Better Call Saul “Breathe”

There’s a running concept right now in the Jimmy McGill plot that Chuck’s death is perhaps having unintended consequences on Jimmy, the sort even he isn’t likely to admit.

It would explain one of the more baffling scenes in the episode.

As always, a lot happens in the episode, and a lot of it is compelling but not something I feel overly concerned with talking about.  Mike and Nacho are both separately going deeper into Gus Fring’s organization, only one of them willingly.  Mike is even arguably doing too much to justify his fake employment to get some stolen money laundered while Nacho was looking to get out and just sucked in even deeper by someone who is arguably much more dangerous than Hector Salamanca.  These are good characters involved in a good story.  I just don’t have much to say about them right now.

Instead, there’s Jimmy.  He needs a job, and while Kim thinks he could take some time off and just enjoy some unemployment benefits, he won’t hear of it.  He has some job prospects lined up, and the first one is as a salesman for a copy machine company.  His interview goes well enough, using his knowledge of the HHM mailroom to show he understands the product very well, but no sooner does he leave that he goes back and offers a hell of a pitch to get himself hired right away rather than wait for the owner and the manager to come to a decision.  It’s a somewhat standard Jimmy McGill tour-de-force, the kind that shows how much his quick thinking and showmanship can actually get him places.  It even works.  He’s offered a job on the spot.

That’s a classic Jimmy thing.

But then he berates the two men for being so quick to hire him without doing something like due diligence or at least a background check.  They know Jimmy used to be a lawyer.  Did they ever stop to find out why he stopped?  Of course not.  And Jimmy absolutely takes them to task for that.  Why?

Maybe that’s his inner Chuck.

See, Kim has Jimmy’s best legal, emotional, and mental interests in mind when she has to deal with well-meaning (maybe) people like Howard, but that does leave Jimmy working off by himself.  So, if Jimmy is stopping his own scams, and “scam” seems too strong a word in this case, then is it that little Chuck voice in his head that’s keeping him from doing something like that?

Or is he working some other angle I haven’t figured out yet because I don’t have all the details?

Regardless, I think it is safe to say that Chuck’s death did more to Jimmy than he’s likely to let on.