Many fans of “Breaking Bad” were skeptical upon hearing news in 2013 that a prequel following criminal lawyer Saul Goodman was in the works. In the world of TV, it’s not uncommon for spin-offs and prequels to fail miserably and spell ruin for the legacy of their source material. However, after four impressive seasons, “Better Call Saul” has indeed proven itself a compelling and unique work of art in its own right.

Set six years before the events of “Breaking Bad,” “Saul” follows shifty, fast- talking lawyer Jimmy McGill—before he changed his name to Saul Goodman and took up laundering drug money and defending lowlifes out of his strip mall law office. Though much of the show’s cast and crew worked on “Breaking Bad,” “Saul” has distinguished itself from its predecessor by adopting a more subtle and methodical approach to its storytelling.

Following the third season’s shocking conclusion in which Jimmy’s older brother Chuck committed suicide, the fourth season begins with Jimmy repressing his grief and searching for ways to keep himself occupied, pretending as though his brother’s death was merely an inconvenience. It also didn’t help that Chuck’s last words to Jimmy were, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but the truth is, you’ve never mattered all that much to me.”

Throughout the show’s first three seasons, Chuck and Jimmy often viewed each other as adversaries, and their tumultuous relationship served as a primary plotline. However, Chuck was also Jimmy’s moral anchor. Whenever Jimmy acted outside the law or exploited it to his advantage, Chuck would do everything in his power to reel him back to justice, even if it meant dealing irreparable damage to their relationship. But with Chuck now gone and Jimmy temporarily disbarred from practicing law, Jimmy finds himself falling deeper into a seedy world of crooks, drug dealers and killers. The only person left who can save Jimmy from himself is his determined colleague and romantic interest, Kim Wexler, who maintains very little knowledge of his criminal activity.

Though Jimmy’s gradual transformation into Saul has not been quite as grim or violently exhilarating as “Breaking Bad” protagonist Walter White’s, it has been equally tragic and perhaps even more poignant. The stakes of “Saul” are not always tangible, but that doesn’t necessarily make them insignificant—quite the opposite, in fact. It’s not the lives of the main characters that are often at risk, but their moral faculties and their relationships. Showrunners Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan humanize their characters with a meticulous attention to detail—so much so that, strangely enough, watching Jimmy lie and act against his own conscience somehow seems more devastating than watching Walter White sell meth and commit murder.

However, the most dismaying part of Jimmy’s descent into a life of crime is that by the end of this season we start to see that he has become a shell of his former self. His sense of morality has become completely warped; he has convinced himself that his relationship with his brother meant nothing, that everyone in the world of law will inevitably turn on him because of his questionable past, and that the only way to get ahead in life is to act out of rational egoism.

But somehow it’s difficult to cast judgement upon Jimmy for his actions. The path he puts himself on is indeed a regrettable one, but we understand his reasoning. Moreover, we can’t shake the feeling that if we were put in his position, we might make the same decisions. This emotional dichotomy that Gould and Gilligan have created is one of the many complicated forces that lifts “Saul” above most shows on the air.

Another one of these forces is of course the show’s connection to one of the most revered dramas in TV history. And although some of the supporting characters in “Breaking Bad” now play major roles in “Saul,” Gould and Gilligan refrain from exploiting viewers’ sentimentality for the former. It would be all too easy for returning characters like drug kingpin Gustavo Fring and ex-cop Mike Ehrmantraut to overshadow characters who only appear in “Saul,” but newcomers like lawyer Kim Wexler and cartel associate Lalo Salamanca are given the same treatment as the more familiar faces. The impartiality with which the two creators approach their characters makes “Saul” feel like a worthy counterpart to “Breaking Bad” rather than simply a vehicle for nostalgia.

But if there’s one thing that Gould and Gilligan have mastered, it’s the importance of time. The first four seasons of “Saul” have been a slow burn, but the two creators have proven themselves to be incomparable executors of set-ups and payoffs. Viewers will inevitably be rewarded for their patience with earth-shattering resolutions and revelations. Moreover, Gould and Gilligan have continued to ramp up the show’s intensity as it nears the timeline of “Breaking Bad,” and with the fourth season now in the books, they’re showing no signs of letting up.

At the end of the season, Jimmy is riding high after pulling off one of his most deceitful schemes yet. The brief but foreboding concluding scene essentially seals Jimmy’s fate and suggests that the final stages of his transformation are at hand. Though “Saul” has consistently maintained its unpredictability, the show has demonstrated time and time again that its story unfolds like a contemporary Greek tragedy. Sooner or later, Jimmy will fall from grace for good. Now, it’s only a matter of time.