It has to happen, surely…
Better Call Saul is about to enter its fourth season, and the show has proved arguably much, much better than Breaking Bad fans could ever have expected.
Sure, there was plenty of room to work with a character like Saul Goodman, but the immediate expectation of a project focusing entirely on him was that it might lean on the more over-the-top elements that came with Bob Odenkirk’s scene-stealing performance.
In the end, Better Call Saul quickly put paid to any doubts by establishing itself as an excellent drama in its own right, one that further fleshed out this strangely compelling, conflicted human being.
And, of course, given its status as mostly a prequel to the events of Breaking Bad, it also allows for the possibility of familiar faces showing up.
We’ve seen more layers of Mike Ehrmantraut and the superb Jonathan Banks, we’ve seen the terrifying Tuco cause further chaos, and we’ve seen the origins of the ice-cold Gustavo Fring.
For many fans, though, something is missing.
As Better Call Saul gets set to return in August, people are wondering if Bryan Cranston’s Walter White and Aaron Paul’s Jesse Pinkman will show up together on our screens once again.
In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, creator Vince Gilligan confirms that he “desperately” wants to reunite the pair, and it’s a feeling shared by the entire production team.
Cranston dropped by the set as season three was being shot, and left quite the impression.
“Everyone went nuts,” recalled Gilligan.
“You could hear the buzz go through the building. I desperately want to see both of them on Better Call Saul. Peter (Gould, co-creator) wants it, the writers do, the actors do.”
Speaking to the same publication for a special Breaking Bad reunion issue, both Cranston and Paul seemed quite open to the possibility of working with Gilligan once again.
“If he asked, I would just say yes,” said Cranston.
“He takes such meticulous care of his characters and the story, and he changed our lives. ‘Yes’ is the answer. Even if it’s just a brush-by. A quick little something. We’ve come to know people who we’ve seen before but we don’t know that we’ve seen them before, because we were in the store and we just passed by them.
“Or we might even have a word or two. ‘Oh no, please go ahead.’ ‘Thank you for holding the door.’ And then five years later, you would never remember that. So something as minuscule as that could be very interesting in the fabric of the whole thing.”
However, Gilligan doesn’t just intend for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it fan service cameo.
“It wouldn’t feel as satisfying if it was just a cameo or an Alfred Hitchcock walkthrough,” he said.
“I think we’ve waited long enough. We damn well better have a good reason for them to show up. I just hope we figure it out because I’ve got to hear, ‘Yeah, bitch!’ one more time.”
So yeah, get it done, lads.
