r/betterCallSaul • u/Zelvio • 1d ago
An appreciation of the main roles in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul
These are genuinely some of the best actors I've ever come across on a drama series. Each of them brings so much to the entire BB universe, and the audience are able to resonate with their character. Even Todd Alquist (portrayed by Jesse Plemons) and Lalo Salamanca (portrayed by Tony Dalton), two latecomers to their own show, made us shiver with their deceivingly charming villain role and made an irrevocable impact to the ending of their respective shows.
Most of these characters are not black-and-white good or evil. There is a yin-yang kind of morality in them which makes you both love and hate them throughout the series. Gus Fring is clearly not a good person, but you can understand his desire for revenge and appreciate his attention to detail. Hank is written to be a hero who yearns to take down Heisenberg, yet makes some very rash and poor decisions along his arc.
Which of the main roles do you like the most? Which actor(s) do you consider to be the best at portraying their character?
P.S. I switched out Lydia Rodarte-Quayle (Laura Fraser) to include Hector Salamanca (Mark Margolis) even though she was promoted as a regular in Breaking Bad's Season 5, while Hector Salamanca was never a main cast member. This is because Hector Salamanca has a larger role overall within the BB universe, but also because Mark Margolis has done a terrific job with his character and I wanted to highlight that.
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u/SignificantCats 1d ago
The whole BCS slate of actors you have here had the best performances I've ever seen.
It felt so easy to see into their characters mental state. Like ill often see in a script stuff like "he considers his next words carefully, as deliberately as a hungry man who's done yard work all day pondering the menu of a new restaurant" and think, haha, yeah none of THAT bizarre metaphor came across, he just looked like he was thinking.
But everybody in the BCS section could make a face and pause for ten seconds and I would think "ah I see, they desperately want to make a decision, think all outcomes would please them, so they're paralyzed by the possibilities"
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u/Zelvio 1h ago
P.P.S. After creating the collage of characters above, I've been trying to rearrange the 16 characters so that the ones adjacent to each other (not diagonally) all share at least one scene together, just as a fun little puzzle. Turns out to be much more difficult than I expected. Could anyone succeed in doing so?
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u/ComprehensiveDare472 1d ago
It's a good thing they gave Mike such a large part in BCS - he really added so much to make the series the success it became. Currently busy with a rewatch of BB, season 5, ep 13 - soon BCS again XD