That’s actually an interesting contrast between Howard and Chuck. They both have a duty to protect the firm’s reputation and business, and Howard takes that seriously. But Chuck is ignoring his duties as a partner, and risking the firm’s reputation to carry out a private vendetta against his brother (in his head it’s a personal defense of The Law). I think Howard is much more disturbed than he’s letting on to Chuck, and Chuck doesn’t see it. Granter Howard is good at holding back emotion, he is the guy who had to play at being the unwavering bad guy to the point that Jimmy called him a pig-fucker and threatened to burn the Sandpiper case to the ground, and was able to calmly respond “Okay then, if that’s your decision”.
The problem with that is that “felons” are people with a felony conviction on their record, and Jimmy simply doesn’t have one. He was charged with one, but wasn’t convicted and didn’t plead guilty, so he is not a felon. If they go with the general idea that felons should be disbarred, then Jimmy would not be disbarred, because he isn’t one. Everyone who’s looked at the charge, like the local prosecutor, seems to think the felony charge was overreaching, so it’s doubtful that the board would look on a confession to something that should be a misdemeanor as a felony. Odds are, like Chuck said in the episode, they would consider it more of a family matter and just suspend him for a year or two for bad judgement.
That’s why Chuck couldn’t just let it go, he needed them to see Jimmy was not breaking in out of anger or concern for his brother, but to destroy evidence in an ongoing investigation - which is definitely worthy of disbarment (with the bonus that the evidence that he was destroying was also a disbarring offense if they believe it). If they just stuck to the breaking and entering without introducing the tape, they have something that will get Jimmy in trouble but not bring him down.
Yes. Has this been addressed here? Isn’t it illegal to tape surreptitiously? There was a little legalistic interchange between Jimmy and Chuck about what he technically did but I lost the meaning of it.
You can’t be compelled to testify against yourself, but that doesn’t mean that if you choose to confess to a crime someone can’t record it or talk about your confession later. One of the exceptions to the hearsay rule is that it’s allowable for someone to testify that they heard you confessing to a crime. If this was true, police wiretaps and questioning would be much less useful.
New Mexico is a one-party state, it’s perfectly fine to record a conversation as long as at least one of the parties consent to it. Since Chuck was one party in the conversation, there’s nothing illegal about taping it.
Her talk of touring and hotels suggests that she’s a soloist. A rank-and-file orchestra member wouldn’t be traveling all the time.
She’s probably a cellist. In one of the second season episodes, Chuck is playing the piano accompaniment for Sicilienne, a work for cello and piano by Gabriel Fauré. I’m guessing this is something Chuck learned so that he and Rebecca could do something musical together.
On the second it’s true you’re not technically a convicted felon on completion of a Pre Prosecution Diversion (NM specifically below). The whole idea is the charge goes away after you fulfill conditions like a probation period, restitution, treatment etc as the case may be. But you do admit guilt, and it turns into a guilty plea effectively if you don’t fulfill the conditions. Jimmy admitted guilt to the felony charge of breaking into Chuck’s house, which the prosecutor specifically refused to lower to a misdemeanor. And the show starts out with Chuck emphasizing that, without push back.
But then the plot kind of sidles over to Jimmy’s plan to undercut Chuck’s use of the tape contents, not directly the source of any charge against Jimmy, and Chuck ends up playing into Jimmy’s hands by being a very flawed ‘star witness’. So it ends up again IMO reasonably plausible. But still IMO a kind of quais-gap in that the board could go with the idea that formal admission to a felony in a PPD agreement was enough to disbar, as again the show initially has as Chuck’s idea, and to which Jimmy’s reaction wasn’t ‘oh no they wouldn’t do that you need more’.
I’m very much enjoying the series, but wow is it slowly paced - I mean, we’re three series in so far and pretty much only just out the front door on Jimmy’s journey into becoming Saul Goodman, Dodgy Law-Talking Guy Extraordinaire.
For me the big questions revolve around what ultimately happens to Chuck and Kim, since they’re not in Breaking Bad at all - even as tangential mentions, from what I recall of the series.
It’s not just Jimmy’s journey into becoming Saul but also Mike’s journey going from an above board Police officer into a man working for a drug cartel. There’s a lot more going on here and disagree completely, it’s not slow-paced at all. I can’t think of any scenes I’d eliminate.
Mike wasn’t an above board police officer. He took bribes, and murdered the officers that murdered his son. The latter may have been justified, but that doesn’t make it above board.
I agree with all the points about baseline morality, but disagree that he was significantly changed in Breaking Bad. There was no bright line he stepped over, he just got a little too close and sucked into the maelstrom. Remember that Walter White was not exactly the type to take no for an answer from his accomplices. I think Jimmy/Saul doesn’t actually transform that much, and that’s not the point of this show for either him or Mike. It’s not Breaking Bad 2: Who Else Broke Bad? It’s just a show about two of the more entertaining and engaging characters.
One thing about Jimmy’s morality that I think we will find out, and will confirm your belief about him only scamming people who deserve it, is that the whole story that Chuck points to as the start of his disrespect of Jimmy isn’t actually true. I think we will eventually find out that Jimmy was not stealing money from the family cash register, but let Chuck believe that to save Chuck’s respect for their father. I suspect that their father had a gambling problem or something like that, and Jimmy let Chuck believe it was Jimmy when Chuck jumped to that conclusion.
I am pretty sure we are shown that Chuck’s suspicions wrt to the cash register were unfounded, McGill snr was willing to give cash to every sob story he heard.
I was trying to remember if we already saw something like that and I think you’re correct. And yes, Marvin, I think we did see Jimmy finally pocket cash himself when he realized, if his dad was going to give it to everyone else then why not him too.
Right, and this may be a Rohrschach test outing those of us who are just like all the people Chuck complains about: failing to see the bad in Jimmy, always making excuses for him. But I would still point out that Chuck came to the conclusion he did not based on eyewitnessing it, but by inductive reasoning based on his examination of the books and seeing how they did not balance. So I tend to think the vast majority of the missing money went to grifters, meaning what Jimmy did was like a teenager grabbing a few bucks from his mom’s purse now and then, and was not anywhere near as substantial as Chuck thought, certainly not enough to capsize the business.
No, this is just wrong. Once Jesse and Walt established that they were the ‘higher up’ for Badger, Saul wanted to arrange to have Badger shanked to keep him from testifying, and thought Jessie and Walt were being absurd for wanting to spend so much on the alternate plan when killing him would be cheaper. This wasn’t Walter White ‘refusing to take no’, this was Saul disagreeing with Walter White about how to handle a situation, and was long before the maelstrom caught Saul. Meanwhile in BCS we’ve seen Jimmy risk his own life to save two stupid kids he has no connection with from getting killed by a violent, crazy, ill-tempered drug dealer in the desert, and actually lost money because of it.
There’s a huge difference between the guy who risks his life arguing with a dangerous lunatic and loses money to save two kids he doesn’t even like, and the guy who casually wants to arrange to shank a kid to save money and effort. Jimmy has never killed anybody and is clearly repulsed at the idea of letting someone die even if it saves his own skin, Saul is happy to arrange murder as long as he gets a tidy profit. The path from Jimmy to Saul involves some huge changes. Mike has more of a journey of self-discovery (a phrase he would hate) to realize that he’s fine with working for a drug dealer as long as he’s not killing innocent people, he doesn’t seem to change very much, but Jimmy is a different story.
I agree - we saw young Jimmy pocket a little bit of money, but nothing to confirm that he keeps doing it, and he doesn’t seem happy about it in what we see. I think Chuck is wrong about Jimmy being responsible for the missing cash in his father’s business, and I suspect Jimmy actually tried to help him. I actually think the experience of seeing his father get ripped off is why Jimmy feels personally offended by Sandpiper ripping of residents, and why he doesn’t even consider scamming his Elder Law clients.
I think you’re mischaracterizing this. He wasn’t urging them to do that, he just didn’t understand why two supposedly bigtime drug dealers weren’t already intending to do it.
Secondly, that was in what was essentially Saul’s “pilot” episode. It’s well established in TV that you’re not really expected to consider characterization in a pilot to be rigidly canonical. This does not match with the general character Saul showed over his time on Breaking Bad, and I think Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould would agree that they would go back and change that a bit if they could.
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No, this is just wrong. Once Jesse and Walt established that they were the ‘higher up’ for Badger, Saul wanted to arrange to have Badger shanked to keep him from testifying, and thought Jessie and Walt were being absurd for wanting to spend so much on the alternate plan when killing him would be cheaper. This wasn’t Walter White ‘refusing to take no’, this was Saul disagreeing with Walter White about how to handle a situation, and was long before the maelstrom caught Saul. Meanwhile in BCS we’ve seen Jimmy risk his own life to save two stupid kids he has no connection with from getting killed by a violent, crazy, ill-tempered drug dealer in the desert, and actually lost money because of it.
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II just rewatched the pertinent scene (BB, Season 2, Ep 8 “Better Call Saul”) and he says this as an incredulous comment when his “kidnappers”, who are holding him at gunpoint over an open grave tell him he is to be the best lawyer he can be to Baxter, but not to make any deal since he’ll talk. Its an observation not his recommended course of action.
He also earlier turned down a bribe from Walter, to the surprise of Jesse.He is also very impressed an episode later that Walter wants to provide a nest for his family.
I think Saul is Jimmy, with his inhibitions removed, but with his essential personality.Or to use Howards term, CHarlie Hustle. Jimmy played down his “hustler” tendencies to get respect, Saul played them up since he realised being thought of as a “Criminal” Lawyer was good for business.