AMC Wanted To Remove One Of Breaking Bad's Best Characters

In the world of television, it's tough to do better than "Breaking Bad." Created by Vince Gilligan, the tale of a high school teacher with cancer who becomes a drug kingpin is widely considered one of the best TV shows ever made. It also spawned arguably one of the best spin-offs ever in the form of "Better Call Saul," which centers on Bob Odenkirk's crooked lawyer Saul Goodman. As hard as it may be to believe with the benefit of hindsight, though, there was almost a world where Saul never would have made it to air.

Entertainment Weekly recently released a preview of Alan Sepinwall's new book "Saul Goodman V. Jimmy McGill: The Complete Critical Companion to Better Call Saul." In it, he speaks with "Breaking Bad" writer-producer and "Better Call Saul" showrunner Peter Gould. During their conversation, Gould discussed Odenkirk's first episode, aptly titled "Better Call Saul," which came as part of "Breaking Bad" season 2. Gould wrote the episode and expressed his concern that Saul was too "silly" for the show. In his own words:

"Did we think he was going to have a future? Well, I'll tell you, personally, as I was writing the episode, I got very nervous. I got scared, because I was worried that we were going to break the show by making a character that was too silly — that he was going to be just too big for what I thought was a very grounded show. Grounded in its own way, let's put it that way.

To make matters worse for Gould and Gilligan, when they had a call with AMC about the episode, an unnamed executive actually suggested that they kill the script mainly because they didn't like the character of Saul Goodman. Per Gould:

"My fear was actually enhanced when we had our first notes call with an executive who will remain nameless. Vince and I were on a conference call, and the question came up, basically, 'We don't like this character. Could we start again and come up with a different story for this episode?'"

This is truly dizzying to consider. It's just a reminder that this show was not always the titan of TV that it's now considered to be. Don't forget: were it not for Netflix saving the day, "Breaking Bad" would have been canceled early on. This show was on a razor's edge for a long time. That's not to say that the series couldn't have turned out well without Odenkirk's Saul, but given how big of a player he became, it's tough to picture.

Fortunately, Gilligan pushed back against AMC on this particular note. In the moment, that saved Gould some work and a big headache. On a longer timeline, it also gave the network more than it could have ever imagined. In Sepinwall's book, Gould explains how things proceeded after that phone call:

"Vince said, 'No.' He was strongly advocating for the script and for the character. And, to their credit, the person or persons on the call backed down, because they had to trust Vince. But, you can think about what an alternative universe would be where we had had to throw that episode out. And as it was, that season we ended up shutting down briefly, because we ran out of scripts — which never happened again, I'm happy to report."

What's truly amazing is that this isn't even the only time Saul was spared during the show's run. The "Breaking Bad" series finale nearly killed off Saul Goodman as well. Mercifully, things changed and we not only got 43 episodes worth of Odenkirk in the original show, but we also got six seasons' worth of "Better Call Saul" out of the deal as well. For Gould, this was a watershed moment in the most stressful season he endured during his time on both shows:

"That was probably the most stressful season of either show, for me, anyway. I lost a lot of sleep over it. There's actually a scene in that episode between Hank and Walt, where Hank talks about his insomnia. And that's literally lifted from what was going on in my life at that moment. Although, I had not shot Tuco. So, I was nervous about letting everybody down, especially Vince."

You can grab "Breaking Bad: The Complete" series on DVD or Blu-ray from Amazon.