Better Call Saul, now in its fifth season, is not a fast-paced show. Initially, this probably came as a shock to fans of its parent series, Breaking Bad—a propulsive drama that prioritized edge-of-your-seat storytelling, never missing a chance to ratchet up the tension ever further. Breaking Bad became one of most beloved television series of this century, while Better Call Saul is, essentially, a solidly rated cable drama; its unrushed narrative is likely one of the reasons why.

But to dismiss Better Call Saul on these grounds would mean missing out on a different, still terrific kind of storytelling. The streaming era is plagued by TV that doesn’t know how to pace itself. Released from the demands of filling a time slot or fitting in ad breaks, serialized shows on services like Netflix and Amazon are also free to drag their heels. Better Call Saul is not like that. Other slow shows feel like they’re driving into the middle of nowhere. This one knows exactly the journey it’s on—it’s just taking the scenic route.

Part of this willingness to take time is baked into the premise of the show. Saul is a prequel; we know exactly where Jimmy McGill, aka Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks), and Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) are heading. In the absence of real tension, creators Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould have instead embraced quieter moments and mundane repetition: Better Call Saul is filled to the brim with meticulous, expertly crafted sequences in which characters spend time on dull tasks, like filling in documents or making phone calls. These scenes frequently linger past the point where other shows would cut away, luxuriating in their own precision.

It’s not that Better Call Saul is plotless. This is an intensely serialized narrative about one man’s gradual descent into darkness and eventual collapse. But it’s also in no rush to get to the end. People don’t transform overnight, after all; change happens over the course of thousands of tiny moments. This wasn’t always the plan: “Because the show is named Better Call Saul, we thought that we had to get to this guy quick or else people will accuse us of false advertising—a bait and switch,” Gilligan told Rolling Stone in 2018. “Then lo and behold, season after season went by and it dawned on us, we don’t want to get to Saul Goodman…and that’s the tragedy.” Watching this show is like living in those last few days of summer before school starts: You’re trying to enjoy those final gasps of freedom, making this time last as long as it can.

This kind of storytelling isn’t new, but until recently, it did seem to be on the decline. Screenwriters use the term shoe leather to refer to moments like the scenes that form Saul’s backbone: They don’t move the plot forward, but add context to a narrative’s characters and world. They’re the moments that add a little dirt and damage to your metaphorical footwear. Older TV shows and films are much richer in shoe leather. Try watching an episode of Gunsmoke, the long-running midcentury Western series, to see what I mean.

This is why people often complain that older media feels slow. Modern pop culture tends to trim the fat, especially contemporary broadcast TV dramas. Breaking Bad was so winning in part because of the way it mixed aspects of quieter cable drama with the breakneck plotting of a network drama like ER, or 24, or Alias, landmark shows that took fast pacing to new heights. With Saul, though, Gould and Gilligan go in the opposite direction—and they’re not alone. Look closely at the Peak TV era, and you’ll find plenty of worthy patient TV shows—like Jenji Kohan’s Netflix series Orange Is the New Black and GLOW, which use leisurely pacing to explore large casts of quirky characters, or Nic Pizzolatto’s True Detective, which loves to stew in its own juice.