Found two talks from Stanford Law School about the show, I thought they were interesting but they may be a bit dry for some people. First one is lawyers talking about legal ethics, second is Peter Gould and Rhea Seehorn talking about making the show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAspHeyHyiQI don’t think it’s spoiling too much to say that episode 8 will answer that question for you.
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OK, you guys have sold me that Jimmy and Howard strongly suspected that Chuck’s problem was mental before the hospital bed scene. But I will still hold that at least Jimmy was not certain - why would he religiously follow Chuck’s instructions to leaving everything electronics outside if he thought Chuck had to know of their presence if order to be affected? And he would always ground himself before entering the house, even when Chuck wasn’t watching. The hospital bed episode brought certainty.
I had also forgotten that Howard asked Jimmy if he was going to commit Chuck, which also indicates that at that point Howard believes Chuck’s problem is mental (or it could just mean that Howard got wind of the temporary guardianship and is worried that Jimmy would commit Chuck to get back at HHM).
However, I still think that there is a reasonable case to be made that outside of Chuck’s inner circle that most people thought Chuck’s condition to be real. The bar association was certainly accepting Chuck’s request for accommodation without questioning if Chuck is mentally stable enough to continue to practice law. The Wikipedia entry on electromagnetic hypersensitivity indicates that the consensus that the condition is psychological came at least concurrent with the current time of the show if not a bit later. I don’t think that Chuck’s self-diagnosis would have been just blown off as woo.
Now the fact that Howard can be shown to have known that at least one doctor considered Chuck’s condition psychological and that he was a danger to himself or others (a condition for involuntary commitment) would seem to put Howard and HHM in an even worse position than if he did not “know” until the hearing. Now Howard has been continuing to allow a person who he knows is seriously mentally ill to continue practicing law as his partner. He could be in trouble for not disclosing Chuck’s condition to the bar association (his duty as an “officer of the court”) or to the insurance company (who certainly would have conditions requiring notification of any medical condition which would increase their risk - maybe insurance fraud?).
Maybe this is what brings HHM down, and why Jimmy needs to change his name so that he’s not tainted by the McGill association.
OTOH mental illness is still a valid medical condition, and mentally ill people have rights including to medical privacy.
Here is a possibly relevant link from the ABA. Sounds like Howard would only be required to report Chuck to the bar if he actually screwed up a case due to his impairment - so any catastrophe to Howard or HHM would probably come via the malpractice insurance company and any reporting requirements they have.
Partially because he cares about Chuck and Chuck asked him to do these things. I’ve done stuff for a relative before that I knew was nonsense, but I’d follow their pattern so that I didn’t have to lie to them later about whether I did it or not. And usually once you make a habit of something, you just keep doing it unless you actively try to stop. Also because if he has his phone with him, it’s likely to go off or he’ll want to use it to make a call sometime, which will make Chuck aware that he’s not actually following the ritual, which will then result in a back-and-forth every time he comes over.
I don’t find it at all unlikely that Chuck’s old friends, who respect him for a lifetime of legal work, would be willing to accept that he’s gone a bit eccentric without thinking that he’s gone completely around the bend. None of Chuck’s accommodations were more than a mild inconvenience, so there’s no reason for the people holding the hearing to object strongly - turning off the lights, collecting cellphones, and taking down the clock aren’t really a big deal. And it’s clear that Jimmy didn’t raise any objection (if nothing else, objecting would interfere with his defense strategy), and in most legal proceedings if one side asks for a thing and the other side says “yes, that’s fine” then they do the thing without much further discussion.
A lot of people don’t wait for that level of ‘consensus’ and research before thinking that a tinfoil hat condition is mental. I first heard of someone claiming that cell phone rays hurt them around ten years before the show’s time frame, and my first thought was not “oh, I’ll need to wait for lots of experiments and investigations to evaluate that,” it was “yeah, dude is probably mental”. It helps that I know a bit about physics involved, and you don’t exactly need a physics degree to know that a battery with nothing hooked to the ends doesn’t have significant electricity flowing and doesn’t generate significant EM waves.
Like I said before, the idea that no one in a group of lawyers would feel that someone with an ‘electricity allergy’ who wears a tinfoil suit must have a purely physical condition, and refuse to even consider the possibility that it’s a mental thing until someone investigates the condition thoroughly doesn’t match my experience with lawyers, or people in general.
Now that the episode is out, I like this episode and am really looking forward to seeing how they wrap up the season.
The time delay shots of Mike methodically metal detecting in the desert were great, it shows how patient and thorough he is and involves some great camera work. I like the touch that Mike had an old metal stake with a rag tied around it to mark his place, it seems like the thing Mike would use instead of a modern plastic orange stake or one of the little wire flags. The end scene with Gus was also really good, Gus could easily have accepted $40k from Mike to launder the money but by refusing the 20% he really improves Mike’s attitude towards him. Wonder if it will be enough for Mike to tell Gus about Nacho’s plan for Hector and how ?
The Nacho scenes were incredibly well done, I could feel the tension and worry when Nacho was building pills and practicing swapping them, and the oppressive heat in the room at the restaurant made the scene so much more intense. Nacho’s idea of breaking the AC to force Hector to take off his jacket was smart; trying to do sleight of hand on clothes that Hector is wearing was clearly beyond Nacho’s ability. I like Nacho’s thoroughness, hiding his pills in the bag he drops money in (so he’s expected to reach into it) and making sure to put the same number of fake pills in when he does the swap.
I feel a bit sorry for Howard, he’s going out to a lot of nice meals but instead of enjoying them he’s got to spend the whole time schmoozing on damage control. It’s clearly wearing on him, his breakdown after Kim checks his little dominance game (pun intended) shows how much stress he’s under. OTOH, like Kim points out the reason he has to do damage control is that he’s been covering up Chuck’s condition for so long. The check was a very well-aimed slap in the face, and I wonder if planning to pay back HHM explains her hesitance to spend money earlier - if she was trying to save up $15k quickly, that would encourage her not to hire an assistant. I’m not really sure what Kim’s doing at this point - taking on the oil company seems to be stretching herself too thin. Maybe she’s planning to catch Jimmy?
It looks like Jimmy realizes that his way forward is to become Slippin’ Jimmy again - Slippin’ Jimmy just solved Jimmy McGill’s commercial money and community service issues plus got him a sweet signed guitar. I think we’re going to see more of Jimmy’s scams, and the first bit of the preview seems to confirm that. This seems to me the point where he’s starting to embrace his darker side, I think we’re starting to see him ditch the idea of Jimmy McGill (straight shooter who does mildly questionable stuff once in a while) and start to develop Saul Goodman (does whatever he can get away with that makes him money), though I think he still sees it more as a temporary measure. I think the fact that he lies to Kim about his slippin’ exploits is going to come back to bite him badly at some point.
From the preview of next week’s episode:
The insurance company is doubling the malpractice rate for all of HHM, which is pretty huge. Chuck’s threat to sue them and Howard’s face afterwards lead me to believe that this is the big conflict that drives Howard against Chuck finally. Howard wants HHM to appear stable, he doesn’t want to be the crazy company suing their own malpractice carrier, and any lawsuit is just going to make Chuck’s condition front and center. Also Chuck likely made the decision himself without consulting the other partners, another big issue. Interested to see where that leads.
But - a while ago, there was an episode that began with a flashback - Jimmy and Chuck were setting up Chuck’s house with tinfoil and referring to it as a scam.
Perhaps I misunderstood. It wouldn’t be a first.
Crane
Yes, you misunderstood. That was probably the episode when they were setting up the house to look normal so that Chuck’s estranged wife wouldn’t find out about his mental problem.
In other words, Chuck lies.
There’s something that wasn’t completely clear to me. How did Mike know where to search for the body?
My impression is that he got the information from Nacho in exchange for helping with the pills, but why would Nacho know about what happened to that woman’s husband, and how would Mike know that he knew about it?
It’s not ‘that woman’s husband’, it’s the good Samaritan who found Hector’s truck after Mike raided it, who was then killed by Hector’s crew (including Nacho) and buried in the desert. The woman telling the story of how much it hurt that her husband disappeared is what prompted Mike to realize that he didn’t want to leave the Samaritan’s body undiscovered. Since Nacho was involved with disposing of the body, he knows where it’s buried.
Duh. Thank you for the clarification.
The body had me baffled too, until I read the answer in the NYT. I initially felt it must be the gal’s husband but thought “why would Nacho know that?”
Didn’t like this episode much. I don’t think Jimmy’s “Jedi Mind Tricks” would have worked on the supervisor.
I’m STILL bitter about a few episodes ago, where no one called the police in the ‘Los Pollos Hermandos’. I’m not use to taking such big leaps from the BB team.
I hear what you’re saying.
I also think that there have been more than one instance of plot points being murky. The story line with Mike and the gas cap tracking devices confused a lot of people, and Mike finding the body was confusing to at least myself and Qadgop, and presumably others.
Even so, the show is better than the vast majority of what’s on TV.
I agree, that scene was weak. Jimmy pulling a scam he’s done for years on the guitar brothers seems perfectly believable to me, even without seeing more than the fall and immediate aftermath, that I was sold on immediately. But he didn’t really seem to have a hook to get the supervisor guy, it’s not like he did a fake fall to make it look like his back was injured on the scene, and the lawyer talk didn’t seem specific or eostric enough to make the supervisor change his mind. I think it is a lot like the ‘why didn’t anyone call the police’ scene, they had an idea for what they wanted to happen but forced the scene leading to it instead of properly handling the details like they usually do. (The fact that the drug dealer was perfectly willing to pay on their deal unlike the guitar brothers was clearly what they wanted to show, and making the deal $700 exactly like his public defender gigs was a nice bonus).
I’m not confused. Its just a bunch of filler.
Wow.
Thanks for agreeing with me guys! Sometimes I feell all smart and stuff - like I’m contributing!!