Better Call Saul has officially pulled the curtains, and Bob Odenkirk took the time to thank the fans for their love and devotion to the Breaking Bad prequel.
After 7.5 years on AMC, the Better Call Saul aired its last episode. After the show aired its final episode, Odenkirk took to social media to thank everyone, the fans, the cast, and the crew. While taking the time to voice his gratitude for everyone, Odenkirk, who's lucky to be alive to finish his work as the character, got emotional reflecting on his time as Saul Goodman.
Odenkirk took the time to thank everyone involved, including the showrunners, cast, and crew. "I want to thank Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould for giving me the chance. I did nothing to deserve this part, but I hope I earned it over six seasons. The cast around me, Rhea Seehorn, Michael McKean, Jonathan Banks, Tony Dalton, Michael Mando, Patrick Fabian, and everyone else. I mean, Giancarlo Esposito. They all made me a better actor than I am just working with them or watching them work." Odenkirk also wanted to thank Better Call Saul fans for giving the show a chance considering what it had to live up to. "Thanks for giving us a chance because we came out of maybe a lot of people's most favorite show ever, and we could have been hated for simply trying to do a show. But we weren't! We were given a chance, and hopefully, we made the most of it. Thank you for staying with us."
Odenkirk has played the character of Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill/Gene Takovic since 2009. Originally, he wasn't supposed to have much of a role on Breaking Bad when they first put him on the show. However, because of how well Odenkirk captured the essence of the crooked lawyer that Saul was between his introduction and when the show ended, the showrunners already had Better Call Saul in the abstract before Breaking Bad ended. Even though the Better Call Saul story was brilliantly executed by everyone involved, Odenkirk deserves special mention for stepping up his game when they gave him a much bigger role compared to the one they gave him on Breaking Bad.
Odenkirk was relegated to a mostly comic relief character on Breaking Bad, but at multiple points, the show demonstrated the human side of Saul. Even though he was a con artist bending and breaking the law every which way to make a profit, he had his limits. Better Call Saul developed him more as a person. Even if he was a con man at heart, Jimmy McGill had a moral compass and was trying to do things right and fought off his natural urge to cut corners. He then soon realized that when society prevents people like him from succeeding because of both the choices and mistakes he's made, his best route was to stick to his guns as Saul Goodman.
That all brought him to his final comeuppance in the show's last episode, "Saul Gone." The finale of Better Call Saul didn't just feel like a sendoff for the show, but a send-off to the Breaking Bad universe as well. It's already been confirmed that until further notice, Vince Gilligan will not expand on the Breaking Bad story. Better Call Saul did not have a happy ending, but at the same time, it would have been difficult to pull off a happy ending knowing what Goodman had done in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Even if it was a bittersweet conclusion, it fit what had to be done for such an iconic character. In other words, it was S'all Good Man.
Better Call Saul can be streamed on Netflix.
Source: Bob Odenkirk/Twitter