, working as the parking lot attendant at the Albuquerque courthouse. This appearance provokes numerous questions for fans of the earlier series, as it seems far from what we’d learned of Mike’s backstory as a police officer, and how we’d come to know him as an enforcer and investigator for a criminal drug enterprise. Although this is Mike’s only scene in the episode, actor Jonathan Banks’s name in the opening credits signals that the character will serve a major role in the ongoing series. The second character returning from Breaking Bad is more of a surprise, appearing only in the last moment of the pilot: Jimmy is held at gunpoint by Tuco Salamanca, a minor but memorable character from Breaking Bad’s early seasons. This reveal concluding the episode certainly triggers a wave of fan memories of Tuco and excitement to see his backstory before his death early in the original series, and feels like a direct continuation of the tone and genre of Breaking Bad’s crime story, rather than Better Call Saul’s originality as a character-driven legal drama.

      Other moments in Saul evoke Breaking Bad through subtle parallels and continuities, primarily targeting hardcore fans who obsess over televisual details; such commitment to “forensic fandom” is a hallmark of narratively complex television. For instance, Jimmy meets clients at the diner Loyala’s, an Albuquerque location that had appeared twice on Breaking Bad. The episode also provides parallels between Jimmy and Walter White, with actions echoing across the series—Jimmy’s car windshield is fractured in an accident, evoking a repeating Breaking Bad trope where Walter’s windshield was cracked three different times throughout the series. Similarly, Jimmy kicks and dents a chrome garbage can when leaving his brother’s law firm, echoing Walter punching and denting a metallic paper towel dispenser. These minor parallels could be seen as formulaic rehashes from the original series, but they function more to convey character parallels and themes, entering the more prestigious realm of “allusion.” Such intertextual references can be regarded as either lowbrow imitations or highbrow storytelling devices to subtly convey meanings—or both. Saul alludes to its own imitative history, as Jimmy quotes an iconic monologue from the 1970s film Network, an acclaimed critique of the television industry’s lowbrow appeals and formulaic content: “You have meddled with the primal forces of nature!” By referencing Network, Saul winks to knowing viewers by acknowledging the commercial motivation of a spinoff, while also proclaiming its own cultural legitimacy through allusion to a celebrated film.

      As of this writing, Better Call Saul has run for four seasons and established itself as one of television’s most acclaimed dramas on its own terms, rather than just as a spinoff. It won a prestigious Peabody Award in 2017, one of only a handful of scripted spinoffs to accomplish that feat, along with Frasier and Lou Grant. Many critics and fans contend that it has eclipsed the original as their favorite series, suggesting that the shadow of imitation can be escaped. As co-creator Vince Gilligan recounts, the goal was just “to not be AfterM*A*S*H. That’s about as high as we had set our sights: We wanted to not embarrass ourselves. We wanted our spinoff series to not take anything away from the original, to not leave a bad taste in the mouth of the fans of the original.”⁷ Beyond accomplishing this modest ambition, it is clear that Better Call Saul has created true originality through imitation, forging the unique hybrid of the prestige spinoff.

      FURTHER READING

      NOTES

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      Empire