‘Better Call Saul’ finale ratings: Did they set strong course towards season 2?

We know already that “Better Call Saul” is coming back for another season, but we still feel at the same time that there is a little bit of value in analyzing some of the ratings for the season 1 finale. These numbers serve in many ways as a jumping-off point, and a chance for us to really start to see if this show can convince people to tune in for the final episode in a way that other AMC series can.

In looking at the numbers from Monday night, it’s a little bit of a mixed bag. “Better Call Saul” drew a 1.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic, and also over 2.53 million viewers. It did improve slightly from the penultimate episode, but was down from the show’s Monday premiere. You cannot really compare it to the series premiere after “The Walking Dead,” given that it had that huge audience serving as a stellar lead-in.

While we think that Netflix and word-of-mouth should help somewhat to improve the numbers, what we are most worried about right now is that the finale hardly set the world on fire. To many, the criticism is that it rushed the transformation from Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman, and do so in a way that not everyone enjoyed.  We discussed this at length in our own podcast on the subject.

Do we still think that the show can be one of the greatest out there? Sure, mostly because it already is. Even if we were not in love with every facet of the finale, it would be complete nonsense for us to bury it completely based on just a solitary episode.

(Photo: AMC.)