Better Call Saul: Season 3

Y'all know I like ranking things, and in particular TV shows. So here it is - halfway through the year, Better Call Saul has been the best show on television. It's not without its flaws, of course, and I'd even venture to say it stumbled a bit in its second half, mostly just by slowing back down and returning to that good-not-great pace from Seasons 1 and 2, but everything up to and including that courtroom episode was just aces. (Okay, maybe The Leftovers is my number one on the year. But maybe not! Six months to decide, folks.)

Let me backtrack. "Slowed down." I'm not criticizing the slow-burn of individual scenes here; Mike deconstructing an entire car, piece by piece, in meticulous detail, in silence, for seven or eight minutes is goddamn fantastic television. I mean in the broader sense. The arc of the series. We know what Jimmy McGill becomes. We know what becomes of Mike, of Gus, of Hector Salamanca. We know these things because we watched Breaking Bad, the best show of the last, say, uh, decade? Yes, decade.

When this show debuted two years ago, no one expected it to be bad. No one thought Vince Gilligan was going to fail to make a compelling or interesting show. But Saul Goodman had always been this sleazy, schlocky character, and Bob Odenkirk far more of a comedian than a dramatic actor. So few people really expected something great, something tense, something so full of tragic hubris and damaged morality, something so goddamn excellent. But that's exactly what we have here! And like Breaking Bad before it, it only seems to get better every year.