Interesting that both Jim and Kim end up doing pro bono work.
It was that he wanted Kim back, at least emotionally if not physically. The reconnection with Kim, especially during his miserable exile in Omaha, showed him what he actually wanted, which was her.
He cannot have her back in any other way except morally - to do the right thing. Sharing a smoke with her was the best thing to happen to him since they were married.
Exactly. That was, in fact, the most important scene in the episode.
Walter never learns, not really. Hank was right; Walter is brilliant but he’s also stupid. He loses the only people he loved. Walter’s great regret is not making more money - and frankly, I didn’t even believe his own memory of what happened at Gray Matter. He was lying, or lying to himself, about why it all fell apart at Gray Matter. His pride blinded him to the truth to the very end. His family, in the end, hated him.
Jimmy learns, and so, in that little way, he regains the respect, maybe even the love, of the woman he loves. Walter could never see past his ego; Jimmy saw past his evasiveness. In that little way, he is genuinely happy. He won.
The lit tip of the cigarette was in color, and in the moment i couldn’t figure out why. But i think this is it. That smoke was a little bit of Jimmy’s old life with Kim.
Right. Walt’s brain was broken in some way, and there’s no telling exactly when that happened. The events at Gray Matter revealed that condition if they didn’t cause it, and from then on Walt pursued money mindlessly. Each decision he had to make came down directly on the side of his own financial advantage without regard to the collateral damage involved.
As I mentioned already, I don’t think Jimmy actually learned all that much. I assume when he wins his appeal and gets out of prison it will be power that enchants him instead of money. The only thing he’ll learn is that money can be tracked too easily.
The exact role he guest starred in on Third Watch, where he was helping to protect an wanted man, who’d redeemed himself with a family, who then was exposed getting injured rescuing people from a fire.
Ok, so as one of the ones who hasn’t watched BCS or BB recently, I couldn’t remember the bit with Walt and Saul in… A bunker somewhere? Did they both get on the same bus to escape to a new life together and held out until they went their separate ways?
I always viewed them as what he is sees when he stops reminiscing and focuses on the TV again. Or, maybe he is dozing and the intros are what he sees when he comes back to.
They were hiding out in the bunker under Best Quality Vacuum while Ed was preparing their new identities. At the beginning of “Granite State” (the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad), Saul arrives at the shop with Ed where Ed tells him that he will need to hide out for a couple of days while his Gene Takavic identity is being finished up. He also informs him that Saul will have to bunk with Walter, who is also at the shop.
The scene with Walter and Saul in the series finale episode takes place at some point during the couple of days they are hiding out.
My first thought was that maybe it was based on the Richard Russo novel. According to IvoryTowerDenizen’s link, it looks like it is.
Walter only became obsessed with money during the events of Breaking Bad. His thing, more than money, was pride. It’s what pushed him out of Gray Matter (and prevented him from accepting the sinecure they later offer that would have solved his money problems legally) and it drove him to all the tragedy. Breaking Bad is a straight up classic Shakespearian tragedy in the true sense; White is the tragic hero, felled by his tragic flaw, which is pride.
Jimmy’s tragic flaw is, for want of a better way of putting this because I’m only 1.5 coffees in, dishonesty. He just cannot seem to avoid lying and twisting the truth to do things in an easier way, even when his intentions are good, and it destroys him and the people around him. The difference is that at the very end, he finally tells the truth even though it will hurt him, and it saves his soul.
He had a seven year deal and threw it away. Why would he then go back to making appeals to get out early? I mean, I can see it happening eventually, but I don’t think that’s supposed to be the takeaway. And as someone upthread said, this is a supermax prison. Most of these guys are lifers. There’s not a whole lot of chances for prison lawyering in this facility.
I think the bus chant and being popular in the kitchen show that he will do just fine in prison. He’s not getting shanked like Mike’s guys did. But I don’t think we’re supposed to expect an elderly Saul Goodman to walk free one day. The idea is that he’ll die in prison, but presumably with a clean conscience, and the knowledge that at least one person in the world respects and cares for him.
And I think he learned a great deal. His whole life, Chuck, Walt, Howard, everyone told him he couldn’t change. He would always be Slippin’ Jimmy. And he believed it, most of his life. Kim was the only person who ever saw anything more to him. And eventually he realized that he didn’t have to define himself that way. He could overcome what everyone told him was an inherent aspect of who he was.
And I think he learned there’s another axis, another whole dimension to life, besides money and freedom. When Kim told him to turn himself in, he said “we’re too smart to throw our lives away”, but he eventually realized that being a fugitive, being Saul, was throwing his life away, and that doing the right thing, what Kim as his conscience told him to do, was the only way to avoid throwing his life away, in the end.
Did he perhaps think that his confession in court would help Kim in the civil suit brought by Hamlin’s widow?
I don’t think so, and in fact I think the “shopping for lawyers” comment was not true, and simply a calculated ploy to get Kim to show up at the trial. In my mind, Kim is in no danger of a lawsuit.
But even if she is, she was adamant earlier in the series “You don’t save me, I save me”. She’s a big girl. Jimmy just wanted her to see his change of heart. He wasn’t making some sacrifice for her sake. That’s not what I got out of it, anyway.
Bill made the shopping for lawyers comment, not Jimmy. He didn’t know that Kim had given the affidavit to Mrs. Hamlin until they were already on the plane to New Mexico.
Agreed. In an alternate universe in which he stays with Grey Matter and he gets very rich, he’s not going to be comparing his yacht to Bezos’s yacht and getting irritated that Bezos’s is bigger. He might, however (assuming he still has the same basic personality) read every magazine profile of him and Gretchen and Elliot and bristle whenever he thinks he, personally, isn’t being given enough credit.
No, as DrCube and others have already responded. But I agree that it was a bit confusing, and not in a way that retroactively seems intended… one bit of slightly sloppy storytelling in an otherwise nearly flawless episode.
I want to give a shout out to the scene between Jimmy and Chuck. When Chuck makes the offer to consult with Jimmy about his clients, is he sincere? Could that work out? Would he be genuinely helpful without being condescending? Who’s the bad guy in that conversation? Whose fault would it be if they made the effort and it blew up?
An absolute master class in representing the complexities of relationships between people who love each other but also have a long history that hangs over everything that happens between them.
I do think the confession would help Kim with the civil case, even if it wasn’t the primary motive. Jimmy just showed that A) He has no problem committing perjury and B) He’s willing to take the blame. As Kim said, Jimmy was the only other witness. He would have no problem going up there now and saying it was all his plan and Kim was just another patsy.
I think Chuck was being sincere. He really believes in the law and that everyone deserves representation.
I think he was being sincere in the moment, but largely because he was bored, sitting at home in the dark, afraid to even leave his house. I’m sure that if Jimmy did start discussing the details of his cases, Chuck would have inevitably allowed his fundamental disdain for Jimmy to leak out.
Remember, Chuck was the guy who publicly supported Jimmy when he became a lawyer, but who also, behind the scenes, made Howard act as the bad guy when Chuck decided there was no way in hell Slippin’ Jimmy would ever become a lawyer at HHM. Faking sincerity is old hat for Chuck.