#yahootv

Q: Chuck’s smugness on the stand, especially when he makes his little speech about how he knows why Jimmy brought Rebecca there, then his outburst… it’s reminiscent of Jack Nicholson on the stand at the end of A Few Good Men. Chuck is so sure that he has disarmed Jimmy, and he gets very, very angry when it turns out that really Jimmy has just set him up. Was that an intentional nod to A Few Good Men? A - Gordon Smith: “Yes, and no. We went kind of to the same source that A Few Good Men went to, which is The Caine Mutiny of it. All three scenes have the same DNA, I think, which is, yes, that sense of somebody brought down by their own hubris. It’s sort of the classic of tragedy structure, where somebody has the opportunity to not do this thing that destroys them, and they still do it. And I think Chuck is exactly that character. He counts on the fact that he’s the smartest guy in the room to always save him. And sometimes when you’re the smartest guy in the room, but you’re not the nicest guy in the room, that can come back to bite you in the ass.” – from ‘Better Call Saul’ Postmortem: The Truth of Chuck’s Illness and Jimmy’s Big Play (YahooTV)

Q: That final shot of the exit sign, and Chuck’s dejection — it is perfect, and such a powerful end note for the hearing. A - Gordon Smith: “Yeah, I think that came out really great. Dan Sackheim, who directed this episode, has a fantastic eye. It’s in the script, but I think he found exactly the right way to get that look and that moment out of Chuck, because Chuck just looks so, so defeated, and so small. That buzz of the electricity through the exit sign just feels overpowering to everybody, I think, at that moment.”

Why did you decide to end it there, without yet revealing the outcome of the hearing? A: “We kind of hoped that, generally speaking, the outcome was set. There’s obviously more ground to cover, which we will get into in the next episode — there’s some other procedure to be done — but by that point, you’ve gotten through the bulk of what we were gonna see, and that to whatever degree the bar decides, Jimmy has at least proved what he needed to prove from Chuck, and so it’s up to them to see how much they weigh what happens here in Jimmy’s favor, or not. But, yeah, we felt like for the dramatic structure of it, it was better to leave it there, and leave you feeling like, oh, Chuck has fallen apart. That’s what you needed to know. So hopefully it is pretty clear. Jimmy’s done what he needed to do. Everything Jimmy needed to do, or could do, is there, and the question that we’ll [answer] in Episode 6 is how much of an effect that had.”

Q: In the end credits, the episode is dedicated to Jane Marzelli Smith, esq. Is that your mom? Was she a consultant for any of the storylines on the show? A - Gordon Smith: “That is my mom. My mother was a tax attorney. She passed last year, just before we started breaking this episode. She helped us with various things throughout the years. She helped us back on Breaking Bad, with the IRS [story] with Skyler, and my mom has actually had those kinds of scenes, so we talked through some of that stuff with her. And she helped us with the Sandpiper Crossing stuff. My sister is also a lawyer and helped out more directly with getting the sort of trial shape of it in order. But yes, that is a dedication to my mom. It’s very nice of Vince [Gilligan] and Peter [Gould] to do that for me.”