Physical injuries, certainly. But I imagine she’ll be suffering some mental injuries from working too hard, and she may make the mistake of having Jimmy do some of the non-legal stuff for her. We shall see.
From Ep 9 the scene that didn’t work for me was Jimmy waiting and button holing Howard. As somebody said before, we might interpret Howard’s reaction in part as ‘you’re trying to play ME?’. He’s not a fool. I agree he doesn’t really hate Jimmy, might not like him much anymore, and fed up with the McGill’s. Anyway I don’t see why the Jimmy, with the insight into human nature to construct pretty clever scams, couldn’t see how that would never work.
And it just makes the scam more likely to unravel. They would probably think ‘Jimmy’ as soon as they heard Irene’s decision anyway, knowing he has no lawyer income for awhile. But after Jimmy reinserts himself lobbying directly for a settlement? I guess as usual the way in which Jimmy doesn’t get the money, or has to make more moral compromises to get it, will be interesting. But the general plot in that regard seems very heavily telegraphed especially by that scene.
I think he may indeed get the money.
I think Jimmy’s behaviour in this episode proves he doesn’t actually give much of a fuck about his elderly clients - even if he’s doing the wrong thing for ostensibly the right reasons (ie getting the residents to settle now means they’ll all get paid, waiting a few years won’t get them much more money but will further fill HHM’s coffers).
Ultimately, I think “Jimmy Gots To Get Paid, Yo” overrides the other considerations - hence his manipulation of the Sandpiper residents to force the class representative to settle, by frankly abhorrent means.
So what would you do if you were in his shoes?
Yeah, people are being unduly hard on Jimmy IMO.
He could always try getting a job at Cinnabon.
Yeah! I mean sure he likely ruined the peace and happiness of an old woman’s final years for crassest of all reasons but…uh, but…ummm…:p.
C’mon, he acted like fucking dirtbag. It really doesn’t matter if he was technically right that it was in the best interest to settle at that amount( an arguable position ). If he really wanted to make that argument, he could have done so honestly and upfront. He didn’t because he knew however he couched it he would come off as greedy and the counter-arguments of the law firms’ staff might have prevailed. So he tried to seal the deal by running a con.
Running a con that makes a nice old lady cry so you can get paid = dirtbag. It pretty much defines itself :).
ETA: If I was in Jimmy’s shoes and I honestly believed I was right, I might have tried the honest approach and lived with the consequences. I also might have shut my mouth if I was unsure. I would not run a con, because I’m not a conman.
I’ve gotta agree with SlackerInc. This episode greatly changed my opinion of Howard. I previously thought that he was basically a standup guy who sometimes had to make tough decisions. But Jimmy was right: Howard was giving strong advice that was against his clients’ best interests, knowing that it would benefit him a lot but benefit the clients very little. Well, not just that but also the way he talked to Kim earlier. When confronted with his own unethical behavior he tries to divert attention from it by trying to make others look bad.
Got to agree with you there. Howard may have been doing what’s legal but one could certainly argue that it’s not very ethical to make elderly clients wait when the current payout offer is entirely reasonable—and they can spend it before they kick off. That telling off Jimmy was hubris on Howard’s part. Hubris, I tel you, hubris. It’s everyone’s downfall.
Go and get an actual job somewhere to pay the bills, like a normal person?
I don’t personally see anything wrong with trying to use your influence to help speed up a settlement, a settlement that you worked hard to put together, although using ostracization to make Irene cave does seem to cross a line. However, shite like that happens al the time with legal shenanigans and class action suits. If you have to take everyone’s feelings into account, nothing would get done.
I have no problem whatsoever with Jimmy trying to speed up the settlement, especially as he’s right in this case - the lawyers will drag it out for years and make heap of extra dosh, while not really improving the take-home for the claimants.
However, I do strongly object to his ostracising the woman to make her capitulate - that’s crossing a line from “underhanded” to “malicious” IMO. Would you like it if someone did that to your grandmother? I suspect not.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but were I in Jimmy’s position and my options were “Cause huge emotional damage and fuck up a nice old lady, possibly causing irreparable damage to her friendships and relationships in the only place she knows to call home” or “Go and get a McJob for a while until things blow over”, I’d start updating my CV and doing some doorknocking or making some calls.
Someone please clear something up for me…
What, exactly, is Mike getting from Madrigal? I guess he’s setting himself up as a fake employee so he can receive on-the-books money from them? What is he offering them in exchange?
And if he wants it to all appear above-board, why the hesitation in Madrigal using his real name? Wouldn’t that ensure that things were handled properly? Any red flags, it seems to me, would be raised only if he were caught doing something suspicious (like not using his real name).
mmm
A McJob is not going to pay his bills, first of all. His CV currently consists of mailroom clerk and lawyer. The update would be to include his suspension.
Yes, what he did was pretty mean but it’s hardly unreparable. If she settles the case and says sorry I waited, I’m fairly certain that $15k and contrition will smooth things over.
I thought she made clear it was being done as a favour to Gus.
Mall walk, duh, that’s what they’re made for.
But seriously, Jimmy’s only in this situation because he keeps making awful choices that I wouldn’t make. But no one’s likely to make a popular TV series out of that 
For example, I’ve endured awful jobs for a time because I needed to, in his shoes I’d just stick out the F&M job (which wasn’t even awful) for a year and have a nice chunk of change saved, plus a bonus and good reference from them, and been much closer to a settlement. And he’s shown that it’s possible for him to endure an unpleasant situation for years if he wants to, working in the mail room while secretly getting a law degree, or operating his public defender gig from a tiny room in a nail salon while taking care of his brother isn’t exactly slacking off.
In this case, Jimmy isn’t actually in an objectively bad situation. He has a decent amount of savings and could easily get a regular job to pay the bills for a year, then go back into his old line of work. But he just doesn’t want to give up his ‘dream job’ idea of WM, and fears that if Kim drops the big office for a year and does her MV work alone, it will end the dream. He also is too prideful to just ask Kim for help to keep the dream alive. So instead of just buckling down and doing something reasonable, he decides to seriously hurt an innocent person’s life in the hope of getting fast money so that he can get something that he wants but doesn’t need, to fix problems that he caused himself with bad behavior (like breaking into Chuck’s house).
That’s not a choice I’d make. I’d have no problem (morally, practically I don’t have the skills) ripping off a drug lord’s trucks for cash like Mike has done. But attacking someone who’s innocent, has never wronged me, and who trusts and admires me just to get some money faster so I don’t have to swallow my pride and work temp jobs for a year? Yeah, not in the cards for me.
Mike is getting his money laundered so that it’s on the books in his name, and his granddaughter can inherit it if something happens to him. He told Gus that his concern was that if he died, none of his cash would go to his family when he talked about setting up the scheme, it’s pretty straightforward. Mike isn’t offering them anything in exchange, Gus is the one paying for the deal. Gus took Mike’s $200k and is getting him back the clean, on-the-books $200k because he wants Mike to work for him, and doing a favor is a good way to do that. He’s either paying Lydia extra or exchanging favors to make the deal happen, we haven’t seen what he actually arranged (and probably won’t).
He doesn’t know Lydia or what the scheme is, Gus basically told him ‘show up here’. So he wants to know what’s going on and who she is, and why this scheme isn’t going to blow up on his own head. He also wants to hear her talk about it so that he can get a read on her, since he’s basically putting his safety and his money on the line with this person he hasn’t met.
I suspect that Jimmy usually picks good marks unconsciously, but doesn’t have a choice with Howard. Also his read on Howard is probably completely off, remember that until the “Gollum” blowup Howard has been wearing his ‘professional face of HHM’ mask in all of their interactions except for one short time when Howard talked about “Charlie Hustle,” where Howard was friendly. He does most of his scams on people who he sees with their guard down (drinking and relaxing is really common) or people who don’t put up a front personality. Also, in his head he thinks of the F&M situation as some fun hijinks that he got away with, and switching digits on his brother as sort of a practical joke, and doesn’t realize that Howard finds both of those situations absolutely, disgustingly reprehensible.
I think this shows that Jimmy’s read on Howard was as completely wrong as the audience’s read of Howard at the start, and he thought that he had more of a connection with Howard, and that HHM-face Howard would be inclined to his line of argument. I think it’s good to show that Jimmy’s con-man abilities don’t just work without limit, especially after the road crew van driver scene that I felt like didn’t actually sell itself and veered into “Jimmy’s just magic” territory.
He can get something better than a simple McJob, and even a McJob will pay his real bills. It won’t pay for him to keep half of a business front open, but it won’t pay for a yacht either, and both of those are just yachts. Seriously think about what you’re saying “Jimmy is justified in destroying the social life of an elderly woman on a fixed income who trusts and respects him, who may not live long enough to make new friends, because he wants to keep up the image of working in a partnership with his sort-of-girlfriend and renting office space without office money coming in is expensive”.
Abusing trust and screwing up the lives of people who trust and admire you, who haven’t done anything wrong to you and aren’t just awful people themselves (like Hector) is not in the category of things that can be smoothed over with a little cash.
Also, how exactly will he smooth it over if the stress from having her life upended causes Irene to die while feeling alone and abandoned by all of her friends? The ‘old people might keep over soon’ argument cuts both ways. What if Howard catches on to his shenanigans and finds enough misconduct to cut Jimmy out of the deal, so he doesn’t have $15k to pay her? Even if you accept the idea that cash repairs that kind of abuse of trust, Jimmy doesn’t actually have the cash to repair it, and she might not live long enough for him to repair it by the argument he uses to justify his actions!