We've come to know characters from TV shows in a very specifically intimate way at some midpoint between characters from literature and the "real" people in our lives. As TV pushes verisimilitude to achieve greater and greater resolution in its characters, we feel more and more that we know characters on TV shows. "Better Call Saul" ended for me last night and had that particular sadness of a show ending and of a character for all intents and purposes dying. You can rewatch a great show but the vibrancy of experiencing a character for the first time can't ever be really recaptured. The character of Saul Goodman exists across two very detailed meticulously rendered shows making him one of the realest characters ever to have lived on TV. Unlike a formulaic drama or TV sitcom, we have lived with this guy across a hugely broad spectrum of situations. It's great writing and acting but also a very finely rendered portrait of an individual. The fact that he is invented seems almost besides the point. Do we know our friends and some of our family members as well as we think we know this guy? Where are we going with these kinds of dramatic works? They are thrilling but also a little draining and demand a kind of commitment that was once only encountered in epic novels. And even then those people lived in our imaginations and had a large measure of subjectivity. They didn't live in our houses. The screens we look at to escape have changed. Now they work both ways and let people in. And once they're in, they're in forever.