Better Call Saul

[Swagwell]

To me, ths show is now called "Fuck Chuck (and his imaginary affliction.)".

 

Team Jimmy all the way.

[Cas Stark]

3 minutes ago, Paladin of Ice said:

It requires Chuck to be screwing over his brother to have Mesa Verde ever involved. If, as I said, Chuck sat down with Jimmy and had a serious talk with him when Jimmy got the law degree, none of this happens. And if Jimmy was just some random person in HHM's mailroom that Chuck knew had been shady years ago but had since been straight for years, Chuck would have never done any of this. He would have advised against giving the person a position as a lawyer, shrugged, and let the person screw up or not on his own.

But with Jimmy, Chuck went out of his way to make sure that Jimmy would never be able to be able to go straight. Never even have a shot at it. And I absolutely do not believe he would have done that with another person. He wrecked Jimmy's attempt to go straight, and he is in the middle of trying to wreck Jimmy's chance of being a slightly crooked success. What happened with Mesa Verde was Jimmy finally pushing back.

Again, Chuck had the opportunity to be a stand up guy and do this openly when Jimmy came to tell him about the law degree. He chose not to. Chuck chose to make Howard play the bad guy. Chuck chose to undermine Jimmy from within when Jimmy thought Chuck was virtually his only friend and ally. Chuck chose to repeatedly spite Jimmy even as Jimmy nearly killed himself taking care of Chuck.

And Chuck did all this after hearing Jimmy swear that he was going to change his life, after he saw Jimmy living on the straight and narrow for years. (Jimmy worked in the mailroom long enough to get a law degree, even from a degree mill/correspondence school that takes a lot of time, as would taking the bar multiple times) He then watched Jimmy be an honest underpaid public defender/solo practitioner for at least another year. (When Jimmy gave Howard a list of Chuck's needs, Howard was shocked and incredulously stated that Jimmy had been doing that for more than a year.)

Chuck chose to be a backstabber instead of a straight up guy about his brother practicing law. That backstabbing had a lot of unintended repercussions, and Chuck has his share of responsibility for it all.

This is untrue.

Jimmy could have gone straight at Davis & Main.  He's not working for Chuck any more, he's given a ton of perks and a lot of leeway.  He first, breaks legal rules, then airs the commercial w/out authorization knowing this will cause problems and ultimately he forces them to fire him.

Jimmy could have gone straight when Kim chose him over HHM or the other firm.  All he has to do is NOT COMMIT ANY FELONIES.  But he can't stand that his bat shit insane but brilliant lawyer brother got back Mesa Verde so, because he's Jimmy, he commits multiple incidents of fraud.

This is not on Chuck. Chuck should have been honest, you're right.  But to say Oh poor Jimmy, he couldn't go straight because of Chuck is false.  We see 2 fantastic opportunities and he blows them both.  Who is to say how many opportunities he's blow in the past.

[Caligula_K3]

This was a great episode, rounding out a very good season. The conflict between Jimmy and Chuck has been played perfectly, and even if the tape recorder was a little predictable, I think it was meant to be so and didn't detract from the ending at all. I see a lot of arguments in this thread about who's right, Jimmy or Chuck, and the beauty of this season has been to show that they're both wrong. They're both manipulative, devious bastards, with the only difference being that one abides by the law and the other is lovable. I think the season did a great job developing Jimmy, and moving him towards a believable moment where he'll become Saul. And Bob Odenkirk is just pure hilarious entertainment as Saul (I think my favourite sequence from this season was his mission to get fired from his law firm) while still selling the tragedy aspect of his character. As much as we all want to see Saul, what we've seen in the past two seasons is the devolution of a man trying to be good to a man who cares less and less about being a bastard. And that's pretty painful to watch.

Also, credit to the writers and Rhea Seehorn for the great character development of Kim this season.

On the other hand, Mike's plotline has been a lot less successful, IMO. It was working fairly well until after the Tuco storyline, and I enjoyed the focus on his and Nacho's relationship and tracing his own evolution from a half-measures type of guy to the Mike we get in Breaking Bad. But his vendetta against the cartel never really made much sense to me, the creators felt the need to introduce too many Breaking Bad characters, and the ending was probably my least favourite creative decision on either this show or BB. Sure, Gus is coming. Cool and all, but in terms of Mike's storyline this season, who cares? Better Call Saul has been so successful because, to my mind, after the first few episodes of season 1, they broke away from Breaking Bad and gave the show its own identity. The Mike sections this year completely lost that (if you haven't watched Breaking Bad, his ending is meaningless). And it doesn't help that he might as well have been on a completely different show than Jimmy; compared to season 1, where they interacted fairly often, I think their plotlines intersected... twice this whole season? I'm hoping next year, they find a way to bring Jimmy and Nacho and Mike together.

But, overall, it was a very strong season and I'm sure as hell excited for the next. Gimme Jimmy!

 

 

[RumHam]

I think it's better that the Mike and Saul plots don't intersect too much yet. Too much too soon could risk seeming contrived. Since we know where they're going, I don't see the harm in taking a bit of time to get there. 

On another note, when you think about it Mike working for Saul on Breaking Bad doesn't really compute. You can't tell me Fring wasn't paying him enough and he needed a second job. You could even argue Fring would not want Mike having any sort of conflict of interest. For a bit there mike was actively aiding Gus / the cartel's competition by helping Saul help Walt. Maybe they'll try to explain that and Mike will end up owing Saul a favor somehow.

[Cas Stark]

58 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

This was a great episode, rounding out a very good season. The conflict between Jimmy and Chuck has been played perfectly, and even if the tape recorder was a little predictable, I think it was meant to be so and didn't detract from the ending at all. I see a lot of arguments in this thread about who's right, Jimmy or Chuck, and the beauty of this season has been to show that they're both wrong. They're both manipulative, devious bastards, with the only difference being that one abides by the law and the other is lovable. I think the season did a great job developing Jimmy, and moving him towards a believable moment where he'll become Saul. And Bob Odenkirk is just pure hilarious entertainment as Saul (I think my favourite sequence from this season was his mission to get fired from his law firm) while still selling the tragedy aspect of his character. As much as we all want to see Saul, what we've seen in the past two seasons is the devolution of a man trying to be good to a man who cares less and less about being a bastard. And that's pretty painful to watch.

Also, credit to the writers and Rhea Seehorn for the great character development of Kim this season.

On the other hand, Mike's plotline has been a lot less successful, IMO. It was working fairly well until after the Tuco storyline, and I enjoyed the focus on his and Nacho's relationship and tracing his own evolution from a half-measures type of guy to the Mike we get in Breaking Bad. But his vendetta against the cartel never really made much sense to me, the creators felt the need to introduce too many Breaking Bad characters, and the ending was probably my least favourite creative decision on either this show or BB. Sure, Gus is coming. Cool and all, but in terms of Mike's storyline this season, who cares? Better Call Saul has been so successful because, to my mind, after the first few episodes of season 1, they broke away from Breaking Bad and gave the show its own identity. The Mike sections this year completely lost that (if you haven't watched Breaking Bad, his ending is meaningless). And it doesn't help that he might as well have been on a completely different show than Jimmy; compared to season 1, where they interacted fairly often, I think their plotlines intersected... twice this whole season? I'm hoping next year, they find a way to bring Jimmy and Nacho and Mike together.

But, overall, it was a very strong season and I'm sure as hell excited for the next. Gimme Jimmy!

 

 

Yeah, I kind of agree, but I could watch Mike doing crazy badass rambo stuff for hours.

[Bridgeburners]

The only thing I really see wrong with Chuck is that the way he goes about getting things he wants is devious, and reeks of a strained relationship with his brother. That being said, I don't blame him at all for any of his decisions. For example, the way he went about keeping Jimmy from getting hired as a lawyer at HHM was extremely devious, and a ton of trouble could have been avoided if he was just up front with him about it, (i.e. "I don't want you to practice for us because of xxx") but we all know how difficult that is to tell a loved one. So yeah, he was a complete dick in the way he went about it. But given what we know now about Jimmy, Chuck was absolutely right to not allow Jimmy to join as a lawyer. No law firm in their right mind would hire Jimmy if they knew about him what Chuck (and now we) knew.

After that, I'm not even sure I have that much more of a problem with the way Chuck goes about things. Changing the locks? That's completely justified given that Jimmy basically betrayed him by completely taking advantage of his position as a trusted caretaker of Chuck to screw him over. That is way dirtier than Chuck using Jimmy's caring nature to catch his confession. If I were in his position, at that point, all bets would be off in terms of how I get that confession. And I don't even know the full level of frustration that Chuck had to deal with throughout his life, with Jimmy. 

Anyway, I was just thrown off by the immediate "fuck chuck" responses to the finale, because what Jimmy did to him was about a thousand times worse in my opinion. Also, I kinda thought that scene was kickass. I was like, "hell yeah bitch, Slippin' Chuck!"

[Gustavo Fringed Sleeves]

1 hour ago, Bridgeburners said:

The only thing I really see wrong with Chuck is that the way he goes about getting things he wants is devious, and reeks of a strained relationship with his brother. That being said, I don't blame him at all for any of his decisions. For example, the way he went about keeping Jimmy from getting hired as a lawyer at HHM was extremely devious, and a ton of trouble could have been avoided if he was just up front with him about it, (i.e. "I don't want you to practice for us because of xxx") but we all know how difficult that is to tell a loved one. So yeah, he was a complete dick in the way he went about it. But given what we know now about Jimmy, Chuck was absolutely right to not allow Jimmy to join as a lawyer. No law firm in their right mind would hire Jimmy if they knew about him what Chuck (and now we) knew.

After that, I'm not even sure I have that much more of a problem with the way Chuck goes about things. Changing the locks? That's completely justified given that Jimmy basically betrayed him by completely taking advantage of his position as a trusted caretaker of Chuck to screw him over. That is way dirtier than Chuck using Jimmy's caring nature to catch his confession. If I were in his position, at that point, all bets would be off in terms of how I get that confession. And I don't even know the full level of frustration that Chuck had to deal with throughout his life, with Jimmy. 

Anyway, I was just thrown off by the immediate "fuck chuck" responses to the finale, because what Jimmy did to him was about a thousand times worse in my opinion. Also, I kinda thought that scene was kickass. I was like, "hell yeah bitch, Slippin' Chuck!"

I have nowhere near the same level of sympathy as you do for Chuck, but you're right that an overwhelming reaction of sympathy by the audience for Jimmy resembles that of BrBa for Walter against Skyler. Too much projection of what a badass Walt is and we'd like to be, but in the end Skyler was right about 3/4 of the time, and much of the other 1/4 included her aiding and abetting her husband's criminal endeavors.

[DaveSumm]

17 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

Has anyone explained the age discrepancy with Mike's granddaughter?  This is seems like a big continuity issue unless she was a lot older than I remember her being in BB.

This post cites an interview with a BCS writer who claims that BrBa and BCS aren't necessarily set when they aired, so we don't know exactly what the gap is between  the two shows. That muddies it up slightly, but he says she should be around 5 years old on BCS. She's been played by two actresses on BCS, neither of their ages is listed on IMDb. I don't have kids and am rubbish with kids ages, maybe someone who isn't can weigh in on how much older than 5 she seems?

[Consigliere]

Great episode to round off a very good season. We do need more Mike and Nacho though. The Jimmy/Chuck and Jimmy/Kim relationships were well done but I felt that Mike's storyline wasn't particularly great.

The relationship between Chuck and Jimmy is so complicated and well drawn that I just can't get enough of them. They are both dicks though, not just Chuck. It was definitely wrong of Chuck to not tell Jimmy of their mothers last words but again it was also understandable from Chuck's point of view -  Chuck the loyal, dutiful son and Jimmy the likeable fuck-up who seems to skate through life doing whatever he pleases. The resentment/jealousy that Chuck feels because of this pov makes his actions towards Jimmy completely believable. Chuck recording their conversation was devious but it makes him no more of an ass than Jimmy for committing fraud (much less of an ass, imo). I find the whole argument that Chuck should have let this go to be absurd.

On the note: I eventually figured that the note must be from Gus. Initially I thought Nacho but that didn't make sense. I'm glad to hear that the note being from Gus was basically confirmed.

43 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

This post cites an interview with a BCS writer who claims that BrBa and BCS aren't necessarily set when they aired, so we don't know exactly what the gap is between  the two shows. That muddies it up slightly, but he says she should be around 5 years old on BCS. She's been played by two actresses on BCS, neither of their ages is listed on IMDb. I don't have kids and am rubbish with kids ages, maybe someone who isn't can weigh in on how much older than 5 she seems?

Gilligan has stated that BCS starts in 2002 approximately six years before Walt meets Saul. I believe that Gould has also stated that BCS starts off in 2002. Kaylee should be around four or five in BCS but she looks several years older than that (nine or ten,imo).

[Talleyrand]

Great ending to round off the season. 

 

Love the Jimmy/Chuck rivalry. Jimmy can't go down cause of Breaking Bad but as others have said I can see an ending where Jimmy agrees not to practice law under the McGill name in return for not being charged.

While they're fun the Mike sections have been the weakest for me this season a bit too much of the "Mike is old rambo" I mean he suffered his first actual set back in this episode and if it's Fring's bunch then it's not really even that much of a setback.

Hoping that at some point Hector, the Twins or Nacho actually outplay him, maybe to convince him he needs the protection and funding of someone like Gus.

Speaking of which and I think It's going to be something I say at the end of every season now but I hope we get more Nacho next season.

[dbunting]

Good season, wish it was a little longer though, 2 episodes more would be good.

Jimmy, gets what he deserves. He plays the victim role too often when it comes to life, it's always someone else. Now, we all know he is a sneak and a cheat. He will do whatever it takes to get the outcome he is looking for. He seems to have good intentions but takes shortcuts to get there. I could see him beating this recording real easy(BTW where did he get the batteries?!), he says more than once that he is trying to make Chuck feel better, and then there is this whole thing called the law. I don't know 2002 New Mexico law but most states do not allow a conversation to be secretly taped without a warrant. So Chuck can damage Jimmy and black mail him to lose the McGill name, but legally I believe that's about it.

Chuck is an asshole, no doubt. There is no justification for not telling Jimmy that his mom woke up and called his name. You could never convince me that he is ok for doing that. He also always seems to perk up and get better when it comes to stopping Jimmy, then he gets sick again right afterward.

Mike, yeah, pretty clear that was Gus or his people. They have also been tailing the cartel and picked up on Mike doing the same. Likely wanted to see if he was law or if it was personal. 

The fact that there are 3 pages discussing this since it aired tells me it's a good show.

[Commodore]

A Marxist holds the view that whomever is more powerful is in the wrong, no matter the circumstance.

Theft, fraud, lying; none of it matters because Chuck is rich, powerful and a "dick".

[Aemon Stark]

Zzz. Please take it back to Gen Chat if that's the kind of discussion you want to have. 

[Theda Baratheon]

lmao name one person who doesn't like chuck because he is richer than jimmy. seriously. 

[Aemon Stark]

It's a testament to the writing that we're having so much discussion about "Chuck vs Jimmy". I don't think it's just that Jimmy is more charming and likeable than Chuck, though of course he is. But if Chuck's main feature is his reverence to the law, Jimmy is all about loyalty - to Kim, even to Chuck! That doesn't make some of his actions any less misguided, but his motivations are always clear. 

[Mark Antony]

Yeah there have been lots of strawman arguments defending Chuck in here. 

2 hours ago, Talleyrand said:

While they're fun the Mike sections have been the weakest for me this season a bit too much of the "Mike is old rambo" I mean he suffered his first actual set back in this episode and if it's Fring's bunch then it's not really even that much of a setback..

Well not killing Tuco was a setback for sure and then not killing the truck driver got him found out by Nacho and a Good Samaritan killed so I'd call that a setback as well even though he got the money. Things definitely werent smooth at all for Mike this season. I was a tad underwhelmed with where his storyline finished and completely agree about the under use of Nacho who kills every scene he's in. Hopefully next season things heat up a bit on the Mike/Nacho side of things. 

[Ken Stone]

1 hour ago, Aemon Stark said:

It's a testament to the writing that we're having so much discussion about "Chuck vs Jimmy". I don't think it's just that Jimmy is more charming and likeable than Chuck, though of course he is. But if Chuck's main feature is his reverence to the law, Jimmy is all about loyalty - to Kim, even to Chuck! That doesn't make some of his actions any less misguided, but his motivations are always clear. 

 

Can you call it loyalty when Jimmy betrays Chuck by committing fraud? 

[Scrambled Aegon]

19 hours ago, Swagwell said:

To me, ths show is now called "Fuck Chuck (and his imaginary affliction.)".

 

Team Jimmy all the way.

It isn't "imaginary", it's a mental illness.

[Aemon Stark]

Not at that point - but then sometimes being loyal means having to choose between loyalties too. 

[Dr. Pepper]

Chuck definitely has a mental illness and has been suffering from it since we met him.  Hypersensitivity to electricity isn't a real thing, but the symptoms people experience are real.  They just happen to be related to something else.  

Without thinking on it any deeper, I would say there's some agoraphobia, social anxiety, depression, and OCD going on, at the very least.