Better Call Saul: Time Improves

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I am the Watcher in the Night
The first season of Better Call Saul (which we will call BCS from this point on) just wasn't very good, in my opinion anyway. It certainly was not a bad show, especially with the quality of Netflix originals at the time but it was no Breaking Bad or even at the level of lesser shows like Boardwalk Empire and so on. Then along came season two and the show started to find its feet. Jimmy McGill, has ever played by the brilliant Bob Odenkirk and Kim Wexler, played with nuance by Rhea Seehorn, became must watch characters. Their relationship felt real, it was disjointed yet loving; both of them wanted the best for the other but you could already see that it was doomed. Kim was a good person and as much as JImmy wanted to be good (for his brother, for his career, to atone for past mistakes), he just couldn't. He wanted the easy way out more often than not and he wanted to win, by any means necessary.

Fast forward to 2020 and the latest season, a near decade after the end of Breaking Bad and some five years after season one of BCS...we watch as Kim clears up the broken glass left from a night of flinging beer bottles into her apartment blocks' car park. Just moments earlier Jimmy, now going by Saul Goodman, shrugs and says the building caretaker will clear it up; with that, he walks away. Kim does not, she can not, it is what makes her who she is - a good person, not because it's easy, but because it is difficult. It has taken five years for the show to get to this point, a place where I can say the show is more than just good, it hits the height of the very good. As seminal and as worth watching as the likes of Game of Thrones, Lost, Chernobyl, The Night Of... but not as instantly engrossing as those shows. It is the perfect example of time and progress helping a show find its feet and become better. With that in mind, I wanted to discuss other shows which became better over time but were not given enough of a chance by networks to reach their absolute best, or were meddled with far too much, or became drowned in convoluted producer/creator disputes. Basically, shows which were not allowed to achieve their vision.

Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles
2 seasons

I'm a massive Terminator fan, which puts me in a minority of millions around the world and the show did get a fair shake with two seasons and 31 episodes, which is quite hefty but it could have been so much more. For whatever reason, it just never managed to find an audience, even though the first episode has great production for its time and carried that forward. Most episodes have some very cool action sequences, effects and story moments. In fact, this is the first time that a terminator actually comes off as intimidating since T2 and the female terminator does not seem like the feminist deep throat we have gotten with Terminator whatever it is which was released last year.

I can understand that the premise is a lot to start off with and the straight up continuation from T2 with Sarah Connor alive, John Connor now a teenager etc is a lot for non-hardcore fans to remember post T2 way back in 1991. However, if Fox had given the show a third season, allowed it to develops its characters even further, delved into the time travel to the future dynamic with which the show ended, who knows where the show could have gone? Maybe recaps of the first two seasons during the off season would have helped it gain an audience? Sadly it was not persisted with and faded away, just as things were getting very interesting.

Community
6 seasons

This show is both the perfect example and the antithesis for the point I am trying to make. Community was a really enjoyable, odd ball, at times truly original comedy which, for me anyway, started off very weak. The first season is actually so chaotic, starting with a boy/girl, will they/won't day dynamic and ending with that exact same nonsense, all the while a series of movie satires in between; it felt like a show trying so hard to find its identity, so hard to be both different and popular. It fails in both accounts (apart from a few episodes).

Then came season 2, all the characters come into their own, it seems the show runner finally get a chance to move away from sitcom tropes and it becomes plain hilarious. Pierce Hawthorne, played by Chevy Chase (who famously fell foul of the show) is consistently one of the funniest parts of the show; Troy and Abed, played by Donald Glover and Danny Pudi respectively are a fun duo and Ken Jeong's Ben Chan is just a brilliant, wacky, freaky addition. Add to that talent such as Alison Brie, Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Yvette Nicole Brown and the ever hilarious Jim Rash as the college dean. All of a sudden, the show felt like a comfortable pair of jeans you can slip into whenever you feel like it.

Season three was better if a bit disjointed and then came season 4 and all that followed. Donald Glover and Chevy Chase both left the show, Dan Harmon the showrunner left and then returned but by that point the show kept trying to up the stakes and rekindle its prime years but that was gone. Not because the show was hopeless but because of studio interference, in fighting and lack of TV network support. Oh what could have been.


I will keep updating this thread when and wear I can with similar examples. The BCS Hypothesis!
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I am the Watcher in the Night
Love all seasons of BCS..

Never finished Terminator SCC.. but it's not bad..

Gave: Community episode: A Fistful of Paintballs a 10/10!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1640867/?ref_=rt_li_tt
I love the two paintball episodes before the toned down and boring one we got in season 6.