I must have missed that, or forgotten it. Could someone explain the scene please, as the link’s video is too much of a buzz cut and I don’t quite get what’s going on.
Police have taken Chuck to the hospital on suspicion of drug abuse - they were investigating him stealing his neighbor’s newspaper and noticed the wiring ripped out of the electrical panel. In the hospital Chuck is unable to convince the staff that the electronics in the room is hurting him, so he goes catatonic. Jimmy and Kim arrive and Jimmy shuts off all the lights and electronics over the objection of the nurses. Chuck comes out of the catatonia, but the doctor (Dr. Cruz) surreptitiously switches the hospital bed back on (only Jimmy and Kim can see) but Chuck doesn’t notice - no pain or discomfort. Dr. Cruz tells Jimmy that Chuck’s problem is psychological, and that Jimmy needs to get an emergency temporary guardianship and commit Chuck for treatment. Jimmy refuses, but he and Kim now both know that Chuck’s condition is mental and not physical. Until that point, as far as we (the viewers) know, everyone thought that Chuck really suffered from EM sensitivity.
No they don’t. Certainly some people probably believe Chuck, and some people find it in their best interest not to question Chuck, but that doesn’t mean that everyone believes his story. People have made baseless claims of sensitivity to EM waves or emissions from satellites and the like for decades, and some people’s immediate response to them is skepticism. When I first saw Chuck in the show, I certainly didn’t think ‘oh, he’s actually physically sensitive to electricity’, I thought it was a mental condition and was interested to see how elaborate Chuck’s delusions were.
I don’t think Jimmy has believed it’s physical during the show time, his reaction to his brother talking about contacting experts for treatment read exactly like someone who is humoring a crazy relative and hoping he snaps out of it to me. And just watch Jimmy’s face in the linked scene - there is not even a glimmer of surprise on his face, he’s just ticked at the doctor for playing a dirty trick on his brother. If Jimmy really thought the condition was physical until then, I’d expect to see shock and amazement on his face, not just annoyance at the doctor.
They also haven’t seen any direct evidence that his condition is physical, and nothing in the show supports your idea that everyone believes it’s physical. All of the actions of people around Chuck are perfectly consistent with a belief that the guy has a mild mental eccentricity (believes he’s sensitive to EM rays) that they’re humoring because they like him, get benefit from him, or don’t want to rock the boat. I’m not saying that everyone disbelieves him, just that some people do. And I think that makes the revelations worse, because there’s already a seed of ‘this guy is crazy’ out there - it’s a lot easier to move from ‘eccentric but we’ll humor his delusions’ to ‘completely nuts’ than it is from ‘phsyically sick’ to ‘completely nuts’.
OK, this is going to spiral into the same argument about what “know” means that happened when discussing whether Kim “knows” Jimmy doctored the documents. Probably better to drop it.
I know what you mean. 
Actually, the word ‘know’ isn’t even relevant - the claim you made and that I disagreed with was specifically that they “think” it’s true. You’ve asserted that everyone on the show must think that Chuck’s condition is physical, but as I’ve pointed out there is no evidence in the show to support that contention. The idea that lawyers automatically believe a claim of a medical condition by someone, no matter how foil-wrapped and outlandish, must be physical until they have direct evidence that it is mental is at odds with every lawyer I know. All of them have bumped into (or had a buddy who bumped into) at least one person who made some kind of injury/sickness claim that they were pretty sure was psychological, and there’s usually a funny story about how divorced from reality that person was. And no, they didn’t need a ‘battery trick’ to decide that they didn’t believe the guy being affected by CIA mind control rays.
But surely this is kind of splitting hairs? I mean on either side of the argument - whether everyone(many) thought he had a physical malady, but now realize he might be seriously nuts vs. everyone(many) thought he was a bit dotty, but now realize he might be seriously nuts. At the end we all are in agreement that whatever the understanding of Chuck’s malady before hand, he now looks a whole lot worse after his disasatrous turn on the stand. Yes?
Yes.
It was the elephant in the room that nobody really wanted to confront, and Chuck seemed to think he could intimidate Jimmy enough that he would never spill the beans. Basically, achuck got what he deserved, just like Jimmy did. But Jimmy’s a survivor. Chuck? I guess we’ll see.
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This week’s episode is actually out there in the wild, from less than legit sources, if you don’t mind Spanish subtitles throughout, except for the parts where they actually speak Spanish, where you’ll be annoyed if you don’t understand Spanish, but you won’t really miss anything important.
I guess they didn’t want to annoy the Latino market with our holiday… I’m not gonna discuss anything from the episode, but figured I’d give a heads-up that SPOILERS ARE OUT THERE, and I guess that there will be week-ahead Spanish-speaking-market episodes out there for the remainder of the season.
What surprises me is the episode is not available in Australia - it’s not a public holiday here, so if they’ve got the episodes to legally stream (which they do, the same day they’re released in the US) why are we missing out again?
I don’t think it’s splitting hairs to notice that Jimmy and Howard have probably known the malady is psychological all along, but indulge Chuck for their own reasons. There’s a lot in the hospital scenes that doesn’t make sense if they believe it’s a physical and not mental condition. Why would Howard worry that Jimmy might have Chuck committed if he thought Chuck’s condition was physical? Why would Jimmy show no sign of surprise when the doctor demonstrated that Chuck’s condition was mental? And there is a lot of other scenes where their reactions and motivations look very different if you presume they believe the condition to be physical. In a show that with as much good, expressive action as this one and with as interesting and convoluted of a story, I think it’s a reasonable point of interest.
That’s…weird. I don’t like the idea that they are releasing it in other parts of the world before here in the U.S. It’s a show about mostly American characters, made in the U.S. by mostly American creators and actors, for chrissakes!
I was thinking of the argument more in the context of the wider world of anonymous HHM employees and the like.
As for Jimmy and Howard specifically, my own parsing would be that they probably accepted it was physical for their own piece of mind, while simultaneously worrying/suspecting that it was really mental. Jimmy was disabused of his flimsy conviction at the hospital and no, he wasn’t shocked because he had suspected all along. But he still needed direct convincing. I suspect the trial was the equivalent for Howard.
I think either reading is consistent with the show (what I disagreed with earlier was the claim that they all definitely believed it to be physical). I’m pretty sure that Jimmy was just humoring Chuck all along, that’s how I read his emotional performance in the early scenes caring for Chuck and talking about Chuck contacting experts. And I also think Howard hasn’t believed it to be physical but hasn’t cared because he’s been 100% about protecting HHM and treating it as physical was the way to go about that, but I’m not as sure about him. I wonder if the topic will come up later in the season.
Interestingly, episode 8 did air in some Spanish speaking countries, and you can find it streaming online (not posting link because I think that’s not allowed here). I went ahead and watched it, but am not going to post anything spoiler-like since it has aired in the US. One incidental fact that they did establish in the episode is that it’s been about three years since Chuck argued a case in a courtroom, so I think that means the condition is just a little over three years old. I thought it had been more like five years from the flashbacks.
I’m always intrigued by what is and isn’t considered reasonable accommodation under the law. Assuming Chuck was an employee of the law firm and not a founding partner, would it be considered reasonable that he can’t use a computer or phone? (Let’s even assume that the employer assumes his illness to be true.) They would be severely hindered in their ability to do research, to write anything (they could hand write it but it would have to be typed- basically Chuck’s secretaries would be on a 1950s paradigm where the boss can’t type) or even consult with a client over the phone.
Though I just can’t feel any sympathy for Chuck. The fact that he rehearsed his “I don’t hate my brother” spiel shows what a phony he is, and as we saw in flashbacks to their childhood, Papa McGill seemed to be doing a good job of losing money hand over fist long before Jimmy helped him by stealing.
Well, the show time is 2003, when a lot of legal work was a lot more paper-oriented than now. A regular employee couldn’t be a ‘full’ lawyer because he wouldn’t be be able to go to court or call clients. But he could do doc review, type up documents, give answers to legal questions, and similar duties. If there’s a position at the firm that has those jobs but not client contact, he might be able to insist on moving to that position and then not using a computer or phone. But if there isn’t such a position, then his inability to do client contact means he can’t do an essential part of the job. The fact that he can’t use electric lights is actually a bigger problem, I’m not sure how you’d safely light internal rooms without using electricity. I think requiring gas lamps would fall way outside of ‘reasonable accommodation’ and they might not meet modern fire codes or OSHA standards. He couldn’t insist on working at home, because the only way he can access documents remotely violates the company’s security policy (so not reasonable) and requires an extra staff member to cart stuff back and forth (which is also more than reasonable).
While it’s not impossible for him to ask for some accommodations, I can’t see how the ADA would obligate HHM to keep him around, there are too many massively unreasonable things that he needs. And HHM is filled with ruthless lawyers, so they would be well-equipped to make a solid case to fire him, they’re not some small-time schmucks that might get intimidated if threatens an ADA suit. Even more damning, though, is that he’s going to have to document his medical condition. Since Chuck doesn’t believe his actual condition, he would probably get utterly destroyed trying to file an ADA suit, because HHM could pull something like the ‘battery trick’ (likely a more dignified version) to show that the condition wasn’t what he claimed.
This is from watching the leaked epsiode 8:
[Spoiler]It looks like the most Jimmy stole were single coins at a time; he’s spot valuable or rare coins in the till and collect them for himself. It was just a band-aid box worth though, so the face value that Jimmy took over the years was probably less than $25, and the father wouldn’t have taken advantage of their higher collector value. Jimmy’s recollection of the business was that his father was way too willing to give handouts to people and everyone knew it. And unwilling to do underhanded stuff like sell cigs and alcohol to school kids.
I think there may be a setup for Chuck trying to reconcile with Jimmy - he says “What have I done” while talking to his doctor, and seems to be reconsidering his actions. Chuck trying to reconcile and it failing miserably or blowing up in his face would fit the show very well, it’s pretty clear that Jimmy isn’t going to forgive him at this point. [/spoiler]
You’d think this would be a 1950s paradigm, but I’ve always read that this is what Bill and Hillary Clinton have always done and still do to this day: write longhand on legal pads (oh, the cramping!) and have secretaries type it up. It’s what my dad, an anthropology professor and published author born around the same time as Bill and Hill, did (he actually paid me to type a lot of stuff for him once I learned to type at age ten or eleven). So unless my dad and the Clintons are extremely unrepresentative of their generation, there must have been a lot of people Chuck’s age in the white collar world still doing that in 2003.
Kudos for finding this and posting it.
Not to pile on, but I don’t see a basis to think ‘everyone’ buys that Chuck has a real physical disease. I don’t think the typical audience member buys it even before witnessing the Dr. Cruz episode, and otherwise what the audience is let in on that all the characters aren’t is sequences where it’s made pretty clear Chuck really feels pain due to ‘EM’, not that it’s a real and purely physical as opposed to psychosomatic ailment. I never thought it would prove to be a real physical ailment. Such an ailment is not proven to exist AFAIK, and some characters in the show would surely have the same info.
So that’s a huge ‘but’ to any protection of Chuck under the law, even before you get to how ‘reasonable’ the accommodation of Chuck would have to be even if it was a real physical disability. As we’re seen, it’s not actually very reasonable to facilitate Chuck by allowing documents that should really be under lock and key at HHM’s office to be in his house to avoid de-electrifying the whole HHM office on an ongoing basis.
I think we can take for granted Howard is savvy enough to have considered it a serious possibility all along that Chuck’s malady is in his head. Though as with Jimmy in the Dr. Cruz incident, having it demonstrated (battery in pocket he didn’t notice) takes it to another level.
It’s a sign of the quality of this show that Howard, who could easily be just a cardboard cut out of a lawyer D-bag, and who started off apparently as one, has so much depth as a character. His reticence to really confront Chuck IMO is partly based in decency to somebody you care about who is struggling with a problem, even if it’s mental.
The part that doesn’t quite compute for me is Howard not apparently realizing yet (as of Ep. 7 no Ep.8 where I live, yet) what a disaster the court hearing is going to turn into eventually for Chuck and HHM associated with him. Even if Jimmy didn’t sabotage Chuck with the ins co, everyone in Abq law now knows about this, like Kim’s contact at Mesa. Everyone on either side who was unhappy with an outcome involving HHM will know. And there’s really no ADA protection (2003 or now) when a professional paid big bucks for mental work has a mental issue. That’s a reputational risk meltdown for the lawyer and firm.