Better Call Saul - Season Four Discussion & Digestion

Interesting points, and what you say could be possible. Kim could make it work though if she sold it to Mesa Verde as her getting the support she simply must have to do the volume of work. If she was the front person communicating with Mesa Verde, and if the law firm did excellent work, Mesa Verde could be happy.

In my legal career I have seen many attorneys with a large client face the challenge of keeping a personal relationship with the main person at the client, while other attorneys were doing a lot of the work. It can be done. It can also not work at times, especially if the other attorneys either do not do good work, or if the other attorneys have a different vision of how the work should be handled and voice that opinion to the client.

 

I found it telling that Kim approached S&C after seeing Jimmy's sketchpad.

 

I found it even more telling that she did not discuss it with Jimmy before she went to see S&C.

I find Kim's attitude toward Jimmy now a little bit puzzling. He really is no different than he ever was. It seems like she liked him all right when he had a good job as an attorney with Davis & Main, and also when he was functioning well as an attorney and law business generator at their partnership law firm. Then she overlooked his weaknesses and flaws.

Now that he is unemployed to underemployed, she can't stand it, and focuses on his shortcomings. Didn't she know what he was really like all along? She seems to some extent to have focused on the ideal image of being with a successful attorney, instead of really caring about Jimmy the person, come good or bad. Come to think of it, she really pushed him to take the job at Davis & Main.

Maybe it has something to do with her lifelong striving to escape the tiny town in Nebraska and make it as a professional in the big city. She might see his career failure as possibly dragging her back down to where she would have been if she had stayed in her small home town.

She definitely seems to have decided to go her own way and cut him out of her professional plans, without discussing it with him first. At the restaurant, if he had said, "I forbid you to join S&C because I command you to become my law partner in ten months," I doubt that she would have said, "all right, I will do what you want."

Also, Jimmy, for all of his skill in talking to people and conning them, cannot have a direct confrontational conversation with her about her unilateral career choice. He has to pretend to have to go to the bathroom and after he composes himself, has to pretend to be all right with what she is doing, even though it is killing him inside.

 

I think some variation of this is going to happen. HHM, along with Jimmy's financial interests, are in direct conflict with Kim and her new employer. That had to be set up for a reason.

 

I think she does care about Jimmy the person, but she wants him to be the better version of that person and not give in to his shadier side, and sticking with a respectable job is how she thinks he can do that.

 

I think it's important (though I haven't figured it all out yet) that Kim was taken back at how unemotionally Jimmy read the letter from Chuck and how he evaded and then admitted he was not going to seek therapy and "do what was right for him." This seems to have been a catalyst for her behavior, and after seeing the "WM" on the sketchpad she may have realized that a future "WM" was "right for Jimmy" but not necessarily representing any consideration for "what was right for her." I think Jimmy has actually changed. The Jimmy that cared for Chuck, was hurt by Chuck, was gone. There were elements of that Jimmy that Kim cared for more than she may care for Jimmy without them. . .

 

There's always the possibility that she doesn't even think he will get his bar license back. As viewers who already saw the future in BB, we know that he does, but she wouldn't have the benefit of that knowledge. Kim might think Jimmy's law office partnership plans as wishful thinking and fear he will be a lame store clerk and flim-flam man forever.

 

I would add that the way he took the Chuck letter showed to her that he was now unrestrained from trying to keep his good side going to appease Chuck. She knew he had a dark side, but it had been in check. His reaction to the letter was a blatant sign of a new worrisome direction, that she knew he was capable of. His decision not to see a therapist sealed it for her that there was a severe problem now.

 

Of course, Kim does not know that Chuck hurt Jimmy to the core by telling him that he (Chuck) never really cared much about Jimmy anyway, shortly before Chuck died. That conversation could be part of why Jimmy seems so indifferent to Chuck's death.

Jimmy did not tell Kim about that. Many people in a loving, committed relationship would have confided in their partner about that especially hurtful conversation.

Both Jimmy and Kim are not communicating honestly and completely with each other. Both are "sparing the other's feelings" by hiding things from the other. It could lead to their breakup.

 

She also seemed taken aback when Howard confessed to them that he thought that he had caused Chuck's suicide by driving him out of HHM, and then Jimmy just seemed so light and cheerful immediately after hearing Howard's confession. She does not even know the worst, that Jimmy told the malpractice insurance company representative about Chuck's breakdown in the transcript of Jimmy's bar hearing, and set everything in motion which caused Chuck's suicide.

Either Jimmy really does not care about having done that, or he is in so much pain over it that he cannot face it himself at all.

I think that Jimmy accurately thinks that Howard and Chuck were dismissive of him and screwed him over every chance they got, for years, and he sees the disclosure to the malpractice insurance rep, Chuck's suicide, and Howard's current near-breakdown, as payback.

 

Kim could not work on Sandpiper now if she joins S&C, due to attorney ethics rules. In fact, there is an ethical issue about her switching firms from the plaintiff's firm to the defense firm in an ongoing case. The ethics rules require that she have no contact with the case at the new firm, and that the clients on both sides are informed in writing about her change in employment and consent.

That could possibly cause her to not be able to join S&C, or it could cause S&C to have to give up the Sandpiper case if she joins them. S&C might not care about that. They have made a ton of money billing Sandpiper on an hourly basis and getting paid every month, and they do not get any large sum of money when the case is resolved. S&C has already made their money on the Sandpiper case if the work is over or nearly over. They would probably see Kim as the future monetarily, and Sandpiper as the past golden goose they have already exhausted.

 

Kim will most likely blow up at Jimmy and then we wont have to read her mind. Thats usually her m.o.

She holds a lot in and then BOOM! She lets it all out like Miss District Attorney Diahrrea!



That last part was an attempt at a Saulism

 

The Kim/Jimmy relationship has never seemed 'right' to me. From the very beginning, I've always felt a disconnect, I mean, she's a hard-charging winner, where as Jimmy has never risen above various levels of being a loser. Even in the latest episode, showing them in younger days at the law firm, I found myself thinking "what could she possibly find attractive/appealing about this bottom-feeder?". The thing that I can't figure out is whether this 'disconnect' is being done on purpose. With the level of expertise of the writing and acting involved, I imagine it would be child's play for them to portray a loving, healthy relationship and yet they don't, never have. It suggests to me that there's something 'off' about Kim's character, I'll never believe its due to lousy writing or acting!

 

Opposites attract.

 

My experience is at least somewhat different, likely informed by the practice of law in an area where there is a lot of overhead . . . not the least of which are real estate considerations that can break or greatly injure firms that make unwise expansion plans. One instance I recall is a firm that actually had to pay its landlord not to occupy planned expansion space after the economic downturn in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Nevertheless, I can see how Kim's new firm could structure their relationship with her to avoid any downside. There are various types of "partners", including non-equity partners who are little more than glorified senior associates. If the firm can fairly cleanly sever their relationship with Kim, if necessary, the worst that could happen is that they lose the Mesa Verde money tree and end up back where they were pre-Kim. Otherwise, Kim stays and makes money for the firm (and ups their prestige) or they terminate her and Mesa Verde decides to stay with the firm.

Where's the legal nerd alert button? We need one for this thread.

In any event, I think it is agreed that Mesa Verde would have to be consulted before she pens any deal with the new firm.

 

I wasn't a breaking b obsessive (watched it live) so I don't notice a lot of the bb easter eggs that are thrown in, but yeah its probably going to increase with the timelines getting closer.

I dig it, and as much as I love Michael McKean (true class act) I think Chuck (rip) running around turning off lights had run its course and trading that for more Cartel works for me (and storywise makes sense in the long run)

 

Either that or Jimmy has something going on with his little jimmy that keeps Kim hanging on.

 

Female nipples are much more offensive than the F word.

 

Me too. When Gus started talking in the hospital room about growing up in Chile I started to smile because I thought we were finally going to get to hear some of this information - and hear it from the man, himself. Turns out that whole scene was dissapointing. The story Gus told was not written to the usual standards of the show and I really don't think the scene as a whole added anything at all to the episode.

 

Do we know if Jimmy has ever been married? I might be forgetting an earlier plot line now, but I just rewatched an episode of BB S3 where Saul says to Walt, "Hell, my second wife screwed my father-in-law and I got over that." Maybe that was just a line to make Walt feel better about Skylar's infidelity (that was the context of the remark) but it made me wonder if Jimmy's previous marriages had been mentioned in BCS. I also realised I can't remember what we know about his mother. Didn't she die when he was quite young?

 

Perhaps it's just simple chemistry/attraction. Jimmy's a very charismatic , charming guy with a certain outward innocence - an underdog. I can see how those qualities might be attractive to a potential partner.

 

He's also a lot of fun - something Kim doesn't get near enough of.

 

I didn't catch this, but someone else did: anyone notice that the first HHM employee in Jimmy's oscars pool chose ''Howard's End?"

 

Enjoying the ride of s4, great television. Criticisms aside, this and Ozark s2 and the I turn the bloody box off...

 

As I've indicated before, the key to understanding Kim is the name she has given alter ego (i.e., Viktor's accomplice, Giselle).