Better Call Saul’s penultimate episode features the Med City

(ABC 6 News) -To many people in Rochester, a stretch of North Broadway and Northern Heights Dr. is just like any other road getting them from one side of the city to another.

But to fans of the critically acclaimed AMC show, Better Call Saul, it’s a lot more.

It’s been over a year since Better Call Saul, came to a close. However, a small part of it’s second to last episode, Waterworks, had a connection to Rochester.

There was one quick scene in the show where Bob Odenkirk’s character, Jimmy McGill, or in this, his alias Gene Takovik, is driving on a street that is supposed to be in Omaha, Nebraska. The footage shown is actually right in Rochester on North Broadway.

Rochester gets it’s 30 seconds of fame in the show while Gene Takovik sings along to the well known Blondie hit “The Tide is High.”

“I think that may have just been green screen footage, we did a little bit of poor man’s process for that,” said Christian Diaz de Bedoya, Better Call Saul Locations Manager. “And we did some practical here too where we did have fake snow, special effects, laid out snow because it was actually shot during the summer months.”

Marc Valdez grew up in Albuquerque, where most of the Breaking Bad Universe is set. He’s made a hobby out of cataloging filming locations in his hometown, something that has always been easy. The few scenes not shot there have taken more effort for him to identify. He called up another fan of tracking locations in film James Gelet, to figure this one out.

“It didn’t look like the Albuquerque area,” said Valdez. “So, he started looking around cities and I guess Rochester was the second city he started looking at and he got lucky and was able to quickly locate it. It only took about two days, I think.”

Bill Thomas has had his dentistry practice off North Broadway for 30 years. He and his wife became fans of Breaking Bad in its middle seasons. When they first watched the episode feature Rochester a year ago, they didn’t recognize it.

“We had a friend call us and say ‘Did you see your office on that show?’ No, we didn’t see it. So, we went back and looked at it and sure enough, we caught a glimpse of it,” said Thomas.

People have gone to making pilgrimages to Albuquerque to see the numerous filming locations of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul over the years. Now, Rochester can be added to that list.

“It’s great actually. From Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul it’s put Albuquerque on the map for you know like a tourist destination. A lot of times it was just like a drive through town going from west coast to east coast but now they kind of make it a point to detour and stay a day or two. And go visit some of these sites,” said Diaz de Bedoya.

There’s become a fascination and amusement for people to check this intersection out that brings Bob Odenkirk’s character to the legendary Carol Burnett’s home the moment before the episode’s climactic end.