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Better Call Saul -- Season 3 Fring-ing The Gang Back Together Again


SpaceChampion

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4 minutes ago, RumHam said:

I get that it's all in his head, but my understanding is he thinks he is sensitive to electromagnetism. I'm pretty sure a battery not connected to anything would not be generating any. So it shouldn't have proven anything to the Bar people.

Well, the way he threw it away when he realized that it was in his pocket basically said all that needed to be said about it being in his head.  When he didn't know the battery was there, he had no idea.  As soon as he found it, he threw it away in disgust and winced in pain.

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3 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

Do they?  Should they?  I'm always a little surprised how much hate Chuck gets when he is 100% right about his brother every time.   I found this episode really, really hard to watch because I could see that Chuck was going to end up exposed and shafted.  I'm not sure that is a good thing....Jimmy is a criminal who cuts corners, who lies, cheats, steals, whatever he feels like doing at the moment and then rationalizes it away as no big deal....and the vast majority of the audience seems to agree with this because he's likable and has on occasion good motives.  Chuck is a rigid hardass, so the fact that he is not a criminal and doesn't break the rules carries no weight with the audience.

Ooooo does Chuck end up exposed and shafted?, nice I'm going to load up Netflix now.

Chuck is one annoying character, I thought they couldn't write one more irritating than Skyler or Hank, I was wrong, really hope Jimmy pushes him under a bus and not just a metaphorical one.

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18 hours ago, Bridgeburners said:

As much as I like BCS and A Few Good Men, I always think it's a cheap plot device for the protagonist to win a court case because he successfully made the witness explode on the stand. The cheapness of it is even exacerbated by the way Jimmy and Kim acted like they had the case in the bag, at the end of the last episode. I have a hard time believing that something like that could ever work.

yeah.  This is my big complaint with the show this season.  These guys are able to predict EXACTLY what the other guy will do.  Except when the other guy needs to win, then THAT guy can predict what the other guy is going to do exactly.  The 'is there something in your pocket? there's no battery in your phone, is there?' is the most recent, but far from only, example.  Why was that even in there?  it was so contrived and so unnecessary to the plot.  

People are not robots, and just do not react in ways that are that completely predictable down to the littlest detail.  I'm having a really hard time suspending my disbelief.

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3 hours ago, RumHam said:

I get that it's all in his head, but my understanding is he thinks he is sensitive to electromagnetism. I'm pretty sure a battery not connected to anything would not be generating any. So it shouldn't have proven anything to the Bar people.

the point was that he CLAIMED he would know about it.  Debating the technical realities is irrelevant, since it's not a real disease anyway.

There are no hard and fast scientific rules except the ones Chuck invents.

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4 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

He's not a good guy either.  It's just my personal take on it, I have a lot of sympathy for Chuck, and while he IS an asshole, I feel for him for a variety of reasons, not the least of which he acquired all of his status playing within the rules.......I found this episode very hard to watch, I am disappointed to see Kim start to go down Jimmy's road, but I understand that mine is a minority viewpoint.  

I think there's a lot of people in this forum who thinks Chuck is on higher moral ground (myself included). He still did some shitty things, such as leading Jimmy on while making Howard take the fall for not hiring him. He should have just been straight up. But I definitely don't think he was obligated to hire Jimmy in the first place, nor should he have, as we can see from the way Jimmy acts. It's obvious HHM would have to keep on cleaning up all the messes Jimmy made from cutting corners, and he would just be a liability. 

But it's definitely true that Chuck is just less likable than Jimmy. I would honestly rather have a beer with Jimmy and hang out with him than Chuck, even though I know that Jimmy is incredibly irresponsible to a dangerous extent, and deluded about it, whereas Chuck is really a decent guy with strong ethics. 

I honestly think the writers are having fun with the audience by making Chuck so unlikeable and Jimmy so likeable on the surface. They had so much fun watching people sympathize with Walter White way longer than they should have, and even made some jokes at some of the audience's expense. (For example, Walter telling Skyler off and calling her a "bitch", which many of the Walter fans applauded at without realizing why he was making that call.) So now they're repeating the experiment.

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1 hour ago, Swordfish said:

the point was that he CLAIMED he would know about it.  Debating the technical realities is irrelevant, since it's not a real disease anyway.

There are no hard and fast scientific rules except the ones Chuck invents.

My point is that I don't think chuck ever claimed he would sense a disconnected battery or be affected by it. He thinks he is affected by the flow of electricity (aka electromagnetism.) Unless there's something I don't know about phone batteries (not an expert) there should be no flow of electricity from a disconnected battery. It needs to be hooked up to something. I would think Chuck or at least one person on the bench would be familiar with the basics of how electricity works. 

Again it's not a big deal, I just found it odd. They could have just as easily done a "no my phone's not in my pocket, it's in your pocket" type thing. or maybe there's something I don't know about lithium ion batteries and they do always generate a field. 

Edit: I went back and  Chuck says "If the currents not flowing" he's not affected.  

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2 minutes ago, RumHam said:

My point is that I don't think chuck ever claimed he would sense a disconnected battery or be affected by it.

Pretty sure he has, actually.  Didn't he react negatively to the batteries that were brought 'for the tape recorder'?  

There's also the fact that  he forced people to leave their phones outside, rather than just turn them off.

And I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure Jimmy asked him if he'd be able to sense it, and then the way he reacted when he had it in his hand......  he clearly BELIEVES it would affect him.

To me it seems pretty cut and dried that he believed that batteries affect him.  the science is irrelevant, because there;s no science behind any of it, including the electromagnetic field part.  it's completely made up.

 

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10 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

Pretty sure he has, actually.  Didn't he react negatively to the batteries that were brought 'for the tape recorder'?  

There's also the fact that  he forced people to leave their phones outside, rather than just turn them off.

And I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure Jimmy asked him if he'd be able to sense it, and then the way he reacted when he had it in his hand......  he clearly BELIEVES it would affect him.

To me it seems pretty cut and dried that he believed that batteries affect him.  the science is irrelevant, because there;s no science behind any of it, including the electromagnetic field part.  it's completely made up.

 

That's a good point about the batteries, but again what Chuck believes doesn't change my underlying point. Which is that it's odd that nobody brought up the fact that that's now how electricity works. Either on the show or in the writer's room. 

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32 minutes ago, Swordfish said:

And I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure Jimmy asked him if he'd be able to sense it, and then the way he reacted when he had it in his hand......  he clearly BELIEVES it would affect him.

Yeah, it wasn't the battery itself that was the point here.  It was how Chuck winced and threw it to the ground once he realized it was there.  It was totally harmless in his pocket when he didn't know about it, but as soon as he knew it was there he couldn't touch it and had to throw it away from him.  Thus Jimmy proved it was a mental issue, not a physical one.

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S3E5: Chicanery

Great title! Loved this episode. Chuck gets outed on his "electricity allergy" con by his own brother in the place Chuck holds most dear--a court room. Never con a con-man or try to hustle a hustler. #CharlieHustle.

1 hour ago, Swordfish said:

Pretty sure he has, actually.  Didn't he react negatively to the batteries that were brought 'for the tape recorder'?  

There's also the fact that  he forced people to leave their phones outside, rather than just turn them off.

And I can't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure Jimmy asked him if he'd be able to sense it, and then the way he reacted when he had it in his hand......  he clearly BELIEVES it would affect him.

To me it seems pretty cut and dried that he believed that batteries affect him.  the science is irrelevant, because there;s no science behind any of it, including the electromagnetic field part.  it's completely made up.

 

Yup. Back in the episode where we see how Chuck sets up the tape recorder (I think it was S3E1) we see Chuck go outside to his garage where he uses oven mitts and salad tongs to pick up the tape recorder. It's been proven to the home audience, if not to the courtroom audience that this is a mental and not physical illness for Chuck. Likely a byproduct of his wounded ego and heart after being divorced by Rebecca.

1 hour ago, RumHam said:

My point is that I don't think chuck ever claimed he would sense a disconnected battery or be affected by it. He thinks he is affected by the flow of electricity (aka electromagnetism.) ...Edit: I went back and  Chuck says "If the currents not flowing" he's not affected.  

Yeah, I agree with swordfish in that it's not about the "science" at all but rather about Chuck's own perceptions and mental illness.

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54 minutes ago, PetyrPunkinhead said:

Yeah, I agree with swordfish in that it's not about the "science" at all but rather about Chuck's own perceptions and mental illness.

Ok, but it still seems odd that the guy knows the formula for for the dropoff rate of an electrical field but doesn't know how batteries work. 

 

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The thing is Jimmy specifically asked Chuck if he would know if a small battery was near him and said "yes I would". Of course, its bogus but it is Chuck's reasoning. Being in a car doesn't seem to bother him that much because the radio is closed I guess ? Completely ignoring the fact that there are hundreds of cars around him, meaning a hundred huge batteries.

 

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Yeah, it makes more sense to me as a phobia, rather than the allergy that Chuck describes it as.  So the fear or anxiety can persist and lead to physiological reactions even in the face of logic and rationality.  Chuck reacting to disconnected batteries is no more or less realistic than a cynophobe (with a fear of dogs) breaking into a sweat at the sight of some newborn puppies.  Despite the ridiculousness, all manner of reassurance, or even 4" thick plate glass, there is still an inarticulable dread that some wildly unpredictable, unaccountable, indescribable thing may happen as a result of the proximity of puppies.  

 

If Chuck were asked about the science of unconnected batteries causing him pain or whatever he would probably just dismiss it as one of the things that needs to be researched about his condition.  Because clearly they do cause him pain, and he's not crazy!

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On May 9, 2017 at 0:28 AM, Bridgeburners said:

As much as I like BCS and A Few Good Men, I always think it's a cheap plot device for the protagonist to win a court case because he successfully made the witness explode on the stand. The cheapness of it is even exacerbated by the way Jimmy and Kim acted like they had the case in the bag, at the end of the last episode. I have a hard time believing that something like that could ever work.

I'm not bothered by any "cheapness" of Chuck exploding/going into a rant because it's a pretty long established pattern that any time something doesn't go Chuck's way he blows up and goes into a rant.

When Jimmy finally sees through Chuck's manipulations and bullshit towards the end of season 1 and confronts Chuck about how Chuck has spent years working against Jimmy, what does Chuck do? Blow up and go into a rant. When things start going south in the copy shop, what does he do? Blow up and go into a rant. In the start of this very episode, when his ex-wife's cell phone causes him pain? Blow up, go into a rant, and blame her for it. You can find a similar occasion for almost any time something goes Jimmy's way or doesn't go Chuck's way.

Chuck's always been a simmering pot of hate and hypocrisy. He's forced to put a lid on it to look good for others, but just like any pot that being heated with a lid kept on it, the contents get hotter and hotter all the while. Chuck's entire character has been about getting overheated and lashing out at others because of it. The idea that it would happen again, when he's out of his mental comfort zone, experiencing pain due to the nocebo effect he has going on, is thrown off by seeing his ex-wife again and is overconfident because he fell for a feint and thought he'd seen through Jimmy's plan is entirely plausible.

As such I don't see Chuck blowing up on the stand as cheap, blowing up has been a part of Chuck's character since the first season.

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On 5/10/2017 at 11:27 PM, Paladin of Ice said:

I'm not bothered by any "cheapness" of Chuck exploding/going into a rant because it's a pretty long established pattern that any time something doesn't go Chuck's way he blows up and goes into a rant.

When Jimmy finally sees through Chuck's manipulations and bullshit towards the end of season 1 and confronts Chuck about how Chuck has spent years working against Jimmy, what does Chuck do? Blow up and go into a rant. When things start going south in the copy shop, what does he do? Blow up and go into a rant. In the start of this very episode, when his ex-wife's cell phone causes him pain? Blow up, go into a rant, and blame her for it. You can find a similar occasion for almost any time something goes Jimmy's way or doesn't go Chuck's way.

Chuck's always been a simmering pot of hate and hypocrisy. He's forced to put a lid on it to look good for others, but just like any pot that being heated with a lid kept on it, the contents get hotter and hotter all the while. Chuck's entire character has been about getting overheated and lashing out at others because of it. The idea that it would happen again, when he's out of his mental comfort zone, experiencing pain due to the nocebo effect he has going on, is thrown off by seeing his ex-wife again and is overconfident because he fell for a feint and thought he'd seen through Jimmy's plan.

As such I don't see Chuck blowing up on the stand as cheap, blowing up has been a part of Chuck's character since the first season.

Excellent characer analysis of Chuck! I especially liked the part I bolded. And I'm not sure if they mentioned the nocebo effect in the series before, but I don't recall it. It seems like a bang on matchfor Chuck's reaction to electronics.

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Also him blowing up was not essential to the case they had him with the battery and the phone. Him blowing up as just extra, but by showing his mental condition they provided a plausible reason why Jimmy would lie to him. If he had reacted to the empty phone Jimmy would have shown that it had no battery so either way without the rant and without Chuck guessing the empty phone ruse, once that battery was placed on Chuck and he didn't react his case was sunk.

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On Invalid Date at 3:35 PM, The Monkey said:

Very entertaining episode. Felt good to get back to meat of the story after all the business with Gus and Mike (however entertaining that is). 

I'm curious though... Why would they not disbar Jimmy after this episode? Sure Chuck was proven to be delusional, and that might explain why Jimmy said the stuff on the tape... But Jimmy still broke into Chuck's home and broke his property. That remains a crime, no matter the context. How will they justify that?

Once Chucks mental instability was revealed everything looks different. Now you have Chuck, who was shown to have a mental issue, Jimmy who has/had legal guardianship over him, who by all accounts waited on Chuck hand and foot every single day for years, can say I broke in because I feared Chuck was getting worse. That Chuck was getting more and more delusional, maybe feared for his life with his open flame lanterns on top of stacks of paper. That I confessed to that crime on the tape because I thought it would help him, and by all accounts it did, but then he seemed to be spiraling out of control with the fascination over the tape. Then you add in how they found out Chuck is the one who blocked Jimmy from getting hired in at HHM and Chucks rant on the stand sounding like he has been obsessed with Jimmy since he was nine.

 

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