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Jun. 20th, 2017 04:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionBetter Call Saul 3.10
It's still just 2003?!
So Kim and Jimmy both back out of their big mistakes completely - with Kim's referral of the oilman to Schweikart's firm making it clear that the sliminess was the real problem, not the long work hours. But Jimmy's attempt to partly undo their earlier big slip by reaching out to Chuck is too little, too late; as with Chuck's career destruction, it's not the initial consequences of your actions that fuck you up but the delayed ones. Which makes sense, since mistakes with obvious consequences won't be made by intelligent people, whereas they can make this other kind as easily as anyone else. The kind where the line you cross is invisible when you don't remember to draw it yourself.
So it's a big psych-out by the show, which had led us to think Jimmy, at least, was way further down the Saulward path, but one that makes us think about how such paths really work. As on Breaking Bad, getting free of terrible but delayed consequences of much earlier lapses can usually only be accomplished by more extreme lapses along the same line (or by actually, and at increasingly great immediate cost, coming clean about what you did - a path almost never taken, though Jimmy does take it re. the settlement). Which later lapse will then have even worse consequences etc. Elder law's now closed off for Jimmy, and that may foreclose moral as well as career possibilities, since old women have a good influence on him, probably connected to memories of his mother. Along the other line, Chuck's cruel words don't seem to have made him worse yet, but may come to given time, or the sealant that death, a coma, or permanent institutionalization as a madman might put on them, since they then become a final verdict - to be taken as true by Jimmy even if some part of Chuck himself didn't believe them (hence the relapse). His brother had been the Atticus Finch type, not Jimmy, meaning his words of guidance (the Mabel story) and the faith/pride they proved are what have kept leading him back onto the righteous path. And now both will be gone.
(The rolodex will come up again, either as a sign of hope at the end of the show or to crush our hopes at some point prior to that. Presumably it's on Breaking Bad and has drug dealers and hitmen and the like in it and I just don't remember it.)
(Must be something very symbolic about the clocklike meter, the very motion of which was presumably what was using that trickle of electricity. Is Jimmy the power to do right, Chuck the will or something? Disconnect the one from the other and they're both doomed? Slightly dofferent read than Legality vs. Consequences but maybe compatible?)
Of course Salamanca and Chuck aren't necessarily off the show, so even that much advancement toward the Breaking Bad state of affairs might not have been made (he and Kim have to somehow separate, is the other major event that has to happen in those five years). I thought Nacho was done for, but since Gus seems to be on to him he still may be ... a little delay. Best guess: the poisoning will be figured out and Salamanca will assume it was Nacho's father and try to have him killed, and Nacho might have to implicate himself to save him. And Gus will be tempted to blame one or both, since he too will be a suspect, considering, and Mike will get caught in the middle since he'll feel loyal to both men. But it's a very slippery show, as this episode proved. Still, don't trust Gus. He wears more black than anybody.
It's still just 2003?!
So Kim and Jimmy both back out of their big mistakes completely - with Kim's referral of the oilman to Schweikart's firm making it clear that the sliminess was the real problem, not the long work hours. But Jimmy's attempt to partly undo their earlier big slip by reaching out to Chuck is too little, too late; as with Chuck's career destruction, it's not the initial consequences of your actions that fuck you up but the delayed ones. Which makes sense, since mistakes with obvious consequences won't be made by intelligent people, whereas they can make this other kind as easily as anyone else. The kind where the line you cross is invisible when you don't remember to draw it yourself.
So it's a big psych-out by the show, which had led us to think Jimmy, at least, was way further down the Saulward path, but one that makes us think about how such paths really work. As on Breaking Bad, getting free of terrible but delayed consequences of much earlier lapses can usually only be accomplished by more extreme lapses along the same line (or by actually, and at increasingly great immediate cost, coming clean about what you did - a path almost never taken, though Jimmy does take it re. the settlement). Which later lapse will then have even worse consequences etc. Elder law's now closed off for Jimmy, and that may foreclose moral as well as career possibilities, since old women have a good influence on him, probably connected to memories of his mother. Along the other line, Chuck's cruel words don't seem to have made him worse yet, but may come to given time, or the sealant that death, a coma, or permanent institutionalization as a madman might put on them, since they then become a final verdict - to be taken as true by Jimmy even if some part of Chuck himself didn't believe them (hence the relapse). His brother had been the Atticus Finch type, not Jimmy, meaning his words of guidance (the Mabel story) and the faith/pride they proved are what have kept leading him back onto the righteous path. And now both will be gone.
(The rolodex will come up again, either as a sign of hope at the end of the show or to crush our hopes at some point prior to that. Presumably it's on Breaking Bad and has drug dealers and hitmen and the like in it and I just don't remember it.)
(Must be something very symbolic about the clocklike meter, the very motion of which was presumably what was using that trickle of electricity. Is Jimmy the power to do right, Chuck the will or something? Disconnect the one from the other and they're both doomed? Slightly dofferent read than Legality vs. Consequences but maybe compatible?)
Of course Salamanca and Chuck aren't necessarily off the show, so even that much advancement toward the Breaking Bad state of affairs might not have been made (he and Kim have to somehow separate, is the other major event that has to happen in those five years). I thought Nacho was done for, but since Gus seems to be on to him he still may be ... a little delay. Best guess: the poisoning will be figured out and Salamanca will assume it was Nacho's father and try to have him killed, and Nacho might have to implicate himself to save him. And Gus will be tempted to blame one or both, since he too will be a suspect, considering, and Mike will get caught in the middle since he'll feel loyal to both men. But it's a very slippery show, as this episode proved. Still, don't trust Gus. He wears more black than anybody.
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no subject
Date: 2017-06-21 03:30 pm (UTC)So sad the season has to end. Why can't it just always be on? Are we supposed to read Chuck's kicks as suicide? He has a watch on his night stand and wasn't there something about Walt having a watch at the end and damn it is it the same watch? How?
no subject
Date: 2017-06-22 12:05 am (UTC)I don't remember the watch in either. Will now add it to the list of things to pay hyper-attention to when we next rewatch Breaking Bad:
Colors
Clothing
Cars
Lawyers
Rolodexes
Timepieces
It's a cruel form of serialization, isn't it? Like if Dickens had only published chapters in the spring, then taken 9 or 10 months off.