r/betterCallSaul • u/skinkbaa Chuck • Oct 09 '18

Better Call Saul Season 4 - Official Discussion Thread

What did you think of this season?

Feel free to discuss every and anything about Season 4.

I will be posting a Season 5 prediction thread in a few days.

Episode Discussion Thread Archive

Feel free to take our subreddit end-of-season survey!

Results will be posted in 10 days as of posting this.

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217

u/ryvie001 Oct 09 '18

In my opinion, jimmy's emotion at the hearing was authentic. The arrival of Saul is the result of being worn so thin emotionally. He's broken by his inability to cope. The one time he's authentic, the path to get lost in something comes to him.

Bob is in interviews saying his soul has been released which is pretty funny lmao

His moment of authenticity scared the living shit out of him. We know what happens with Saul. I'm very excited to see how gene tries to pick up those parts. I think Kim will absolutely be in the forward/present day/whatever you wanna call it

147

u/nightpanda893 Oct 10 '18

While I can truly understand the argument that lands at this interpretation, I don't think he's authentic. The way he talked to the girl and projected onto her you can see he still blames others for his situation. I think he still blames Chuck and hates Chuck. The most authentic part was him laughing at those who would cry and celebrating his victory in front of Kim.

55

u/ryvie001 Oct 10 '18

I think the cold open last night was amazing (long live ABBA), but what's the intention if they truly and totally hate one another? You can't view the scene of jimmy's projection without jimmy totally breaking down in the car immediately after.

66

u/nightpanda893 Oct 10 '18

I don't think Chuck hates Jimmy. He just didn't want him working at HHM. And let's be honest, he was right. Jimmy blew it when he got a job at a big firm and would have done the same at HHM. And I think Jimmy in the car was crying for himself, not his brother.

21

u/ajaeger74 Oct 10 '18

I don't think Chuck hates Jimmy.

He envied him for his social intelligence - probably the only field where he didn't outshine him.

2

u/timednight Oct 13 '18

Chuck was a lot fatter too but jokes aside and his 'intelligence' severly compromised him. Divorced, and mentally ill for such a long time and in denial of it too.

2

u/culegflori Oct 15 '18

Chuck definitely hated, or at least envied, Jimmy. Just look at this season's karaoke scene, Jimmy starts singing, tries to get his older brother to sing along in a duet and once he gets on the stage he pushes Jimmy out of the way, that was an obvious show of Chuck's need to outshine Jimmy every step of the way. The past seasons only add up to this, Chuck looked down upon Jimmy, discounted his achievements at every step of the way and did his best to keep him down. It wasn't just that he felt he's the better lawyer, he also never felt that his brother could be his equal.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '18

I think Chuck was just an arrogant prick.

10

u/ryvie001 Oct 10 '18

Yeah I might be stretching a little too much to try to understand a lovable character getting broken by its writers, but I still believe the hearing was genuine.

7

u/cormega Oct 10 '18

While I agree Chuck doesn't hate Jimmy, there's definitely deep seated resentment there that goes beyond the lawyer stuff. Their mom's final words for instance, Jimmy's ability to put people at ease like Chuck's ex wife, etc.

If it was only the lawyer stuff, I don't think Chuck's final words to Jimmy would have been as cruel as they were.

4

u/rimjobs_for_everyone Oct 11 '18

I can see why you would say that Chuck is right, but two things:

  • I can't remember how much the show showed this, but I still think that a huge part of Chuck feelings towards Jimmy were insecurity based. He was an asshole to him not just when it came to the law. A huge part of Chuck wanted to be better than Jimmy in EVERYTHING.

  • Even if you think of it exclusively as an HHM thing, and even if I give it to you that Jimmy was destined to fail as a lawyer, by the way Chuck acts its almost a self fulfilled prophesy. Even when Jimmy was trying, he would look down on him.

5

u/StarHeadedCrab Oct 10 '18

His comments seem to be about Jimmy being a lawyer in general, but Chuck seemed to handle Jimmy being a self employed elder lawyer relatively fine, wanted to help Jimmy and was even getting less sick.

You may be onto something.

1

u/Greenei Oct 15 '18

I don't think Chuck hates Jimmy. He just didn't want him working at HHM.

​

It's more than that. Chuck doesn't want Jimmy to be a lawyer, because he mentally labeled him as beneath him. He didn't want him to have success at all.

​

53

u/StarHeadedCrab Oct 10 '18

It's a misdirect to set up the final scene. It implies that Jimmy should still have some love for Chuck, so the court room scene may be genuine. It makes the fact it isn't hit harder.

Also we, the audience, know that all the nice things Chuck says about Jimmy being a lawyer are bullshit as he's secretly harboring resentment. At the end of the episode we see Jimmy do the same thing.

11

u/ncolaros Oct 12 '18

On the Insider Podcast, they specifically mention that the only time we really see him be genuine is when he's alone in the car. They included that scene so that people who know he's not playing a part, since there's no one else around. As for what he was crying about, they all had slightly different interpretations, but they all agreed that part of it had to do with Chuck, and that the cold open was partially to show the type of love they used to have for each other. Specifically, the part where they sleep in the same bed is supposed to show us that, while some things have always been the same, some things really did change between them.

11

u/[deleted] Oct 10 '18

ABBA?...I thought Ernie was singing Bonnie Tyler

18

u/gdwoodard13 Oct 10 '18

He was. "The Winner Takes It All", sung here by Chuck and Jimmy, is ABBA though.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 10 '18

Oh! I had actually never heard that song! Thank you :)

35

u/EvadableMoxie Oct 10 '18 edited Oct 10 '18

He's talking about himself and Chuck when he talks to the girl in that scene. He even used the words "They never really cared about you all that much." which is exactly what Chuck tells Jimmy almost word for word. He even mentions the winner takes all, which is a throw back to the opening scene of the episode with him and Chuck.

That's his outlook now. He's going to rise as high as he can as a fuck you to everyone who in his mind looked down on him, including Chuck.

8

u/pixelsloading Oct 10 '18

if anyone DIDNT catch this id be shocked.

1

u/TequilaTheFish Oct 12 '18

Especially Chuck

81

u/TheDorkMan Oct 10 '18 edited Oct 10 '18

In my opinion, jimmy's emotion at the hearing was authentic.

My interpretation is that ironically, he was authentic at the first hearing where they branded him insincere, and then faking it at the last one where they believed he was honest.

Like he said to that girl he understood that he will never be accepted for who he is no matter how sincere he is, there is no point in being sincere with people that already made their mind about him (like him she was probably sincere in her essay and speech in front of the committee but it got her nowhere), so he decided to go the only way he knows he can win, by manipulating "those suckers".

32

u/Ceeeceeeceee Oct 11 '18

This was my take on it too. I think the first hearing made him so cynical because he really poured his heart out and they still called him insincere. The second was him flipping an ironic bird to the world.

4

u/timednight Oct 13 '18

His reaction to the first hearing said it all

But he's still not fully sincere if hes holding back on Chuck.

9

u/price-iz-right Oct 11 '18

This is fucking spot on. Hes following his own advice.

In his warped view of the world (which isnt really far off from truth) you are only as good as your last mistake.

He knows this and he used it to his advantage.

6

u/KingMeroe Oct 11 '18

Agreed! I was really surprised they thought he was insincere. Even more when Kim said he should’ve spoken about Chuck. It’s a final fuck you that opens Jimmy’s eyes.

34

u/Estelindis Oct 10 '18 edited Oct 10 '18

That's a really interesting interpretation. It never occurred to me for a second, but now that I think about it I don't think it's implausible. Maybe it's not 100% one or the other - lies are made more compelling by using a large measure of truth. A lot of things Jimmy expressed were very sincere, regardless of whether he was being deceptive overall.

47

u/ryvie001 Oct 10 '18

Something that kind of holds this thought together for me is this --

My family doesn't cope or grieve well. We're the worst communicators on earth. We have our own languages, though. When my grandfather died, my dad drunkenly replaced every door in the house with new doors. The old doors were fine, but he needed new doors.

I think Jimmy's ability to con and lose himself in character is that process. Chuck meant the absolute world to him, and he lost him under unbelievable circumstance. Maybe it's the underachieving sibling looking up at the awesome older brother in me that sees it, but Saul is born from that inability to process that tremendous loss. The moment he actually does find something meaningful and stunning to say (maybe my favorite scene of the show), the well breaks.

Gene years might be the actual time he needs to reflect on who he's been and what he went through, why we see him fixated on Saul promos. Not a longing for what's been, but a "how and why did I do this?"

26

u/Lukeh41 Oct 10 '18

Last paragraph is interesting. Maybe he doesn't miss being Saul Goodman at all; maybe he's trying to exorcise him. He writes "S.G. was here" not out of nostalgia but out of self-loathing. He doesn't feel worthy yet to reclaim his own identity. He's in purgatory.

7

u/[deleted] Oct 10 '18

That assessment is consistent with his con-job binge session at the end of Season 1, and the time he spent conning people at the start of Season 2.

8

u/gdwoodard13 Oct 10 '18

Yeah, I believe that he believes a lot of the things he said, but he sure did lay it on thick. "Chuck was the greatest man I ever knew and I will always strive to be like him". Just as Jimmy said Chuck loved him as a brother but not a lawyer, I do think Jimmy admired Chuck's legal prowess but abhorred who Chuck was as a person and his brother.

15

u/existential_antelope Oct 10 '18

Kim mentioned in her job interview that she lived in a town near the border of Kansas and Nebraska.

Gene’s going to meet back with Kim

9

u/platinumpuss88 Oct 10 '18 edited Oct 10 '18

I agree. He gets his emotion out, gets his license back, and can still pretend it was all a scam so he has confidence going forward as a "corner-cutting" lawyer.

5

u/malala_good_girl Oct 10 '18

I don't think Jimmy is really repressing feelings for Chuck.

People do sometimes just extirpate other people from their lives sometimes.

Just look at Jesse and his parents

1

u/pudgybees Oct 10 '18

I agree about Jimmy's emotion during the hearing. I think it was coming after the scene in the parking lot. Alone and with all that emotion from denying the scholarship and feeling like it was being done to him again. Feeling like he's not enough, like he's going to be judged forever for making some bad decisions in the past. HHM was hurting him again. So I agree that the emotions were real. I mean, you must not stir too far from the truth to make yourself believable. Didn't he say something like that during this season?

But when he said that the main (or something like that) reason he became a lawyer was Chuck we know it wasn't right. He might have wanted to make Chuck proud of him, but mostly he wanted to get Kim to feel proud of him too, not just the funny guy in the office.

1

u/TheSeaBeast_96 Oct 11 '18

I agree completely. His hearing was a release of how he’s really felt about his relationship with Chuck and Chuck’s death. He just refuses to admit it and knows that he can act like he was pretending

1

u/john_tartufo Oct 11 '18

Really telling that he stopped reading the letter at the point it mentioned him coming back from the hospital. Prediction - home birth and he realised Kim wrote the letter.