Better call saul — why does it stand out?

Better call saul recently concluded its fifth season. Unlike most TV series, of which the quality has been decaying season by season, BCS has managed to keep its quality in terms of every aspect of it. The sheer brilliance of storytelling, cinematography, quality of characters, and symbolism remain as it is. In fact I sometimes feel that those had got better.

For me, it is one of the best TV series I have ever watched (Probably the best) due to multiple reasons. Two major reasons out of many are, an exceptional way of representing reality using very real-life situations and excellent storytelling. The former is not an easy task and doing it consistently is even harder. BCS has been echoing real-life scenarios in a very subtle manner throughout five seasons and makes fans thinking about many situations. It portrays insecurities, moral dilemmas, relationships, and many other real-life scenarios in a very real way that viewers feel closer to their life.

This series perfectly illustrates as how people change over time, how they compromise moral integrity and the way such are justified, how people get caught in moral dilemmas and most importantly, how unexpected events and choices changes ones life dramatically. these are very realistic and that is why I am so attracted to the show. For instance, in season 5, Mike tells Saul that our choices puts us in a road and later even we want to get off the road we eventually comes back to it. This is very true to life. our choices makes us and our life. Even though we would wish to change our life, we wouldnt be able to do so. Life is not linear and we are not the sole controllers of the life. there are many other variables, may that be individuals of scenarios, that are linked to our lives due to the choices we have made. We are contemplated to take a road which mostly is not the happiest one, but that’s how it is. Nothing works out as per the plan, again a bitter reality to life. The irony is that Saul tells this road story to Kim when she said she resigned from the fancy law firm she was attached to. Again, this is what most of us do — repeating something we heard to explain a situation to someone.

BCS also allows to rethink about good and evil, moral dilemmas and tells us how people justify their actions. Kim is in a moral dilemma about the things she had to do for her job. she is not satisfied with the job and tries to do more pro bona work to makes herself happy. This, I believe has something to do with her background too. Kim is not from a high-class wealth inherited family and it is clear that she sees the people from her ‘class’ when she sees average citizens. She wants to serve them and provide legal protection for them. She often questions herself about working for a bank belongs to the upper class of society and she is not happy about it. Over two or three seasons we have seen how this moral dilemma has grown and reached the pinnacle when she decided to resign from the fancy law firm and proceed with pro-bono practices. Her prior action of getting Jimmy to involve to support an enemy of her bank client portrays her struggle with moral values and the income. This is a common scenario that most of us encounter in day today life.

There are many scenes like this that express life scenarios in a brilliant way. I should write about this in the next posts.