Compact little scenes of dialogue-many between Jimmy and Kim-transition from one to another with ease, building in ways that can allow thematic examination but also just work as a fascinating character study. The writing on 'Better Call Saul' is as tight as any show on television, with every scene feeling like it has thematic or narrative purpose without being overwritten. Kim (Rhea Seehorn) tries to convince Jimmy not to give up the legal deal of a lifetime, while Mike ( Jonathan Banks) works with a moronic drug supplier who has crossed paths with criminal underling Nacho ( Michael Mando). In the premiere, Jimmy resists, tired of being the good guy and tempted to return to the days of 'Slippin' Jimmy.' He spends his afternoons in a pool, waiting for suckers to come into his view. Jimmy has brought in the Sandpiper case to Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill, who have brought in another law firm to help with it, and that firm wants to hire Jimmy. The new season picks up relatively shortly after the last.

And the sense that Jimmy/Saul exists in that gray area of morality, able to steal from the rich but defend the poor, has persisted to 'Better Call Saul,' still one of the most confident, engrossing dramas on television. Is Jimmy McGill ( Bob Odenkirk) a 'good man' (and don't think it's a coincidence that he will eventually change his name to Saul Goodman) or a fringe bad guy, the wheeler-dealer we met back on Vince Gilligan's original program, a guy who it felt like would sell out his best friend for a profit? Over the course of 'Breaking Bad,' Saul became a more well-rounded character, someone more caught up in White's drug world than running a criminal empire. In some ways, 'Better Call Saul,' returning Monday for its second season after an award-winning first, is even more morally complex. By the end (actually, long before the end) Walter White was a villain. If 'Breaking Bad' was about a man who started off in a gray moral zone-selling drugs only to provide for his family-it became a show about a man whose gray turned pitch black. 'The world is a rich tapesty, my friends.'

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