'Call Saul' plays Easter egg game.

• Author: Moore, Frazier
• Position: Living

Byline: Frazier Moore

NEW YORK -- Every week, the hunt is on.

When each "Better Call Saul'' episode hits the air at 10 p.m. Mondays on AMC, a certain segment of its audience answers the call, not just savoring each hour of duplicity by lawyer Jimmy McGill, but also scouring the screen for covert clues.

This pursuit of so-called Easter eggs isn't unique to "Saul,'' or even to TV. Throughout his long career as a movie director, Alfred Hitchcock in effect cast himself as an Easter egg, popping up in each of his films in a blink-and-you'd-miss-it cameo appearance.

But since premiering last month, "Saul'' has emerged not only as TV's most beguiling tragicomedy, but also a favorite hunting ground for high-alert Easter eggheads.

Many of its buried clues link "Saul'' to "Breaking Bad,'' the 2008-13 AMC series that introduced Jimmy McGill in a time frame six years after the starting point for "Saul.'' For instance, in the "Saul'' premiere, Jimmy's car was revealed to be a 1998 Suzuki Esteem rattletrap parked in the Albuquerque courthouse alongside a Cadillac DeVille -- a deliberate reference to the make of car he will drive years later on "Breaking Bad'' in his alter ego as flush attorney Saul Goodman.

On another "Saul'' occasion, a fleeting close-up of a letter to Jimmy displayed a home address on Juan Tabo Boulevard, which quick-witted viewers recalled as, years later, the residential street of nerdy chemist Gale Boetticher, lab assistant to Walter White ("Breaking Bad'' star Bryan Cranston) in producing his top-notch crystal meth.

Detecting such needles in the "Saul'' haystack calls for sharp eyes, a good memory and much...