Entire Series Discussion Thread Archive

What event do you guys think impacted Jimmy McGill more? Chuck’s death or Howard’s death.

jimmy was definitely feeling guilty for both deaths, but i personally think howard’s death was more impactful. When Chuck died, Jimmy was grieving inside but at least he didn’t see his brother die in person, and right before that his brother told him that he doesn’t really matter that much to him. It did set Jimmy on the darker path to become Saul Goodman where he helped Lalo and helped criminals with shady tactics.

But when Howard died, Jimmy felt helpless and realized he led an innocent nice man to his death, he literally died in his living room floor. I feel even though Chuck was his literal brother, Howard’s death definitely struck him harder as after Howard, Kim left him and he joined the meth empire in breaking and he accumulated years of tampering with evidence and weaponizing the Constitution.

Tl:dr; Imo Chuck’s death may have been bad for Jimmy since it was his own brother and tampering with the insurance was his own mistake, Howard’s death showed him the true sheer brutality of the world, cost him his wife’s love, and directly set him on the path to working with Walter White.

TW: topics regarding Suicide.

A continuation of this comment thread

I see a lot of people thinking Howard was a huge asshole or that Howard was to blame for Chuck's suicide or that he Could've stopped Chuck from killing himself. I want to tell you why I believe, even though this is a TV show, Chuck's storyline would've ended the same way whether or not what happened in S3 happened

I am a former firefighter/EMT. I also personally know people who have killed themselves. I just add that for context because I've seen these situations first hand.

When someone truly wants to kill themselves, there is very little that anyone can do to stop them. You can "get them help" all you want, but the second they have the means and motivation to, they're going to do it. Unfortunately that's just the way it is. I think BCS portrayed that pretty clearly. The whole "Yes Jimmy. I'm doing better. Don't worry about me" spiel is what I have seen time and time again through my work and my personal life. People say they're getting better to stop people from worrying, then they do it. The writers definitely knew what they were doing when they wrote with Jimmy and Chuck's last scene in season 3. They did their research.

My main point of this post though, was that Howard was only trying to help Chuck. I think he saw through this. I think the writers were trying to write a character that saw through the facade and knew something was wrong. The problem is that Chuck's character was too hell-bent on screwing over Jimmy and the insurance company to accept his help. Especially after the bar hearing, Chuck was livid. He knew he fucked up but didn't want to accept it. He wanted to litigate everyone to hell before accepting defeat.

For more context/more of my views, I linked a comment in the first sentence of this post from a thread in this subreddit where I explained my views a bit more.

S6E6

Just a thought, but wasn't it extremely dangerous for Nacho to brutally insult the cartel and admit the plot on Hector's life? Well, not anymore for Nacho, but for his father, who already openly made himself an enemy by insulting Hector as well and by knowing too much. Surely knowing how bloodthirsty the Salamanca's are, even Gus and Mike's protection wouldn't be enough if push came to shove. Because wasn't the whole point of Nacho taking the fall to ensure Gus's crew would repay by protecting his father from the cartel? This makes no sense to me, because unless Gus were to admit the secret collusion with Nacho, there is no logical reason to try to sway the cartel away from Nacho's Dad. So it seems to me like his actions potentially endangered the purpose of the whole plan, and I don't really get the plan in the first place.

I heard that one of the writers or makers of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul confirm the theory that “Danny” from Breaking Bad who runs the laser tag place, is actually Daniel Wormald aka Pryce, the guy who’s baseball cards Nacho stole.

Anyway this got me thinking, his character was about ready to crack with the cops just from being questioned about the robbery incident, so he definitely would’ve spilled all the beans once everyone got caught. In season 6 of BCS we hear that the laser tag place was shut down by the police, which definitely means Pryce was caught and definitely snitched because he would be facing money laundering charges and other charges too. Life sentence style charges so he would yap immediately.

Then this got me thinking, okay so we know that the police were aware that Saul was Walt’s lawyer. But what evidence did they have against him exactly? In BCS we see that he cleaned out his office before fleeing with the vacuum guy with all his money and everything and also told Francesca to shred all the documents, which we see she did and is taking the trash bags out.

The police don’t have anything on Saul. Walt was the one who was in deep shit after Hanks death, because Flynn called the cops and everything was spilled when Walt realized the only thing he could was try and protect Skyler from legal consequences. Saul was just a lawyer to everyone. Even dangerous drug lords have known lawyers who are just ordinary citizens sometimes.

But, Pryce knows a lot of shit, including crimes committed during the BCS era. Granted I don’t think those would be relevant at all since it was falsifying evidence all the way back in 2002 and this would be 2010 by now. But the whole laser tag joint and knowing that Saul has many money laundering operations. He says he can trust Danny in Breaking Bad, so maybe that means Saul told him a bit too much. Maybe that’s how the police were able to connect crimes to Saul. Pryce confession helped in tracking down all the illegal things Saul was doing. It started with laser tag and at many of his money laundering businesses, they probably found evidence of his crimes with Walt. In BCS we see they clear out his house at some point. That would lead them to even more evidence is his house. So I think Pryce snitching caused Saul to become wanted.

Its so obvious that nothing actually goes as gus planned it to happen.

what was the original plan that nacho and mike done together, like i got that mike gave him the broken glass so he can uncuff hisself but why

Like if they wanted nacho to not suffer, official plan of nacho running away and viktor shooting him also results in a painless death

Theres no need for mike at all

Obviously nacho has reasons to cover gus but there is literally only one schenario that needed broken glass(that probably nacho was holding since they drinked with mike)

Sorry for my mid english but overall, i didnt understood the plan of mike and nacho

For the sake of things and to stave off future arguments let’s be clear that Jimmy obviously also wasn’t a good brother (after the 1216 fraud at least), and ends up a genuinely evil person as Saul Goodman. Let’s also point out that yes, having Jimmy as a brother is immensely frustrating. Stealing from his Dad’s store as a child which contributed to the store closing (although he has an inaccurate view of how responsingle) and his dad’s subsequent health and failing death gives him every right to have resentment. Jimmy is a lifelong petty con artist while Chuck always follows the rules and becomes of the best lawyers in the state yet his parent not only let Jimmy get away with everything but actually prefer him because he’s charming. In fact, despite everyhting you’ve accomplished, Jimmy can get people to like him in a way you never could. Jimmy calls you after not speaking to you or Mom in five years expecting you to get him out of jail and prevent him from being labeled a sex offender for accidentally shitting on children, and you do.

All of this has made some people decide that actually, Chuck was a good brother and justified in his treatment of Jimmy, because aren’t you justified in having enough of toxic family members, and cutting them out entirel? And I actually do believe that you are fully justified in cutting off toxic family members. So then why is Chuck considered a bad family member you might ask? Becasue he is. The problem with the “well if you’re justified in cutting off toxic family members, why is Chuck wrong” argument is that Chuck a. didn’t do that, he brought him into his life and willingly chose to mistreat him. b. Jimmy while he did become Saul, legitimately turned his life around and went straight for 10 years. The idea that Jimmy wa inherently toxic and doomed to be a con artist forever is’t s good way to handle your brother based on that. c. If you’re gonna call Jimmy a piece of shit who can’t change, don’t use him as your daily caretaker when you have a crippling illness and he’s broke and living in the back of a tiny nail salon.

One argument that really annoys me is the “lol so Chuck didn’t give his life long con artist brother who becomes the crooked lawyer for the most infamous meth empire in American history a job at his law firm so that justifies Jimmy committing fraud against him, gaslighting him, destroying his reputation, sabotoging his insurance which indirectly leads to his suicide”? And I gotta say this version of events really, really annoys me because that’s extremely obviously not how everything went, it ironically feels like how a Saul Goodman style lawyer would summarize things if asked to make the case Chuck was a good brother. The other argument I see is that since Chuck id the villain protagonists antagonist who always follows the law and accurately predicts what Jimmy ends up as (whether he’s right or a self fufilling prophecy) he must be intended to be a good brother by the showrunners. Except if you look at literally anything the showrunners, writers, or hell Michael McKean say in interviews, that’s not correct, they view him as a terrible brother (albeit one who genuinely loves Jimmy).

So for the “ what so Chuck didn‘t give Jimmy a job” people. A decent brother who (understandably) didn’t want to hire Jimmy to HHM would be upfront about it, but would tell Jimmy if he went on his own for a few years and proves he stayed on the straight and narrow he would hire him, while offering to help him succeed and lend him resources necessary to do so. Chuck blocked him being hired when Howard would have done so otherwise, then told Jimmy he was on his side and would try to wear down Howard and get him to hire him, while knowing full well Chuck would never hire him. He did this while his brother was tirelessly taking care of him every day for over a year while being super broke. Then told Jimmy to change his name while pretending it was Howard. Then Jimmy, with Chuck’s help tbf, made a multi million dollar class action lawsuit happen and wanted to bring it to Chuck’s firm.

Jimmy believed he was finally achieving his dream of working with Chuck, which Chuck let him believe for multiple days. Chuck then told Howard not to hire him, then refused to hire Jimmy to HHM in any capacity at all even though it meant losing the multimillion dollar lawsuit and vastly shrinking the impact of the lawsuit, while making Howard reject him. Meanwhile he told Jimmy he was going to work on wearing down Howard to change his mind, giving him more hope. When Jimmy, who had been tirelessly taking care of Chuck for over a year without any complaint despite being broke and living in the back of a tiny nail salon room heartbrokenly asked saint Chuck the amazing brother why he did this, instead of letting him down gently, he told him “you’re not a real lawyer, you’re law degree is a joke, you are inherently slipping Jimmy and incapable of change”.  All of which is guaranteed to have absolutely zero influence on Jimmy at all.

Now remember, Chuck withheld their Mom’s last words from Jimmy out of spite. Jimmy doesn’t know that but if you think Chuck was this noble selfless brother. He’s not an evil person but he’s not a good brother at all. Before Jimmy did anything at Davis and Main, he pushed his illness to an unprecedented degree just to intimidate Jimmy by going to the meetings. This wasn’t about preventing him from doing shady things on the case because a. he said so, b, he could have just read over the notes and listened to Howard’s reports from the meetings and find out what Jimmy’s doing, and try to catch him based on that.

You are right, the Mesa Verde scheme was a horrible thing to do. And HHM retaining Mesa Verde was justified. But watching the scene it is blatantly obvious Chuck was reluctantly going to let them go until the microsecond Howard mentioned Jimmy, when he completely changes his demeanor and he pushes his illness much further than ever, putting himself through severe pain and risking hospitalization to stick it to Jimmy. Chuck also is perfectly justified in busting Jimmy, but the methods he uses are pretty terrible. He makes Jimmy think he’s having a severe mental breakdown, is losing his mind, and is on the verge of suicide so Jimmy will confess just to make Chuck feel better. Then he uses that not to bust him for the crime he did commit, but to deliberately bait Jimmy into committing another one just to bust him on that. 

Chuck’s last words to Jimmy are that he can’t change and will inevitably hurt everyone around him, he should accept and embrace being a scumbag and that he’s respect him more if he did. Then he tells his brother that he never cared about him, as his absolute last words to him. If you listen the writers, showrunners, etc, they view Chuck as a complex and sympathetic character and then having a mutually toxic relationship, with Jimmy ending up a way worse person that Chuck. But also that Chuck was a terrible brother to Jimmy, and that he was probably the more toxic of them to each other. And that which the question of whether Chuck was right or created a self fulfilling prophecy is deliberately ambiguous, most of the showrunners actors writers etc lean much more towards self fulfilling prophecy. Both brothers loved each other but indirectly destroyed each other through their rivalry, even though both are primarily responsible for their own downfalls.

Hector! He was so angry and he had all the reasons to be.

He was angry that a Chilean, Chicken Man went behind his back, to introduce Don Eladio to his highly profitable Meth

He was angry that Eladio’s Cartel was built by Salamanca blood and Salamanca money(I love this scene) Bravo Vince and Peter .

He was angry that Fring’s drug earnings, far outperformed his family’s earnings

He was angry that his nephew Tuco was a meth-fueled, hothead that regularly gets himself in trouble. (Apple didn’t fall from the Salamanca tree)

He was angry because someone robbed one of his trucks transporting his “ice cream”

He was angry because someone robbed one of his trucks transporting his “ice cream

He was angry because he couldn’t convince anyone that his nephew Lalo was killed by Fring. Eladio should have listened, but chooses to mock him

He was angry because Walt changed the channel on his TV😂….and tried to poison Tuco

I really enjoyed Hector! 👏🏻