[rating=10.00] “Chicanery”
Michael McKean’s Chuck McGill continues to be one of the most compelling villains on TV today. His snide demeanor is so instantly hateable and so enduringly awful that we cannot help but cheer against him—even despite the fact that he’s 100% correct. Jimmy is awful, a disgrace to his profession, with enough skeletons in his closet to populate a graveyard.
Even taking what we know about Jimmy and where he winds up in life, every punch he lands against his insufferable brother feels like a victory for all of us who’ve ever dealt with some holier-than-thou prick on any sort of regular basis. We’re desperate for things to work out in Jimmy’s favor, though we know how futile our efforts will eventually be.
It’s a credit to Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould that this dynamic works as well as it does—hell, that it even works at all. Better Call Saul is a work of fatal determinism, and yet we cheer and hope against what we already know. Outside of politics, getting anyone to cheer against their own best interests is typically an exercise in futility. And yet here we are; week after week, we hang onto some semblance of hope that things will work out in any way other than what we know. We need Jimmy to succeed, even though we know he will eventually fail.
That didn’t make last night’s knockout punch any less sweet, however. For two and a half seasons, we’ve watched as Chuck continuously holds Jimmy back, thwarting his dreams and forever keeping him boxed into the mistakes of his past. We do so love a good comeback story, and for the last 25 episodes we’ve seen nothing but Chuck’s meddling in the kind of tale that works so well within the American mythos—redemption and bootstraps.
In another context, Jimmy’s story would be just that—a one-time con-man who turned his life around and excelled in the world of law. It’s the story we want, and the one we almost have—even though we know Jimmy begets Saul Goodman, the ethically deficient criminal lawyer who’s looking out for number one and never above making a quick buck (or million) with money laundering tips. Within this context, Jimmy’s story becomes so much worse and more tragic.
How different might things have been had Jimmy not been forever confined into the box Chuck placed him in? What potential laid untapped as Jimmy was forced to fall back on his flim flam roots to try and get ahead? How much fault does Chuck hold for the rise of Saul Goodman?
Which is why the tête-à-tête in the courtroom seemed so sweet. Finally, Jimmy got the chance to meet Chuck in his home arena, and grievances were laid bare. Never mind that we know Chuck was wronged horribly by Jimmy with the alteration of the legal documents and never mind that we know Jimmy was at fault for breaking in and destroying the tape. Chuck is a total dick, and total dicks deserve their comeuppance.
For a while there, it didn’t seem like we were going to get to see that. Jimmy seemed on the ropes, thanks to the onslaught of punches from the bar and Chuck. It was a classic rope-a-dope, however, and Jimmy was saving his hardest punches for later. They came quick, and they were devastating.
First was the appearance of Rebecca, Chuck’s ex-wife, whom we last saw—in happier times—during a flashback in season 2. We finally got some closure with that storyline, learning that she had left Chuck and pursued a career with a touring symphony. At the behest of Jimmy, Rebecca came to the courtroom to watch as the two brothers battle it out in the courtroom. Her presence had the effect not only of unnerving Chuck, who clearly still has feelings for his erstwhile lover, and revealing his “condition” to her, which he so desperately tried to hide during the flashback in the cold open.
Of course, that’s not enough to take someone like Chuck out of the game completely—that was more an opening volley, to let Chuck know this isn’t a game anymore. The real damage was done by Chuck himself, with a little help from Jimmy and an old friend from Breaking Bad.
Oh Huell, sweet Huell. How great it was to see you once again and watch you work your oafish magic. We all knew that he was doing something when he bumped into Chuck on the stairwell, and we all suspected it would have something to do with Chuck’s electromagnetic hypersensitivity disorder. But coming as it did, as Jimmy cross examined his brother before members of the bar, made the reveal on the best moments in all of Saul.
Seeing Chuck lose his mind on the stand made it all the more delicious. In his rage, he revealed his true motivations to all the world: To see Jimmy stripped of the title of lawyer for good. He was also forced to contend with what he no doubt suspected for years—his “allergy” was all in his head. Why else would he not have noticed a fully charged cellphone battery sitting in his breast pocket for, as Huell reveals, an hour and forty-three minutes. The emperor has no clothes, and finally everyone saw it.
It felt good. But why? We forget, in our revelry, that in any normal story Chuck would be the good guy—the righteous, upstanding lawyer fighting for truth and justice. But when you call Saul, the lines between truth and lies, justice and injustice, are blurred. Reality becomes a subjective concept, full of wiggle room and reasonable doubt. His moral goodness is what ultimately makes him such a great bad guy. We’re not here for truth and justice. We’re here for the other things. We’re here for the grey. And sometimes, as we already know, breaking bad can be so good.
