#bcs 3x6

[kiraalexander]

AND NOW WE COME TO

jimmy became saul in order to stay with kim and it KILLS ME

like, throughout the entire show we’ve been seeing jimmy’s longing to become partners with kim, but most of all, professional partners. 

he started it in season 1 with bingo, when he tried to interest kim in going into elder law with him in his fancy new office.

then he takes the job with davis and main against his better interests and instincts, in order to stay with kim, because she won’t go scamming with him every night, and the only chance he has of really spending quality time with her is to work with her.

it’s only when his ability to freely work with kim on his case gets sabotaged that he breaks away from davis and main, and offers to go out on his own as wexler & mcgill. and he’s so desperate for this that when she offers the imperfect solution of wexler AND mcgill, he jumps for it.

when kim’s stake in their quasi-partnership is threatened, he goes straight to his scammer instinct and not just sabotages chuck, but hurts him in the way that cuts chuck the worst (because siblings always know how to hurt you the most).

and think about how much being co-counsel with kim must mean to jimmy. but the fact is, it’s his own trial, so the conditions are ruined from the start. he has to salvage this somehow, but with a 12-month suspension, how is he going to keep up the partnership he’s spent so long trying to achieve?

giving up the office means giving up the very thing that ties the two of them together in jimmy’s mind. the shared office space is EVERYTHING to jimmy, and he’s going to do whatever it takes to keep it... but he’s going to lose kim in the process.

and all of this could have been overcome if 1. kim had not been so hyperfocused on work and professional success (yeah, I’m going for Kim’s Fatal Flaw here even if as far as sin goes it is minor compared to jimmy’s), and if 2) jimmy didn’t think that the only way he can be worthy of kim is on a professional level. she’s signaled to him that his professional success has nothing to do with her love for him, but he can’t bring himself to understand that his is not a rejection of him as a person. he wants to do the thing he loves most with her, and what he loves most is wheeling, dealing and convincing. he does this as a lawyer and a scammer, and the only way she can accept him and keep her job is if he does it only as a lawyer.

BUT HE WANTS KIM TO BE HIS NEW MARCO. AND SHE CAN’T BE HIS MARCO.

like, i fantasize about a universe where mcwexler actually works, and it’s a universe where kim is able to take a step back from her job and success in order to spend quality time with jimmy that doesn’t have to do with work. but more, it’s a universe where jimmy lets go of the idea that he has to be A Successful Lawyer in order to be with kim in any way, and embarks on entrepreneurship with kim supporting him financially and emotionally until he gets on his feet.

and meantime he gets off on waiting on her when she gets home from work because, you know, sub.

[kiraalexander]

so it was absolutely heartbreaking to watch rebecca and jimmy argue. like, we’ve gotten used to jimmy and chuck’s back and forth, and honestly, it’s very easy to get caught up in how reprehensible chuck’s actions have been, especially because we’ve been presented with this narrative from jimmy’s perspective, and from a place of sympathy for jimmy. chuck has been awful to him, but we haven’t seen the countless ways that jimmy must have broken chuck’s heart from back before jimmy went to albuquerque.

but i mean. rebecca comes in and she’s a whole fresh perspective, the in law who never was in on the family drama, who only had an outsider’s perspective. and when she says “chuck was right about you,” it was devastating for me because i realized holy shit, she’s right. chuck was absolutely right about jimmy, even if it was for the wrong reasons. looking at the situation from rebecca’s perspective, jimmy’s a liar who just exploited his brother’s mental illness to slither out of the consequences of his own actions. watching kim realize this, even a little bit, was just the velvet glove cast in iron on top of this shit sandwich.

[kiraalexander]

but why didn't rebecca just go to howard, what was the point of her going to jimmy's office and guilt tripping him for not dropping everything to look after chuck again?

Because Rebecca doesn’t know Howard, she knows Jimmy. 

Rather, she knows the Jimmy who would do anything for Chuck. And we have hints that Jimmy pretended that Rebecca’s presence was necessary to help Chuck through his illness in order to get her to the trial, where he then delivered his coup de grace - revealing the true nature of Chuck’s mental illness in front of Rebecca, the person Chuck cares for most.

Jimmy used his position that he’s enjoyed in the past, of the fuckup but sympathetic little brother, in order to get Rebecca in play and devastate Chuck all the more.

Now let’s be real. Chuck’s actions are reprehensible. There’s no excuse for what he did to Jimmy for so many years. He sabotaged Jimmy’s dream, he lied, and he used Howard to defer the blame from himself in order to maintain his relationship with his brother, who cared for him, and helped him deny the panic disorder he’s so clearly suffering from.

But Rebecca doesn’t know this. Chuck and Jimmy have both carefully shielded her from the worst parts of Chuck’s mental illness. All she knows is that Chuck helped Jimmy out from a terrible fix back in Cicero, that Jimmy pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and then Jimmy betrayed both Chuck and her in the worst way possible.

Jimmy is right not to go with Rebecca to try to get Chuck out of his house. But Rebecca is also right (considering the extent of her knowledge) to ask Jimmy to come, because she has every reason to think that Jimmy could help Chuck. Where she’s right is when she says that Chuck’s mentally ill - and implies that Jimmy has not been treating Chuck as though he’s mentally ill. If he had, he’d have committed Chuck back in Season 1, which could have spared both of them a lot of heartbreak, and could possibly have helped Chuck recover from his panic disorder much sooner.

So that’s what I mean when both Jimmy and Rebecca are right. They’re arguing from the extent of their experience and knowledge, and also their ability to deal with Chuck’s condition, given their past with him. And honestly, that’s what makes this situation truly tragic - neither is right, neither is wrong, but if either one of them could have understood the other, then they could have made a significant difference in what’s about to happen next.

[kiraalexander]

my Short Thought is that Nacho and Mike are going to collude to bring about whatever it is that puts Hector in his chair.