Better Call Saul: S4, Episode 1 (Smoke) - Patreon Version
Added 2025-10-22 16:00:15 +0000 UTC
Comments
Ooooh you're so right!
Chandra
2025-11-01 21:10:51 +0000 UTCHoly, I love your analysis. You noticed so much more than either of us did. Howard being the younger brother that Jimmy always wanted to be is so dead on. You make a ton of great points!!
Chandra
2025-11-01 21:10:08 +0000 UTCThe first time Chuck was hospitalized, Jimmy, Kim and Howard all had opportunities to start the discussion of getting Chuck the mental health help they all knew he desperately needed. Kim was afraid to speak out against her boss, Howard was afraid to ruin his firm's reputation, and Jimmy was afraid to see his brother's autonomy taken away. Instead, they all chose to enable him and then, through a series of insane events, eventually abandon him. All three of them played a role in Chuck's demise. And it'll be interesting to see if/how that affects them going forward.
8bitAndy
2025-10-24 18:02:37 +0000 UTCLove your reactions as always. Y’all are some of my favorite reactors! I feel like many channels don’t really understand or care about the character development (which in my view is the main point!) and just want to talk about plot mechanics and action. Okay, so here’s my grand unified theory of Jimmy: I’ve said before that I think his character is designed from the ground up to be the anti-Walt. Walt’s fatal flaw is his egomania/delusions of grandeur, whereas Jimmy’s fatal flaw is his emotional immaturity/refusal to take responsibility. Walt is nerdy, socially awkward, and introverted; Jimmy is charming, charismatic, and extroverted. Walt is a conventional suburban square; Jimmy is an eccentric cosmopolitan bohemian. Walt is abusive, domineering, and controlling; Jimmy is gentle, supportive, and nurturing. Walt is an exacting perfectionist; Jimmy is an inveterate corner-cutter. Walt is callous and self-absorbed; Jimmy is sensitive and other-directed. Walt is a respectable schoolteacher and family man; Jimmy is an irresponsible, immature slacker. Walt is rigid, repressed, and obsessed with his masculinity; Jimmy is flamboyant, emotional, and in touch with his feminine side. Walt is a scientist; Jimmy is an artist. Walt is a sourpuss; Jimmy is a sweetheart. Walt is serious, disciplined, and ambitious; Jimmy is frivolous, hedonistic, and underachieving. Walt is arrogant, monomaniacal, and self-aggrandizing; Jimmy is anxious, vacillating, and self-effacing. Walt is paternal; Jimmy is filial. Walt is Apollonian; Jimmy is Dionysian. Walt is a bland, forgettable personality who longs to be special and important; Jimmy is a histrionic, extreme personality who can’t help but stand out, but longs to fit in and be accepted. Heisenberg is a monster who’s convinced himself he’s the hero; Saul Goodman is a coward who’s embraced being the villain. I think the inciting incident of the entire saga is the death of Chuck and Jimmy’s father. Their father died of a broken heart a few months after his store went under, which strikes me as a classic mid-century euphemism for him committing suicide. In any case, it's clear that Chuck blames Jimmy for ‘killing’ their father. Chuck claims Jimmy stole $14,000 from the store, which seems totally unrealistic to me on its face; Other flashbacks show Jimmy stealing from the store, but it appears to be negligible amounts, and seems much more likely that the store failed because their father was constantly being scammed and giving things away for free. Even Chuck admits he “wasn’t much of a businessman.” The origin of Jimmy’s cynical attitude that the world is divided into winners and suckers, is obviously that he grew up seeing their father get scammed because of his friendly and kindhearted nature. I think Jimmy adopts this worldview precisely because he is so much like their father, because he observes these same soft-hearted tendencies in himself, and they make him feel vulnerable and taken advantage of by the world. Chuck said of their dad “everyone loved him, he knew everyone’s name and what was going on in their lives,” etc. That also describes Jimmy! Of the two of them, Jimmy is the one who inherited their father’s extroverted, charming personality. Other people’s emotions visibly exert a kind of gravity on him. Usually when Jimmy is doing the ‘right thing,’ he seems frustrated with himself, like he’s succumbing to weakness: “Dammit, I can’t let Tuco kill the skaters. Dammit, I have to give back the bribe from the Kettlemens. Dammit, I have to run in and save Chuck after he hit his head in the copy shop. Dammit, I have to turn all the old folks against me to fix things for Irene.” In all these cases, you see his face contorting as if he is being dragged into doing the right thing against his will. But no external force is compelling him; It’s just that he experiences his own conscience in these scenes as a burden and a liability. He adopts this cynical con man attitude to harden himself against the pull of his own empathy. Jimmy is completely unscrupulous and unprincipled— He won’t do the right thing because the rules said so, but he *will* do the right thing if his emotions compel him to. Anyway, the death of their father (possibly/subtextually by suicide): Keep in mind, Jimmy is canonically sixteen years younger than Chuck, and would have been like fourteen years old if Chuck was a law clerk at the time. Chuck, who Jimmy looked up to and whose approval Jimmy craved, was psychologically more like a father figure to Jimmy than an older brother. Because of the huge age gap between them, they did not grow up together; Jimmy never knew Chuck as a child. When Jimmy was five years old, Chuck was a grown man. So, Jimmy’s self esteem and identity hinge on Chuck’s approval in a way that is not typical of a brother relationship, and is much more like a father-son relationship. I think because their father died when Jimmy was so young, Chuck took over the role of father figure in Jimmy’s psychological development. And then Chuck (a grown man) blamed Jimmy (a kid) for killing their father. "Ever since he was nine!" Chuck says during his breakdown in court. The resentment goes deep. Bringing up the crimes Jimmy has done as an adult is fair game; But resenting a nine-year-old like that is crazy. I think this is the origin of Jimmy’s pathological inability to take responsibility and face the consequences of his own actions. He internalized this intense guilt as a kid, and has never been able to emotionally grow up as a result. He is emotionally stuck at fourteen. He cannot process guilt or shame, because he is traumatized by this unbearable original sin of ‘killing his own father.’ Whenever he does follow the rules, it’s strictly for the sake of receiving head-pats and good boy points from the people he idolizes (Chuck & Kim). When people expect him to behave like an adult, he becomes petulant and lashes out. He wants Kim, his mommy domme girlfriend, to coddle and baby him, to clean up after his messes, and always pinch his cheek and tell him he’s adorable, and never hold him to adult standards of behavior. Walt always had to be the Man, whereas Jimmy always has to be the Baby. Walt is always like “I did it all myself! No one else! It was all me!!!” while Jimmy is always like “I didn’t do it! Someone else did it! Okay, fine… maybe I did do it, but I didn’t really mean it!” Through this lens, it seems like the reason Chuck's suicide is so overwhelming for him, and so impossible for him to face, is that it's a repeat of his childhood trauma which he never healed from in the first place. When Chuck kills himself, it's as if Jimmy has driven his own father to suicide all over again. It's the absolute most traumatic way he could have possibly lost Chuck. And this is after Chuck’s last words to him were “You never really mattered all that much to me.” Now he can never ever gain Chuck’s approval; So, what’s the point in trying to be ‘good’ by following the rules? Might as well do as Chuck instructed him, and ‘embrace’ being the bad guy. The end of this episode shows Jimmy shutting down his emotions in this really creepy and uncanny way. He puts on this cheerful mask, because what Howard has just revealed to him (that he may have driven Chuck to suicide by getting his insurance canceled) is simply unbearable for him to face. And so, when Howard volunteers to take the blame, Jimmy jumps at the chance to push it all off on him. It’s also significant that Jimmy and Howard are canonically the exact same age: Jimmy is wildly jealous of Howard, because Howard is the little brother Chuck always wanted. Jimmy lets Howard take all the blame, because the minute Jimmy accepts his own responsibility for Chuck's insurance being cancelled, he will fall apart. The self hatred will be too overwhelming to bear. So, he just flatly refuses to face it. This is all Saul Goodman is ultimately: He’s just Jimmy dissociating and putting on a silly voice so that he won’t have to face his real emotions. Saul is the terminal end result of Jimmy treating his own heart as the enemy, trying to rid himself of his guilt and grief, and therefore his empathy and kindness as well. Saul is always cheerful because he’s a nihilistic scumbag who doesn’t care about anybody and treats everything like it’s a joke; But even in Breaking Bad, it’s clear at times that Saul *does* have real emotions underneath this mask of cynicism and callousness. In BB, Saul is comic relief and the audience loves his slimy criminal antics; But with the context of BCS, we see that Saul is a very sad and strange and artificial character. The cheerful mask Jimmy is wearing at the end of this episode is what Saul actually is.
Francesca Langer
2025-10-23 17:29:38 +0000 UTC
