“If I’m lucky, a month from now, best-case scenario, I’m managing a Cinnabon in Omaha,” an exasperated Saul Goodman told Walter White in the penultimate episode of the hit TV show Breaking Bad.
Audiences will get to see that softer, sadder, Cinnabon-slathering side of Saul again in the new season of Better Call Saul, which premieres tonight on AMC in the US. The show’s season openers usually flash forward to the Cinnabon in Omaha, Nebraska where Saul appears to have been hiding out since the events of Breaking Bad.
The first episode of the third season will reportedly open with a brief black-and-white sequence of Saul, who now goes by the name of Gene, icing gooey buns at the restaurant chain.
And actor Bob Odenkirk, who plays Gene/Saul, trained with a real Cinnabon executive on how to properly ice the shopping-mall delicacy for the new Cinnabon scene, Odenkirk told the New York Times (paywall).
“I’m telling you, Cinnabon is not about skimping on any ingredients,” said Odenkirk. “They weigh everything out, but I think they also put extra in. They are unabashedly putting everything your mouth loves into one hot lump—and they make no bones about it. So don’t skimp on frosting.”
After the scene, the show returns to the years before Breaking Bad, during which Saul transformed from the rule-bending, yet well-intentioned public defender Jimmy McGill into the crooked lawyer-to-the-criminals he ultimately becomes. This season, he’ll encounter Breaking Bad kingpin Gustavo ”Gus” Fring, played by Giancarlo Esposito. And we’ll continue to see the evolution of Saul’s one-time fixer, Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks).
Cinnabon did not pay or partner with AMC on its initial Breaking Bad shout-out back in 2013. But the company jumped on the reference by tweeting its career page to Odenkirk after the episode. It has been working with the network on campaigns around the spinoff Better Call Saul ever since, Adweek reported.
Cinnabon isn’t clued in as to what will happen in the show, so its latest campaign around the season three premiere tonight features general videos in the black-and-white style of the show, giveaways, online sweepstakes, and promotions on Cinnabon’s website.
One of the videos, published by Adweek, features a faceless worker named Gene.