Even with “Breaking Bad” fading into the sunset, taking with it the legacy of being one of the best shows to ever grace the small screen, fans will be dropped back into that world again soon enough. Back in September, AMC greenlit the tentatively titled “Better Call Saul” centering on the ambulance chasing lawyer played by Bob Odenkirk. And while exact details of the show aren’t yet known, it hasn’t taken long for Vince Gilligan to tease that it will overlap with “Breaking Bad,” suggesting Walt and Jesse could have cameos. And that’s not all.
Chatting with EW, Gilligan tossed out another character who could enter the orbit of Saul Goodman’s adventures with the law, and it’s a man who was up to his elbows in criminal undertakings. “The character that springs to mind [to pop up] would be Mike [Ehrmantraut, played by Jonathan Banks]. That would be a great deal of fun. I would say the sky’s the limit, at least theoretically speaking,” Gilligan said. “Realistically speaking, we’ve got a whole lot of actors, and the world is now well-aware of their wonderful talents and abilities, and therefore ‘Breaking Bad’ has probably made it tougher for [writer/producer] Peter [Gould] and I to get some of these folks pinned down for another TV show. They’re off making big movies and doing Broadway plays and whatnot, and that’s exactly the way it should be. That is a high-class problem that we will have to contend with as we go forward with ‘Better Call Saul,’ if we do indeed want to touch base with some of these characters… ‘Better Call Saul’ could be ‘The Love Boat’ of its generation, where instead of Milton Berle showing up in a sailor’s cap, hopefully it could be Aaron Paul, also in a sailor’s cap. [Laughs]”
Of course, the question is how these characters could be re-introduced in the show, and Gilligan suggests we could see the storyline jump around in time. “We think, by and large, this show will be a prequel, but the wonderful thing about the fractured chronology we employed on ‘Breaking Bad’ for many years is the audience will not be thrown by us jumping around in time. So it’s possible that we may indeed do that, and we’ll see the past and perhaps the future,” he explained. “Nothing is written in stone yet, we’re still figuring it out…”
However, Gilligan will have folks intimately familiar with the world of “Breaking Bad” on the staff if he wants to go that route. Variety recently reported “Breaking Bad” writers Thomas Schnauz and Gennifer Hutchison have come on aboard “Better Call Saul,” with Gilligan clearly ensuring he has right recipe for success around him once again. And while we await the new show, which is expected in some form this year, the finale of “Breaking Bad” still draws a lot of discussion. But for those of you clinging to the theory it was all a dream? Yeah, even Vince Gilligan thinks that’s a bit silly.
“…when I heard anecdotally that a lot of people were of the belief that the whole thing had been a dream, then I was kind of scratching my head because that to me as a fan of storytelling, that to me, is the antithesis of a satisfying ending. The whole thing was a dream? [Laughs] The only time the ‘It was all a dream’ bit worked out well was the first time it was used,” he told EW. “The first time that I know of was in the old Ambrose Bierce short story ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.’ It worked beautifully in that short story from [123] years ago. It does not work well to a modern audience. It certainly doesn’t work well for me that these people I’ve invested all my care and close attention to for years on end, that nothing they’ve accomplished happened to be real: It was all some bulls— dream. [Laughs] I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ Who would find that… what’s the word?… fulfilling?”
In other words, keeping dreaming folks…