BAD: AMC announces an official spin-off to Breaking Bad.
By Stephen Park, Staff Writer
With the beloved television series Breaking Bad coming to an end, there is a slight sliver of hope for fans wanting more. AMC has announced an official prequel based off of Bob Odenkirk’s character, Saul Goodman, titled Better Call Saul.
Saul Goodman is a character that was brought to life because of Odenkirk’s brilliant portrayal of the cartoonish, sleazy lawyer. Thanks to Odenkirk’s confidence and timing, he was able to flesh out a character even dodgier than his clients. With that said, will this spin off be successful or will AMC beat the multi-award-winning series into the ground like it did to so many other spin-offs before it?
In the vast world of entertainment, spin-offs are a regular occurrence, but only a handful of them go on to become stand-alone successes. Daria, The Colbert Report and Torchwood are perfect examples of this. The widespread love and success these shows have amassed are due to the show’s similarity to the original, but lack of the repetition that typically follows. On the other hand, a majority of media-based spin-offs are nothing more than terrible mistakes.
A spin-off is terrible just by definition. It’s a stand-alone creation that focuses on sub-par characters without any of the characters most people care for. Take Saturday Night Live’s The Night at the Roxbury for example: it was a movie based off of a short sketch, a gag that ran on for about 80 minutes longer than it should have.
This is why Better Call Saul is so unpredictable. AMC seems to think that everything related to Breaking Bad will be as entertaining as the original, but the show lacks what made Breaking Bad so popular in the first place: the material. Breaking Bad has compelling characters, ones that drastically transform in their short years of air time. It tells a story unlike any other with moments that drop your jaw through the floor. The sleazy lawyer archetype makes a fantastically adaptable supporting character, but it is not enough to sustain an entire series. On top of all of this, Better Call Saul is a prequel to a series with a clear ending. If Breaking Bad‘s main technique for audience excitement hinged on unpredictable, suspenseful outcomes, how will Better Call Saul appeal to fans? Hopefully the long-time writer for Breaking Bad in charge of the entire project, Peter Gould, has the answer.
When diving into the history of spin-offs, the successful ones all have stories that happened in the same world, but are not governed by the rules of the original. This is why the probability for Better Call Saul’s success is so low, and why it’s likely that it won’t end up a success like Torchwood. It will probably be more akin to the tragedy of the Friends spin-off, Joey. People often forget there can indeed be too much of a good thing. Though the ending of Breaking Bad is a grievous reality, the show should end with dignity and not as a means to squeeze out as much novelty and money the franchise can muster.
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