So, it looks like the move from Jimmy McGill/Elder Law to Saul Goodman/Criminal Law might have been largely necessitated by his burning his bridges with the senior citizen circuit. I wonder if the Jimmy McGill name in general also catches notoriety as the ruthless lawyer that was so lowdown that he drove his own brother to suicide. Either way, his eventual new practice does now seem like a natural fit.
FWIW my insurance doing only criminal law costs $500/year. Criminal law has cheap malpractice insurance, because in order to win a suit the client needs to demonstrate actual innocence, which is difficult-to-impossible in most cases.
See, I told you guys you were being too hard on Jimmy! He torched his settlement money and his future elder law practice to make things right for Irene.
As it turned out, and only after seeing Kim’s very close brush with death. He got a very sudden taste of what’s important in life and did the right thing ethically. However, he was being a downright prick in the previous episode, so he could still go either way under pressure. I don’t think Chuck’s death is going to make it any easier to come to terms with his choices in life.
Prediction: Kim joins HHM
CPR training in 2003 definitely included administering breaths, but you are right, that is no longer the standard (at least for lay people).
I don’t think Gus gave it much thought beyond ‘somebody has do do something’. So I think you are right again: you are overthinking it. 
mmm
If you go back and look at the scene, HHM wasn’t in a tizzy. Howard and Chuck were the only ones talking to the insurance agents. Howard was pissed like anyone would be over rates doubling, a supplier suddenly making something cost tens or hundreds of thousands a year more is the kind of thing you argue about. But it looked to me like Howard wanted to mitigate what was going on like you would any other expense, despite being pissed at the unfairness (if Chuck’s rate went way up he probably wouldn’t be so mad, but doubling rates for the entire firm is a dick move). Chuck decided singlehandedly to sue the insurance company because of his ego, and tried to commit HHM to the lawsuit on his own - just like Jimmy ran the commercial for Davis and Main on his own. (The decision is something that all of the partners should vote on, not something one person pushes the firm into).
Howard waited after the insurance people left to let Chuck explain himself, since maybe Chuck actually had a slam-dunk legal trick to solve the situation. But when it was clear that Chuck was just vaguely threatening a lawsuit with no real grounds, and was looking to commit more theoretically billable hours to suing the insurance company than the rate increase, Howard asked him to retire. HHM never threw its weight behind Chuck’s threat, it never even got to a vote of the partners - the only thing they were in a tizzy about was Chuck’s lawsuit. And while Chuck and Howard working together have apparently been able to get the other partners to agree with them without much effort in the past, I don’t see the partners voting to support Chuck’s out-of-the-blue lawsuit, especially since the other ‘name on the sign’ partner would be opposed.
It’s not quite that non-compulsory - I’m pretty sure that if HHM stopped carrying malpractice insurance, a lot of their clients would be worried. It’s something that a high end law firm is supposed to have, you don’t look like a respectable firm if you can’t carry that insurance. The clients might not check for it, but other firms would find out and make a point of bringing it up when they’re competing for the same client. Saul wouldn’t have the same problem, because aside from criminal malpractice insurance being cheap, he isn’t going to sell himself as a respectable firm. “Hey drug dealer looking to get out of jail time, your CRIMINAL lawyer who runs ambulance chaser ads doesn’t bother with insurance because he’s that good” is really different than “Hey bank that’s looking to expand operations, the conservative, respectable law firm that is going to handle complex regulation interactions has so much trouble they can’t even get insurance”.
I don’t think the insurance is a major obstacle that’s going to recur, it was a reasonable point to drive action in this season but isn’t going to affect much later.
Nitpick: He did sacrifice his future elder law practice, but he didn’t sacrifice his settlement money. He isn’t going to get the settlement now, but he’s going to get even more money when the case finishes grinding out.
Ahh, but what would it be if you were doing CRIMINAL law?
As a partner?
That would be some really subtle writing, but you could be right. It’s very “Gus” to be CPR trained and to do it right.
A wild dumb alternative guess: Gus knew Hector would rather die than have lip contact with a gay man in general or Gus in particular.
Agree with prior posters that Gus figured out what Nacho had done; curious how he’ll use that.
I’m thinking that Jimmy is going to somehow lose the settlement money. Maybe because of his stunt with Irene, which is now public knowledge.
Funny, because I was trained in CPR either in the 90s or early 00s, and when I watched the scene I wondered why Gus was not administering breaths every few compressions.
I thought Chuck’s destruction of his house went on a little long. But I guess he has been such a strong character, that I don’t begrudge him that amount of screen time as a farewell.
What Howard “owes” Chuck (or his estate) is interesting. Of course it is TV, but they didn’t allege to or even show a single piece of paper being signed. Sure, there was the public farewell, but enforcement could prove difficult.
So - did Hector anticipate having his goons kill Gus and the other guy?
I liked Chuck telling Jimmy that, if he was going to keep screwing people over, why bother with the guilt. I still really like Jimmy as a character. And I can see him being pulled in different directions. But if you anticipate unpleasant results, but choose to act anyways, save the hair shirt. I enjoyed that stratght talk in the same episode as Howard calling Chuck’s “bullshit.”
I don’t see that happening. Even putting aside from the bad blood between her and Howard, why would she want to work for HHM - I don’t see anything in it for her? She is making money hand over fist with MV and gets to do things her way, if she goes to HHM then she does the same sort of work for less money and still is expected to put in long hours. The only discontent she has shown with MV specifically is burning herself out by working too much, which is still a risk at HHM and which she can fix fairly easily (she was interviewing to hire help back at then end of last season). When she talked about To Kill a Mockingbird she did show some discontent with doing regular corporate law (like MV), since she’s just helping a bank expand and not changing the world or saving an innocent man, but going to HHM isn’t going to help with that, she’s just going to do more routine ‘help the rich get richer’ work.
I think it’s much more likely that she ends up in some kind of criminal law practice with Jimmy than that she goes to HHM. Plus it’s not going to be HHM anymore, the M is gone
But Jimmy’s response to that was to make a serious effort to redress the harm he did Irene. At some personal cost, he revealed his machinations and made himself the bad guy so that the “girls” would take Irene back. That would have hurt (Jimmy really values being [del]everyone’s[/del] most people’s friend) even if it didn’t cost him his future client base.
So I think he did take the lesson about not *pretending *to be sorry after you screw people over, but not quite in the way Chuck meant it or we expected. I fully expect he will apply it in that way fairly soon, however, and that will be part of the rise of Saul Goodman. Chuck’s death is going to affect him badly. The last words Chuck spoke to him were: “You never really meant that much to me”. Jimmy idolised Chuck when he was young, and younger brothers often do (mine didn’t, the swine). He was genuinely shaken by that sentiment, and now it will haunt him. I can quite easily see how he could conclude that there’s no point in trying to genuinely reach out to other people after that. Kim will be the one thing keeping him straight.
Gus is absolutely trained in CPR. The latest Los Pollos Hermanos training video makes that pretty clear (plus a ton of BB Easter eggs - hilarious).
If she goes back to a big firm I think Schweikart and Cokely is more likely. They were ready to hire her last season, and she just referred the oil company case to them.
I clicked the link and (after an ad), the video started up and played about 7 seconds, and then cut to something else. Is this just me?
Oooh, yeah, that would be juicy. Any legal eagles know if Jimmy’s finder’s-fee contract would likely have some ethics provision that would let HHM and the plaintiffs claw that bonus back?
As others have said, I think that was a direct homage to Harry Caul’s breakdown at the end of The Conversation.
They can steer it in any direction (assuming Chuck really is dead - just because Michael McKean may have called it “Chuck’s death scene” doesn’t mean it actually is; I don’t think the actors have any idea what’s going to happen other than a script or two into the future). A lot depends on the check that Howard gave Chuck. If Chuck deposited the check or if the check is found in Chuck’s house after the fire, then Chuck can be demonstrated to have accepted a buyout per the terms of the partnership agreement (through an exchange of interest), Chuck is no longer a partner, and HHM would owe his estate the balance. If the check is lost or destroyed, then there might be no evidence that Chuck is no longer a partner and terms to handle the death of a partner kick in - possibly including a “key man” life insurance payout to cover the payment to the estate.
Of course what I would like to see is Chuck dying intestate (his arrogance making him think he is immortal) and Jimmy inheriting so HHM owes Jimmy $9M. Instead of insisting on the money, he forces Howard to take Kim on as a named partner in HHMW.