For those wanting to join the ride of AMC’s “Better Call Saul’s” final run, Netflix makes it all-too-easy to binge the previous five seasons. As Dr. Ian Malcolm warns, however, you should probably stop to think if you should feverishly burn through one of the best shows on television.

Spending full days binge-watching a season of TV certainly existed before the rise of streaming — I’ve got the DVD sets of “Lost” and “Grey’s Anatomy” collecting dust in my garage to prove it. As a person who prefers to watch movies over television shows, I’m especially susceptible to mass marathons of content, all because I feel a compulsive need to engage with as much of the full story all at once.

It’s the reason why I don’t watch too many shows, in particular hour-long dramas (Limited series, on the other hand, still entice me with their promise of “finality” come season’s end).

So it’s strange for me to be in the midst of the zeitgeist surrounding the final season of “Better Call Saul.” The first seven episodes of the season currently air weekly on AMC, with the final six episodes coming in July. Watching it without cable involves a subscription to AMC+ (who has that?), and they remove episodes from the platform regularly.

“Saul,” is a prequel to the highly acclaimed “Breaking Bad,” with the current series focusing on the origins of seedy cartel lawyer Saul Goodman. As played by Bob Odenkirk, Saul was once known as Jimmy McGill, a good-natured lawyer who resists his natural urge to lie, cheat and swindle in order to escape the shadow of his successful older brother.

Prequels can be risky endeavors, especially as they invite obvious comparisons to the beloved source material. To its credit, “Saul” doesn’t hide from its legacy. Instead, two other main players from “Breaking Bad” return (Jonathan Banks and Giancarlo Esposito), alongside several supporting characters and Easter eggs. Even better, the new characters, chiefly Rhea Seehorn’s spiraling Kim Wexler and trapped cartel middleman Nacho Varga (played by Michael Mando), have their own deeply satisfying dramatic arcs, and, unlike the legacy characters, we don’t know what their fates will be by series end, adding even more dread to their stories.

Threaded through an incredible lead performance by Odenkirk, “Saul,” even from the start, felt like its own worthy story. The writing and production quality matches that of “Breaking Bad,” and the journey from Jimmy McGill to Saul Goodman proves to be a masterclass in character evolution, taking subtle turns through both monumental actions and seemingly minuscule decision points.

In short, I personally find Odenkirk’s Saul Goodman to be a vastly superior series lead compared to Bryan Cranston’s Walter White. My hot take about White: He “broke bad” in Season One of “Breaking Bad,” and the series spun its wheels on his subsequent characterization.

I don’t mean to criticize “Breaking Bad” just to praise what I think is a far superior product with “Better Call Saul.” They’re both extremely well-executed programs that take a unique approach to dramatic tension. Much of both shows build dread and narrative momentum through acts of seeming tedium. There’s a procedural element to specific episodes that depict the sometimes maudlin nature of terrible behavior. What we see on screen should be boring on paper, but both series rely on their incredible actors to relay vital information about their characters in these quiet moments.

That quality, however, makes them both enticing to binge multiple episodes at once. You sit there compelled by an episode, but because the story hasn’t moved all that much, you want to keep going and get MORE. Then you’re watching five episodes in a night, and you’re slapping your face to stay awake through work the next morning.

I came to “Breaking Bad” late and watched the entire run on Netflix over the span of a couple weeks. That approach probably fed my criticism of the Walter White character, though I still consider the experience of watching the show to be glowingly positive.

With “Better Call Saul,” my lack of cable TV subscription kept me from watching the show live, week-to-week, and I’ve digested each season in quick bursts as they arrived on Netflix (the previous seasons typically landed on Netflix just a couple weeks ahead of the new season premiere on AMC, encouraging people like me to rush through the new Netflix season for at least the chance to watch the new season as it unspools).

Sure enough, after waiting almost two years for season five of “Better Call Saul" on Netflix, I recently burned through all 10 episodes in a span of two days, then fired up an AMC+ account to watch the first two episodes of this final season. Season five was incredible, but man, I don’t feel like I got to fully appreciate it because of how quickly I consumed it.

Now that I’m caught up with the current run, perhaps I can finally see what it’s like to digest “Better Call Saul” one episode at a time. I can obviously go back and rewatch the previous episodes at a more leisurely pace, but I worry if the same binge behavior might return. And anyway, with so many other acclaimed shows, who has time to rewatch anything?

Still, if you’re new to the “Better Call Saul” game, I recommend practicing as much restraint as possible. It’s too good to just blow through. Good luck to you. I anticipate most who take this recommendation will burn through the entire show before the next installment of this column.

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Tyler Wilson is a member of the International Press Academy and has been writing about movies and pop culture for Inland Northwest publications since 2000, including a regular column in The Press since 2006. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.