#bcs thoughts

not a single soul:

me: You see, Jimmy McGill did become exactly the kind of lawyer that Chuck had said he would become, except Chuck was still wrong, primarily about the causality, as it didn't happen because Jimmy couldn't do it any other way, it happened because the society didn't *allow* him to do it any other way, not least bc of Chuck's own contempt and public disregard for Jimmy.

Chuck had all the power to make the Albuquerque legal community respect Jimmy, regardless of his background and education, but he chose to keep punching down instead, punishing Jimmy for everything bad that's ever happened, like he was his bad luck charm. So when the last straw dropped and Jimmy's personality started to split he didn't have a support system to keep him together, he only had Kim, who tried her best to not let him break, but it was ultimately beyond her capabilities (and so he broke but she loved him nonetheless).

I do!! mostly I want to point you to this great post, which I think has a really smart take on the vagueness of "justice" in the finale and how much is left to the viewer to define. 

honestly, my read on jimmy’s ending has always been that the point of the prison is figurative — I don't mean it's not literal within the world of the story (it's not a dream), but it is a story. jimmy's prison sentence is exactly as real as the prison bar imagery the directors kept trapping him and kim in for the whole series, especially the final season; it’s just taking that imagery to its logical conclusion. he's in a prison of his own making and has to find a way to live in it. I definitely don't think better call saul developed faith in the justice system or carceral punishment at the eleventh hour (jimmy’s apparent folk hero status behind bars feels like a testament to saul goodman’s virtues in a rigged system). but “judging” jimmy in the eyes of the same law that he twisted for his own gain is poetic. the show isn’t interested in realism here; it’s interested in a man who’s living and dying by the same sword (the law). 

there are also plot reasons: as a wanted man, jimmy couldn’t have publicly, legally reclaimed his name any other way, and reclaiming his name is the emotional core of his arc across breaking bad and better call saul. but thematically, I think the finale is using courtroom imagery to complicate easy conclusions about justice, doubling down on how difficult it is to reconcile legality and morality (“that wasn’t a crime” “yes it was”). and if that struggle for reconciliation also falls to the viewer in the end, that’s interesting, because the focus of the final season was on how much harm can be caused by someone taking the definition of right and wrong into their own hands. but maybe better call saul believes that taking the definition of right and wrong into our own hands is just what life is. if every system is broken, maybe there’s nothing else but to be our own judges.

“The structure of the show finally makes sense: everything Chuck did was to get further away from Jimmy, and everything Jimmy did was to get closer to Chuck.”

Hey Same Anon, sorry it took me so long to respond to this, but there needs to be more Novixler content on these godforsaken internets so let’s go.

I feel like when Kim and Paige get together, Kim’s pretty raw from her relationship with Jimmy and all the devastating consequences it has wrought. So I think that roles in her new relationship are pretty much the last thing on her mind - she’s likely in a place where a lot of us have been, where she knows it’s not a good idea to plunge into another relationship where her previous one had gone so badly, but she’s so smitten with Paige that she can’t help herself. 

But I think Paige is intuitive enough to recognize that Kim needs to be taken care of right now, and that includes taking a more dominant role for the sole reason that Kim just needs a break. This includes:

- Making Kim pancakes for breakfast and cutting them into bite size pieces before she wakes up so Kim doesn’t have to deal with either using both hands to feed herself or being infantilized by getting fed;

-Learning how to brush Kim’s hair into the perfect curled ponytail so Kim doesn’t have to; and

-Going down on Kim so expertly that for five minutes after she comes, Kim can’t stand to be touched from navel to knee.

it's become even more obvious this season that better call saul is not at all the antithesis of breaking bad, even though it is the antithesis of the kind of antihero story breaking bad exemplified. both shows are about moral agency in the wild west. they assert choice as identity (you are what you choose to do) and ask whether those choices redefine you or just reveal who you are intrinsically. they're both about men who become the architects of their own destruction and about how one person's actions can trap others.

I think better call saul is doing it in a much sadder and richer way. jimmy is acting out of deflected love, in a system that gives him fewer options to succeed without bending the rules. walt is handed an out early on from his wealthy ex-partners, but he doesn't take it because of his pride. he does what he does for entirely selfish reasons: money, power, ego, control. I've seen some pushback against walt hate on the premise that it ignores the humanity in the writing or whatever, so let me be clear: walt sucks because he's written like a human being. he's terrible to his son and only dotes on him when he wants to feel like a big provider. he ignores and lies to his pregnant wife. his students don't like him. he thinks he cares about jesse, but he's manipulating him, and he's at his most affectionate when he has the most control over him. that's not real care. I do think in the later seasons it sometimes borders on ridiculous how loathsome walt can be, and he's not the best character on breaking bad (jesse, skyler, mike, and hank are all more interesting. marie and gus are cooler). but the writers took care to root the worst things about him in personality traits that clearly predated his little meth empire. this is not a good guy we caught at a bad time. this is a small man who's masked his bitterness in socially acceptable ways for years.

in better call saul the chain reaction is more tangled. jimmy takes the opportunities that he's given to change, and then he tanks them, and his self-sabotage is both a fatal flaw and a response to legitimate structural problems in the legal system. (the rules are harder to justify when those rules are designed to maintain a status quo that makes upward mobility so hard, makes forgiveness so hard. think of jimmy's speech in "winner": one teenage shoplifting incident will follow you forever. they are never, ever letting you in. he got a whole law degree, but it was from an online university, so should it count?) he's much more shaped by other people than walt is ("people tell me how they see me"). better call saul builds on the big ideas in breaking bad but really commits to making the world around the fucked-up guy fucked up too, and it makes the tragedy so much deeper. because ultimately it's still a story about personal responsibility, just as breaking bad is. even when you have no good options, you still have to live with your choices.