“We Were Ready To Dump The Whole Thing”: Better Call Saul Co-Creator Reveals What Would Have Happened If Bob Odenkirk Hadn’t Recovered From His Heart Attack
Not really. Most of our conversations were, “What can we keep shooting right now?” And we got very lucky, because at that point in the season, suddenly you had a lot of material with Mike and with Gus, and we had some little pickups to do for previous episodes. So we were only down for three or four days, and then the crew was back to work and shooting.
But look, if he hadn’t been himself… [long pause] It didn’t really bear thinking about, but I will say, I think we would’ve just dropped the show. I think Sony would’ve had to take a terrible financial loss, because it would be an utterly incomplete story. And they were shooting the scene that comes immediately after Lalo has shot Howard. There’s no rewriting to get around that. That’s about all I can say. We were ready to dump the whole thing. I mean, I wasn’t thinking about that. It’s too complicated. It was too big to really kind of think it through. But I’m sure somebody deep in the bowels of Sony had to start doing some calculations about what kind of loss they’d have to take, and thank God it didn’t happen.
What This Means For Better Call Saul
Gould recognized that without Odenkirk, there was no Better Call Saul. He played the titular character, was the face of the show, and as important as Better Call Saul‘s other characters were, it was ultimately the story of Saul Goodman/Jimmy McGill. It would have been both disingenuous and logistically impractical to finish making the show without Odenkirk. No amount of rewriting, recasting, or technology could do justice to the character the way that Odenkirk had done since he was first introduced in Breaking Bad season 2.
Better Call Saul being a prequel not only for Saul, but for all of Breaking Bad ensured there was still plenty to film without the protagonist, especially where Mike and Gus were concerned. While this was what Gould and his team focused on, they were prepared to drop the show entirely and leave it unfinished if Odenkirk was unable to recover and return
Our Take On Peter Gould’s Comments
Gould’s comments speak volumes about the integrity that he and his team had, along with how much they valued Odenkirk. Better Call Saul ending after season 5 would have been controversial, but it would have been the right decision. Jimmy’s full transformation into Saul, Jimmy’s relationship with Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), Kim’s fate, and other storylines would have been left unresolved. This never became the reality, though, as Odenkirk returned and delivered arguably the best performance in his entire career as Better Call Saul concluded on a deeply satisfying note.
