Cry of the week: Jimmy bests Chuck on 'Better Call Saul'
Welcome to our weekly series "Cry of the Week," in which we highlight whatever moment made us ugly cry on our couches the most in the past seven days.
It's all been leading up to this.
Over the past two and a half seasons, we've watched as the relationship between Jimmy and Chuck on Better Call Saul has gone from uncomfortable to ugly to downright toxic. In this week's episode, "Chicanery," that sibling rivalry comes to a head in a devastating courtroom showdown.
Our boy Jimmy comes out on top, as we kinda-sorta knew he would. (There's no Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad if Chuck is successful in stripping him of his law license.) This should be a moment of triumph – he's devised a perfect plan and executed it flawlessly, and the outcome has been exactly what he wanted.
But the look on Jimmy's face says it all. He takes no pleasure or satisfaction in destroying his brother, because he's well aware of how much it's cost him. It's a victory, yes, but a pyrrhic one that hurts more, in some ways, than a loss would have.
And Jimmy's not the only McGill brought low in this episode. At the start of "Chicanery," Chuck looks like the cat that ate the canary. He's so sure, and so relieved, that he's finally outsmarted his wily younger brother. Then Jimmy robs Chuck of the thing that matters to him most: his pride.
As Chuck's business partner and Chuck's ex-wife look on, Jimmy paints Chuck as a mentally ill man driven by his spite and anger. Or rather, he proves the first part, by proving that Chuck's electromagnetic hypersensitivity is psychosomatic in nature. Then he steps back and lets Chuck's subsequent outrage do the rest.
The thing is, Chuck's not wrong. Jimmy really has committed most (or all?) of the sins he's being accused of, and probably does deserve to be disbarred before he can do any further damage. Nor is Jimmy wrong about Chuck. Whatever love once existed between the brothers, it's withered away to the point that Chuck was put himself through pain just for the chance to ruin Jimmy.
Jimmy could argue that Chuck started it. Chuck could say that Jimmy did. At this point, though, it doesn't really matter. They're engaged in full-blown psychological warfare now, and neither man has the mettle to break free.
We don't know what'll happen to Chuck after this. He's never mentioned in Breaking Bad, or in any of the Better Call Saul flash-forwards. But we know exactly what comes of Jimmy, and we know Chuck will be proven right. Jimmy will never change. He'll only get more jaded, more brazen, and more immoral.
What Chuck fails to realize is his role in setting Jimmy on that path. The Jimmy we met in season one was a shady but basically decent person who wanted to do right by the two people he cared about most, Chuck McGill and Kim Wexler. It's for them that he's tried so hard to go stay on the right side of the law and avoid the easy shortcuts.
Now, backed into a corner by Chuck, Jimmy has damaged one of those relationships beyond repair. In the process, he's lost another little piece of his soul. Eventually, he'll lose another, and another, until he transforms into Saul Goodman.
That's not a surprise or a spoiler – it's the whole premise of Better Call Saul, and the reason we tuned in to begin with. What we didn't anticipate, though, was that the process would be so painful to witness.
