‘Better Call Saul’ kicks off a new season on a sweet note
T he black-and-white opening episode of the third season of AMC’s “Better Call Saul” returns to the Cinnabon in Omaha, Nebraska, where the disreputable lawyer Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) — first introduced on “Breaking Bad” — is icing buns.
He is still hiding out under an assumed name there, and as he goes through his dreary paces, the sunny 1967 Nancy Sinatra hit “Sugar Town” plays against the mood.
Eating his bagged lunch, Gene, as he is now known, watches a teen get arrested for shoplifting. “Get a lawyer,” he shouts in warning as they drag him off, only to have the youth in turn insult him.
The show then returns to years before “Breaking Bad” and the story of how Jimmy McGill, a onetime New Mexico public defender, turned into Saul.
Season 3 dives into the mess left at the end of last year when Jimmy’s confession of evidence tampering was captured on tape by his elder brother Chuck (Michael McKean), who is a combination of crazy — he believes he suffers from electromagnetic hypersensitivity — and crazy like a fox.
Like “Breaking Bad,” “Saul” — also created by Vince Gilligan — is filled with weird and quirky moments, which keeps it interesting. Gilligan, who directed the first two episodes this season, has a low-key sense of humor that can sneak up on you.
Odenkirk is flat-out terrific at times, but the show hasn’t kicked into gear for me. On “Bad,” Bryan Cranston’s Walter White was in a desperate situation that unleashed his inner monster and diabolical genius. Meanwhile, the occasionally dense Saul is meandering toward his sugar-rush exile in Omaha.