#gilliverse

Good question, Chuck! Why have regrets? I agree that if we're being rational, regrets are meaningless. Beating yourself up wishing you could change something you cannot, is ultimately a waste of time and energy. The only thing you can realistically do is move on and hope to do better next time. But also

it is true, Jimmy! It sounds unnecessarily harsh, because there's an implication that hurting people always makes you a bad person, but that is not true! You will hurt people, because you are a person. Nobody is a saint, people hurt people. Having relationships with other people means making ourselves vulnerable, and being vulnerable means hurting and getting hurt and forgiving and repeating. That's just human.

But Chuck doesn't actually care about any of that. He is using his methodical approach not to make a sound argument against having regrets, but specifically to hurt Jimmy.

See, this is 50% a good advice. Accepting that you have and will make mistakes is essential. However, apologising, as in, recognising that you did something wrong and acknowledging it to a person, whom you have wronged with your actions, is also important. It's, again, human. I wish you were able to do that, Chuck.

Jimmy is trying to call Chuck out on his hypocrisy as in 'if I'm a bad person doesn't it make you a bad person too, because you hurt people too, me most of all'. As we can see, however, Jimmy has chosen the wrong point of counterattack, because:

Chuck doesn't believe in regrets

Chuck doesn't believe in apologies

but more crucially:

Chuck doesn't want to stop their mutual circle of violence.

And that's it. Nothing Jimmy can say or do would make Chuck to concede and meet him halfway, because Chuck simply refuses to.

Chuck is hurt by the entire existence of Jimmy. He wants Jimmy to be as hurt by his existence as well. Except Jimmy already is. Has always been. Jimmy needed Chuck to be his brother. Chuck saw Jimmy as his rival.

I believe, Bob said in one of the interviews (or was it Michael i don't remember tbh), the best thing they could do for themselves is to stop talking to each other. Leave one another alone forever.

This, Chuck! If only you meant it. And if only you'd said it sooner. And if only Jimmy could get on board with that.

But alas. They are both too tangled up in their pain and family and refusal to accept each other to ever let go.

Bullshit! Double bullshit. For one, as we've established over and over, Chuck hurts Jimmy very cruelly and purposefully. For two, LMAO. Yes, brother mine, you matter to me so little, that I spent most of my life trying to ruin yours, because you definitely did not offend me so deadly by being born.

Hurting Jimmy hurts Chuck too (and the opposite goes without question, obviously). He relapses every time he does something especially awful. Then, instead of breaking the circle he just punishes Jimmy more. He knew that his death would crush Jimmy...

So anyway.

In this scene Chuck is being a monster to Jimmy. His worst nightmare. Tries to camouflage it as being rational, but is just being a massive asshole. Obviously.

But there is someone in this episode who very implicitly and subtly acts exactly in the way Jimmy needs. How a person who loves him should act. How Chuck should've acted if he weren't Chuck.

And it's Kim of course. Look.

Jimmy laments about his career, about fucking up so greatly that he'd need to start completely anew once reinstated. Kim doesn't correct him. He did fuck up. She just

lets him know that there is hope

and tells him that they will fix this (somewhat a mirror of the support he gave her after the crash).

And then she kisses him promptly as a wordless reaffirmation of them.

And that's the thing. Fucking up is inevitable. Everyone does it. It doesn't automatically make you a bad person. There is no point in drowning in regrets. There is a point however in forgiving yourself and your loved ones. In some cases over and over and over again. And moving on.

I see all of it in what Kim is doing and saying here.