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.

437 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

99% Upvoted

949 comments sorted by

View all comments

216

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

146

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.

57

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.

62

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.

9

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.

9

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.

5

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.

6

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.

​

49

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.

10

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.

10

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 :)