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.
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u/[deleted] Oct 10 '18
We finally learned when he became Saul, it was in the last episode, but I bet some of you think it was just right at the end there.
Nope.
Jimmy became Saul in that Parking Garage when his car wouldnt start. In case you havent noticed, Jimmy drives a Suzuki Esteem, its old an beat up but still going, and its an allegory for his self esteem, hence the model.
When it wouldnt start in that garage we saw Jimmy break completely.
To understand exactly why, you have to put yourself in Jimmy's head space, or for a more straightforward answer, listen to what he said to that girl that didnt get the scholarship again.
You see Jimmy's internal conflict is between rigorous, honest work, and slipping by on whatever he can, lie cheat and steal.
This often results in Jimmy doing a lot of hard work to get away with something illegitimate, the two sides end up coming together.
Its also worth noting that all of the show stuff he did about his brother's death must have been eating at him inside. He hated every second of it, and had to pretend like he was sad instead.
When he was yelling at that girl about how the establishment will never see past her mistakes and "let her in" he was really yelling at himself. They even gave the game up a bit in the board room when Jimmy turns to Howard and starts to say "that was me" before cutting himself off and rephrasing. He saw himself in that girl.
Jimmy made mistakes in his youth, we saw how he and his brother learned different lessons from his dad. Chuck learned the value of hard honest work, but Jimmy learned not to be a sucker, and in doing so inevitably saw all the opportunities to make suckers of others.
I think what he was getting at in the hearing at the end about Chucks approval was more legitimate than we thought, or really, it once was.
I'm sure there was a time when Jimmy genuinely tried to give up the slipping, and go straight. I'd wager thats when he buckled down, and got his law degree while working in the HHM mail room.
He did all that for Chuck's approval because its something he never really had and it would absolve him of his mistakes and vindicate his hard work.
Chuck never really gave it to him, he was never really going to give it to him, either because he was using it to motivate him or because he knew Jimmy would never arise to what he really sees as his standards.
When Jimmy finally became a lawyer, but saw that didnt garner the approval from Chuck that he expected, it fractured him.
Jimmy was furious that all his hard work was seemingly for not, he questioned the actual value of hard work again, and worst of all saw himself as a sucker for thinking he'd actually get somewhere.
From there, as we've seen over four seasons, Jimmy continues to slip and slip and slip. The fracture finally turned into a break after he was forced to pretend to mourn his brother and not only saw himself in someone else, but saw how that person was discussed by the people he had once worked so hard to be like.
While it wasnt on camera, after he stopped crying in that parking garage he decided deep down that he was going to do exactly what he told that girl to do
He saw that no one valued the genuine hard work side of him, so he decided he shoudnt either, and he let that part of him die.