Better Call Saul season 5 will not premiere until 2020
This news today was first reported in an interview with Vulture featuring Sarah Barnett, the president of the entertainment networks group at AMC Networks. As for the reason for the delay, she keeps that fairly simple and clear: “It’s driven by talent needs, which we would not override if it would result in a worse show.”
Now, let’s explain why the writing has been on the wall for a while here already. Better Call Saul hasn’t even begun production yet on season 5, and we are now months removed from season 4 wrapping up last fall on AMC. It will be kicking off filming this month, but there’s a lot of time needed to film scenes properly, let alone then edit them and then score it after the fact. While you could make some easy arguments that this isn’t a show with a ton of special effects and could be edited together quite quickly, there’s an important counter-argument there that cannot be ignored. Think about how carefully Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould care about every single line and every single shot of this show. The process here is a careful, artful one. It’s almost like making a painting out of just candy wrappers where you need to place every single one perfectly for the overall image to make a good bit of sense.
Luckily, viewers for Better Call Saul have grown rather accustomed to waiting over the years. As we’ve reported with regularity in the past, this is a show with a tendency to take some enormous hiatuses of a year or longer between seasons. Season 4 arrived after a pretty long break in the action and this one is really no exception to the rule. As we approach whatever the end of the road here is, we wouldn’t be altogether surprised if there is another big break before a season 6 … provided that there even is a season 6 given that this is not something that is altogether assured right now, either.
The new season, whenever it does air, will be the first to really, fully chronicle the adventures of Jimmy McGill as Saul Goodman, the criminal lawyer who we saw across multiple seasons of Breaking Bad. He made a fortune being ruthless, smarmy, and deceitful — basically, doing whatever he could to get ahead even though it was at the expense of some of the people who were close to him. What we’re most curious to learn in this upcoming season is how much Jimmy was within Saul, screaming still to get out and show a different side. Are the two sides now one and the same, or was there hope for redemption even in this character’s darkest time?
What do you think about Better Call Saul season 5 not premiering on AMC until we get around to 2020, and what do you think that’s going to do to the series’ viewership … if anything? Be sure to share right now in the attached comments. (Photo: AMC.)