Better Call Saul: Chuck Was Right All Along

Chuck McGill did nothing wrong. He was the best character in Better Call Saul by far. He’s a real antagonist, unlike that soiboy Lalo Salamanca. He can actually come up with a revenge plan that makes sense and works, not whatever comic book bullshit this was. He was completely based and red pilled, and if he was the villain of Season 6, things would have gone down a lot differently.

Alright I admit I’m memeing here. Chuck is of course a flawed human being, like everyone else on the show. He let his insecurities and jealousy of his own brother destroy his life, both literally and metaphorically. But I think that many fans of the show dislike Chuck for all the wrong reasons.

They don’t like him because he’s arrogant, deceitful, and most of all because he’s mean to Jimmy. They blame him for Jimmy’s downfall, saying that it was his sabotage of Jimmy’s career that set him on the path to becoming Saul Goodman. But not only was Chuck 100% right about Jimmy, blaming Chuck for Jimmy’s decisions is entirely missing the point of the show.

So in this video, let’s examine Chuck McGill, and why he was right all along.

Chuck McGill is Jimmy’s older brother, and in many ways his polar opposite. Where Jimmy starts out as a two bit criminal, Chuck is a straight laced lawyer. Where Jimmy is a clown, Chuck is respected as a serious professional. And where Jimmy is constantly breaking the rules, Chuck adheres to the law like a religion.

Before the series started, Chuck got Jimmy out of jail time after he served some kids some chocolate softserve. However in return, Jimmy agreed to give up his scamming ways and move to Albuquerque where Chuck was building a legal practice. Jimmy got a job in the mailroom of the Hamlin, Hamlin, McGill, keeping to his promise to not be Slippin Jimmy.

Eventually Jimmy passed the bar exam by taking online classes at the University of American Samoa on his own time. Chuck was shocked that Jimmy had managed to become a lawyer all on his own. However when Jimmy wanted to work at HHM alongside Chuck, Chuck refused to allow it. Instead of telling Jimmy directly though, he had Howard, one of his partners, take the blame for not hiring him at the firm. Instead Jimmy began a solo practice and started doing low paying public defender work, eking out a meager existence.

Around this time, Chuck separated from his wife Rebecca. We aren’t told why, but afterwards he began to develop a sensitivity to electromagnetism. Though the condition was psychosomatic, as it grew worse and worse he stopped going into work and removed all electronics from his house. At the start of the series he is basically a shut-in, completely dependent on Jimmy to bring him supplies everyday.

Eventually Jimmy learns the truth about Chuck’s sabotage of his career at HHM. Outraged at the betrayal, Jimmy cuts ties with his brother. He even goes further when Chuck manages to steal Kim’s client Mesa Verde. Jimmy secretly takes documents from Chuck’s house while he’s passed out and sabotages them, resulting in a legal mess for Mesa Verde and them leaving the firm to go with Kim.

Knowing full well that Jimmy sabotaged him, Chuck orchestrates a confession from him and later baits him into committing a crime to try and destroy the evidence. This results in Jimmy being arrested and having to go in front of the bar to defend his license to practice. The evidence is very damning to Jimmy, but he manages to trick Chuck into having a meltdown in front of the bar and giving a paranoid rant against Jimmy’s actions. Chuck is humiliated, and in the end Jimmy is only suspended for a year.

After the hearing, Chuck’s mental state continues to deteriorate after a number of setbacks. He has a falling out with Howard, and is forced out of the firm. His sensitivity returns full blast, and with no one in his life and nothing else to live for, Chuck kills himself by setting his house on fire with a lamp.

Now Chuck is characterized very villainously throughout the series. Not only does he stand against Jimmy’s chances of getting hired at HHM, he’s a very unlikable person. He’s judgmental, constantly thinking that Jimmy is up to no good. He’s also very arrogant. He believes that he is better than other people, and when he’s put into stressful situations he reacts very harshly to any sense of criticism.

Part of the reason why Chuck is so hostile to Jimmy is his jealousy. Chuck worked hard his entire life, becoming a successful lawyer and always playing by the rules. However as perfect of a person as he tried to be, he was always jealous that Jimmy was able to easily charm people and be likable in a way that he was not.

When their mother is on her deathbed, her last words were asking for Jimmy, not Chuck who was sitting right there next to her. His parent’s constant preference for Jimmy, despite his wrong doings, really make Chuck envious of his brother.

This is why when Jimmy becomes a lawyer, Chuck is secretly furious. Being a successful lawyer was the one thing Chuck had going that put him above other people. Despite how likable Jimmy was, at least he was a two-bit scam artist. However when Jimmy passes the bar, Chuck can’t stand the idea that Jimmy could consider himself on the same level as him.

Chuck’s insecurity and jealousy manifests itself as his electromagnetic sensitivity. It’s confirmed throughout the series that the condition is psychological, not actually a real disease. Not only does it develop after his wife Rebecca leaves him, it grows worse whenever his suspicions of Jimmy flare up.

Chuck’s condition isolates him, both literally and figuratively. He loses his career, his friends and family, and is left in a dark, broken house. His pride and ego push away everyone close to him until he’s left all alone, which is why he ultimately takes his own life. Without a doubt Chuck had serious flaws that ended up being his undoing.

However I think that fans of the show miss that despite his contemptible personality, Chuck was right about Jimmy. Even after becoming a lawyer, he was still Slippin Jimmy, the con artist more interested in taking shortcuts than doing things the proper way. And that need to break the rules is what ultimately led to his own demise as Saul Goodman.

Now I already know that people are going to say “but Chuck made him that way!” He didn’t support his brother even when he did go straight and work hard to become a lawyer. If he had, Jimmy would have been a straight laced lawyer and would have never become Saul Goodman. Which is total bullshit.

The series establishes that Jimmy’s need to break the rules isn’t just a result of his circumstances. It’s a pathology, almost the same as Chuck’s allergy to electricity. Chuck knows Jimmy. He knows the damage he’s capable of doing to those around him, even when he doesn’t mean to. So while it was a dick move to not tell Jimmy he didn’t want to hire him, it wasn’t necessarily a wrong decision.

When he was a child, Jimmy witnessed his father being taken advantage of by a grifter. The man told him that he had to choose if he was going to be a wolf or a sheep, essentially either be someone who takes advantage of others or is taken advantage of. Jimmy chooses to be a wolf, and begins stealing from his own father’s store because of it.

This is what creates the Slippin Jimmy persona. Because of this experience, Jimmy began to see any form of compassion or naivety as weakness. Instead he devotes himself to scamming people, not just to earn a living but because it gave him a rush. He’s addicted to the thrill of getting over on someone, which is why he does it even when he knows it’s not the right thing to do.

The comparison to Walter White is apt because just like Walt, Jimmy’s behavior can’t be excused by his circumstances. Despite whatever happened to him, Jimmy ultimately did it what he did for himself. Even when he gets an opportunity to have the legitimate career he always wanted at Davis and Main, he just can’t play by the rules. Coloring outside the lines is just too attractive for him, and he ultimately decides to do things his way.

The larger point of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul in general is that choices have consequences. It’s the bad choice road that Mike talks about. Our actions lead us to a conclusion that we have to face, but we made the choices that put us on that road. You can’t blame other people for your own actions. The finale is Jimmy finally accepting responsibility for who he is and what he has done.

In the end he even admits to his own part in the breakdown of the relationship between him and Chuck. Throughout the finale, we see him asking various characters what they would change if they had a time machine. Though he plays it off as another Saul Goodman quirk, in reality it’s his way of saying that he regrets what happened between him and Chuck, and wishes he could go back and change things between the two of them.

My point with this video wasn’t to say that Chuck was perfect. He was a deeply flawed and bitter man. But he isn’t responsible for Jimmy’s choices. Jimmy chose to be Slippin Jimmy. He chose to be Saul Goodman. And he was responsible for his own fate, not Chuck.

Now to be fair, he was wrong about one thing. He thought that Jimmy could never change, and in the finale he did by finally admitting the truth about himself. It wasn’t his usual display of emotion after a scam, it was real this time and he accepted the consequences. But I’d argue it was only by accepting that Chuck was right about him previously that he was finally able to become Jimmy McGill again instead of Saul Goodman.

So as much of a dick as Chuck might be, the series wouldn’t have been the same without him, and I think he deserves to be appreciated for that at least.

Although he was still crazy.