AMC’s Better Call Saul hopefully won’t invest in the same boring logic as other spin-offs

“So as far as Better Call Saul is concerned, I ask myself two questions about its potential for success: Does Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), the crooked lawyer who served as Breaking Bad’s comic relief from season two to season five, really merit his own show? And secondly, will Better Call Saul simply play off Breaking Bad’s success, or will it breathe new life into a Goodman storyline that we needed to see?” —Leo Traub

When AMC confirmed earlier this fall that a Breaking Bad spin-off, dubbed Better Call Saul, was officially underway for 2014, I was more than a little nervous.

I don’t generally look forward to spin-off TV shows. To start with, there’s typically no need for them, no real space they fill or valuable plot they add to the original film or show. It’s overstated to note that producers often announce spin-off shows when they are about to lose their audience from the original work; for example, Better Call Saul was publicized during Breaking Bad’s final episodes, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was given the green light after a successful summer for Marvel’s The Avengers. I resent the idea that my attention is something that can simply be bought and bartered with a half-baked, repackaged idea.

But it’s more than just the idea of a spin-off; shows born off the success of other shows simply don’t tend to be good. They follow one of two distasteful trends: relying on the popularity of a character from the original show or retelling the original show from a slightly different point of view.

Spin-offs that expect to coast off of popular characters from the original are often uninspired and uninteresting. Playing off the success of a character doesn’t work if there’s nothing else about the character to be discussed. Matt LeBlanc, who played Joey Tribbiani in Friends, learned this the hard way when his Joey spin-off nosedived. The whole fun of Friends was in feeling like you were a part of the gang and watching the cast’s group interactions. Joey alone, representing one-sixth of the Friends crew, felt lacking. 

Retelling the original story from a new point of view is boring too. Unless there’s something about the perspective that draws a clear distinction between the new and the original series, the story probably does not need to be told. Why watch the new show when I’ve already seen the first? 

So as far as Better Call Saul is concerned, I ask myself two questions about its potential for success: Does Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), the crooked lawyer who served as Breaking Bad’s comic relief from season two to season five, really merit his own show? And secondly, will Better Call Saul simply play off Breaking Bad’s success, or will it breathe new life into a Goodman storyline that we needed to see?

Realistically, these questions should be asked before creating any spin-off, but obviously, this does not always happen. However, I have faith in the Better Call Saul team; they’ve proven their storytelling abilities with Breaking Bad. Thank goodness they didn’t buy into the awful cliche of naming the spin-off a Mad-Lib of the original, changing a single word to fit the new premise; Breaking Saul or Defending Bad would have been near intolerable.

Other spin-offs slotted for the airwaves in the next couple of years are another story. Girl Meets World, the planned 2014 spin-off of the popular ’90s show Boy Meets World, sounds as if it’s being written like Boy Meets World 2.0. The spin-off’s plot is nearly identical to that of the original, the twist being the spin-off protagonist is the daughter of the original protagonist. 

How I Met Your Dad, presumably debuting within a year or two, sounds like it has potential. The creators of the original, How I Met Your Mother, insist that the spin-off will be an entirely new story and not a retelling of the first series. 

Then there’s The Walking Dead’s spin-off show, about which not much is known yet, except that it won’t hit TV screens until 2015. The executive producers have expressed their interest in making drastic changes in the cast and setting for the spin-off. 

Seeing at least a few thoughtful producers seem concerned with validating the existence of spin-offs gives me hope that there is a place for Better Call Saul and the like after all.