Final Seasons of Better Call Saul and Ozark: Too Close for Comfort (NO SPOILERS)

I've watched the final season (second half) of Ozark and now I'll wait a couple of months for the final season (second half) of Better Call Saul, and I gotta say:

They hit rather too precisely the same notes.

The biggest connect point, I think, is this:

Ozark: A particular character calls out the "yuppie scum" Laura Linney and Jason Bateman characters as "soulless" and then reels off more insults at them.

Better Call Saul: A particular character calls out the "crooked lawyer" Rhea Seehorn and Bob Odenkirk characters "soulless" and then reels off more insults at them.

Interesting: the Linney and Bateman characters ARE soulless, scummy and evil -- especially Linney who "nudges" contract killings and ruins people's lives. Seehorn and Odenkirk -- in a different show with better writing -- are somewhat LESS scummy and evil, and there is a chance for some sort of redemption maybe -- way down the line in Nebraska.

Still, it was too close for comfort -- scenes being written so much the same , with the same verdict -- "soulless" -- that I felt: its time maybe for the streaming networks to put these kinds of shows to bed.

Especially those shows about the Evil and Unstoppable Mexican cartels.

50 years ago, it was The Godfather and Italian-American mobsters(carried on through Goodfellas and The Sopranos to be sure.) Now...Mexicans...cartels.

Breaking Bad started it...and magnificently. Better Call Saul continued it - and Ozark rather "jumped on the copycat bandwagon."

Interesting about Better Call Saul was how it steered AWAY from the cartel stuff for a number of seasons that were much more about Jimmy vs. Chuck(his supersmart mental case lawyer brother) and Howard(the smarmy rival) than anything about cartels(which remained a "side plot.") And even that crooked couple, the Kettlemans.

But then came Lalo and...here we are. (On Ozark, they fashioned a copycat Lalo called Javi and set him up the same way.)

I suppose there are only so many gangster groupings available to movies and TV: Italian American Mafia, Russian Mafia, Mexican Mafia.

But for Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and Ozark to hit one after the other in such short order reflects the fact that you can only go so far before you start getting the same characters(Lalo, Javi), the same situations, the same outcomes.

I thought the end of Ozark was a big, predictable disappointment.

I have higher hopes for the more thoughtful and witty Better Call Saul.

But maybe they just drop the Mexican cartel shows for awhile.