Published Feb 3, 2026, 7:01 PM EST
After joining Screen Rant in January 2025, Guy became a Senior Features Writer in March of the same year, and now specializes in features about classic TV shows. With several years' experience writing for and editing TV, film and music publications, his areas of expertise include a wide range of genres, from comedies, animated series, and crime dramas, to Westerns and political thrillers.
Breaking Bad might have given rise to one of the greatest TV universes ever to grace the small screen, but its forgotten Better Call Saul spinoff Slippin’ Jimmy has played absolutely no part in its greatness. This little-known animated series is best left well alone by fans of the franchise's two long-form masterpieces.
There are even those who consider Slippin’ Jimmy to be outside the canon of Breaking Bad TV shows, and for good reason. This zany cartoon about the teenage Jimmy McGill’s adolescence in Cicero, Illinois draws a major blank in entertainment terms. It has none of the panache or storytelling wizardry of Vince Gilligan’s live-action Breaking Bad creations.
While plenty of great TV shows have spawned bad spinoffs, it’s generally assumed that this franchise is a notable exception to the rule. Better Call Saul is arguably an even more extraordinary piece of work than its parent series. Yet, Breaking Bad does have a dud spinoff after all, and it goes by the name of Slippin’ Jimmy.
What Is Slippin' Jimmy?
Developed by two production staff members from Better Call Saul, Ariel Levine and Kathleen Williams-Foshee, Slippin’ Jimmy is an animated prequel series that charts the future Saul Goodman’s teenage years living just outside Chicago, in Cicero, Illinois. It features Jimmy McGill’s exploits as a high-schooler alongside his lifelong friend, Marco Pasternak.
If you thought Bob Odenkirk was the only adult actor to play Saul, think again. In Slippin’ Jimmy, he’s voiced by Sean Giambrone, who’s most famous for playing Ben Pincus in Jurassic World’s animated spinoffs. Released in one go on AMC+ in May 2022, the show consists of six brief and entirely forgettable nine-minute episodes.
Slippin' Jimmy's Existence Feels Like A Joke
The tone and narrative approach of Slippin’ Jimmy is so far removed from Better Call Saul that we could be forgiven for wondering whether it’s even an officially sanctioned franchise release. Beyond Giambrone’s admirable impression of what a teen Odenkirk must have sounded like, it’s impossible to discern that the show has anything to do with its live-action counterpart.
Perhaps Slippin’ Jimmy could have been a great little addition to Breaking Bad’s franchise if more time and budget had been spent on the animation, and if a higher threshold had been set for its humor. There was actually a lot of interesting backstory for it to explore in Jimmy and Chuck McGill’s childhood, too.
As it stands, though, the series is nowhere near good enough to compare with Vince Gilligan’s magnum opus. The funniest thing about it is that anyone would have thought it was.
How Breaking Bad & Better Call Saul Creators Feel About Slippin' Jimmy
For those wondering what the great minds behind Better Call Saul think of the show’s animated spinoff, it’s enough to know that Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan had nothing to do with Slippin’ Jimmy. While they would never air any negative views about the animated series publicly, the silence of Gilligan and Gould is deafening.
Maybe if it were presented as a fan-made homage, Breaking Bad’s main franchise creators could consider this cartoon a flattering and inventive little prequel officially outside the canon. But when it’s placed inside the franchise alongside the live-action big guns, Slippin’ Jimmy just seems like a mildly embarrassing misadventure.
Release Date 2022 - 2022-00-00
English (US) ·