We've been diving deep and reviewing Better Call Saul, and the Season Three action in Albuquerque was down for critical analysis in this week's Player Ratings.
One crucial and constant plot point throughout this season is the character progression, and ultimately regression, of Jimmy's brother Chuck.
There has always been a brotherly rivalry between the pair that truly gets nasty in this season, and Eoin Sheahan, Ger Gilroy and Joseph Conroy discussed that theme among others this week.
Ger says that Rhea Seehorn's character in particular guides us in changing our thinking around Chuck's mental illness.
"I think after a period of time you realise Kim Wexler plays the role of the audience in all of this. She's the one who gets intoxicated by what Jimmy is up to and loves him for the rogue that he is, but is always a bit conflicted as to whether he's going too far.
"She is the one who really called a halt to the whole notion of his illness being just a comedy trope. It was used in so many dramatic moments... Huell [Babineaux] bumps into him and plants [something on him] in the court scene on which a lot of the whole season hinges.
"Essentially the Chuck narrative hinges on that one moment. He gets humiliated in the court because they've planted a battery on him. It proves essentially that his disease is psychosomatic.
"It has been funny up to this point in some places, it has been played for laughs. But it was Kim who drew our attention to the fact that this is a mental illness, and that HHM should have been treating him as someone with a mental illness, as opposed to a cash-cow when they were dealing with him the whole way through this.
"Ultimately at the end, his suicide is shocking, truly shocking."
Chuck suffers, or at least thinks he suffers, from electromagnetic hypersensitivity, and Joseph says his pretending to deal with that is one of his strongest memories from the first few seasons.
"I think they set him up as this asshole. There's actually somewhere in the series where Saul is really exasperated with Chuck and saying 'why can't you just be normal?' And the whole thing is he can't, I think they really hammer that home.
How does someone become an immoral, law-bending lawyer? One step at a time. Track the critical moments of Jimmy’s spiral to Saul: https://t.co/AihUXWAot3 #BetterCallSaul pic.twitter.com/4BrqSLqXfK
— Better Call Saul (@BetterCallSaul) April 10, 2020
"It's that sequence of him destroying the house and trying to stop the meter ticking... we've seen he's tried to move on, and tried to pretend he's getting treatment... but still the meter is running and he's losing his mind.
"They spent seven minutes of him just with no dialogue unravelling. They built him up as this asshole... but then they've tried to flip it and tried to make you feel that sympathy.
"That also raises questions - could someone have helped him? Could there have been another resolution that's not him burning his house down and killing himself?"
Meanwhile Eoin feels his brother's demise will ultimately have a huge impact on Jimmy / Saul's feelings in future seasons.
"The idea of who was the person responsible for this? I'm sure we'll see in Season Four the guilt that Jimmy McGill will feel as a result of this.
"You're left on an unbelievably cold final exchange between the two brothers at the end of Season Three."
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