AMC’s long-awaited Breaking Bad spinoff Better Call Saul kicked off Sunday night with a wonderful one-hour premiere.

Between surprising moments, like Saul’s office location, an immoral scheme gone wrong, and a tribute to Breaking Bad fans right at the top of the episode, Better Call Saul opened strong and introduced a compelling storyline for fans who’ve been missing the bizarre but always interesting lawyer.

To the recap!

Over top the song “Address Unknown” by The Ink Spots, the show begins by actually looking ahead: Saul is living up to the promise he made to Walter White in Breaking Bad’s final season. The lawyer is now a manager at an Omaha Cinnabon working under the name Gene. Despite distancing himself from Albuquerque, he still has to look over his shoulder in fear of the meth business coming back to haunt him. We love this scene because it’s a great nod to the original series.

Saul gets home from the Cinnabon and hits the bottle while reflecting on how he got to this point. He opens a box in his closet and finds a tape with his Better Call Saul commercials.

And then, the prequel begins.

We jump back to the early 2000s. Saul is a public defense attorney who has to represent loser clients like a trio of boys who decapitated a dead body and had sex with the head. Despite dealing with scum, he does his best to represent these guys. That’s the Saul we know and love — he’s a hard worker!

Despite putting forth his best effort in defending losers, the state doesn’t offer him a good paycheck. Thus, Saul is close to being broke. He drives a dumpy yellow Suzuki Esteem, pretends he’s his own secretary, and works out of a bathroom-sized office in the back of a nail salon.

Outside of public defending, Saul has a tough time locking in his own clients for bigger pay. The struggling lawyer has to look through newspapers for potential people he can represent.

One of those potential clients is the Kettlemen family, and after unsuccessfully signing them to his one-man firm, two skateboarding brothers purposely jump in front of Saul’s moving car and hurt themselves so they can squeeze some money out of him. Saul is smarter than this type of scheme, of course, and proudly points out their mistakes.

Hamlin Hamlin & McGill

Jimmy’s brother Chuck was an all-star lawyer at his law firm Hamlin Hamlin & McGill until a mental disease left him unwilling to be anywhere near technology or electricity. These days he’s staying in his home at all times. His old partner at the firm, Howard Hamlin, is continuing to pay Chuck while he’s out sick, but Jimmy, who is strapped for cash, wants the firm to buy Chuck out.

In the middle of the episode Jimmy enters the firm with a bizarre grand entrance and tears up one of Chuck’s checks in front of Howard and his team. The firm brushes off the move and Jimmy’s latest attempt at getting Hamlin to buy Chuck out, because unfortunately for Jimmy, Chuck is hoping to get back to work, too.

To make matters worse, as Jimmy is walking out of the office, he spots Betsy Kettlemen chatting with Howard about legal representation. Jimmy takes his anger about Betsy and Howard out on a trash can, then joins Hamlin Hamlin & McGill lawyer Kim outside for a smoke. The two used to be closely involved with one another, but we won’t learn more about their relationship until a future episode.

Jimmy heads to Chuck’s house. The disease the elder brother is dealing with leads him to require strict rules at his home: All electricity is off, Jimmy has to ground himself before entering, and Chuck is busy working away on a typewriter. His house is like a tent in the woods — a cooler with ice has replaced a fridge, another cooler serves as a water dispenser, and gasoline lamps offer light.

Jimmy sits down with his brother and floats the idea of leaving the law firm, but the elder brother says no because he wants to eventually return to work. Jimmy counters that he’s barely making any money for the both of them because he’s not getting any work outside of public defending. “Have patience,” Chuck suggests, “and the clients will come.”

The two brothers continue to argue over money until Chuck reveals that he’s been accepting payments from Hamlin Hamlin & McGill behind Jimmy’s back.

There’s one more thing to hurt Jimmy with before he leaves: Chuck and the firm want him to change the name of his personal law firm so “Hamlin Hamlin & McGill” isn’t confused with “James M. McGill.” But what about those matchbooks he spent valuable money on?

“Don’t you want to build your own identity?” Chuck asks. While it’s not made clear in the first episode, we can assume this moment plays into Jimmy eventually changing his name to Saul Goodman.

Skateboarders and lawyer, unite!

Thrown into the dumps by his own brother, Jimmy turns to the skateboarders who tried to punk him earlier in the episode to get back at Betsy for turning down his legal representation offer.

Jimmy wants the boys to jump in front of Betsy’s car and get hit — just like they did with Jimmy — so he can represent the boys and make lots of money for all three of them.

Unfortunately, Jimmy’s plan backfires when they jump in front of the wrong car (in fairness to them, it looked exactly like Betsy’s car). Upset that she hit and ran, the boys decide to ditch Jimmy and chase the woman — who they still think it Betsy at this point — to her home.

When they catch up with the woman at her house, her young, no-nonsense son Mijo drags them — and eventually Jimmy — inside. The show leaves us on a cliffhanger just like Breaking Bad would always do.

Luckily, fans won’t have to wait long for the next Better Call Saul. Episode 2 airs Monday, February 9 at 10 p.m. eastern/pacific on AMC.

What did you think of ‘Better Call Saul’s’ series premiere?

And will you be sticking with it?

The show is taking its time in answering questions like how Mike and Jimmy begin working together. We’ve watched three episodes so far and can tell you that Mike’s role begins to expand in episode 3.

We thought Better Call Saul’s premiere was a great start to the series. The slow moving scenes, which were plentiful this episode, simmered beautifully so that Bob Odenkirk can take his time developing the character.

If episode 1 didn’t do it for you, wait for episodes 2 and 3. They’ll remind you of Breaking Bad in numerous ways.