Peter Gould

I'm currently listening to Gould being interviewed by Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan on The Watch podcast, and wanted to share what he has to say about the transformation we saw last night.

Jimmy is so hurt, and that's what the ending is. The question we started with is "what problem does becoming Saul Goodman solve?" And I think this episode answers it. He's so fucking hurt. He's so wrecked by what happened that he flattens himself out into a cartoon character. And it's terrible because now you know that during Breaking Bad, that underneath all that is still the guy we knew. It's not Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde transformation - he's purposely flattening himself out.

Gus is a gay man, he mentions Max as "his boyfriend" and the obvious subtext of the scene in the wine bar.

I know this isn't exactly breaking news, but it's the first confirmation I can recall from a showrunner, and there is still a vocal portion of the fanbase that thinks it's all just fan-fiction.

Edit: should have added this earlier, but the timestamp for anyone that wants to hear it is around 22:00.

How much did your work on the end of Breaking Bad—not only making the final episodes, but the audience’s response to them—inform how you approached Saul’s conclusion?
I think mostly it just made it scarier. Because the response to the end of Breaking Bad was so terrific. And I’m so proud of the work that we all did, led by [Breaking Bad creator and Better Call Saul co-creator] Vince Gilligan of course, in those final few episodes of Breaking Bad, and it was an incredible moment to be there and be part of the show. Trying to equal that is daunting. And in fact, what we realized was, this is a very different show from Breaking Bad. And it has a very different ending. [In the final episodes,] the show takes some turns that I don’t think anyone’s expecting, that I think are great and organic. But I have no idea … hopefully, the world will love it as much as we do.

In your mind, what would a successful finale be? Does the reaction not matter, as long as you’re happy with it, or do you need that audience appreciation as well?
Obviously, we want people to love the show. The reality is, you can never please everybody. And I think the thing that I’m most proud of is that both shows have integrity. And we’re not wildly changing it because we’re trying to figure out what the audience thinks and what they’re expecting; we’re not playing a game like that. We’re trying to finish telling the story in the most organic, satisfying way we can. The best thing would be if people loved it.

Also, this particular ending, I think it’s going to cause some discussion, and a lot of thinking. In my perfect world, you keep writing the story of the characters in your own head. These characters live in the minds of the audience after the show is over. And that’s the ultimate compliment and that’s something that Breaking Bad definitely had; you still see people reference all the Breaking Bad characters, even in just casual conversation or in memes. And that’s the ultimate compliment: if the characters live beyond the story in the hearts and minds of the audience.

"Anybody who watches the show carefully and is thinking about where this is all going, one of the questions you have to ask yourself is: 'What does this man deserve?' Not just: 'What's going to happen to him?,' but 'What would be a deserving end to this? Does Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman/Gene Takovic deserve death? Does he deserve love? What would be the most fitting end for this guy — for the show?' Obviously the end for everybody is death, but that may not be where we leave this guy. Is there any way for him to win any redemption after everything that he's done?"

I was reading a Deadline article from before the season started -- -- and noticed this quote:

"Just to give you a tease that I probably shouldn’t: There’s something in this season that you will know that we watch a lot of old TV,” teased Gould. “There’s going to be a surprise that I think is pretty extraordinary.”

I'm curious if anyone has any predictions of what that could mean, especially now that we're several episodes into the season.

It seems like he's implying there will be a big surprise that's reminiscent of an old tv show... so my hunch is that the writers love Newhart and the last scene of the finale will be Saul waking up in bed next to David Cross as it's revealed that the entire BB/BCS universe was a Mr. Show sketch.

Any other guesses?

Sure, ''Better Call Saul'' is a spinoff of Breaking Bad which was created by Vince Gilligan but I find that people often ignore how important Peter Gould was to make BCS possible.

In my opinion both B.B and B.C.S are some of the best written shows of all time but when I watch clips of BCS on YouTube the comments always say things like ''Vince Gilligan was a genius for including this detail or for writing these character parallels''. However Peter Gould deserves more than 50% of the credit for the spinoff being as good as it was and even more so when you consider that Gilligan wasn't even there for the second half of BCS

Gould also wrote the series finale ''Saul Gone'' which is arguably the greatest series finale to any Tv show ever

NOT A SPOILER I just watched episode 608 at the Tribeca Film Festival, and yes, it’s absolutely edge-of-your-seat incredible. Afterwards, there was a fantastic panel with Bob, Rhea, Tony, Gordon (the episode writer), and Peter Gould. (Vince, the episode’s director, was not there.)

Don’t worry, nothing was spoiled but after a fascinating discussion, the moderator asked some of them to describe the final five episodes of the series in one word. Their responses are ambiguous but exciting nonetheless:

Peter Gould: multi-chromatic

Bob: A second life (“but you don’t know what that even means”)

Rhea: (After a very long pause) Provocative and psychologically disturbing