Jimmy broke. we all saw that. we didn't just see it in the last episode.
per the topic, what broke Jimmy, when, how, when could you notice it.
Why, the script did!
shareWhen he was in the car crying, that is when Jimmy became Its all good man.
shareIt came from the Chuck scholarship board meeting. It mirrored his bar hearing. The girl that Jimmy spoke up for was never gonna be considered by the rest of the board. What he said to her afterward was him projecting his beliefs and experience onto her. He didn't realize what this meant until he got back to his car.
He wanted to be the kind of person Chuck would be proud of, and did a lot to change his ways, but he came to believe he would never get a fair shake. Someone or something would always be in the way of him becoming the best lawyer or the best man. And whenever that happens, he sees Chuck, the guy who would never be proud of him enough to rename the firm HHMM.
agree with winslow that this was the crystallization of it, the explanation of it, and maybe the last straw, i think you nailed it.
but we saw signs of it earlier. his callous reaction to chuck's letter, for example, and response to howard. it was that same emotional disconnect. i'm betting there were earlier signs, but i dont recall seeing one.
he started dropping chunks of his humanity.
The first part of Chuck’s letter says it all; describing how happy their Mom was the day they brought Jimmy home from the hospital. Jimmy was the very much loved and wanted child. Evidently, Chuck was not. (There are lots of reasons she might not have wanted, then resented, Chuck. Post-partum depression and the resulting lack of bonding after his birth. Unwanted pregnancy forcing her to give up her dreams and marry their father. If he was Chuck’s father, that is; Chuck could’ve been the result of an assault, or just a different boyfriend who wouldn’t marry her. It was the 1950s, after all.) So Chuck made it his life’s mission to prove to his parents that their favorite child wasn’t as worthy of their love as he was, in an effort to take it all for himself. Even though Jimmy truly cared for him, at least up until the end, Chuck was always disdainful and belittling in his treatment of his little brother. Chuck was really the one who created Slippin’ Jimmy. Plus, did you notice how Chuck yanked the microphone away from Jimmy during the karaoke? Yeah, he did have the better singing voice, but it was Jimmy’s night, not his. He should’ve taken a back seat and let Jimmy happily sing his song off-key, instead of grabbing the spotlight and making it all about him. He just couldn’t let Jimmy have some sense of accomplishment without trying to pee all over it and steal his thunder. So I think it was a lifelong thing, and entirely Chuck’s fault. Decades of having your own brother relentlessly—-hell, obsessively—-try to keep you down in the dirt to make himself look superior would break most people, especially if it was so unnecessarily and flagrantly vicious at the end.
shareabso-lutely
great points. sibling rivalry is a very interesting dynamic. this show mined it to the hilt. jimmy was a co-dependent brother, who finally was brought to the point of recognizing how deeply he was despised/loathed/feared. that has to take something out of you.
Jimmy was broken from the time he realized his actions killed his brother. It started his trip from a sometime sociopath to a full time sociopath. The difference is that after Chuck's death almost all of Jimmy's empathy left him.
I really got that message when Jimmy went after the young girl he championed in the scholarship interview. When he starts talking to her it seems he's trying to help her. But then it becomes clear how every word is about him and not about her. The scene with Jimmy crying in his car pushes that message home. He's lost and hurt, and hurt for himself not for her. His speech about others not accepting people with flaws is really about how he can't accept himself any longer. From that point forward, Jimmy can't be Jimmy any longer.
The hearing scenes finish Jimmy's transition. We see that Jimmy talked to Kim about trying to show remorse for Chuck's death prior to the hearing. Unfortunately, episode after episode proved that feeling is not something he owns. Jimmy is sorry for Jimmy, and so, all he can do is con people into thinking he really cared. Part of Jimmy McGill died with Chuck, so when he ends up as Saul Goodman its appropriate.
yes - his reaction to chuck's letter, his treatment of howard, was the clear indication that something had been snapped off. then, when kim went off on her own and formally dissociated with him professionally, that was another piece gone. but we also were shown that their relationship had been deteriorating throughout the year. jimmy is simply emotionally adrift, his circle of trust is down to between 1 and 0.
take a skilled experienced con with no one in his life he can count on, or who counts on him (his co-dependent role w/ chuck, which was his basic tether on a social existence), and he is now fully ensconced in his own social universe, with nothing left but games/cons to play.
the one social role he has left is defender of the despised, the criminal. he has a bit of the stand-up guy in him, going back to the beginning season when he kept his hired con accomplices from being murdered by nacho's pals. he still has a code, still has guts, we can probably expect.