Amazing episode.
I’ll freely admit I didn’t see the twist comming. I thought the break with Chuck would be Jimmy’s fault, for taking revenge on the firm.
Kudos to all who predicted it - but this is just what I love about this show: I am usually wrong in my predictions. It doesn’t take the obvious path.
Now I’m wondering about the scene in which Chuck suggested the $20 million settlement. Jimmy would have been happy to take half a million (or whatever it was that lawyer offered). Did Chuck deliberately raise the stakes so that Jimmy wouldn’t be able to handle the case? Is Chuck driven by jealousy; that for Jimmy to succeed cheapens his distinguished profession?
BTW, I was impressed by the number of people at the HHM offices. I had no idea the firm was that big. But why didn’t they just meet outdoors somewhere; that would have been easier than turning off all of the electronics.
I couldn’t believe the speed at which this epi went by.
It seemed like it started and then 5 minutes later … it was finished.
I have no idea why it went by so quickly.
But … it was just … “Whoosh!” and it was all over.
I just can’t imagine why it was over so quickly. Holy Smoke!
Indeed it would!
One question for US lawyers: is there any reason Jimmy could not take his amazing surefire case to another legal firm, and make a deal?
Throughout the show, Jimmy is treating his brother’s firm as if it was the only game in town. If he’s being shafted by them, at his brother’s behest of for any other reason, why can’t he just go to another? At least in Canada, that’s what I would have done.
There are plenty of entreprenurial firms that do plaintiff side class action work, and would be happy to make a deal with Jimmy if he had the stuff.
Yes, that was the best hour of television I’ve seen in years. The final scene was heart-breaking.
Amazing episode. I had heard that the last two episodes of the season were big, but that was not in a way I was expecting.
Also, Hamlin has been taking all sorts of shit from Jimmy, and putting up with it, even though it’s not his fault that Jimmy is mad at him.
And that’s a good point about his name. I could see that maybe it won’t be just Saul starting up a new business, but wanting to distance himself from his brother.
I don’t know if it’s just worry about Slippin’ Jimmy, it seems to be a somewhat classic case of sibling rivalry. Jimmy is fairly younger than Chuck, maybe he was coddled more as the baby brother, and Chuck was resentful.
It’s an interesting relationship. If he was just truly worried about the damage that Jimmy could do, I would think he’d be more honest and upfront and tell him from the beginning that they couldn’t have a former scam artist with a law degree from an online law school work at HHM. But instead he made someone else be the bad guy.
And at the meeting with at the office, when Hamlin said Jimmy couldn’t work there, and Chuck was making incredulous faces and noises, you see that Chuck is really committed to the charade.
Speaking of the offer, do any law types know how reasonable it was? The $20,000 now and the almost guaranteed money in the future doesn’t sound too terrible to me, but I know that it’s the principle of the thing for Jimmy that made him upset. I wonder if he’s still going to take the deal; he said he was at the end but that was to bait Chuck.
I was wondering if they’re going to show what happened to cause that. I think Chuck has been out of the office for 18 months now, when was it that Jimmy got his law degree? I don’t think the guilt is the direct cause of the psychosis, but Chuck has an interesting layer of a lot of things going on.
Yeah, Mike was amazing tonight. And that was definitely the premise of Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad. I wonder when we’ll see Nacho again.
That was painful, seeing Jimmy hurt like that. How he didn’t have a response, other than to say what he had brought and that he was leaving.
BTW, in a previous thread someone quoted Vince Gilligan or one of the writers as saying that Kim is Jimmy’s ex-wife. But she described herself (or Hamlin described her) as Jimmy’s friend here. I’d think they would have said exe if she had been married to Jimmy.
I have been in Hamlins position. Being the bearer of bad news because someone else does not have the balls to do it himself, although I was a Senior Associate, not a partner.
You always end up being blunt and hurtful.
I’m not a lawyer, but I think Jimmy could have taken the suit to another firm in ABQ, but I’m not sure how it would go. From that meeting with the other law firm, Chuck is obviously a well known and respected lawyer. And HHM is a big law firm. I’m not sure if another firm would see the case and think it sounds good, or be suspicious about why HHM isn’t taking it and thinking there must be something wrong. Thinking “if this is such a good, profitable case, then why didn’t this guy’s brother and his firm take it? This guy is probably crazy.” Or maybe another firm would not want to take it because they don’t want to make an enemy of HHM.
If Jimmy went to another city or state, there wouldn’t be the baggage of having the connected to HHM, but that would be difficult too. He doesn’t exactly have a lot of disposable income at the moment to travel to other places and pitch his case and hope another firm picks it up.
But I’m not a lawyer and I don’t know how this stuff works, so I’m just guessing.
She could be an ex, but they are still friends, so that’s how the identify and describe each other as. Since if you call someone your ex-, that brings different things to mind.
I imagine the biggest problem would be simply getting a foot in the door for an initial meeting.
If they see the materials already prepared, presumably they would find them convincing, or at least, a good gamble. Jimmy could then explain why problems with his notoriously crazy brother make working with his brother’s firm impossible. Also, it now seems unlikely that the partner actually doing the work at that firm would care - he’d probably be relieved that Jimmy is outta his hair.
But if Jimmy has one thing, it is plenty of brashness and moxie, so getting an initial meeting should not prove impossible.
I think she did tell him. She confronted Howard who made a big issue about it being a partner decision. Then as she was leaving he had her close to door, presumably to tell her what had actually happened. A few scenes later she meets Jimmy at the laundromat where he’s telling her what an ass Howard is, only to have her keep quietly trying to tell him to listen to her. Next scene is at Chuck’s house. So I think we had a few conversations we know what happened without ever actually hearing them.
Jimmy did mention to Chuck that he figured it out by looking at his phone, probably to keep Kim out of their disagreement.
That’s exactly how I interpreted the action.
After telling Jimmy to take the deal, didn’t we then see her leave? 
And then Jimmy pulls out his phone and starts to make a call on the landline?
Yes, I just rewatched the scene. She says “Take the deal” and walks out of the laundromat. Jimmy turns around, walks into the back room, and starts looking at his phone. Kim doesn’t tell him anything.
They are definitely ex-somethings. In the flashback last episode, Jimmy brought her his acceptance letter from the bar association, they opened it together, and they had a congratulatory embrace and mouth kiss. Maybe Howard just didn’t want to dredge up old wounds by mentioning the word “ex”. Or maybe they kept their relationship a secret from the firm?
Kim and Jimmy seem to be fairly close and mostly get along. Besides (or along with) Chuck, Kim is definitely Jimmy’s closest friend and confidant on the show. So I really wonder what caused them to split up. Maybe her staying at HHM after Jimmy was rejected caused a temporary falling out?
In fact now I’m wondering if she slept with Hamlin at some point. But I’m not seeing any of that in their behavior towards each other. So maybe that’s a dead end. Breaking Bad and BCS both are almost unbelievably lacking in the “sex sells” gimmicks most other shows find mandatory. A few awkward sex scenes between Walter and Skyler, and a few of Jane in her underwear in Breaking Bad. That’s about it for both shows. I don’t think I’ve seen a single gratuitous sex scene or sex object in Better Call Saul. It’s refreshing actually.
That’s true. Jimmy could have hustled and maybe worked with another firm, but not after being crushed by Chuck like that. If he hadn’t figured out that Chuck was behind him not being hired, then Jimmy might have called up some other firms.
Yeah, she left, he goes to his office looking exhausted, starts his cell phone charging, and starts to make a call on his landline. I don’t know if Kim wanted to explain what the deal with Chuck was, or didn’t want to because it would hurt Jimmy too much, but she didn’t do it then.
The issue is whether he called her up & they talked offscreen (and she spilled the beans about his brother) - or whether he figured it out by contacting the phone company, like he told his brother.
We will probably find out next episode, when the two of them interact again.
He could do that, and in the real world, that’s exactly what he would do. HHM would still be entitled to an equitable share of the fee, to be determined, based on Chuck’s input. But yeah, if I were sitting in Jimmy’s seat I would have just said, “Well, this ain’t the only law firm in town.”
Also, now that it seems that HHM was never the bad guy, what was the deal in the first episode with the checks that HHM was sending and that Jimmy was tearing up? Was it just the normal salary, everything above board, and Chuck let Jimmy tear them up rather than admit that he was the bad guy? It had seemed in the first few episodes that HHM was trying to be sneaky about something about Chuck’s partnership, and Jimmy was mad as hell at them, but it turns out that Hamlin has great respect for Chuck and doesn’t mind being the bad guy, but I’m not sure what the checks were for then.
Getting a meeting is easy. You do it like this: “I have a $20 million case.”