“Things are fine
the way they are.” In the Season 3 finale
of Better Call Saul, Chuck pushes Jimmy away
with the words, “I don’t want to
hurt your feelings. But the truth is, you’ve never
mattered all that much to me.” And in the moments that follow,
these words haunt us, because they’re so
demonstrably untrue. The episode makes it
painfully clear how much Jimmy has affected his brother,
and not for the better. We’ve spent a lot of the series
paying attention to how Chuck has hurt Jimmy,
through his resentment, his underhanded sabotage,
and his fundamental refusal to believe in his brother. But the finale forces us to wonder
how much Jimmy is to blame for the sad deterioration of Chuck. Is Jimmy, in fact, the true cause
of the illness that’s plagued Chuck for as long as we’ve known him — his electromagnetic hypersensitivity,
which the series has increasingly made clear is psychological,
rather than physical? So here’s our take on what
Chuck’s sorry end reveals to us about where Jimmy’s headed,
who he’s been all along, and how much viewers have been
encouraged to get wrong about him. The episode opens
with a symbolic flashback. The camera tracks in from a distance
to reveal a scene from the past -- visualizing that wisdom
from The Glass Menagerie that “Time is the longest distance
between two places.” We see a younger Chuck reading
to a child Jimmy. The vignette makes us
emotionally aware of how much changed in
the years that followed. Back then Chuck wasn’t ill
and the brothers were close. We hear Jimmy ask “Is she gonna be okay?” It’s a question universal
to children hearing stories. Chuck answers as most adults would “She’ll be fine, Jimmy.” and when pressed he says “Just listen. You’ll see.” These are words that say to Jimmy,
you have learn to deal with the uncertainty, which is part of being an adult. The questioning young Jimmy is also
a stand-in for us watching this show -- we hope that everything
will be alright, yet we know from the start
that it won’t be. The camera moves through the lantern
to carry us into the present day -- so this focus on the lantern --
which is of course the title of the episode -- subtly plants in our minds a connection
between Chuck’s later illness and the brothers' relationship. As their bond fell apart,
is this how -- and why -- Chuck became unable
to tolerate electricity? Lanterns return in the episode
as markers of where Chuck is now, versus then. The next time we see Chuck,
the camera tracks across a row of lantern-like lights
in the conference room of HHM. On the surface it’s a sign
of Chuck’s progress that he can even sit among these lights -- but in this scene,
Chuck is forced out of the firm. “Because I always thought
you had the best interests of the firm in mind... But you’ve let personal vendettas
turn your focus away from what’s best for HHM.” Howard’s words capture how
Chuck’s surface wellness belies a deeper disease. And likewise, Chuck’s win here
of being bought out “You won.” is really a loss. And his exit to enthusiastic applause
is a sad reversal of his earlier re-entry, even though then he had to have
all electronics removed around him, at least he had the faith and support
of Howard and the firm. In the final scene he shares with
his brother, Chuck is surrounded by an assortment of electric lights
and a record player-- it’s another image announcing that
on the surface he’s better, back to normal. “I always told you I’d get better,
you just never believed me.” We spy a lantern-like light in the fire --
it’s hard to tell exactly what it is, but, perhaps significantly,
after Chuck closes this spiritual door on Jimmy during their conversation,
that light in the fire has gone out. We might read this as
an ominous foreshadowing that the fire in Chuck will go out
at the end of this episode— and that Jimmy’s hope for a brotherly love
has at last been snuffed out for good. Finally we see a lantern much like
the one from the opening scene at the very end. Chuck kicks this lantern over
to set fire to his house and end his life. So this object, the lantern,
which was a symbol of the brothers’ intimacy in the flashback,
becomes the means of Chuck’s demise. And this hints that Jimmy is connected,
complicit, in his brother’s death. Chuck is pretty persuasive
in feigning indifference in that face-to-face
with his brother, at least until that final look
he gives after Jimmy has left. But the significant progress
Chuck has been making is immediately and totally derailed
by this one meeting. That night, he’s unable to enter his
current “emotional state” in his journal. And the next scenes we see of Chuck
tearing apart his house -- in a 7 minute sequence inspired by
Coppola’s The Conversation -- clearly illustrate what Chuck’s
emotional state is after seeing Jimmy and trying to sever
their relationship for good. Halfway through the Season 3,
Jimmy convincingly puts forward the narrative that Chuck’s illness
was born of his divorce. “Talk about when these
symptoms first started. It was shortly after you
were divorced, is that right?” And the show supports this idea
by opening that episode with a flashback to Chuck hiding his new illness
shortly after separating from Rebecca. Chuck’s EHS does feel linked
to lack of control and an inability to address his emotional needs,
but that’s not just about Rebecca. It’s also very much about Jimmy. “My brother hates me.” Even though Chuck is the
ultra-successful lawyer, all his life, he’s envied Jimmy,
as we see in the flashback when Chuck dislikes that his brother
immediately charms Rebecca with jokes, and he can’t do the same “What do you call 25 attorneys
buried up to their chin in cement? Not enough cement.” “What?” and especially in the way that
their parents favored Jimmy, despite all of the younger’s
screw-ups and betrayals. “Jimmy.” “No, Mom, it’s me, Chuck.” “Jimmy…” Over time, it’s hard to shake the suspicion
that the real long-term cause of Chuck’s sickness is simmering,
consuming hatred for his brother. “He’ll never change,
ever since he was 9, always the same,
couldn’t keep his hands out of the cash drawer. But not our Jimmy,
couldn’t be precious Jimmy!” So young Jimmy’s question at the start
if things will turn out okay in the story, is finally answered, no --
Jimmy’s and Chuck’s back-and-forth is resolved by the finality
of Chuck’s death. So this lantern that haunts the episode
represents the tragic truth that eventually what happens to us
and between us is irrevocable. “Jimmy, he’s still your brother.” “Not anymore he’s not.” Neither brother can undo the damage
of how much they’ve hurt each other. “Two brothers...whose relationship
after years of strain finally broke.” In their final conversation,
Chuck calls Jimmy out on something that we, too,
have probably started to pick up on -- that Jimmy has a certain
cycle to his behavior. He does something crafty
or underhanded, then he feels bad and tries to atone with a genuine
outpouring of emotion; he resolves to live a
straight-and-narrow life, until, sooner or later,
he gets an itch to bend a rule or take a shortcut. And so the cycle repeats. But here when Jimmy tries
to voice his regrets, “I would… maybe do
some things differently.” Chuck refuses to participate
in this pattern. “Why are you putting yourself
through all this?” “Because I wanted to tell you…” “That you have regrets. And I’m telling you, don’t bother.” The important point Chuck is making
in this scene is that we eventually have to judge people by what they do,
not by what they feel or say. Jimmy constantly means well,
but the results around him speak for themselves. “Jimmy, this is what you do. You hurt people,
over and over and over, and then there’s this show of remorse.” “It’s not a show.” “I know you don’t think it’s a show,
I don’t doubt your emotions are real. But what’s the point
of all the sad faces and the gnashing of teeth?” In this story,
character is destiny -- so much so that Vince Gilligan
and Peter Gould have talked about how the characters
lead their story places that they, as writers, would rather not go. Yet the show concludes that what
defines character is a person’s choices, embodied in their actions. “If you’re not going to change
your behavior, and you won’t—“ “I can change—“ “Why not just skip the whole exercise.” When Chuck voices his regard
for the “rule of law” “The rule of law, the idea
that no matter who you are, your actions have consequences.” it feels like he’s actually describing
the cosmic law that governs Better Call Saul and its predecessor. This is a universe in which
no human being can escape the results of what he does. Jimmy, the great talker,
performs one thing. But his actions tell another story --
and through these actions we see Saul Goodman emerging more and more. Significantly, Chuck’s unraveling
in this episode is intercut with a key example of Jimmy proving
exactly what Chuck is talking about. Jimmy struggles to fix the mess
that he created by sabotaging the elderly Irene’s friendships in order
to get his Sandpiper settlement sooner. His plot to manipulate Irene
is genius in its own way, but also grotesquely elaborate
and arguably unnecessary. Jimmy’s special talent is destruction. “I’m not good at building shit, you know? I’m excellent at tearing it down.” And the only way he can think of
to successfully make up for his sin is through another destruction, the casualty this time
being his own reputation. “You took advantage of poor Mrs. Landry. Does she know how much money
you're gonna make from this?” “Nope. And again I ask so what?” It’s hard to say if, at least in part,
Chuck’s view of Jimmy as the Great Destroyer has
made Jimmy see himself this way. But it’s true that Jimmy’s mind
always goes toward the con, the creative workaround —
it’s a calling. “It’s showtime, folks.” Meanwhile doing the difficult,
mundane work of building things is extremely hard for him. When he gets the great job
with Davis & Main, this straight,
upright life doesn’t fit; it doesn’t allow space for that
crooked thing within him, just as his favorite mug
won’t fit in the cupholder of his shiny new company car. Sooner or later, Jimmy will feel
that need to push the button. Breaking Bad made viewers feel powerless
by showing us chains of events that followed from each other as inevitably
as stages in a chemical reaction. But in Better Call Saul we’re placed
in an even more powerless position, because we already know what happens. Still, we invest anyway,
hoping for the impossible -- and this is the eerie power of
Better Call Saul’s narrative experiment: getting us to side with someone
we know from the start is going to be wrong, to root for someone
we know will fail. Our lack of power aligns with
Jimmy’s own impotence to change what’s happening to him,
what he himself is becoming… because however much he wants
to be good for his loved ones, he can’t stop himself from doing them harm. And likewise, all that we feel for Jimmy
and the other characters changes nothing, does nothing to stop
the accelerating car crash happening before our eyes. In the end, emotions just aren’t enough. “See, that’s your problem, Jimmy…
thinking the ends justify the means. And you’re forever shocked
when it all blows up in your face.” Better Call Saul has made it easy
for viewers to dislike Chuck and root against him. Chuck’s death makes us look back and ask:
what if we got a lot of this wrong? What if we came into the story
at a misleading point? “All we did was tear down a sick man.” We start out seeing Jimmy
as a selfless caretaker to a brother who is ungrateful to his face
and devious behind his back. “You told him not to hire me.” What we haven’t seen front and center
(but only in brief flashbacks) are the years in which Chuck watched
his brother steal from their parents and need bailing out for his
various cons and crimes. Siblings aren’t able to break out of
the impressions they form of each other in early life, “So I need you to work your magic
and make this whole situation go poof.” so it’s hardly surprising that Chuck,
whose great love is the law “It’s mankind’s greatest achievement.” sees Jimmy as a user and abuser of that love. “Slippin' Jimmy with a law degree
is like a chimp with a machine gun.” Still, however frequently Chuck has a point,
however many times he’s right in the letter of the law,
the show makes us feel that Jimmy is right in the spirit of it. As Matt Zoller Seitz wrote for Vulture,
Chuck “does the right thing for the wrong reason as often as Jimmy
does the wrong thing for the right reason.” “He has a way of doing the worst things
for reasons that sound almost noble.” Zoller Seitz observes that Chuck is
essentially Better Call Saul’s version of Breaking Bad’s Skyler,
that character who’s right to criticize our protagonist, but who feel wrong. Skyler inspired intense audience dislike,
which unfortunately was mixed up in some cases with misogynism. Chuck is like Skyler 2.0 --
free of those gender politics. Chuck warns of the person
Jimmy’s destined to become -- and Breaking Bad confirms
Chuck’s predictions -- yet we’ve been so biased,
we just haven’t wanted to hear it. By now, though, we’re forced to admit
Chuck is correct about a lot of things. However much he means well,
Jimmy is toxic to everyone in his life. “In the end… you’re going
to hurt everyone around you.” Jimmy genuinely loves his parents,
yet he steals from these people he loves. This is what Chuck knows
about Jimmy from the start. “I know you. I know what you were,
what you are. People don’t change,
you’re Slippin’ Jimmy.” And from that perspective,
we might understand why Jimmy’s later caring behavior doesn’t atone
for what in Chuck’s eyes is unforgivable. We start to wonder if maybe this
desire to live a straight life that Jimmy is performing over these
opening seasons is actually a backlash, a response in opposition
to what he’s truly doing and thus becoming over the long-term. “You’re like an alcoholic who
refuses to admit he’s got a problem.” Season 3 gave us the literal birth
of Saul Goodman as a response to financial strains. “It’s like, ’s’all good, man.’” “That guy has a lot of energy.” “Yeah. It’s just a name.” Interestingly,
on the character-is-destiny front, Chuck and Kim both
say things to Jimmy in this episode that essentially
encourage him to accept his inner Saul Goodman. “You know, sometimes you gotta
play to your strengths.” “You can’t help it -
so stop apologizing and accept it, embrace it. Frankly I’d have more respect
for you if you did.” It’s clear that Chuck has seen
his brother as Saul for a long time, way before others have. By now it truly feels that
there are two distinct people within our protagonist, wrestling for his soul. With Chuck gone,
Jimmy is one step closer to losing this battle. What remains to be seen
is how we get to our destination, the victory of Saul over Jimmy,
and the collateral damage of that war. “He can't help himself…
and everyone's left picking up the pieces.” It’s Debra and Susannah,
and you’re watching ScreenPrism. Thanks guys so much for watching. We post videos every
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